Mammoth Trunk Sanjeok
"Lord Jigmeser! A guest is arriving at dawn!"
"With all the work still left, just—"
Winter might be the season of rest, but at Winterhome outsiders came and went at all hours, guest or not. Preparing a banquet worthy of an occasion unprecedented in Felwinter history meant that the arrival of someone already expected to appear changed nothing at all.
Of course, that guest was the entire reason and purpose behind the feast they had spent the whole night preparing for something once only imagined. Jigmeser's heart felt ready to hammer right out of his chest.
"Th-the Lord himself intends to greet the guest personally..."
Correction.
His heart truly did hammer wildly.
And so, in the deep hours of the following dawn—long before first light—the duke himself led a party out beyond the castle walls.
In this season, no less.
True, a master of the house might sometimes roll up his sleeves to welcome a guest or make up for short-handed staff. But when that master was the Duke of Iceland, the meaning shifted entirely...!
A duke stood at the very core of power, counted from the top. The news that a being of the heavenly realm had descended to earth simply to greet a visitor would race through the entire castle before the sky had fully brightened. Perhaps even beyond the walls.
It was only natural.
Even a company chairman of excellent reputation and temperament remained an object of pure terror to ordinary employees—the mere act of walking past them enough to set hearts racing. For such a figure to set every other duty aside, roll up both sleeves, and personally receive a guest? The fact that word spread at all was less miracle than inevitability.
All of it, of course, was Alfred's fault.
Word that the younger sibling of a long-absent close friend was coming had left him uncharacteristically excited.
By morning, those remaining inside Winterhome could breathe a little easier. The reason was simple: the procession accompanying the guest was far smaller than expected.
Fewer than a tenth of the visitors who had arrived on the day of Winter-Ascend.
People, horses, carriages, and carts all counted together still only amounted to that.
At that same hour Karem was scowling and grumbling under his breath.
Tang-tang-tang-tang-tang-tang—
"We're short on time. Way too short."
"Agreed."
Mary worked through the vegetables at twice her usual speed and nodded. All because they had wasted the entire pre-dawn period on useless busyness.
Breakfast, lunch, and dinner each required preparations earlier still. Ordinarily Karem would have been even faster than Mary, yet there was no need this time.
"At least we started some things two days ago. That helps."
"Hmm. That would be the... sanjeok you mentioned preparing?"
"Yes."
Mary only tipped her head far enough to peer into the container. Slices of mammoth trunk—too thick to call thin, too thin to call thick—lay fully submerged in a dark liquid.
"Soy sauce, onion, green onion, garlic... and this is pepper."
"I added a bit of sugar in place of fruit. The fruit fragrance is already strong enough as it is."
What they meant to cook was sanjeok. He had spoken with Catherine and begun the marinade two days earlier, so all that remained was to pull the meat out and grill it. Honestly, though, he had no idea what the final flavor would be.
Sanjeok ordinarily used the hind-leg meat of cattle. The meat was prepared, left for days in a soy-sauce-based marinade, then grilled...
"But mammoth trunk is a first."
Until now they had only ever seared the trunk as steak. The sudden decision to make sanjeok instead had come entirely because of Catherine.
Taste is one thing, but personal preference is another matter entirely.
Still, he had been told it was not good. Catherine had only meant that the fragrance was too overpowering and complex—strictly a matter of preference—yet to a cook the words landed the same either way.
He could not simply sit still after hearing "not delicious."
Because of that complex fragrance, it ended up feeling like neither one thing nor the other.
Then he would smother that fragrance with something stronger still. That was the purpose of the soy sauce, and of the sanjeok.
The meat was already tender; no tenderizing needed. The soy sauce would season it, so no salt either. Garlic, onion, green onion, pepper, and sugar were pureed and simmered into a thick kelp-dashi soy marinade, into which the prepared mammoth trunk had been left to soak thoroughly.
"It almost looks like beef marinated in wine."
The color was a brown so deep it bordered on black, yet Mary tossed the last of her chopped onions into a pot and began sautéing while she offered the observation.
"Especially this part with the grayish sheen."
"Ohohoho. I guarantee it'll taste far better than that."
"You're that confident?"
Mary tilted her head while she continued stirring the enormous pot of onions. Karem gave no answer.
Instead, he laid a piece of sanjeok onto the heated pan.
Chiiiiiiiiiiii—!!!
"...!"
"That reaction says it all."
The instant the sanjeok met the smoking-hot pan, the concentrated umami that had condensed into liquid exploded outward and blanketed the entire kitchen. Air once filled with the scents of onion, butter, and freshly baked bread was, in the blink of an eye, steeped in the sweet-and-salty fragrance of soy sauce.
"...Haah."
"So? What's the verdict after smelling it yourself?"
"Truly, this seasoning called soy sauce is—"
Mary's ladle froze mid-stir; she could not finish the sentence. The aroma that had flooded the room in a single breath was that sweetly intoxicating.
"Its character changes so completely every time that it leaves me bewildered."
She had cooked for countless contractors across long years, yet she had never heard of—much less tasted—a sweetener or seasoning this intense.
"It is as if only the finest qualities of garum were gathered together with fruit whose bright, sweet fragrance is almost impossible to pin down. The longer one inhales, the more addictive it becomes."
"In my previous life, if I had nothing else, without this I would—wait."
"Hmm? Did you forget something?"
"No. It's not that. Fruit fragrance?"
