Dakgangjeong After Class
What he would make in place of ordinary fried chicken was dakgangjeong.
Of course, that too was a kind of fried chicken.
Brining it in advance would have made it taste better.
"Just checking, but would you be able to wait about an hour?"
"Me? No."
With a hungry person answering like that, Karem abandoned any thought of a proper brine.
He ducked into the cold room right beside them and came back with a basket piled high with ingredients. In that brief span Mary had already finished the washing-up and was now staring at him with a completely blank face from which longing practically dripped.
"Karem Hubae."
"No. You stay right there and just watch. Or is there nothing else you need to be doing?"
"Regrettably, I have nothing that requires my attention at the moment."
Mary lowered her gaze diagonally and bit her lip.
"If I had known it would turn out like this, I would have dragged the work out longer...!!!"
"...Anyway, just watch. Unless you want to sneak in and get your vacation extended as punishment."
Karem lit the burner under the pot of oil and swatted Mary's lingering, wistful hand away as firmly as if he were swatting a mosquito.
In any case, butchering and deboning the chicken took priority.
It sounded grand, but compared to mammals, deboning a chicken was not that difficult. An expert could do it bare-handed without a knife.
There was no need for that now, so he snapped the wings and drumettes free and cut them with the knife, then slipped the blade along the inside of the legs to separate thigh and drumstick meat as well. For the breast he followed the wishbone—the Y-shaped bone—and carved the meat cleanly off.
Scraping the remaining meat from the legs and thighs along the grain finished the butchering.
The wings and drumettes were small and had little meat, so he decided to fry them as they were.
"Karem. There's still a little meat left on the outside of the carcass. Don't you need that?"
"Weren't you the one who wanted to eat quickly?"
"Well, yeah."
"Then just toss it into stock later. We don't have time to pick every last scrap."
He deboned three birds the same way in succession.
He put the wings, drumettes, and bite-sized pieces of meat into a single bowl with salt, sugar, pepper, flour, starch, yeast, and milk, then tossed everything until it was evenly coated in a thin batter.
He flicked a little of the batter water into the oil pot, which was already beginning to smoke.
Sizzle-sizzle-sizzle—
It immediately frothed and rose to the surface.
"Let's see. Oil temperature's good enough. We can fry right away."
"Oh, Karem. Can I try doing that?"
"You want to try?"
"This looks pretty simple. You just drop the battered meat into the pot, right?"
"Well, yeah. Just watch out for the oil splatter."
"Pfft. Of course I know that much."
After washing his hands, William took the bowl with a bold declaration.
He had only watched frying a few times and had never done it himself, yet it did not look complicated.
All you had to do was drop the coated meat into the oil and that was it.
So William approached the oil pot with an easy heart.
But if everything in the world went exactly as one thought or said, problems would never arise.
William dropped the pieces of chicken one by one with a fork.
Sizzle-sizzle-sizzle-sizzle—! Bubble-bubble-bubble-bubble!
"Ow hot! What the hell! Ow-ow-ow!"
The hot oil reacted with violent enthusiasm, as if determined to correct his complacent thinking.
The reason oil spatters so fiercely when frying is that the moisture in the ingredients reacts with the scorching oil—so of course it did.
"Karem Hubae. The young master is like that—shall I take over for—"
"Give it up. Besides, it looks like the second young master intends to keep going."
Just as he said, even while hopping about from the flying oil, William never let go of the fork and managed to drop every last piece of the four birds' worth of chicken into the pot.
As if that were not enough, without anyone telling him to, he was already using a long spatula to separate the pieces that tried to stick together.
"Ow hot! Karem! What do I do now!"
"You've done well. From here I'll handle it."
Karem smoothly nudged the flustered William aside, took up his favored copper spider strainer, and briefly lifted the boiling chicken out of the oil.
He shook off the excess oil and left the pieces in a bowl for a moment.
"Wasn't it already finished frying?"
"We fry it twice so the coating gets even crispier."
The oil stayed hot in the pot while the chicken cooled in the bowl.
In that interval the moisture still trapped inside the meat began to seep back outward.
Once the chicken had cooled enough, Karem dumped every piece back into the oil pot.
Because William had stirred them thoroughly during the first fry, there was no fear of them sticking together.
Whoosh—
Sizzle-sizzle-sizzle— crackle-crackle-crackle— bubble-bubble-bubble—!
The moisture in the chicken fled and evaporated.
Countless tiny holes formed in the coating.
Because of that, the sound of the chicken frying was far more violent than the first time, and the rich aroma grew stronger still.
The sound of oil droplets popping.
The phenomenon of moisture punching through the coating and turning to steam.
The savory scent of oil lightly laced with mushroom fragrance, now deepened by the umami of the chicken itself.
Shake! Shake! Shake! Shake!
Rustle-rustle— crunch-crunch— crackle!
When Karem lifted the chicken and shook off the oil, William's and Mary's eyes were drawn naturally to the strainer.
Pieces of fried chicken rose briefly into the air, fell, and knocked against one another.
The more the crisp sound repeated, the stronger the aroma seemed to grow. No—it truly was growing stronger.
The kitchen air, already heated by the burners, had been thoroughly steeped in that fragrance while the oil boiled and the chicken was fried twice over.
With every inhale and exhale the mouthwatering scent poured into chest and stomach, and the second young master unconsciously swallowed.
Gulp—
William asked Karem with the most serious expression in the world.
"Karem, I know it's not finished yet, but—"
"You want to try just one piece?"
