The Ultimate Yakitori (1)

Somewhere in every culture, there was at least one dish of meat cooked over charcoal.

Argentina had its asado. The Middle East had kebab. The American South had barbecue. The world was full of charcoal-grilled meat, each version shamelessly built to provoke a carnivore's appetite, and aside from a few exceptions, nearly all of them took the same shape: meat on a skewer. Charcoal, once it was properly roaring, climbed toward eight hundred degrees, and a skewer was simply the easiest way to cook over heat like that. The form was intuitive, too. It asked for no elaborate tools. Charcoal, skewer, and meat—human history had more or less proven that combination to be the unwritten rule.

Being common, however, was an entirely different matter from being easy. Judged purely as the act of grilling, the difficulty was vicious. There was the grill sous-vide: a low, direct flame, a sear of ten seconds at most, a brief rest, and then that cycle repeated until a single steak had taken forty minutes. There was asado, pork or beef held over indirect charcoal heat for half a day. Neither was something an ordinary cook could even imitate. Frankly, they were techniques that demanded artistry even from chefs counted among the best in the world.

Be honest. At some point you have burned pork belly over charcoal and eaten the ruins anyway. If something as familiar as charcoal-grilled pork belly could go that wrong, the difficulty of those other methods hardly needed explaining. Simple Korean-style barbecue, I could manage well enough. I had no business chasing the professionals into their own territory. So I had settled on a compromise between the two: Japan's yakitori. Grilled chicken.

And yet—what was this? Why were they reacting as if I had suggested boiled shoe leather?

Eilenna disliked meat, so I could let her pass. But Arthur and Brunok? What was wrong with them?

I aimed the question straight at their lukewarm stares.

"Why? Why? What's so bad about it?"

"It's meat on a stick. A skewer!"

"I doubt most people would care to eat that at a festival."

Somewhere, once again, our sensibilities had failed to meet. Their blunt explanations were no explanation at all. I pressed them.

"So what's wrong with a skewer? Is it awkward to eat?"

"No. When do you eat skewers?"

"Uh... usually when I'm eating outside?"

"Right. You're traveling, night falls, you make camp, and there it is again. That filthy, tasteless jerky soup and those stinking meat skewers!"

"I have eaten them often enough myself. I cannot say the memory is a pleasant one..."

"Ah. So that's the variable."

I had assumed skewers simply struck them as commoner's food. I had not expected this. Nobles, after all, could sit down to something like a proper meal even on the road, so in a sense this was only an extension of that habit.

Still. If the problem was nothing but perception, I was confident I could overturn it. I turned back to Brunok and tried again.

"Look, the stuff you eat while camping tastes bad. What I make is different. You know me."

"I know. I do. Which is why you don't have to do skewers at all. You could make something else."

"Why are you being so logical?"

He was so reasonable I had nothing to throw back at him. As Brunok said, there were plenty of dishes that would pair well with beer at a festival. I had set several of them aside for one reason or another, but if we assumed the profits would be split fairly, Curry Wurst was an excellent choice. Branch out from sausage and a hot dog would be delicious too. Or tacos—light finger food, properly salty. I could even dip into the Mana Market and fry something.

Even so, I could not bring myself to give up the chicken skewers.

A sweltering tropical night, a cold beer, one piece of chicken skewer.

How was a man supposed to endure the absence of that in another world?

Dishes that went well with lager were endless. Chicken was good. Pizza was good. Fried food was good. Most oily cooking got along with lager. But I believed every pairing of drink and food carried its own unmistakable nostalgia. Take beer. Eating it with chicken and eating it with pizza did not feel the same. The first was clocking out in the evening and happily putting a few away with one or two friends. The second was a peaceful afternoon, drowsy sunlight, a single easy glass. All the more reason I could not abandon chicken skewers and beer. This was not a mere pairing. It was closer to a howl tearing its way out of me.

Only after I had sorted the thought into that suspiciously artificial cadence did I manage to calm down. Right. I only had to prove it.

"This isn't simple stubbornness. For me, this menu is more than that."

"Then make a sample or something..."

"Boss, you have just struck the exact core of the matter."

"Ha. There goes your way of talking again."

Gulp. Thunk.

I drained what remained of the beer in one go, then spoke to Brunok, who was watching me with open suspicion.

"Come to the Calius estate in a week, Boss. I'll show you real chicken skewers."

"A week? Not tomorrow?"

"Food at the highest level doesn't just pop out whenever you snap your fingers. I've got work to do."

"Fine. A week's enough to tell the customers I'm closing."

Voices and the knock of glasses beat against my ears. The calm before the storm. Whether my chicken skewers would come out stinking and tough, or deeply savory and rich with umami—the result would speak for itself.

The next day, the moment business ended, I hurried back to the estate. I was radiating haste so openly that Eilenna, considerate of me, settled into the sofa with a book and said she would read. She was probably worried she would only be in the way. Grateful for that, I opened the Mana Market.

It had been a while, it seemed, since I had traded for meat through the Mana Market. Chicken in particular—aside from the time I made Ishilla a clear boiled chicken soup—this might have been the first. I used the ability so efficiently that the memories blurred together. Setting the other meats aside, I exchanged for a single raw chicken.

Shaaaa—

Mana drained away, and a raw chicken appeared on the counter before my eyes. I turned it this way and that and brought it to my nose. There was a faint chicken smell, but nothing that would be a problem, and the bird looked fresh enough on the outside. Then, with practiced hands, I began to break it down. It had been slaughtered as cleanly as modern factory poultry, so there was no ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠truly miserable part of the work.

