Excuse Me, but Why Is That Scrap Meat?
"Aagh!"
The sudden ambush nearly made Karem drop the barrel. He stretched his legs out and caught it with both hands just in time, then let out a long breath. The culprit who had smacked him across the back scratched his gleaming bald head without a hint of shame.
"My mistake, Lord Karem. Got a bit too excited seeing you and forgot my manners."
"I already told you on the first day—I'm only eleven!"
"Well, rumors are just rumors, right? Who would have believed they were actually true?"
The man who had clapped Karem on the back was a towering, middle-aged bald giant with a striking red unibrow and a sharp Kaiser mustache.
"And please, just drop the formal speech already."
"Nonsense! If even half of what they say about Coldon is true, then age doesn't matter—you deserve respect! Isn't that right, boys?"
At his shout, every cook sweating over the massive hearths roared in unison.
"AYE!!!!"
"Damn right! Skill earns respect, no matter how young you are!"
"Deep-frying something completely submerged in oil? That opened my eyes!"
"And those Red Witch's Fingers—don't even get me started!"
The entire hall thundered with the cheers of cooks who looked more like barbarian warriors than kitchen staff. Karem set the barrel down and clutched his ringing head.
It had been exactly like this on the first day.
Hmm? Kid, what did your master order? Atanitas...? The highest-ranking magic advisor...? Wait—you're that little chef from Winterhome!?
What!? A little chef!? I heard he was a dwarf!
He's actually a human kid!?
Of course they hadn't believed him at first. But it hadn't even taken a full day for them to realize it was true. From that moment on, these sweaty, barbarian-warrior-looking cooks had started treating Karem with an almost oppressive level of respect—still using formal speech, but with honorifics piled on thick.
"Look, even so... there's decades of age difference here, never mind background—"
"And yet this is the same chef who made those arrogant, picky dark-elf nobles beg for more, the youngest ever to become a sacrificial cook at Coldon's Winter-Ascend! If a man like that doesn't get respect from other cooks, then who the hell does?"
Karem understood that much. The treatment he received at Winterhome had only gotten better with each passing day.
"But still—it depends on who you're dealing with!"
The problem was that one member of this crew was especially overwhelming.
In rank he stood equal to Winterhome's head chef, Jigmeser. His name was Borgo—no surname. Title: Head Chef of Afterglow Fortress. He was the very man who had just thumped Karem on the back.
"And the sheer nerve of scattering recipes that noble houses had been secretly hoarding for generations across the whole of Iceland!"
"Khhhaaa! Anyone who isn't moved by that might as well be one of those frog-eating cheapskates from Berseingeto!"
"Plus he rediscovered all those spices! That's more than enough reason for us to respect him!"
"...Ahem."
Faced with the scorching enthusiasm of these muscle-bound men, Karem squeezed his eyes shut. His face burned. Honestly, he was embarrassed. This many people pouring out such blatant goodwill all at once? He wasn't a celebrity or an idol—there was no way he had built up any resistance. It felt different from Jigmeser's shameless brown-nosing. The corners of his mouth twitched on their own and heat rose through his whole body.
Ugh, this is so awkward I can't even get a word out.
The cooks found his flustered look delightful and only cheered (sincerely) and praised (also sincerely, for the most part) him harder, though the person in question had no way of knowing that.
"Man, my face is on fire."
"You'll get used to the fame soon enough."
"Anyway—can I borrow the kitchen for a bit?"
"Like I told you before, use it whenever you want! Same as yesterday, for your master and the rest of the party?"
"No. Just me today."
Hmm? Leaving his exclusive chef behind? Why?
Borgo's head tilted.
"I heard she was going to have a business meeting over a meal with Sir Wallace and some other people involved."
"Nobody told me to prepare a banquet for lunch."
"Outside the inner walls, in the city streets."
"Ah, that changes things."
Borgo accepted the explanation and glanced at the barrel sitting beside Karem.
"I've been wondering why you've been carrying that barrel around so carefully. Planning to use whatever's inside?"
"Yes. And I almost dropped it because of a certain someone."
"Hahaha! My apologies. Force of habit when I meet someone I'm happy to see! So what exactly is in there that you've wrapped it up so precious-like?"
"This is... uh..."
The question made Karem's breath catch. He looked down at the barrel. He couldn't exactly call it doenjang here, so he needed a decent name... It was fermented, packed with umami...
"It's garum. Garum. Made from beans."
"Ah, garum. Wait—I think I misheard you. What did you say the ingredient was?"
"Beans. Peas."
Blink. Blink.
Made what out of what? Beans? Garum?
Borgo turned his head without thinking. The cooks who had been half-listening while turning the rotisseries froze mid-motion—just as the skins that had been browning and crisping nicely over the hearths started to scorch—
Borgo nearly jumped out of his skin.
"You worthless lumps! The rotisserie! The rotisserie!"
"Wha—whoa! The skin's burning! The skin! The skin!"
"No! We've been turning these since dawn!"
Snapped back to reality by Borgo's roar, the cooks frantically started spinning the spits again, but a few pieces still got scorched.
"Damn it, it's charred!"
"Still... if we scrape it with a knife we can salvage it."
"Hey, you with the kitchen knife. Yeah, you—go grab me a cleaver."
Mildly startled by the sudden chaos, Karem waited a moment, then let out a relieved breath and spoke to Borgo, who was already restoring order.
"So... can I use the kitchen?"
"Of course. Make yourself at home. There's an empty station... over there."