"Yes. Exactly that."
"It might be a little bland. We couldn't brine it."
The bite-sized piece of fried chicken that landed in his hand was surprisingly light compared to its heavy aroma and appearance.
The coating, crisp enough to know just by touch, was a matte light orange with a faint brown tint that endlessly teased the eye.
He could not hold back any longer.
His stomach, emptied for the sake of the lesson, had received only a few spoonfuls of flavorless stew and a single portion of rare steak.
And he had not even finished the whole thing himself—he had shared it with Karem while the man was still fishing out the chicken.
William did not stop the reason and instinct that wanted to bring the fried chicken to his mouth.
Crunch-crunch-crunch—
The coating was crisp in a different way from the fried chicken he usually ate.
Like the light weight he had felt when he held it, it was endlessly thin and airy.
It felt as if countless bubbles had solidified and layered over one another.
When he crushed that thin, crisp skin and chewed it together with the meat inside, a savory flavor rushed in with the crunchy texture.
The biggest difference, however, was something else.
It's pretty dry, huh?
The seasoning was fairly light as well. Because it was still piping hot from the fryer, it was not uncomfortable to eat.
Perhaps because the pieces were small, there was no juice.
Yet the savor of the fat combined with the concentrated chicken flavor that bloomed with every chew—thanks to the low moisture—made it taste good.
Still, once it cools it probably won't be great. Salt or a dip would fix that, though.
While William savored the taste and evaluated it inwardly, Karem handed a piece to Mary as well and pulled out two deep large pans in succession.
There would be two sauces for tossing the dakgangjeong.
One was a sweet-and-spicy sauce based on the red-hand chili paste he had fermented himself; the other was a sweet-and-salty soy-sauce-based sauce.
This part was far simpler than making the fried chicken for dakgangjeong.
He lightly fried chili powder in oil to make chili oil, then added the red-hand paste, water, syrup, ketchup, sugar, and minced garlic and reduced it until sticky.
In the remaining pan he combined soy sauce, honey, sugar, a little garum, and minced garlic and reduced that the same way.
He dumped the fried chicken straight into the pan from which the sweet-and-spicy aroma was rising.
Over the thickly pooled sauce the chicken and sauce flew up into the air, traced a parabola, and fell back into the pan.
Whoosh— clatter-clatter—!
Once. Twice. Three times.
William's heart lurched with each toss.
"Hey, that's going to fall!"
"Young Master William, you may rest easy. Karem Hubae's skill is not so poor that he would make such a trivial mistake. Much as it pains me to admit."
"But that fried chicken and sauce—ah, my heart's going to stop!"
As the sticky sauce clung to the uneven pieces of fried chicken, the amount of sauce flying into the air steadily decreased.
The thick sauce seeped into every tiny hole of the coating and coated the surface.
By the time no more sauce rose into the air, the dakgangjeong gleamed red and black like jewels catching the light.
Crunch—
"If you're going to coat it in a strong sauce like this, I suppose there's no real need for a base seasoning."
"Brining would still taste better, but for something made in a hurry it's not bad, right?"
"No. It is bad."
"Hm?"
Karem, who had been shaking the remaining sauce and residual powder over the bowls of dakgangjeong, whipped his head around.
Right on cue Mary bit down hard on her piece of fried chicken with a crisp sound.
"In the end I could only stand here and watch."
"That's the disciplinary measure you brought on yourself. Who told you to jump in without reading the room?"
"This coating. If it were me I could make it crispier and lighter."
"Then you can make it for the mages' dinner later this evening."
Clang-clang— As Karem scraped the last of the soy sauce over the gangjeong with his spatula, Mary's eyes narrowed.
"Alright, alright. I can see you two get along just fine. Fight nicely after I leave."
At those words Mary pointed at herself with one finger and then jabbed the same finger at Karem; he snorted firmly and moved the bowls.
As mentioned earlier, William paid none of it any mind.
A house brownie and a cook having a little war of nerves?
Right in front of him sat a dish gleaming black and red that seemed ready to beg him to eat it this very second—what could possibly be more important?
"I'll just step into the cold room for a moment."
"Huh? What else are you bringing?"
"Some pickles for a palate cleanser and something to drink. Go ahead and start on the dakgangjeong."
Gangjeong? Whatever. Just go. Hurry. With that meaning William waved Karem off rapidly, then reached straight for the dakgangjeong with the same hand.
First the black one that smelled sweet and salty—
"Young Master William. Here is a fork."
"Oh, thanks. I'll use it next time."
Mary held out a fork, but William simply lifted the piece of dakgangjeong he had already grabbed and brought it to his nose first to smell it.
Gulp—
It was completely different from the piping-hot fried chicken just lifted from the oil, which people always said was the most delicious kind of fry.
The savory aroma had vanished entirely.
The thick, slightly funky smell unique to soy sauce that scraped the bottom of the nostrils had completely taken its place, joined by a sweet fragrance.
Soy sauce and chicken together, huh.
Every soy sauce William had eaten or seen until now had gone into soup or a sauce for grilled meat; he had never seen it tossed with chicken like this.
And the combination of soy sauce and chicken was far better than he had first imagined.
Grrrrowl—
As he kept smelling it, his stomach—still not properly filled—protested that it could wait no longer and demanded he surrender to reason and instinct at once.
Once again William did not stop reason and instinct.
Crunch—
— Dakgangjeong (Soy Garlic Flavor) —
A picture drawn by ChatGPT.