Seophon Kingdom-Style Mammoth Skirt Steak (3)
In the kitchen, the sauce is absolute.
The right to make and manage sauces is granted only to the head chef himself and his most trusted, skilled inner circle—proof of considerable power within those walls.
A sauce reduced around the juices and deep umami of mammoth skirt steak stuck to the pan, bacon fat, and mammoth butter, finished with wine, balsamic vinegar, and garlic.
Jigmeser tilted the vessel and poured that dark-purple crystal of pure savor.
A thick, unbroken ribbon of sauce stretched thin yet never snapped as it fell, following the laws of nature straight downward.
The fragrance bloomed even before it touched the meat—bright, concentrated fruit and the sharp, full-bodied scent of grapes laced with acidity—wrapping the steak and pooling beneath it, marrying the rich, meaty aroma already rising from the plate.
"Head Chef. Is there still more?"
"Don't rush me! It's nearly finished!"
Jigmeser soothed the impatient Gordon. As if to prove it, the knife already in his hand flashed like the wind, chopping the enormous skirt steak with a rapid series of sharp impacts.
Karem, sharing Gordon's exact feelings, swallowed the saliva that had already pooled thickly in his mouth.
The moment the blade cut, juices erupted. No exaggeration—every stroke sent meat juices flying in every direction.
The cross-section that appeared was so flooded with dark-purple sauce that the juices and fat still welled up in gleaming beads, refusing to be outdone. Tiny gaps between the fibers showed that the fine marbling had melted to perfection.
Honestly, even in his previous life Karem had never understood why anyone would pay tens or hundreds of thousands of won for a steak. He had never eaten one that expensive, and the steaks he cooked from techniques learned in books and videos already tasted better than most restaurant fare. So why?
In this life, of course, the mountain of steaks piled high in the Contest Hall had outclassed anything he grilled himself. Yet only now did he feel he finally understood.
Not his own cooking, not the Contest Hall mountain, not the steaks of Afterglow Fortress, not even Mary's—none of them could stand against the skirt steak resting before him, a cut so massive it barely deserved the name.
While Karem was lost in that shiver of awe, Gordon—drawing on years of mercenary experience—made the wiser choice. He did not wait for Jigmeser to finish plating.
"What are you just staring at?"
Gordon simply picked up a piece and ate it. Dark-purple sauce, juices, and fat dripped onto the floor; he paid no mind. There was no room for mind-paying.
Everyone kept going on and on about mammoth, mammoth…
So there had been a reason.
In his long career he had been feted by countless powers, magnates, and nobles of Europa and had tasted every meat called a delicacy: sweetbreads (calf pancreas), the comb of a male basilisk, chimera short ribs, giant dungeon-hamster meat, coatl wing meat, and that endlessly surprising chimera flesh that changed with every bite. Some of them even carried magical effects when eaten. None of them came close to what was happening in his mouth right now.
The dense perfume of grapes and concentrated butter. The springy chew the instant his teeth closed. The crisp edge around the rim. The salty, toasted flavor of cheese that had crisped and stuck to an oven pan—the best part of baked cheese—rose intact with every bite of the chewy meat.
But even the best flavor grows dull if it never changes. The skirt steak that had seemed destined to stay chewy forever suddenly yielded along the grain after only a few chews. Where the crisped-cheese savor had been, the bright sourness of the sauce woke the pure meat flavor and took its place.
A unique harmony—rich like chicken fat, bold like beef, soft like pork. The springiness and crunch Gordon had first tasted were gone. If he had to compare it, it was like lightly frozen butter: it seemed to crunch, yet melted as soft as butter, then turned crisp again the moment you thought it had softened.
Even after the juices, fat, and sauce were gone and he had no choice but to swallow, their fragrance and flavor still lingered in his mouth.
"Well then, Sir Stark. What is your verdict?"
Jigmeser puffed out his chest with confidence and asked the question of a Gordon who was already reaching for more steak without realizing it.
"I'm afraid it might appear in my dreams."
"Why? Because it's too delicious?"
"Oven-crisped cheese, chicken with every flaw removed, pork and beef all at once—and this sauce. God, this sauce is the real deal."
