268: Cooking
There was a soft chuckle to my side as I looked down to see the form of Huling sitting on the ground next to Lily, rubbing under her chin.
It was strange seeing her because although she had the shape of a human girl, the shape was all she had. Her face lacked almost all the features you’d expect on a human; there were no ears, no lips even, and her nose was more like a snout, while her eyes were just predatory and terrifying.
Looking past her, I saw the merchants looking terrified, sweat already forming on their brows. Even Gilain was still gripping his sword tightly, while those of us who’d seen her before were already putting our weapons away.
“Hello, Huling, nice to see you again,” I said happily.
A smile appeared, revealing a row of sharp teeth. “You remembered me! That’s good!” she said in a soft, melodic tone straight to my mind.
“Of course, uh, I don’t suppose you could tone down the aura possibly? The merchants aren’t dealing with it well,” I asked.
When she looked at them, her appearance somehow became colder, and with almost a sneer, she responded, “They are so greedy though.”
“They are merchants; that doesn’t surprise me, but we are guarding them,” I said.
She turned back to me, and I saw it this time; it wasn’t an aura exactly, but there was a clear shift in the tone around her as it became brighter.
“Very well, Lily says this big one cut her paw?” She appeared to look at Gilain.
I felt the need to jump in here quickly to mitigate the chance of a fight. I also noticed that Hari and Jen were moving the merchants inside the house that Milo had constructed.
“He got lucky, but Lily beat him up for it,” I said with a laugh.
I noticed Lily gave Gilain a glare, but went straight back to closing her eyes and enjoying the scratches.
“He’s so slow though. Did you fall into his blade?” Huling asked.
She was clearly trying to stir the situation, but it seemed like Gilain had relaxed enough to remove his hand from his weapon.
“Just how many old monsters do you know?” he asked.
I decided to try and move the conversation along, ignoring the question, and also shifting it from Huling making fun of Lily for getting cut.
“Do you live in this area?” I asked.
Huling shook her head. “Not really, I live much further into the forest, a bit more to the north, but Sylvy mentioned you’ll be heading this way.”
“How many travellers have you attacked then?” Gilain asked.
The forwardness surprised me, but I remembered back to the dinner, where the king mentioned a long-standing guild mission for Huling, and seemed to imply she was far more dangerous than she appeared.
Huling, however, seemed to take the question as a compliment. “Nobody was greedy enough while I waited.”
“Greedy enough?” I questioned.
It was Milo who joined in with an explanation. “Huling has quite the reputation among adventurers; she lures people in with promises of riches, and those who fall for it will perish.”
“I don’t just kill people,” Huling said, making her disapproval very apparent.
“You’re right; there are plenty of tales of gifting riches or treasures to those who show selflessness, though much rarer than the missing adventurers,” Milo added.
Huling let out a soft laugh. “That’s because most people who are humble enough to earn the reward won’t go around boasting about it.”
“I’m just about to make food, if you want to stay,” I offered.
Immediately getting a nod, truthfully I felt like she was staying anyway, so it made sense to just invite her, though I might need something a little special if I was hosting someone as powerful and apparently dangerous as her.
My mind went back to the spikeback, though it was almost dark, so there was no chance I could butcher it now, but there was something I was going to make and had completely forgotten about.
Voidscale hare pie.
“It’s going to take a few hours to cook though,” I said. There was a recipe in the royal cooking book that had caught my attention, and tonight would be the night I did it.
This didn’t seem to matter to anyone, with Crisplet stealing Huling’s attention, showing her the wooden orb puzzle he’d been so fascinated with, doing exactly what the old man showed him by removing two pieces, then covering it in ash and putting it back together. Crisplet clearly lacked the speed the old man had.
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Before he handed it over to her to work out, in the distance I saw Gilain and Hari start with training, both swinging their swords in the same motion over and over, and surprisingly I saw Jen actually training. If I wasn’t mistaken, she was using an ability I had not seen before, as her arrows not only moved faster than I could see, but even seemed to crack twice, like they were double hitting, despite there only being the one mark in the tree. Well, by mark I mean practically a hole.
I moved inside, with Crisplet rushing in to help me and Huling following behind, seemingly focused fully on the puzzle in her hands, having already removed a piece.
Milo helped by creating a large oven, which Crisplet quickly started heating up with several pieces of the bowyer blend I had in storage.
Pulling out the hare, I pulled out my knife, cutting it into quarters, seasoning it with some salt and pepper before using a tray and sliding it in to roast.
I didn’t have time to waste, so for the pastry, I pulled out some buvul lard and suet, mixing it with grain flour quickly until it reached the consistency of breadcrumbs. From there, Milo gave me a small amount of ice-cold water, which really gave it a solid consistency as I quickly worked it together and stored it away, keeping it cold.
