Dakdoritang with a Thick Red Broth. The Potatoes Were Dyed Red to the Core. It Was Autumn.
Dakdoritang with a Thick Red Broth. The Potatoes Were Dyed Red to the Core. It Was Autumn.
When you hear the word chicken, the first Korean dish that springs to mind is, without question, chikin.
That sound—the violent hiss of battered gold hitting hot oil—was practically the national anthem of salivation.
Korea consumed so much of it that the idea of opening a chicken joint after retirement became a running joke, a collective daydream.
The foundation, fried chicken, wasn't strictly a Korean invention, but what evolved from it—the seasoned chicken slicked in sweet-and-spicy sauce, the soy-garlic chicken glazed to a dark shine—those, you could proudly call Korean.
Seasoned chicken tossed in a sticky, spicy-sweet sauce. Fried chicken, shatteringly crisp, with no sauce at all.
Just thinking about them was enough to make my mouth water.
But what I planned to make for lunch, unfortunately, wasn't chicken in that sense.
For starters, I didn't have the batter mix, the frying powder, or a deep pot of oil heated to the right temperature. You'd need a heavy cauldron built for the job.
The cooking process is simple enough. It's the prep and the oil that are the problem.
A Coco farm isn't going to have a vat of frying oil just lying around.
And I can't exactly scrounge up a cauldron here.
If I'd hauled a pot and oil all the way out here, sure, I could've managed. But I hadn't wanted to. Even on a business trip, you have to draw the line somewhere. My pack was already stuffed with seasonings and the vegetables for lunch—still a hell of a lot lighter than a full cooking cauldron.
I'll test the fried chicken recipes once the Coco orders come in and I'm back home. Dinner menu material.
So today's lunch would be something more traditional—a chicken dish. Coco chicken, anyway. Something that could pull double duty.
Dakdoritang.
"This one was culled two days ago. The least stressed of the bunch."
The farm owner held out a neatly dressed Coco. The bird lay bare, plucked clean, its outer skin and fat layer white against the bright red of the flesh beneath.
Neck and Coco feet had been removed. A perfectly prepped specimen.
I took the clean-dressed Coco.
"If you don't mind, I'll borrow your kitchen."
"Ah, of course. There's a small kitchen for the staff. Use that one."
I followed the owner to the kitchen he indicated.
With a clean cleaver, I broke the Coco down into sections.
Drumsticks, wings, thighs, breast, neck bones and ribs.
The wingtips I sliced off and tossed in the trash.
I washed the pieces thoroughly under cold water, then packed them in salt, sugar, and fresh milk from the milk cow I'd seen yesterday to start brining. Channeling mana through my cleaver made quick work of the prep.
"Thirty minutes minimum, two hours at most for the brine."
While the Coco soaked, I prepped the base sauce for the dakdoritang.
Gochugaru for heat. Minced garlic—you can't call it Korean cooking without it. Gochujang for that thick, sweet, clinging spice. And a spoonful of doenjang to anchor the whole thing with depth.
Green onions from the restaurant, a large onion, potatoes, carrots—all chopped into big, rough chunks. As the prep wound down, I grated the potato and, with the time left, turned to the farm owner.
"By the way, what did you do with the Coco feet after dressing?"
"What do you think? Sold 'em off to the alchemists in the city. Something about simmering chicken bones producing alchemical reagents. Can't say I understand those sorts—magicians and alchemists. Heh heh."
"You deal with them regularly?"
"Hardly. Those folks only show up when they want something, buy what they need, and vanish."
"Then we should talk more about those Coco feet later."
"Looking to buy?"
"Not right now. I need to do some market research first."
We chatted back and forth while I got the rice going, and thirty minutes slipped by before I knew it.
I pulled the brined Coco out of the milk, rinsed it clean under running water, and laid the pieces on a strainer to drain.
The wide, flat pot I'd brought went onto the Brewstar I'd also packed.
The Empire had widely adopted the Flare Range, but you couldn't expect to find one in a back-of-house kitchen like this. There was a wood-fired oven, but its heat was too fierce for dakdoritang.
Tadadadak!
The Brewstar ignited, and I poured cooking oil into the heating pot.
Into the oil went the minced garlic, the gochugaru, and the large-cut green onions.
The idea was to bloom everything together—infusing the oil with the green onion, the garlic, and the chili all at once to build a deep layer of savory flavor.