The meat was one thing, but Gordon had never tasted a steak sauce this good.
"Whoa… whoa… whoooooa."
And Karem's shock, measured purely by scale, was no smaller than Gordon's.
A delicacy really was a delicacy.
Different again from the fatty ribeye and the clean tenderloin he had tasted before. Jigmeser had ranked them better or worse, but Karem could not agree. Mammoth meat, in his opinion, was not something you ranked that way.
It was as if each cut had reached the absolute peak of its own category. It was not that one mammoth cut was better than another; rather, among all the ribeyes he had ever eaten, mammoth was the best, and among all the tenderloins, mammoth was still the best.
And then there was the sauce.
Karem stared openly at Jigmeser, who was savoring the steak with pure bliss, unable to hide his disbelief.
"Yes, yes. This is the taste. This is it. I really—hm? Karem?"
"You knew how to make a sauce like this and still threw that huge fit?"
"Developing something that already exists and inventing something completely new are entirely different fields and different domains!"
Bang! Jigmeser slammed the table so hard the juices and sauce pooled on the cutting board rippled.
"Karem! You still don't understand how amazing your mayonnaise is! That thing is the culinary equivalent of flipping the entire cooking world upside down just by existing!"
"Would you please stop the flattery already."
This kid still lacks self-awareness. Jigmeser decided he would have to keep flattering him until his own palms burned, just to make the boy recognize his own place.
Four seasons had turned and winter had returned once more—more than enough time for a rumor to spread across an entire kingdom. Perhaps it had already crossed the borders.
Arrogance beyond one's station invites disaster, but arrogance that matches one's skill is called presence in the eyes of the world.
Mayonnaise and all the other sauces. The rediscovery of the Red Witch's Finger. And above all the countless recipes that had spread throughout Iceland—recipes that could easily have remained personal secrets and no one would have complained.
At first it had been flattery. In the middle it had been half for fun. Now it was genuine worry, meant to force the boy to understand—
Slurp, slurp, slurp—
"It's not flattery… huh?"
A sudden, bewildering sound filled the kitchen. Jigmeser, mid-passionate argument, and Karem, who had been performing his usual "here we go again with this old man" routine, both turned toward the source.
Slurp, slurp!
Gordon was ostentatiously sucking his thumb and index finger clean, one after the other.
…He had just been grabbing pieces with his bare hands a moment ago.
So what exactly was the slurping for?
Karem and Jigmeser turned their heads the opposite way at the exact same instant.
The cutting board that had held the enormous skirt steak was empty. Not even a crumb of the appetizing meat remained. Only sauce stains marked the wood.
"Why are you looking at me like that? You too, Karem. When there's food in front of you, you focus on the food, right? Besides, there's still plenty of meat."
Let's grill some more and keep eating. At that utterly casual remark, Karem and Jigmeser both pressed their foreheads.
Right. There was meat right in front of them and they had wasted time on nonsense. Their own fault.
Before long the kitchen, which had been noisy with human voices, filled once more with the sound of meat sizzling on the fire.
"So, were you reasonably satisfied?"
"Perfect as a little palate cleanser before lunch."
"Palate cleanser."
Karem was patting a stomach that already felt quite substantial when the words reached him; his face went blank with shock.
"You ate that much and call it a palate cleanser?"
Gordon snorted at Karem's stunned expression.
"You think something that size would fill me up? Think about how much I usually put away every meal."
…Come to think of it, it really was less than half his normal portion. And this was the same man who had polished off dozens of servings of chicken-soup stew just that morning.
"That chicken soup at breakfast? Broth dishes empty out of the stomach fast. I was walking around looking for you before I even reached the temple—it was already digested."
"…Between Lord Atanitas and you, I swear."
Seeing it often had not made it any less astonishing. No matter how many times he watched, it still left him speechless.
"Anyway, there's nothing left that actually needs doing. What now?"
"Earlier, Young Master Godwin… ah, right, you said he's busy right now."
"Pretty much."
Gordon shrugged theatrically, then looked at Karem.
"Well, I'm bored. Anything fun to do?"
"I don't really have anything particular either. Not really?"
