Hardtack Was Never Supposed to Taste Good (3)
The mess cooks, Iseria, and I had come in an hour earlier than usual and worked without a break, and by this morning the hardtack we'd started yesterday morning was finally done.
Hours of tending it in front of a blazing oven had left the cooks utterly spent.
"Ugh, it's so hot..."
"We finished all of it?"
"What did you just say, you bastard."
They sprawled in a cool corner of the kitchen, muttering nonsense at one another.
"Tofu, hardtack? Both of 'em are square."
Iseria, worn out since dawn, was mixing the two up. Both were square, and both were nutty and good, so it was hard to blame her.
I hadn't been idle while they suffered. I'd prepared the morning rations and called up a wind spirit to finish drying yesterday's hardtack. Blasting it with hot air drawn off the oven's heat left it as crisp as anything from a factory line. The finished batch, lightly tossed with oil and sugar, had gone out with today's lunch run. Once they came back, I'd know how it had landed.
They'd probably like it.
Crunch—!
I'd snagged one or two myself while I worked. The barley's nuttiness and that clean, mild sweetness were excellent. Brutal as the job had been, the cooks and Iseria hadn't quit, and those stolen bites along the way were why.
Still, seeing them this wiped out, I wondered if I ought to make that thing I'd been thinking about.
I fetched a wok of a decent size and poured in just enough oil for a shallow fry. Deep-frying would have been better, but I'd been running Beginner Spirit Arts nonstop since yesterday, and I was starting to feel it. So I used only a little of the lard and butter we had on hand. The point was for the fat to soak into the hardtack and coat it, so it hardly mattered.
The wok warmed slowly over the fire, and the oil's temperature climbed fast. I dropped the crisp hardtack in.
There was none of the furious shhhhhk—! people expect from frying. That sound is moisture flashing off, and hardtack is food with its water stripped to the limit. No appetizing ASMR, then. The real show started now.
Sputtering as if it were being fried, the hardtack drank up every drop of oil in the wok in an instant. What had been a dry ivory darkened, once it took on the fat, to the color of aged oak. Dried that thoroughly, it sucked up whatever it met—water or oil, no distinction.
Hardtack, glossy under a coat of oil. And not just any oil: lard and butter, so the hungry smell of animal fat spread through the kitchen.
"Huh—what is that smell?"
"Not... tofu, but it smells amazing!"
"The provisions officer's making something!"
Oh, so now you're awake?
The ones who hadn't been able to pull themselves together caught the scent, and the light snapped back into their eyes.
Now I had to be careful with the heat. Hardtack already burned easily for lack of moisture; soaked in hot oil, a moment too long and it went black. While it was still in the golden-brown range, I killed the fire.
Then a pinch of salt, and—
Whoosh—!
A quantity of sugar that blew past every expectation. Sugar white as stars poured down like a stream.
"Waaah!!"
"All that precious sugar..."
The cooks saw me dump it in and screamed in horror. Sugar was as precious as pepper here, and I was pouring it over hardtack. By their common sense, it might well have been incomprehensible.
The hardtack sent out with the meal run had oil and sugar too, but only a little, just tossed through. There had been too much of it to fry, and not enough sugar to coat that volume properly. I could have used the Mana Market, but even then the quantity was enormous. If anyone pressed me on where that much sugar had come from, blaming the merchant company wouldn't hold.
Anyway, the sugar melted into the still-hot fried hardtack and clung in a thick coat. I gave it a light toss and plated it. And of course I had milk ready. Fried hardtack without milk? That was a crime even a midnight roll call couldn't excuse.
"You all worked hard. Try some."
Fried hardtack, deep brown and gleaming under a coat of oil and sugar. Sight and smell both captured, they grabbed pieces one after another.
Crunch, crack—!
Soaked in oil, it might have looked soggy, but the crunch was intact. No—with the oil lending a moist richness, the hardtack's own blandness was covered over.
"It's... wrapping around my tongue..."
"Frying it changes the taste again."
Oh. Sharp.
As that cook with the delicate palate had said, hardtack tastes a little different when you fry it. More precisely, the flavor evolves into another form. Like how Eevee changes depending on which stone you give it—the hardtack dough was the same.
Wheat flour, barley flour, butter, milk powder: the dough was packed with things that tasted good. And if you didn't bake it, but braided it long and fried it? You'd get something close to kkwabaegi, the twisted fried dough sold at ordinary Korean street stalls. The flour and the ratios were different, so it wasn't identical, but the butter and milk powder reacting with the oil maximized aroma and softness all the same.
Sweet and crisp, the flavor of animal fat moistly opening up the bread's crumb. Climbing back out of that sensual texture was not easy.
The cooks and Iseria kept reaching for fried hardtack without pause. Iseria especially. She still carried the grief of losing the hardtack she'd brought from the elven country, back when a wild-boar magical beast had chased her. This was far richer than elven hardtack: a high-calorie snack so stupidly loaded with sugar it snapped your eyes open. No one was trying to steal it from her, and still she crammed it into both cheeks like a brute.
"Mmmph! Mmm!"
Munch, munch. Cheeks puffed out like a squirrel's, she worked her teeth however she could.
But everyone has heard it somewhere: that getting through seven pieces of hardtack in a minute is already too much. Even fried, that dryness that stole the moisture from your mouth remained. She couldn't spit it back out, and she couldn't keep eating either. A perfect deadlock.
And milk existed for exactly this moment.
"Drink some milk and chew them together."
"Mm?"
Mouth still packed, Iseria took the cup.
Elves didn't eat meat to begin with, so they'd never had much reason to keep goats or cows. To them, milk was a rather alien drink, something you used when making cheese. Even so, trusting me, she gulped the cold milk straight down.
Twitch— twitch!
