"It really is delicious," the broadcast said. "Wrapped outside in a crispy batter, the
octopus inside is very juicy."
"...Hey, