Seophon Kingdom-Style Mammoth Skirt Steak (2)
When the ingredients are good, the food is basically delicious.
That isn’t wrong.
The difference in taste between grades of produce can be enormous. The reason chefs hunt for premium ingredients is simple: even without much effort the dish turns out tasty, and when you do put in the work it becomes even better.
But first-rate ingredients are never easy to come by. Cooking itself began as the art of taking things that were hard to eat and making them edible, easier to swallow, and longer-lasting. For most of history, the people who cooked used whatever poor materials they could get their hands on. Taste, therefore, rested entirely in the cook’s hands.
Of course no one deliberately seeks out only low-grade ingredients unless they have a practical reason. That would just be perverse. Still, most chefs scramble and claw for the best materials they can find.
In that respect Winterhome was paradise for any cook: the finest facilities and tools, top-quality ingredients that never ran out no matter how freely they were used, a throng of fellow professionals dying to steal every technique they saw, and—most of all—an endless stream of recipes that might as well have been a family’s secret legacy, pouring out faster than anyone could master them.
The source of all those techniques and recipes was the Jigmeser–Karem Exchange.
Ordinary culinary exchanges set conditions or limits on who may attend. Here there were none. In keeping with Karem’s wish to spread recipes as widely as possible, any cook who had time to spare could walk in freely.
Not today.
For the first time in the exchange’s short history (barely a year), entry had been sealed off.
“Za-ra-za-ra-zan-zan-zan—jirihihihihihi! Ihihihihihi!”
Jigmeser cackled in that uncanny way of his, swaying as he barred the door of his private kitchen with magic tools so that no one else could enter. The sight of a Dwarf Dragon who had committed the unforgivable sins of a clean-shaven chin and a bald head, combined with those grotesque movements and the feverish glitter in his eyes, was simply hideous.
“Was the head chef always such a weird dwarf? He seemed normal enough at the last banquet—bald and beardless, sure, but normal.”
Gordon tilted his head, then narrowed his eyes at Karem as though something felt off.
“Beats me. First time I’ve seen him like this too. Don’t ask me.”
No, seriously—what even was this situation?
Karem was almost as bewildered as Gordon. Mammoth meat? It had tasted better than beef, sure… but enough to warrant this?
“Head Chef! Head Chef!”
“Aah—damn it, you startled me! Who the hell are y—oh wait. Right. You’re the Karem who suddenly shot up overnight. Still hard to get used to.”
“Well, I can understand that.”
Anyone would be shocked if someone they had been friendly with disappeared for a while and came back looking completely different.
“Anyway… is this really something to celebrate this hard?”
“Of course it is! Do you have any idea how crushed I was last year?!”
Last year? What happened last year? The memory surfaced the instant the question formed in Karem’s mind.
“Ah—right. We did hunt a mammoth, but the roads were so busy we just rode past.”
“Exactly! A delicacy the duke’s own kitchen only sees once a year if they’re lucky, and it slipped right under my nose! When Lord Iona told me, I thought my heart would tear in two. And yet—”
Jigmeser looked down at the table and wrinkled his nose.
“This… it’s not exactly fresh. What’s that faintly funky cheese smell?”
“Ah, well—it spent a short time as undead, so it seems to have undergone some kind of odd fermentation. Tastes like cheese too.”
“Hmm, cheese fla—wait. What did you just say? Undead?”
Jigmeser’s pupils surged like a wave. The manic energy that had filled him a moment earlier vanished completely.
“Eating undead… Karem. I don’t know if I should even say this, but—have you gone mad?”
“We washed it thoroughly with holy water and consecrated it. His Lordship the Margrave himself guaranteed it was safe and even gave it to me as a reward.”
“…The Margrave you mean is the one I know?”
“The previous Duke of Iceland? The current Margrave Hadrianus?”
“Hmm. If he vouched for it…”
Jigmeser stroked his smooth chin and studied the meat again. If the former duke had given his word, it was certainly edible.
“But that means you’ve already tasted it, Karem. When?”
Gordon, who had been standing with his arms folded, could no longer stay silent.
“The evening we returned to Winterhome. Lord Atanitas, Lord Olivier, me, and Mary—we all ate it.”
“What? So everyone except me got some?”
“Well, who told you to sleep the whole day?”
To be honest, Karem had been so ravenous he hadn’t even thought of waking Gordon. And the meat had been far too delicious to stop.
“Khrrr… I can’t even yell at a guy who was recovering.”
“Every cut combined the best points of pork and beef, and each one tasted like a different kind of cheese.”
“Cheese? You said you ate it as steak?”
“Yeah. It was ridiculous.”
“I can’t even picture it.”
Gordon shook his head as though the idea were simply beyond him.
“Then let’s eat some right now!”
While the two of them talked, Jigmeser finished his preparations and laid a pure-white slab of fat in the pan.
Sizzle-sizzle-sizzle—
The white fat melted like snow meeting water. A salty note rose with the oil that shimmered up from the heat.
“Salt-cured pork fat?”
“Only half right. Bacon fat I saved from yesterday’s cooking.”
Jigmeser tilted the pan this way and that, coating it in an instant. His eyes, sharp as a griffon that had just spotted a pack horse, swept over the many cuts of mammoth whose rich cheese aroma was already beginning to bloom.
“Karem. I’m grateful you brought the mammoth meat.”
“Huh? You already said that a minute ago.”
“Just listen, will you!”
Even though almost no one else was present, Jigmeser glanced around with exaggerated caution.
“I am grateful for the meat… but the single most important, most profound cut isn’t here. By any chance—”
“…The ribeye? Mary already grilled a mountain of that for me.”
“What?! She just—no, wait. If it was ribeye there should still be a hill of it left.”
“Then… the trunk?”
“Yes! Every other part is here—only the trunk is missing.”
Every part of a mammoth except the hide, tusks, and offal was a delicacy. And among that mountain of delicacy, the absolute pinnacle was the trunk. Stripped of skin it looked like a thick, prepared snake, yet when sliced it revealed a slightly flattened teardrop shape with a symmetrical pair of holes. No matter how carefully they searched, that cut was nowhere to be found.
“Ah… I deliberately left it behind.”
“Why in the world?!”
“Well… it felt wrong to taste the very best cut first, by myself.”
Jigmeser’s face ran through every possible emotion at once, silently conveying just how absurd that answer was.
But Lord Atanitas is in that condition…
Still, Catherine kept tugging at Karem’s thoughts. Whatever else they shared, shouldn’t the finest of all delicacies be eaten together with the people who had earned it? Knowing Catherine’s personality, she would probably only ask, “You didn’t touch my share, did you?” and then forget the whole matter—but it still bothered him.
“…Right! Sir Stark! Considering a Sword Master’s appetite, you must be dying to know that taste as well! Answer me!”
“Uh, I am curious, but—”
“Yesssss!”
“—not right this second?”
“Whyyyyyyyy?!”
“Because the mammoth trunk is over at the Mage’s Tower, and there’s already plenty of meat right in front of us.”
Gordon stared at Jigmeser’s howl of despair as though he could not comprehend it, then turned to Karem.
“So when are we trying the trunk?”
“At least when Lord Atanitas can eat solid food again.”
“Ah. Fair enough. Tch. Anyway, the fat’s about to burn.”
Still vibrating with excitement, Jigmeser swiftly selected a cut. Neither tenderloin nor sirloin nor ribeye—his quick, precise hands trimmed the meat, sprinkled it with salt and pepper, and rubbed the seasoning in.
“That’s a cut I haven’t tried yet.”
“Skirt! The absolute best cut—the trunk—is out of reach, and you already ate the next best, the ribeye, so I’ll show you another realm of steak entirely!”
