177: Lessons
Heading back into the kitchen, I tried to put the bacon out of my mind for now. I would need to work on those runes with Sylverith before I needed to make other plans.
“Excited for today?” I said to Crisplet.
He was already holding a knife made out of compressed coal in his hand, and I got a burst of sparks to my question. Entering the kitchen, I spotted Lily sleeping in the room’s corner, which made Torrel freeze for a moment as we entered.
“Right! I have you until lunchtime, so let’s get started…”
The next three hours went by in a blur as I was taught so many different techniques: from safely removing venom sacks from creatures to removing tendons from meat to how to prepare organs to make them edible.
I was then taught several marinades that would help tenderise the meat, including one that used crushed-up fruit, as it was explained that the acids in the fruit helped break down the meat and made it tender.
Then, finally, I had just finished learning how to make an emulsion sauce using eggs, lemon juice, and oil before Auguste pulled out what looked like thin white tubes in a ball.
“I will now teach you how to make sausages. These are important to learn, especially for someone on the road, because like jerky they can be smoked and cured to make them last a long time. These are the casings. You can buy them from butchers in the capital, or traditionally they are made out of boar intestines. Trevor, listen to me well: if you collect your own, always clean the intestines more than you think is required,” Auguste said.
Auguste placed the casing on the counter and took the buvul that Torrel had been finely chopping. He then pulled out what looked like a chunk of fat, as well as some ground-up spices that smelled both nutty and earthy, with a deep brown colour, along with salt and pepper.
“Right, so this is pretty simple. First, you want to have ground meat,” he said.
Then he raised his hand over the bowl, and the finely chopped meat started to churn a little before it appeared to be getting crushed.
“Some chefs have the ability to do this; others get a device that pushes it through rotating blades to achieve a similar effect. It’s always best practice to use both your lean meats and offcuts that won’t make good roasts or steaks, but always add some fat to it, or they will be dry and unpleasant,” he continued.
He then poured in the spice mixture he had, along with a pinch of the seasonings.
“Now, these spices and seasonings can change to something you want—be creative. You can also add fine breadcrumbs to the mixture if you wish to have it hold together better, but it’s unnecessary. For these casings, they have already been cleaned, salted, and dried, so all we need to do is simply submerge them in warm water.”
Auguste then pulled out a bowl and produced water from a ring, submerging the white strips.
“Now, for this part, even I need a tool, but it’s fairly simple: a stuffing tube. You just slide the casings onto the end like this, then push the mixture gently in through the hole on the other side. If you want to smoke or cure them, I would suggest adding some sugar to your mixture to feed the bacteria,” he explained.
He then proceeded to demonstrate how to squeeze the mixture into the casing.
“Right, it’s your turn. You can use my mixture, but I want you to fill it yourself,” he said, tying off his example and cutting it free as a giant curl.
It looked really easy, so reaching into the warm water, I pulled up the casing, finding it was slippery immediately. I tried to fit it around the end of the stuffing tube like Auguste had just shown, but every time I thought I had it on, it just slipped off the end. How did he make it look so easy!
Auguste laughed. “You need to get it over the edge, then slide it up. You want there to be an excess on the nozzle there.”
I finally got it on and tried to slide it up, thinking I had it. I then held on as I pushed the meat with the plunger at the back…
And the casing came straight off.
Auguste was clearly trying to hide his smile with a stone-like expression, but you could see it in his eyes.
“You need more on the nozzle then. You really want to make sure you have a good grip. Be careful it doesn’t tear,” he explained.
It tore.
The moment I finally had the casing on the nozzle, it started to fill before bursting through the side of the casing and tearing off.
“How did you make this look so easy!” I said as I once again tried to slide it back on.
“Lots of practice,” he said with a soft chuckle.
“It’s better I teach you now rather than you trying this on the road and giving up because you think you’re just doing it wrong.”
“I expected you to teach me a really fancy dish,” I said with a laugh, putting the casing back on and trying again.
This text was taken from NovelFire. Help the author by reading the original version there.
“It crossed my mind, but ultimately, when would you ever use that again? I instead felt like you’d be better suited to learn more practical skills, and for Crisplet to learn how to wield that knife properly. You’ll learn something delicious later today. Now focus on that casing and make some sausages. Lily is already eyeing you off,” Auguste said.
And sure enough, looking behind me, there was Lily, staring directly at my hands.
She’s going to be disappointed when she finds out I can’t infuse these because Auguste minced the meat.
It took several more tries before I finally succeeded in letting off enough casing at the right speed for the sausage to properly fill, and even then there were noticeable air bubbles in mine that I swear were not in Auguste’s, but I was happy I finally got some made.
The last thing I was taught were two different types of bread that I could easily make on the road.
“Thank you,” I said, bowing. I had learned a lot and got a lot of useful advice, but now it was time for something I was really looking forward to. I noticed when I turned around that the sausage I had prepared had vanished, with Lily having her back suspiciously turned towards me, but I had no time to check.
Julia stepped forward, a giant smile plastered on her face as Crisplet and I waited for our next instruction.
“You’re mine now! And I have a list of requests from your friends in the house.”
