Hardtack Was Never Supposed to Taste Good (2)
Snick—! Shhk!
The sheet of dough spread flat across the wide counter came apart in even cuts. Iseria, handling a razor-keen blade of wind with exquisite control, sliced it into neat little rectangles. The others had knives in hand and were shaping dough as well, but nothing they did could touch the efficiency of magic.
"Ugh... You promised me bibimbap when we get home."
"Yeah. I'll throw in tofu, too."
"Tofu!"
Properly motivated by food, Iseria threw herself into the magic. Before long the trays were lined with small rectangular pieces of hardtack dough, and the whole process had gone remarkably smoothly.
The ovens weren't large enough to bake all eighteen hundred portions at once, so we had to work in batches. I hadn't planned to finish everything in a single day anyway. Keep them going, and we'd be done around this time tomorrow.
The one thing that nagged at me was how finicky hardtack was to bake. It was a food that had to be driven as dry as possible, which meant it went into the oven at least twice.
The first bake—about twenty minutes at 180 degrees—set the shape, cooked the dough through, and drove off moisture and gas. Take a look at the hardtack people usually eat, and aren't there two little holes punched clean through the middle? Moisture and gas escape through those holes. So we'd punched the same small holes into this dough.
Then came the second bake: thirty minutes at a lower heat, around 130 degrees. If you wanted the water evaporated as far as it would go—shelf life, and that brittle snap—you had no choice but to cook it low and slow. Push the temperature too high and you scorch the outside while the inside stays damp.
People who can't cook are always saying the same thing.
"Wouldn't high heat be better? It'll be done faster, right?"
"Then why do you take the elevator? Jumping out the window gets you there quicker."
"...Ah."
Hit them with that, and they usually saw the light the moment they heard it.
Anyway, I walked the kitchen crew through the method. It looked like nothing difficult, and yet holding one specific temperature the whole way through took real know-how. Even in the modern world, where ovens and thermometers are everywhere, there are chefs who do nothing but temperature-sensitive steaks, and others who do nothing but baking.
Fortunately, our mess had a few seasoned assistants. I picked out the cooks who were good with heat, stationed them at the ovens, and used Beginner Spirit Arts.
If a mess cook could hold a temperature in steps of ten or twenty degrees, a fire spirit could manage far finer adjustments. So I told the cooks only to keep the fire somewhere near the target. The spirits would take care of the rest.
Fwoosh—!
Eee—!
The moment the kindling caught and flame leapt up, the fire spirits grew excited and started fooling around. I asked them to hold the temperature, then turned to Iseria.
"What? Why! I already cut all of it!"
"You're not ready yet."
"Ready for what?"
"Ready to rest. Go work."
Iseria threw a fit about why she ought to work for humans, and how magic and spirits weren't meant to be used this way—but the instant I threatened to withhold the tofu, she tucked her tail and cast. She used spirit arts instead of fire magic. It was the same Beginner Spirit Arts I had, the kind that commanded minor spirits, but the number she could call at once, and how stable they stayed, were on an entirely different level. The result was that Iseria pulled off the feat of running three ovens by herself.
"Oh, not bad. Elves really are something."
"Th-that's right! Don't you dare look down on elven spirit arts!"
I meant every word of the praise. I'd been hoping for one oven, maybe two, and here she was handling three alone. If I didn't want her starting to wonder whether the workload was unreasonable, I needed to praise her hard.
"Good job, good job, good job!"
"Ahem!"
And so: two ovens under the mess cooks and my Beginner Spirit Arts, three under Iseria alone. Every oven in the kitchen running flat out. A full five-barracks operation.
At this pace, we might even have them ready to issue with tomorrow's midday meal run...?
Of course, that assumed the five-barracks line ran without a hitch. So as not to get in their way, I quietly set about preparing the evening rations.
"Quartermaster, sir! We have to go see the wounded...!"
"Come on, just finish this and then you can go."