"What? You've lived in Winterhome for a whole year. There has to be something."
"Well…"
Truthfully, the overwhelming majority of his time had been spent locked inside the Mage's Tower, so he still barely knew what the castle even contained.
"Then the city—Coldon? Anything interesting there?"
"I don't know much about that either. Except for trips to the Contest Hall, the exchange meetings, the warehouses, and the occasional times Lady Alicia dragged me around, I've basically been shut in the tower."
"…Hey, even if your body's big, you're still eleven, right? Keep that up and you'll grow mold."
"Mary would probably clean me before that happened."
"Well, yes, she would, but that's not—haaah."
Gordon waved a hand as if to say drop it.
"Look, when you're eleven, aren't you supposed to be kicking balls, chasing rats, yanking the skirts or trousers off random passersby and running for it, or just racing around everywhere?"
"What? Skirts? Trousers? Is that how you played as a kid?"
"City or countryside, neighborhood brats all play pretty much the same. You and I as kids were rare cases, even if not unheard of."
"Oh, come to think of it, you did say little Gordon was just as hopeless as me."
Gordon shook his head as if there was no point answering that.
"Cool? Planning to eat ice cream in the middle of winter?"
The voice came from behind them, right around waist height. Both of them froze in perfect unison and turned.
"Lady Alicia?"
"Eheh, that's right. It's Alicia. But 'cool'…"
Alicia planted her tiny hands on the puffed, fur-trimmed waist of her dress and peered up at Karem through narrowed eyes.
"I know how to eat ice cream too."
"…By the way, isn't this supposed to be lesson time?"
"Heh, hehehe—"
Alicia looked away with an unnatural, awkward laugh that fooled absolutely no one. Gordon, who had been momentarily flustered, understood the meaning instantly.
"So. You're cutting class."
"C-cutting class?! Who would do something so terrifying?!"
"Well, the young lady who just spoke to us, wouldn't you say?"
"Th-this is, well… that! I was only going to take a short break!"
"Karem said it was class time, though."
Gordon raised one eyebrow and looked down at her. The young lady fidgeted in growing panic.
"I'm only taking a slightly longer break…!"
"Well, I'm bored too. How about giving me a tour next time?"
"Hah! A tour! Excellent. Alicia will show you every corner of Winterhome!"
"Next time, of course."
"Huh?"
"There's no need to wait."
No need to wait? Alicia tilted her head at the sudden remark.
"Gordon, what are you talking about all of a sudden?"
"Excuse me."
A high, strict voice belonging to an older woman. Alicia flinched like a hamster caught in a hand.
"Th-that voice!"
From the corridor that bent left behind Alicia's back, the slender figure of Poppins appeared, the hem of her dress flaring with precise discipline.
"Ah, Gordon? This is Baroness Poppins. Baroness, this is Sir Gordon Stark, Baron of Bolton."
Caught off guard, Karem made the introductions.
"Ah, a pleasure, Baroness Poppins."
"A pleasure to meet you, Sir Stark. I would love to exchange a few words, but…"
Poppins looked down at the trembling Alicia.
"The young lady's lesson is not yet finished."
"A-Alicia was only taking a slightly longer break!"
"Snack time is still quite a while away. Gentlemen, if you'll excuse us."
Poppins scooped Alicia up with an ease that suggested the girl weighed nothing. She should have staggered, yet there was not the slightest sway. With the same crisp flare of her dress hem that had marked her entrance, she marched back the way she had come and vanished down the corridor.
"Gordon! Next time for sure! I'll give you a full tour of the castle!!!"
Only Alicia's faint, trailing last cry reached the two of them.
"I thought she'd actually managed to escape this time."
"Hey, Karem. That baroness—she's the governess, right?"
"That's right. Why?"
"…No, nothing."
"Hmm?"
Even under Karem's gaze, Gordon only shrugged as if to say never mind, and started walking again, replaying the sensation of that single moment.
In a frontal fight, certain victory.
If ambushed… certain defeat, huh.
As expected of the renowned Grand Duke of Iceland. Not only the bloodline—the people around them were no ordinary souls either.
Attached Materials
— Skirt Steak —
A picture ChatGPT drew for me~