Borgo led the barrel-carrying Karem to a quiet corner station, pointed out where the ingredients and spices were kept, told him to ask for anything he needed, and then stomped off to punish the people who had been daydreaming in front of the fire. The friendly, smiling face that never left Borgo's features slowly transformed, with every step closer to the hearths, into the visage of a mustachioed demon crawled up from hell.
Karem left the shouting and violence behind him.
Anyway, not my problem.
He dropped a piece of dried kelp for stock into a pot of water, then gathered the ingredients and substitutes for the doenjang stew recipe he'd been planning on the way over.
Green onions, garlic, and onions—the usual ones. Turnips to stand in for both potatoes and radish. Zucchini would have been nice, but...
"None here, so I'll just cut it boldly... As for the meat..."
Karem thought hard. The meat that usually went into doenjang stew was either pork or beef. Pork had its own charm, and beef had a completely different one, so the choice wasn't easy.
Rich flavor from beef, clean taste from pork...
Thud! Thud! Slice, scrape.
Heavy sounds slammed into Karem's ears. His head turned on its own. What he saw was a butcher's cleaver that looked like a Chinese kitchen knife, methodically breaking down half a whole cow by cut. Then, unbelievably, the cook sliced the flat section of the chest completely free and tossed it into a bucket already full of bones and other scrap meat.
...They're throwing that away?
As if possessed, Karem walked straight up to the cook who was focused on butchering.
"Excuse me."
"Holy—! You nearly gave me a heart attack! Who sneaks up on someone holding a knife—"
"Sorry. I'm Karem. I've been imposing on your kitchen for the last couple of days."
"Ah, the little chef from Coldon? Whew, thought my muscles were gonna give out."
Karem had thought the man was just being dramatic—until he saw the cleaver still buried diagonally near the cow's spine. He bowed over and over in apology, making the cook increasingly uncomfortable. When the head chef's scorching gaze started to prickle at the back of his neck, the cook grabbed Karem under both arms, lifted him clean off the ground to stop the apologies, and set him back down.
"Whew, I can breathe again. Need some meat, little chef? We just got some top-quality stuff in—I'd recommend the tenderloin if you want something soft—"
"That does sound tempting, but there's a cut I specifically want."
"Name it. I'll give you as much as you want."
"Then that one over there. The whole piece."
"Hmm?"
The cook followed Karem's pointing finger. At the end of it sat the pile of scrap meat destined for the poor, with a whole brisket sitting proudly on top.
"...That?"
Shock made him drop into informal speech without thinking. Karem kept a perfectly serious face and pointed at the brisket again.
"Yes."
"Look, we've got so much better meat right here. See? Ribeye loaded with fat from the fall, rich tenderloin, nice firm striploin, sirloin too..."
The cook earnestly recommended every delicious cut he could think of. Brisket? He was completely serious.
"Or if you're making soup or stew, the foreshank or hindshank aren't bad either. Great chewy texture."
Why on earth would anyone deliberately ask for that tough, hard-to-eat cut? The cook truly could not understand. Maybe in the old days when food was scarce, but now? Meat for the poor? No matter how well you grilled it, it was nothing but tough, and you had to boil it forever just to make it edible. Why? It was perfect for stock, sure, but still...
"I want the brisket."
"...You're serious?"
"Yes."
The cook kept trying to push other cuts, thinking it was a bit much to hand a guest something like that. But Karem insisted on the brisket. Leaving the utterly baffled cook behind, he finally walked off with an entire piece.
Back at his station, Karem slammed the brisket onto the cutting board.
Brisket. Also known as chadol-yangji—the plate and the point.
He drew his favorite knife, Winter's Lie, from his coat and split the brisket into plate and point with a single stroke, then checked the cut surface.
"Phew, look at that marbling."
Red meat ran through the pure white beef fat like the ripples of a river. They hadn't been lying about the quality—the ratio of meat to fat in the plate was absolute perfection.
"For doenjang stew, it's got to be chadol."
Even among beef, not all cuts were equal. Chadol was pure luxury. The moment even a little of it went into a stew, the price jumped a whole digit. In his previous life people had paid ridiculous money for a single plate of paper-thin slices that barely filled your stomach, and almost no one—East or West—disliked it.
Why would anyone throw away a cut this delicious?
Karem couldn't understand it. Historically, though, brisket—chadol-yangji—had been one of the most despised, looked-down-upon cuts of meat. Only after barbecue techniques spread did people in the West start eating it more often, and even then it only became mainstream after major events like the Great Depression. The same had been true in the East until barbecue arrived. It wasn't that other countries didn't know how to eat meat. Historically speaking, the Korean peninsula—where the entire population went crazy for beef—was the weird country. What other nation ate a cow literally from head to hoof without throwing away a single organ? They usually couldn't get enough of it. Countries like that were rare even if you searched the whole world.
Karem fished out the kelp, set the pot on the fire, and tossed in the vegetables cut into bite-size pieces. Then he began slicing the plate paper-thin, over and over. It was clearly far more than a stew needed. Dumping all of it in would turn the stew into pure oil soup.
"I'll just grill the rest."
On a smoking-hot iron plate the chadol spit out fat in the blink of an eye, shriveled, and browned beautifully. Before long the prep was finished. Karem cleared away the cutting board piled high with slices only a little thicker than paper, along with the knife.
He lifted the barrel from the floor and set it on the table. When he opened the lid, a flavor buried deep in the recesses of his mind rose up all at once.