I wasn't doing it alone, obviously. I worked the priests and nuns right to the end. How was I supposed to prep all this by myself?
For dinner I kept it simple: vegetable stew with hand-torn pasta folded in. I eat the mess food too, and three curries in a row would wear anyone out. Plain as it was, this was better.
And this hardly needs explaining, but—
"Damn it!! It's just stew with ordinary ingredients. Why is it this good?"
"Once the Wave is completely cleaned up... the provisional quartermaster is leaving?"
"Let's lock the quartermaster in the provisions storehouse."
Does that last one sound a little off?
The food was delicious. That went without saying. I'd caramelized a mountain of onions and dumped in chicken stock traded through the Mana Market, plus sugar.
"My eyes... I can't see..."
"Lady Maria, why would You visit such a trial upon me..."
There was the side effect of the priests' and nuns' eyelids swelling shut with tears while they julienned onions like mad, but it couldn't be helped. Great flavor comes with great responsibility.
Evening mess ended like that, and we kept baking hardtack until nine at night before heading back to quarters. We'd finished roughly six hundred portions. Enough to issue as combat rations tomorrow.
Sugar-frosted hardtack... fried biscuits tumbled in sugar...
I hadn't made them with myself in mind, but looking at the finished product, I couldn't hide how much I was looking forward to it.
"Haa... I'm exhausted..."
Iseria stretched her short arms and legs and let out a groan. Everyone had suffered making the hardtack. Maybe tomorrow I'd put on a special just for our people. Fry the biscuits, toss them in sugar, eat them with milk...
Oh, fuck.
Just imagining it filled my mouth with saliva. At this point, you could almost call it Sword Master–grade hardtack, couldn't you? As for the old hardtack—bricks that only pretended to be biscuits—I'd have to set those aside somewhere. Looking forward to tomorrow, I surrendered myself to the bed.
A brilliant day, not a cloud in the sky, sunlight beating down. Two days ago the Monster Wave—half annihilated by Arthur, who had awakened in the middle of the fighting—lost its strength all at once, right as it was due to end anyway.
"Filthy bastards."
Thuk—
"Kieee..."
The corpses of magic beasts stained the ground before the defensive line with blood. Among those bodies, the soldiers were finishing off the ones still faintly breathing and clearing the field.
In the middle of a fight there was no room for any other thought—tension, excitement, the thrill of combat all welling up—but clearing a battlefield was different. Confirming kills, disposing of carcasses, and, in the truly wretched cases, recovering a comrade's remains. In every way, it was gruesome, tedious, and draining work.
"Carlson! Get over here."
"Private Carlson! Yes, sir!"
"What's on the midday meal run today?"
Hans, a common knight, asked Carlson—the junior who'd come in not long ago—what was for lunch. The one thing that offered any comfort on a dull duty was, as always, food. But Hans already knew the menu. He was only asking on the off chance. The meal run was always the same.
"Uh... hardtack, drinking water, and a little jerky, sir!"
"Hah. Damn."
Of course. Brown blocks of hardtack so hard you couldn't possibly eat them as they were—hence the nickname Tooth Destroyer. Field rations had to keep, had to be easy to eat, and couldn't smell too strong. Hardtack met every one of those conditions, so Hans understood it. Logically.
It's just battlefield cleanup. Couldn't they give us a normal meal?
The Monster Wave was over. At most, they were cleaning up a filthy field. Wasn't this exactly when you bent the rules a little and issued regular food? Hans thought back to the curry he'd eaten in the mess yesterday, and the day before. One bite, and the spices—blended in perfect harmony—had rolled in like a wave, warming his whole body. The work of the black-haired chef appointed provisional quartermaster. It was the first time in Hans's life he had eaten anything that good, and after the curry his trust in the provisional quartermaster had grown thick.
"Ah, b-but I heard today's hardtack is a little different, sir! They were baking a huge amount of something small and rectangular in the mess ovens..."
"They made new hardtack? At least it'll be less hard."
