Fried Chicken Deep-Fried in Akusare Oil (2)
Grrrroooowl—
"Hm?"
A ravenous growl of pure hunger rang out like a wake-up call through the utterly silent kitchen. Karem and Catherine's eyes snapped toward the source of the sound at once.
It was Narke.
"Ah, aaaaah."
Narke was an elf, and a woman. The realization that she had just made such a spectacle of herself in front of others (even if there were only two of them) made her face flush scarlet as if it might burst. She wrapped both arms around her stomach.
Catherine, watching, let out a tiny sigh no one else noticed. Reason had just floored instinct.
"Let's take our seats for now."
"I prepared places knowing you'd come."
Under Karem's guidance the hungry mages gathered around the table already heaped with mountains of fried chicken.
"So."
Catherine jerked her chin toward the far side of the kitchen.
"Where exactly did you get the oil to fry this many chickens? Don't tell me you somehow scraped that much oil together in this tiny village."
A huge cast-iron pot sat in one corner of the kitchen, brimming with golden oil.
"It's the oil from this place's specialty—the Akusare mushrooms. They said they just dump it in the forest as fertilizer for the mushrooms."
"Akusare mushroom oil? Certainly if there's that much oil—wait. Hold on. Did I just hear something strange?"
"Mushroom oil?"
"No. The part after that."
"They said they just dump it in the forest as mushroom fertilizer. One leather pouch yields that much oil. What a waste."
Karem popped a stray scrap of fried coating from a bowl into his mouth.
"No. Are you insane? They took all of that and just threw it away?"
"The village chief's daughter who left earlier said so, so it shouldn't be a lie. Why?"
"Because those things are used as materials for magic and alchemy."
Karem blinked, then scratched the back of his neck.
"Uh… I just thought they were cooking ingredients."
"No, you who actually cooked with it—wait, no. There was already the precedent of the Red Witch's fingers. No, they just dumped it in the forest?"
"Yes. Decades ago the village chief ate some raw and dropped dead on the spot, so after that they harvest only the flesh and dump the leftover oil straight into the forest. Thanks to that the mushrooms supposedly thrived and they had bumper crops every year."
Catherine looked as if her soul had briefly left her body. Yet somehow she could accept it for the moment.
Even if Akusare mushrooms were popular across the continent and their byproduct—Akusare mushroom oil—was used as a magical and alchemical material, it was still possible for a village this small to have no idea. After all, it was never something used by ordinary people.
A village only half a day's travel from Coldon? In a land this barren, where wild monsters and beasts roamed freely, half a day might as well be half isolation. Coldon might be nearby, but Iceland was the backwoods of the backwoods even by the standards of the Europa continent. By Seophon Kingdom standards it was no different.
"No. We'll put this matter aside for later."
Catherine clapped her hands lightly to reset the mood.
"We're hungry, so let's eat first and talk afterward."
"Sounds good. Someone's ears look ready to pierce the heavens."
Narke's ears, which had been drooping almost to her shoulders, shot straight up toward the sky and lifted the hood of her shabby robe with them.
"Y-yeah! Food should be eaten while it's hot. I'll dig in!"
The moment Catherine finished speaking, Narke—who had been fidgeting in front of the chicken—snatched up a hefty drumstick. There was no special reason. It was simply the piece closest to her hand.
In the brief window before the sun fully set, a shaft of twilight light slipped through the window and dyed the chicken a bright orange. Hot heat radiated into her palms from both ends of the drumstick. A provocative crackle still rose from the coating that wrapped the meat, heat not yet fully gone. Those tiny waves of sound pricked at Narke's ears and began to rouse her nose and tongue, both of which had been half-asleep from exhaustion.
For Narke—who before coming to Iceland had survived on cheap preserved hardtack, jerky, tree berries, bush fruit, and the occasional actual fruit thanks to research budgets and everything else—it was an overwhelmingly violent trio of sensations.
She finished her brief appreciation and brought the fried chicken to her lips.
Crunch!
The coating split. The meat of the drumstick tore. The instant a subtle sweetness hit her tongue, the juices that had been locked inside burst free and sprayed outward. Some of it landed on her lips, her cheek, even her clothes, but Narke had no room left to care.
"W-why is the chicken so tender?"
Catherine, who had just eaten a piece of chicken breast Karem had prepared, was thinking the exact same thing.
Compared to the ultimate of gourmet—modern civilization—the breed improvement here was pitiful. Muscles toughened by a lifetime of running every which way. Meat that only grew chewier with age. Hens were supposed to be more tender than roosters, yet to her palate the difference was negligible. Naturally, every land in this world and that one had developed countless methods for making such chicken tender.
Of course exceptions always existed. The Seophon Kingdom was not one of them, yet they had always been deadly serious about grilled meat, so continental chefs often made pilgrimages just to study it. As a result, the three classic ways of tenderizing meat were well known: stew, braise, and rotisserie.
But the thing sitting in front of Catherine was none of those. Frying was a technique for desserts, wasn't it? Neither stew nor braise nor rotisserie—yet the chicken had become this tender?
"What kind of trick did you pull this time?"
"Trick? Please call it a cooking technique."
"You must have done something weird and amazing again. No—before that. Was chicken breast always this full of juice?"
"I'm actually ridiculously good at frying chicken."
If anyone ever asked Karem what dish he cooked best, he could answer without hesitation. Chicken. And every chicken dish under the sun. In this life the number of times he had eaten chicken was small enough to count on his fingers, but his previous life had been different. From childhood he could sit down and demolish two or three whole birds in one sitting, meticulously stripping even the bits other people left behind. Once he grew up and chicken prices became absurd, he started making it himself. Even on days when unavoidable circumstances (dieting) kept him from proper fried chicken, chicken breast never left his meals; on cheat days he unfailingly fried a batch.