I dropped the heat low and kept the vegetables and seasonings moving with a spatula, stirring constantly. The key was coaxing the flavors into the oil without letting anything scorch.
Vegetable juices from the green onion met the oil and began to bubble gently.
When the fragrance of green onion, garlic, and chili rose thick, I laid the rinsed Coco pieces straight into the pot.
Chiiiik!
Over medium-low heat, I let the Coco cook, keeping the seasonings constantly moving so they didn't burn.
The outsides browned and released a deeply pleasant smell.
"Hmm..."
Andrea made a small, satisfied sound and licked her lips.
"That good?"
"Yes. Good. Hehe."
"I thought Coco was tasteless meat to you."
"Why would you think that?"
"You don't have to hunt it."
"You're teasing me."
"How'd you know?"
By the time the small talk ran its course, the surface of the Coco had browned through. I poured in the soy-based sauce with a little sugar mixed in ahead of time.
The soy sauce bubbled and frothed.
I kept the heat low and let the soy sauce simmer, making sure it penetrated the meat and seasonings fully.
Andrea's eyes, drunk on the smell of chili paste, Coco, and simmering soy sauce, locked onto the pot in a trance.
"You're strange, boss."
"How so?"
"How do new recipes just keep popping out of you like that? From what I've heard, even top chefs don't have ten original recipes to their name."
"That's what comes from cooking a lot."
Once the seasonings had visibly soaked into the Coco, I added water, then the potatoes and carrots I'd cut earlier.
Bubble, bubble.
In went the gochujang and the doenjang. I raised the heat to medium and let it keep boiling.
When the potatoes and carrots felt just about done, I tossed in the sliced onion.
Then came my secret weapon for dakdoritang: the finely grated potato. I stirred it in and let everything cook a little longer over medium heat.
The starch from the grated potato thickened the broth, while the potato's natural sweetness spread through the seasonings, pulling the whole sauce toward a rounder, slightly sweeter finish.
The mana infused into the potato as I grated it acted as a natural sweetener, too.
I could have used that magic powder—the one that starts with M. But...
I'm pretty sure I'm running low.
With the restaurant's stock dwindling fast, I didn't want to use any more. Until the alchemists Camilla was sending arrived, I had to conserve.
The thickened broth burbled, its bubbles bursting thick and slow.
I scooped up one more large spoonful of minced garlic and dropped it in.
The earlier garlic was for the oil and the savory base of the Coco meat itself. This round was for the broth—building a heavier, deeper richness.
A Korean can't resist garlic.
"Is it really all right to use that much gallek?"
The farm owner stared in disbelief.
Garlic—gallek in this world—was treated strictly as an aromatic spice. What kind of lunatic would dump in a whole spoonful?
"This is how you give the broth body."
The broth burbled.
Now all I had to do was wait for the potatoes to finish cooking. I pressed a metal chopstick into one, and it slid through with no resistance.
"That's it."
At those words, Andrea scrambled to scoop rice into bowls.
"You should eat too, boss. You must be hungry by now."
"Ah—would that be all right? I've always been curious, you know. I've had neighbors who trekked all the way to your restaurant just to eat."
The farm owner settled at the table without bothering to hide the curiosity glinting in his eyes.
Andrea had the table perfectly set, and onto it I placed the dakdoritang—the final, crowning touch.
White steam rose from the red broth and the Coco meat like heat shimmer.
A spicy, faintly sweet aroma filled the kitchen.
Cooking a Coco dish at a Coco farm.
Sorry, Coco.
But you're just too damn delicious.
I served each plate generously—a large chunk of potato, a piece of Coco breast with its signature moist flesh, and a deep ladle of the thick broth.
"Smells good."
"This scent is something else. Completely different from the cooking in my village. We never made Coco soup like this."
The farm owner studied the dakdoritang as if it were a curiosity. Andrea was already drooling, like she knew exactly how good it was going to be.
For my own plate, I heaped on a Coco drumstick and a potato, drenched in broth.
"Go ahead. Eat the sauce together with the rice."
Andrea's spoon split a potato that had been smothered in the red broth. White flesh broke open, steam curling upward.
"Haaah..."
She soaked the white potato in more broth, popped it into her mouth, and stamped her feet, a happy little moan escaping her.
"So good."
By now, she didn't seem to draw any real distinction between vegetables and meat. In the old days, she would have aimed straight for the meat first.
She's graduated into a real flavor connoisseur.