Private Carlson, having picked the news up somewhere, went on about the freshly baked hardtack. Even that left Hans lukewarm. Fresh from the oven, sure, it would be less hard. Hardtack was still hardtack. Bread with its ingredients restricted to keep it from spoiling, its moisture stripped to the absolute limit. It could not, fundamentally, taste good.
Peeeeep—!
While they grumbled, a whistle announced that the meal run had arrived. An empty stomach still had to be fed, so Hans and Carlson headed for the ration wagon.
But then—
"What's that smell?"
"Hnngh... that's toasted. I'm dying over here."
"What? Isn't it hardtack today?"
The other knights crowding in for the midday meal run stirred at the nutty aroma drifting off the ration wagon. Hans and Carlson sniffed as well, trying to place it.
It was the toasted smell of bread just pulled from the oven in a good bakery run by a skilled baker. Beneath the hearty fragrance of wheat and barley baking lay a refined sweetness, the kind that drifted only faintly from a first-rate dessert. And the richness of dairy bound that sweetness and the bread's starch firmly into one.
Waiting in the serving line, Hans kept drawing deep breaths and letting them go. The presence of some bread he couldn't name sank into every corner of the lining of his nose. That presence alone filled him up, and he could feel his brain going weak with happiness.
Grrrgle—.
Even so, a scent was only a scent. The moment his turn came, Hans snatched the bread up quick. Carlson took his share with expectant eyes and followed after him.
"Corporal Hans... is this hardtack?"
"I... don't know either."
He had never seen hardtack in this shape. Not in any knight order of the Empire, not among adventurers, not even among other races. In a palm-sized pouch lay golden hardtack and jerky, and clinging here and there to both of them, pale white crystals. The grains, and the glitter, were nothing like salt.
"S-sugar? They sprinkled sugar... on hardtack?"
This was insane. Hans could not hide his shock at the hardtack in front of him. The source of that refined sweetness was this sugar. A powder said to be as precious as pepper—something only the nobles of the capital could eat—glittering like stars. And that sugar had been sprinkled over hardtack, the ration regarded as the lowest of the low, and issued out.
Hans felt a guilt he had no words for, a sense of transgression, and a faint thrill. Was it like watching some wicked noble lady receive her comeuppance at the hands of a lowly commoner?
Ugh. What the hell am I thinking.
Hans turned his head and pulled himself together. Hungry or not, a man who called himself a knight had no business thinking like that. He steadied himself and picked up a piece of hardtack. Judging by how it had been packed, he wouldn't need to boil it in hot water and eat it like gruel, the way he usually did.
In a moment that was, for no good reason, tense, Hans brought a piece to his mouth.
And then—
Crunch—! Crunch!
He bit down with gusto. The clean, ringing snap that filled his ears startled both Hans and Carlson.
The truth was, Hans had been a little afraid. It looked good, but hardtack was hardtack. Would it really be all right to bite down this hard? He trusted the quartermaster, though, so he had squeezed his eyes shut and chewed. The hardtack, crumbling crisp without betraying that trust, rolled through his mouth.
Everything that had been only a scent a moment ago struck his tongue and surged in at several times the intensity. The more he chewed, the more saliva welled from his glands, and the hardtack, soaked in that saliva, reached a perfect texture. The flavors clinging to the surface hit his tongue in reverse, from the outside in. The sweetness of sugar, and a crust that snapped and crackled. The rich, gentle savor of dairy. And last, the toasted heart of it, filling him with a solid satisfaction.
Once he saw that Hans was eating, Carlson put a piece in his mouth as well. Chewing with the same crunch, crunch, he spoke in a trembling voice.
"Corporal Hans..."
"Yeah..."
"If the hardtack is like this, I think I could do field operations every day, sir."
"Pull your seniority, then. I'm going first."
Hans and Carlson inhaled the hardtack without another word. That day's battlefield cleanup was, strangely enough, far more efficient than usual.
It was a brilliant spring day, the Monster Wave at its end.