"Hah. Just by frying it, the chicken turned this tender?"
"Well, marinating it in honey or buttermilk with vinegar, lemon, and wine probably helped."
Honestly, when Karem first faced the birds he had broken out in a light cold sweat. Less improved than modern breeds, older birds—he had expected toughness, but not toughness you could feel with your teeth. He had thrown every tenderizer he could get his hands on into the mix and still come up short, so before coating he had to toss the pieces in honey.
"That subtle sweetness was honey. No—before that… buttermilk? The leftover from making butter—ah, whatever."
Catherine accepted another piece of chicken Karem offered. Thigh meat this time.
Crunch, crackle, sizzle, snap.
The rough, bright-orange coating shattered far more cheerfully in her mouth than the skin of a perfectly roasted whole bird, far more than pie crust or cookie. Every time her teeth tore and crushed the salty, spice-fragrant coating, a powerful, heavy nutty aroma bloomed from within and struck her nose. After that endlessly light yet weighty, delightful time for nose and teeth, the tongue's turn arrived.
She chewed the tender meat. It was nothing like the cheerfully shattering crust. The meat parted the moment any pressure was applied, releasing a gentle sweetness and the heavy essence of chicken that coated her tongue completely before sliding down of its own accord. Yet the more the fibers tore, the more essence kept welling up, soaking her entire mouth.
Catherine recognized that essence at once. The oil and juices that inevitably escape when chicken is grilled, stewed, or boiled. Those losses had been completely sealed inside by the thick coating that wrapped the bird. And it did not stop there. Inside the cooking vessel that was the coating itself, hot oil pressed in from every direction while the juices boiled from the heat; the chicken was essentially being grilled and boiled at the same time. Meat always becomes even more tender when boiled after grilling. The soft, juice-laden flesh that fell to pieces with every movement of her teeth proved it.
Silky thigh hidden beneath the crispy shell. After the springy drumstick came breast meat that exploded with juice. From chewy wing back to breast again.
Once her stomach had filled enough to restore a little calm, Catherine noticed something that had been hidden under the chicken while her attention was elsewhere. A bright-brown fritter, small enough to vanish inside a closed fist yet perfectly spherical, looked at first glance like a dessert she knew.
"Kid. Is that a doughnut?"
"Doughnut? Ah, that? It's an Akusare mushroom."
"An Akusare mushroom?"
"Seasoned a little, tossed in spices, and fried whole."
"Ha. Fried whole. Bring that over this time."
Karem speared a fried Akusare mushroom with a fork and held it out to her.
"Frying Akusare mushrooms whole… ha!"
"Is it that strange?"
"Yes—in a luxurious way."
Catherine bit into the fried mushroom. The round coating cracked and flattened into an oval; the Akusare mushroom hidden inside stretched in a long, elastic strand from the fork into her mouth. Exactly like cheese.
Catherine shivered at the unexpected extravagance. Karem understood perfectly. The fried Akusare mushrooms he had tasted while frying the chicken had been an astonishing thing. Raw, they were fairly firm. Once coated and blasted with heat they turned chewy and began to stretch like mozzarella. The more you chewed that springy mushroom, the more the flavors and aromas of dozens of nuts—pine nuts, walnuts, chestnuts, pistachios, hazelnuts, almonds—kept blooming. The marriage of that chewy texture with dozens of layered tastes and scents. No wonder popularity had exploded.
"I've never seen them in the main kitchen or storerooms at the mansion. They never appeared at banquets either."
"What, the Akusare mushrooms?"
"Yes. Do they sell them all to the continent?"
"Well. Some are sold, I'm sure. But I think I know exactly who is devouring every last one offered up to Winterhome."
At those words a certain someone flashed through Karem's mind.
Heehee, that's right! It's Alicia coming for snacks!
Even though the person herself was nowhere nearby, the youngest lady's voice seemed to brush past his ear, and Karem's lips twisted into a wry smile of their own accord.
"Well, even that seems to be a thing of the past now."
"A thing of the past… huh? That almost sounds like you can't get Akusare mushrooms from the forest anymore."
Catherine nodded while still savoring the fried mushroom. The answer, however, came from someone else.
"Y-yeah. Lady Atanita's words are right. You probably can't get Akusare mushrooms anymore."
Narke agreed while carefully peeling only the skin from her chicken.
"Uh… is there some big problem in the forest? Contamination or something?"
"Uh, in a way it might be similar? Mushrooms are a kind of fungus, and fungi often mutate because of ma-magical factors, you see?"
"…Could it be the Mana Supersaturation phenomenon?"
If it was a magical factor, he thought he had heard something about it earlier that day. The term that rose unbidden from Karem's memory made both mages nod as though he had hit the mark.
"Th-the mushroom golems that attacked the village all seem to be Akusare mushrooms that turned into monsters. There's a trace of undead which is a little strange, so I need to investigate more, but that forest is basically a nest of mushroom golems."
Narke predicted the fall of Fungusby village in a quiet, careful voice.
"Y-yeah. Unless we raze the entire forest, golems will keep spawning. Uh, anyway there seems to be something inside the forest that's stimulating them…"
"Solving that something is our goal right now."
Crunch—
Catherine bit into the juice-dripping fried-chicken skin Karem held out. But even the finest mountain scenery is best enjoyed after a meal. The three who had been speaking so seriously somehow found themselves naturally absorbed in the chicken once more.
Attached Materials
- Fried Chicken -
- Fried Akusare Mushrooms (Cheese Balls) -
Pictures drawn by ChatGPT.