It wouldn’t be the perfect pastry; I didn’t have everything chilled, but it would do for what I had planned.
Next, I moved on to preparing the vegetables I would be using. First, pulling out an empty pot, I started by adding butter, before cooking off some thinly chopped onions, adding chopped garlic grass and a dried herb blend I had picked up. I wasn’t entirely sure what was in it, but it was a common item in the inn kitchens I had been in so far, so I didn’t expect anything uncommon or rare.
I then added the voidscale hare stock I had prepared to the pot, filling it up to one-third and storing the rest away, moving the stock back to the heat to start reducing.
When Crisplet let me know the hare was ready, I pulled it out, and although it was cooked, we were not done yet. I would need to let it cool down slightly before removing the meat from the bone, which surprisingly didn’t take long, and I suspected that Milo was subtly assisting with it as there was a nice cool breeze blowing past, and no open windows nearby.
Either way, I removed the meat and returned the nearly clean bones back to the oven to roast longer until they had turned nice and dark brown.
While I waited, I cubed the hare meat and some basic boar bacon, and pulled out some mushrooms. I ended up using regular ones from the market. I was tempted to use the duster mushrooms I had picked today, but I didn’t know the flavour and I didn’t want to introduce too many unknowns into the buffs.
Removing the roasted bones from the oven, I set aside the fat that had collected on the tray as I was checking the recipe book while I cooked to make sure I didn’t deviate too far. I was missing some herbs it requested, but so far it smelled great.
The roasted bones I added to the reducing stock, onions and herbs.
I then cooked off the bacon, and using the fat in the pan, I cooked off the mushrooms, which were all cut into quarters.
Finally, the last item left to prepare was a mixture of the hare fat, of which there was not a lot, being a lean meat, and any leftover bacon fat that wasn’t used on the mushrooms. Mixing even parts with grain flour, I didn’t need much. It said quarter-fist size, which seemed like a silly measurement as every hand was different, right?
To finish it all off, I drained the reducing stock out of the pot. Crisplet made me a fine mesh over the top so it would keep all the bones and large items in, and only the liquid came out. It was already a deep brown and had gone slightly cloudy, but it had an almost velvety texture as it was.
To that, I added in the cooked-off mushrooms and bacon, along with the diced-up hare meat, as well as some fresh chopped garlic grass, adding in the flour and fat mixture, which rapidly thickened the sauce as I stirred.
It already looked good enough to eat, but I wasn’t done.
Grabbing the pastry, I used a stone rolling pin to roll it out fairly thin, laying it across a large pie dish, leaving myself plenty to cover the top with.
Despite this pie being very large, I suspected it wouldn’t be enough for everyone, so I decided to make a dessert as well, cleaning the pot that had the bones, just adding the discarded items to the fire as Crisplet quickly burnt away any remaining liquid and turned them to ash.
I used the pot again, this time pulling out all the frost cherries I had, well, all except a small handful. These had been very tart and sour, but I had an idea today, and it might not work, but we’d soon find out.
I added them all to the pot before pulling out the ruby drops and putting them in the pot as well. With that, I added a small amount of water and lots of sugar, almost equal parts berries to sugar, and slowly heated it through. One very important detail I remembered vividly from when I read this recipe a few days ago was a large note saying, “Do not over-stir.”
I was going to use the same pastry as the pie, which I knew wasn’t exactly the same, as I should have made it with butter instead of lard, and it should have had some sugar in the pastry, but it looked similar, so it shouldn’t be too different, I hoped.
Liane caught sight of what I was making, having shuffled her way close and sitting next to Lily.
“Everyone is going to think you’re trying to poison them,” she laughed, spotting the ruby drops.
I shrugged. “I figured it would balance out the super tart frost cherries, that along with the sugar mixture.”
After nearly three hours of cooking, I finally had everything ready: one very large pie, along with fifteen small berry tarts.
I knew there was a difference in pastry between pie and tarts normally, but right now the tarts had an almost meat-like smell to them that had me kind of worried; they were not supposed to be savoury.
I moved on; that was a problem for later.
“Liane, do you think I’ll be alright infusing this even if Gilain sees it?” I asked while he was still outside training.
She nodded. “I’ll check with Milo too, but if we get in a fight, he’s going to see your food used and healing us, so it makes sense.”
After a short while, I got another nod, letting me know to infuse it, which I did, also using my new culinary reclamation skill on it, just in case, along with the berry tarts.
[Uncommon] Voidscale Hare Pie
- +6 Dexterity
- +3 Wisdom
- +2 Endurance
- Perfect Shot
- Improved Focus
- Enhanced Hearing (Passive)
- Fire Immunity
- +1 Strength
- +1 Dexterity
- +3 Luck
- Perfect Shot
- Improved Focus
- Fire Immunity