First I made a shallow cut where the body met the leg. The skin at the joint split along the knife. I hooked a thumb into that opening and bent the leg the other way. A dull crack—the joint giving—and the leg hung loose, drumstick still attached. A careful slice through the ligaments and muscle still joining leg to body, and it came away clean. I did the other leg the same way and separated the bones as well. Done properly, the oyster came free with the leg: the iliotibialis, a flat oval of muscle named for its resemblance to an oyster. It sat close to the spine, where the muscle did little work, and so the texture was remarkably tender. A chicken yielded only two pieces. Alongside the tail, it was one of the cuts treated as rare.

With only the two legs gone, the bird already looked strangely empty. There was a method of driving the knife straight along the center of the rib cage and lifting the breast off at once, but today I was butchering for chicken skewers, so I used a slightly different approach. Take the wing and move it a little, and the cartilage where the wing bone met the body showed itself clearly. I set the knife neatly into that cartilage and severed the joint. The joint was cut, but the muscle still held, so the wing did not come free. It dangled. From there, the angle of the knife mattered. Not toward the neck—scrape the blade in along the rib cage, toward the ribs, and the knife rode the bones of the body downward of its own accord. Feel the bone the whole way, draw the knife out as if filleting a fish, and at last the tenderloin remained wholly attached while the breast lay opened wide. I sliced that breast free, then lightly scraped the tenderloin from the bone with the knife as well.

The other side, the same way. After that I only had to take the popular specialty cuts, and the breakdown would be finished. Houses that truly specialized in chicken skewers would even skewer the fascia along the ribs, the lymph nodes of the neck, the aorta of the heart. Honestly, I was not skilled enough to ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠butcher at that level, and I doubted there would be much demand for it. I cut away the cartilage, the tail, and the neck meat, and called the job done.

Hm. It's been a while, but not bad.

Making boiled chicken soup had not required a breakdown like this, which had made it easy. Fortunately, the skill had not rusted. And now came the moment that tightened my chest.

Please. Please register by cut...!

Chicken skewers demanded that every piece of meat be butchered into cuts—boneless meat, in other words. Spirit arts let me freeze and refrigerate, yes. In the end, though, I was the one who had to break the chickens down. The festival ran four days, and if I counted one of them as a day off, that still left three. The volume was enormous. Toast and tteokbokki—the spicy rice cakes I was selling now—were not a perfect comparison, but gauging by them, I might need anywhere from a hundred and fifty chickens to two hundred if things went well. That was enough to slaughter every chicken I meant to eat for the rest of the year. Which was why registering the cuts mattered so much. Whether I could do business in joy or in misery depended on whether this worked.

With a devout heart, I set my hand on each cut of the butchered chicken in turn.

Shaaaa—

It worked. It worked!

Of course it did. Pork, beef, and Wild Boar meat could all be registered. It would have been a shame if chicken could not. Even so, the Mana Market's standards for what it would register were so arbitrary that I had genuinely been nervous. I could easily imagine it refusing me out of nowhere: Chicken is small. Butcher it yourself. At least the ability kept a minimum of fairness. That was a relief.

Feeling my chest go clear and easy, I seared each cut in a frying pan. I was making chicken skewers, and yet I was using a pan instead of charcoal, because first I had to judge whether this chicken was even acceptable.

What, in the end, decided the taste of a chicken skewer? Which charcoal you used. Whether the grilling was right. Whether the salt was too strong. If there was a sauce, whether the balance held. All of that mattered, but spoken plainly, every one of those things was secondary. The heart of a chicken skewer was not those fiddly details. It was the chicken itself. Set aside the offal, which needed special handling, and the seasoning that went onto a skewer ended at salt and clear rice wine. You did not eat it for the taste of a marinade. You ate it for the fierce scent of charcoal together with the quiet flavor of the bird. Naturally, then, the taste changed completely depending on what kind of chicken you started with. Look at the shops that had turned yakitori into a premium product. Every one of them worked with a poultry farm and took a supply of high-quality breed chickens. I did not need to reach that level. I did think I would only be satisfied with a bird at least as good as a heritage chicken.

Chiiiik—

Nothing but salt, and still the chicken crackled and cooked up appetizingly in the pan. I cut one slice from each finished cut and tasted them with care. The protein was so good that I ended up eating all of it. And yet—

The flavor's a little lacking.

Unlike pork or beef, chicken had never smelled strongly to begin with. Perhaps because of that, there was nothing particularly off-putting, and the taste was not bad. Put another way, it was ordinary to the point of emptiness.

I shot to my feet. No. Chicken of this level did not belong on my skewers. What I wanted was the highest taste. I wanted to show the people of this world—people who did not know the true ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠flavor of a chicken skewer—the ultimate yakitori.

I left the kitchen at once and got ready to go out. Eilenna was sprawled on the living-room sofa, reading. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠When I suddenly made to leave, she looked up, puzzled.

"Huh? Jinwoo. Where are you going all of a sudden?"

"I'm going to look around the market."

"The market? Why?"

"To find a chicken."

She could not seem to parse the intent behind that answer. A question mark might as well have been floating over her head. Whether it was or not, I had to go. A lonely journey, undertaken to stand against the slander of chicken skewers by means of the ultimate yakitori. The first step was finding the most delicious chicken in this world.