Skirt steak. Karem knew it well: a cut with a relatively loose grain yet a satisfying chew, one that grew richer and more savory the longer you worked it between your teeth.
“I just grabbed whatever was handy, but it’s pretty huge for skirt.”
“It’s mammoth—of course it is!”
Jigmeser carefully laid the skirt into the pan.
Krrrkk—!
Sizzle-sizzle-sizzle-sizzle—!
The moment it touched the oil the bacon fat boiled up fiercely. Then, as the entire underside of the skirt settled fully against the pan, a clear, appetite-stirring sound joined the chorus and traveled straight through their ears.
Gordon swallowed the saliva that had pooled at the sound—a rhythm like dozens, hundreds of light, random taps of a fingertip against skin.
“Hey. So you really left me out and ate this by yourselves?”
“There were other people too, not just me.”
“Doesn’t matter. You left me out. That’s the point.”
“That’s why I brought you here now.”
“Yeah… I guess that tracks.”
Gordon hadn’t been entirely serious; he let the answer slide. Right now he simply wanted to keep drinking in this sound and this aroma.
To be honest, until the moment he stepped into Jigmeser’s private kitchen—the stage of the exchange—Gordon had not expected much. He had already been treated to all sorts of dishes; as long as something tasted good he was satisfied, and “legendary delicacy” was too vague a phrase to get excited about.
And above all, one thing had bothered him: that cheese smell that should never come from fresh meat. He had spent a lifetime hearing that nothing beat meat just after the slaughter. Even knowing Karem’s skill, he hadn’t been able to dismiss the doubt completely.
It had been a problem.
Whoa… smell that.
This was no ordinary roasting-meat scent. It was the fierce beef fragrance and the deep, nutty pork aroma that any man finds impossible to ignore when meat fries in hot bacon fat—plus, as the relatively thin skirt began to char on the outside, a toasted-cheese aroma rose as if from an oven.
Better than meat is more meat. The best cheese is the cheese that has browned under oven heat. Those two truths, made flesh as scent, hammered Gordon’s senses—far sharper than an ordinary man’s.
“Pretty unusual smell for meat. Hard to say whether it deserves the title of delicacy.”
“I’ve never smelled anything like this either.”
“…That’s not what I wanted to hear.”
Gordon felt a flicker of unease at the uncertain tone. Jigmeser himself could not find better words.
Cheese smell? Why?
In his experience mammoth was the dream meat that stripped away every flaw of beef, chicken, and pork and kept only their virtues—though the degree varied by cut. The aroma had been the same: the clean fragrance of chicken fat, the powerful beefy savor, the rich nuttiness of pork fat. And now… cheese?
While Jigmeser’s mind reeled, his cool hands moved on perfect timing, dropping butter and a handful of herbs he had somehow already gathered into the pan. For an instant the butter held its shape against the heat, then melted like ice cream, just as the bacon fat had done earlier.
What followed was a butter fragrance so overwhelming it felt almost rude to compare it with any butter he had ever eaten. Simply inhaling it was like scooping up a whole spoonful. That intensity sank into everything around it.
The butter mingled with the hot bacon fat, half-frying as the two fused. Then both bacon fat and butter were spooned over the great skirt steak so that absorption and frying happened at once.
Kak— kak— kak— kak— kak—
Every time Jigmeser’s hand ladled another spoonful of bacon fat and melted butter, the surface of the steak boiled up golden and formed a crust. Juices seeped out, fried, and built more crust; the rich aroma that rose from the process seized every nose in the private kitchen.
Just as the intensity of the scent began to overwhelm them, a fresh, sweet green note—rosemary, thyme, and savory all together—cleared the air.
“Now!”
With lightning speed Jigmeser shifted the steak to a cutting board and clapped a lid over it completely.
“All that’s left is the rest—”
“Finally finished?”
“Hardly! We still have to make the sauce to go with the steak!”
The crowning touch still remained.