Behind the dense soy-sauce aroma there was indeed a subtle fruit note. Unusual, but not unheard of. Fruit could certainly be added to the soy marinade that flavored sanjeok—mostly to deepen the taste and tenderize the meat...
"But I didn't put any fruit in this."
Garlic, onion, green onion, pepper, sugar. Those five ingredients alone; nothing more. Precisely because of the complex fragrance already present in the mammoth trunk.
Which meant the scent had come from the trunk itself...
"...Well, it shouldn't matter."
"You looked quite serious a moment ago."
"It's not enough to be unpleasant just from the smell, right?"
"Well, not to that degree..."
Then that was fine. Karem poured a mouthful of water into the pan.
Paaaaak—! The sudden boil made Mary flinch again, this time for a different reason. Water, while grilling meat?
Ah. So that's why.
The soy marinade that had begun to stick and threaten to burn on the scorching pan dissolved at once into the boiling water. The moisture evaporated, leaving the remaining sauce to cling stickily not to the pan but to the mammoth trunk itself.
"You added sugar?"
"Partly for a touch more sweetness, and partly so the marinade would caramelize and cling."
"When you suddenly poured water I wondered what on earth you were doing."
"In a way it's similar to braising, isn't it?"
"Braising uses a small amount of liquid to steam-simmer, not pouring water in so brazenly."
Moisture vanished from the hot pan in an instant. Karem removed the sanjeok, now a mouth-watering deep brown, and simply repeated the process.
Chiiiiiiii—
"By the way—"
After that it was only grilling, simple work. Karem glanced sideways for a moment.
The enormous pot filled with nothing but onions was billowing thick clouds of steam.
"What are you making that needs onions like that?"
"Care to guess?"
Mary carried the massive pot over with her usual blank expression. When she opened the lid, a rich stock filled it to the brim.
...Looking at that, only one possibility came to mind.
"Don't tell me you're making onion soup?"
"Hmm? Why so startled?"
Was that even a question worth asking? Karem recoiled on instinct.
Onion soup required great quantities of onions slowly sautéed in butter until deep brown and caramelized, then simmered with stock. The method itself was nothing special. The problem was the caramelized onions.
They had to be stirred constantly so they neither stuck nor burned, and the more onions there were, the longer the caramelization took—far longer than one might imagine.
Ten onions once took me more than two hours of stirring...
Even a glance showed dozens of onions in that pot; if he exaggerated, more than a hundred. And onion volume shrank beyond belief as they cooked. With breakfast almost upon them, the physical time simply did not exist to caramelize all of that and finish a soup.
"Why that shocked look... ah."
Mary looked from the pot to Karem and lightly struck her palm with a fist. Then she flicked a finger toward the pot.
Tak—!
Every onion packed inside turned translucent at once, then took on a yellow tinge and began collapsing into a deep brown. Chiiiiiiiiiiiii—!!! A violent sound rose from the pot.
"...Is that some mysterious brownie magic?"
"Yes. Would you like a look?"
Mary immediately tipped the pot. Where white onions had filled it to the brim, a dark-brown jam-like mass of sautéed onions now oozed stickily in their place.
"A spell that roasts onions in an instant without burning them."
"Wh-what? That's actually enviable—ahem."
"Would you like to learn it?"
"Of course I would."
A spell that caramelized onions with a finger-flick? He would bet anything that if Jigmeser heard of it, the dwarf's eyes would roll back in his head.
"Unfortunately for Junior Karem, only brownies can use it."
That was more than regrettable; it was downright disappointing. Karem barely managed to keep from sighing aloud.
He exhaled deeply instead... wait.
"A spell that fries onions quickly?"
"Yes."
"Then are there other cooking-related spells?"
"Of course. Spells that stir a ladle by themselves, or that grill meat without letting it burn, and so on."
Then why had she never used any of them until now...? Karem stopped the thought cold. The reason was obvious.
Mary loved work so fiercely she would radiate killing intent if anyone tried to take her tasks from her; she treated labor as dearly as her own life. She even teleported about simply because walking wasted time. Which meant—
"Don't tell me you refuse to use them because it would reduce the amount of work?"
"I cannot allow mere magic to diminish the value of labor."
"But you said it was brownie magic."
"Exceptions cannot be permitted."
Mary closed her eyes and shook her head with absolute finality. Just watching her made Karem's head ache.
And so, one piece, two pieces, three...
Karem focused wordlessly on the grilling. Every last slice of marinated mammoth-trunk sanjeok left the pan.
"Then I'll go on ahead."
"Shall I leave you a little of the onion soup?"
"Uh... sure. I'll leave the cleanup to you."
Regardless of how dizzy her principles made him, Mary clearly felt the press of time; she casually unleashed a host of magics he had rarely seen before. Flour, water, and butter flew together and kneaded themselves into dough like a living slime; cheese sailed from the shelf, grated itself in midair, and hovered. Soup bowls from the lower shelf marched onto the table and stacked themselves into towers...
The sight alone was enough to make anyone's head spin. Karem loaded a tray with dishes and the mammoth-trunk sanjeok and fled the kitchen.
What mattered was Catherine's meal. He did his best to ignore the chaos and headed for the dining hall.
"I thought the short preparation time might make you late, yet what is that expression?"
"...What on earth is magic, really?"
"Hmm? Why are you trying to grasp the truths of magic?"
Yes, why indeed.
Attached Materials
—Beef Sanjeok—
This is a picture drawn by ChatGPT.