She'd learned that sometimes, potatoes and radishes soaked through with seasoning could outshine the meat itself.
I used my chopsticks to slice into the thickest part of a drumstick.
The meat pulled apart along the grain.
I picked up the skin and the drumstick meat together and laid it over my rice. When I spooned the broth—thickened with starch from the grated potato—over the top, the marriage of white and red was beautiful.
One large spoonful, straight into my mouth.
"Whew—hot."
Hoo, hoo.
I puffed steam like a dragon, cooling it down.
The sticky, perfectly cooked rice, the deep-flavored seasoning, and the Coco meat.
All three elements fused into one and started dancing on my tongue.
Heat and savory richness. A sweet note right at the end.
The Coco drumstick—chewy and springy, then melting away into nothing—capped the whole thing off.
"That's it. There it is."
I plucked a fresh potato with my chopsticks and chewed.
The moment it hit my mouth, it crushed between my teeth and the seasoning spread everywhere. Perfection.
"Whew—this is really something."
Following my lead, the farm owner looked at me in open surprise.
"It's spicy, but... I can't seem to stop my hand. Ha ha ha."
"It's a delicious kind of spicy, right?"
"Incredible. I never knew spicy could taste this good."
Andrea, her first serving already empty, was ladling more onto her plate.
"But boss."
"Hm?"
"Do you not like Coco breast?"
"It's not that. Why?"
"You've only been eating the drumsticks—the hard-to-eat parts. Here, have some of this."
She offered me a piece of breast meat.
"I'm good. You eat it. You love breast meat."
"Me? Really?"
"Yeah."
Most of the Empire's culinary preferences I could understand. But a few things still escaped me entirely.
One of them was the way they overwhelmingly preferred Coco breast over drumsticks.
I just don't get it.
How could anyone pass up a succulent, glorious drumstick like this?
The Empire even had a saying:
Marry someone who willingly gives you the Coco breast.
Why were they so obsessed with that dry, stringy cut? Sure, Coco breast was way more tender than regular chicken breast, but it didn't hold a candle to the drumstick.
I'm telling you, it makes no sense.
I tore into one Coco drumstick and fished the remaining one out of the pot, setting it in my bowl.
I piled dakdoritang broth and a chunk of potato over my rice, mashing the potato into everything with my spoon as I mixed.
Green onion, onion, and shreds of Coco meat went on top, and I scooped up a huge bite.
"This is good."
The whole pleasant sequence—that explosion of flavor hitting my tongue, sliding down my throat, filling my stomach—had me smiling before I knew it.
"Boss, this dish is seriously delicious. What's it called?"
"Dakdori—no, Cocodoritang."
"Cocodoritang? That's a strange name."
Andrea finished speaking and grinned, her bowl already empty.
"I can have one more bowl, right?"
"Go ahead. Since when did you need my permission to eat?"
"Hehehe. Thank you for the food."
I loved the atmosphere that came with eating dakdoritang.
A menu too heavy to eat alone.
A menu you wouldn't necessarily reach for in a huge crowd, either.
It was the kind of dish that hit right when three or four people filled a table—enough to feel full, enough not to feel weighed down.
The sort of meal where you could pour soju in the evening, lean back, and talk in low voices in front of the bubbling pot.
The flavor of the dakdoritang was one thing, but the whole scene it created—I liked that just as much.
Like right now.
A time when I could laugh and chatter with people happily eating the food I'd made. That was genuinely good.
Proper healing, this.
I realized my bowl was empty again and filled it with fresh rice.
It was, all told, a deeply pleasant meal.
***
"But will it really show up?"
Evening, after the sun had set.
Hidden in the woods near the Coco farm, Andrea and I waited for the magi—the creature we suspected was raiding the place.
"We'll have to wait and see. It seems to approach in a way ordinary people can't detect—so let's stay sharp."
If I couldn't solve this farm's problem, chicken dishes were off the menu for the foreseeable future.
And I hadn't even made half the chicken dishes I knew.
Fried chicken, braised chicken, chicken kalguksu, samgyetang, oven-roasted chicken, smoked chicken, chicken porridge, dakbaeksuk, soy-garlic chicken, crispy rice chicken... the list went on.
Man, just thinking about it made my mouth water again.
Add egg dishes to the count and the number jumped even higher.
Give all that up?
No chance in hell.
I was stewing on that thought when—
"Boss, I sense magi from the farm."
Andrea pointed urgently toward the farm buildings.
It was here.