From the first swallow to chewing it down together: exactly ten seconds. In those ten seconds the doubt left her eyes, and her pointed elven ears began to shake wildly. Full of wonder and joy, she chewed and drank the milk and fried hardtack together.
"It's so good! It's white and nutty like that soft tofu I had before, but this one's sweet too, so I like it!"
The sugar had shot her energy straight up, and she launched into an explanation of the flavor. Unlike her usual prickly, contrary self, she described what she tasted the way a pure child would.
Working alongside the cooks these past few days, she had long since shed her robe. Once they learned she was an elf, they had instinctively kept their distance. A mage, another race, and a rare elf on top of that. But watching her now—eating hardtack and rejoicing in a way anyone could read—they smiled, warm and fond.
"Yeah, it is good. You're a completely different person."
"You finally match your looks, Lady Iseria."
"Wh-what did you say?! Do you actually want to die?!"
"Gyaaah!"
Crash—!
Teased back into her true self, Iseria knocked them flat with wind magic.
Right. That was as far as Iseria's template went.
Whether it was the high-calorie fried hardtack or not, everyone had their strength back. They were themselves again, bickering, and the ring of cold steel from the northern wall—something we'd heard whenever things got quiet these past few days—had stopped. An awkward sense of wrongness came with it: a daily life that had slipped out of joint, clicking back into place.
The Monster Wave was over, and clearing the battlefield would take three days at most. I'd only come out to sell a bit of pork, and the timing had overlapped with a vengeance. About ten days away from the restaurant meant every ingredient would have to be thrown out. The fermented pastes... no need to look. They'd be done. When I got home, I'd boil up some soybean-paste stew.
"Rest a bit, then we'll prep dinner!"
"Yes, sir!"
Well. Finish what I'd started, then go.
For the first time in a while, we enjoyed a peaceful day's work.
"You've truly worked hard. But... you really won't reconsider?"
"I'll gratefully accept the words alone."
Reenlisting is out of the question.
The city's alert had been lifted, and I could no longer leave the restaurant abandoned, so before I departed I met Duke Kailan. Met is generous. I'd been summoned.
Through the reports, he had learned that in the few days I'd served as acting provisions officer, the soldiers' morale and efficiency had risen noticeably. Like Arthur, the Duke's realm of mastery was already so high that eating my food gave him no meaningful sense of his mana rising. Even so, the fighting strength of the entire Silbaerin knight order had climbed, and his loyal commander of the 1st Squad, Arthur, had grown into a Sword Expert—so he grabbed hold of me, trying to seat me in the provisions post for good.
As if I'd accept. I'd have to be insane. No amount of pay, no grant of land, was going to get me to reenlist. When I made my refusal plain and stubborn, Duke Kailan clicked his tongue, regretful, and gave in.
"Very well. If you change your mind, come find me anytime!"
"Ah... yes."
"This is a different matter. Could you share the recipes for the mess menu and the hardtack? I'd like to keep the quality of the meals as high as possible even after you leave."
"That much is simple enough."
Recipes. I had no desire to make a fortune off them, so I agreed readily. This wasn't even a restaurant I ran for profit, and it was for the strength of the knights who protected the city I lived in. All the less reason to hesitate.
Ah—but if I handed the recipes over as they were, the cooks couldn't make them even if they wanted to. Too many of the ingredients were things only I could obtain.
"I'm sorry, but I'll revise them a little before I give them to you. It won't take long. I'll come back soon."
"Hm, very well. Running a restaurant and a merchant company besides must keep you busy. Sorry to trouble you."
I flinched.
A thief's own feet go numb—the sudden mention of the company startled me. The matter had been resolved, but the company was a lie I'd invented all the same. I'd produced real results, so being found out probably wouldn't mean a severe punishment. Still, it wouldn't be pleasant.
Iseria and I collected the modest pay the Duke had given us and got out of the mansion quickly. In about three days I'd come back, hand the recipes over fast, and leave. If they started picking at the company, it would be a headache.
I'd just set off for home when—
"Hey! Jinwoo, is that you? Wait a moment!"
A familiar voice called my name, and I turned.
"Good thing you hadn't gone far... It's me. Calius."
"Ah, hello."
The voice belonged to the merchant I'd idly shot the breeze with in the shelter—the one who'd been a great help in exposing the former provisions officer. Calius. Come to think of it, he had vouched for my company back then, which was how I'd gotten into the garrison. I'd been so busy after getting in that I'd forgotten.
"Thank you for last time. I should have come to see you myself. I'm ashamed."
"Haha! Not at all. Hearing you say so is enough to please me."
True to the man who'd chatted so easily with me, Calius brushed it off with natural good humor. But why had he called me over? Something about the company?
The company was just a lie.
Looking back, it had been a pretty reckless move. If the former provisions officer had been even a little more thorough, I might have been the one who looked suspicious and got caught. A merchant company, in my situation? I'd been busy hunting ingredients and running a restaurant.
"But... is something the matter?"
"Ah, right. I tried that new hardtack of yours. I'm a merchant, so I travel for long stretches, and eating tasteless rations was always the worst of it. But yours—the taste was one thing, and I liked that it had real nutrition and actually kept you full!"
"I see. Thank you for the compliment."
"Mm. So, what I wanted to say..."
Calius, who had been showering my hardtack with praise, broke the rhythm of his speech for a moment, then went on.
From the context... this is the timing for something big.
"You and I ought to go into business together. With the hardtack."
"Sorry? Business is a bit..."
"Forgotten that I vouched for you back then? Things turned out well in the end, I'll grant you—but if His Grace learned you'd entered the garrison with a fake company..."
"Ah."
So this is how the snowball comes rolling.
It seemed getting my ordinary days back was going to take a little longer.