I knew immediately who was to blame for this. “Liane and Jen put you up to this, didn’t they?”
“Not telling! Now, I’m going to teach you baking. Baking is all about precision and heat control, and Crisplet, you’re perfect for heat control!” she said.
She proceeded to pull several very basic ingredients out of her storage ring.
“Right, I’m going to teach you very basic cookies first. Very simple: you need flour, sugar, eggs, butter, and this ingredient here, which is a leavening agent we’ll be using in a lot of recipes today. It’s called kartshorn, and it comes from the antler of a plains animal called the kartom. The horn is heated to a very high temperature, where it releases some chemicals contained within it. What remains is this powder. What it’s used for is, like the name suggests, leavening, or rising,” she said, showing me the grey powder.
She then pulled out several other ingredients. I saw what looked to be dried fruit, and small light brown buttons that appeared to be milky almost, and there were several nuts. “Now these can all go into your cookie. Once you have the base, the types you can make can vary greatly, so get creative!”
She then started portioning out the ingredients, writing it down as she went, and it felt like instantly it was all mixed in a bowl and she was left with a slightly yellow dough.
“That’s how easy this is. Throw all the dry ingredients in: your flour, sugar, pinch of salt, and a bit of the kartshorn. In the middle of the dry ingredients, make a little well, then crack in your eggs, add your butter and any other wet ingredients, then mix. I used a skill to cheat mine, but it’s still very simple,” she said, handing me a spoon.
She even prepared a bowl for Crisplet, adding in all the ingredients for him, and then offered him a spoon, but Crisplet insisted on making his own.
Mixing it through, I kept finding pockets of flour and needing to mix it harder. Crisplet looked to be having a great time, even if his mixture looked far worse, as he was letting off bursts of sparks now and then. I also noticed when Julia came over to inspect that Crisplet’s mixture seemed to suspiciously improve.
“Perfect! Next, mix in the ingredients you like. For this, just fold it in—no need to mix it super hard again,” she said, pointing to the nuts, fruit, what I learnt to be chocolate, which was made from a seed. I went with nuts, while Crisplet went nuts and chocolate.
Next, Julia pulled out two trays, where we portioned out the cookies. She was helping Crisplet do his. For these, Crisplet insisted on helping to cook them.
The smell was delicious. There was the caramelising sugar and buttery aroma throughout the entire kitchen.
While Crisplet was cooking, Julia had already cleaned our bowls and had the ingredients ready to go for the next item, also writing it down on the same page.
“Crisplet, can you listen, okay, while you cook?” she asked, getting a burst of sparks.
“Great! Next, we’re going to make muffins. They are very similar in ingredients to the cookies you just made. The main difference is the proportions you use and the ingredients you flavour them with. They tend not to be as sweet. The recipe is simple: two parts flour, two parts liquid, one part egg, half part sugar, and one part butter,” Julia said.
I scrambled over to the bowl and started to get a head start on mixing. Well, I tried, except Crisplet threw a piece of coal in my bowl.
“Okay! I’ll wait,” I said, but I expressed happiness to Crisplet through the mana.
The cookies didn’t take long at all, and they were removed from the oven looking golden brown. The chocolate in Crisplet’s had melted some, and the cookies themselves had spread out and looked incredible.
“Let them cool down. While they do that, let’s get started on the muffins,” Julia said.
We followed her instructions, doing very similar to the cookies, except this time the mixture was far wetter than the cookie dough, and then she pulled out fruit. This time I had an idea. I pulled out a small bunch of dilwater berries.
“Wait, you can’t use those!” Julia yelled as soon as she saw it.
“It’s okay, these are not toxic anymore,” I said, using Purify on them just in case I had forgotten.
Julia seemed very unconvinced by this, but didn’t protest it.
“Right, mix in your fruit, and we’ll have a specially made tray for these. It will allow them to rise like mini circle loaves of bread,” she said, pulling out two trays.
We scooped it in before Crisplet again insisted on cooking these. I noticed Lily was sitting next to the counter now, no longer pretending to be asleep, and long since finished the sausages she stole. She was now sitting between me and the cookies, staring at them.
I really wasn’t sure I could infuse them. All the ingredients were basic, and the nuts were already roasted when they were provided.
The muffins, however, I think I could infuse.
“I can infuse some muffins for you. It won’t work on the cookies,” I said to her.
I got a head tilt, but she didn’t steal any. I, on the other hand, did get to taste one, and it was crispy on the outside with a soft, warm inside. The texture was perfect because the nuts also gave it a crunch. I didn’t touch Crisplet’s, as I assumed he’d likely give his to Jen or Liane, but I would try to trade some with him to try the chocolate.
I watched as Julia cleaned our bowls again. This time she pulled out lemons—lots of lemons—and sugar, more eggs, and butter.
“Next you’ll both learn my lemon tart!” she said with a giant grin on her face.
Crisplet let off a burst of sparks, and I had to agree. This is the one I was looking forward to. Also, those lemons I had only ever used on seafood before today, so I was curious to know how she’d make something so sour into that amazing dessert I tried at the dinner.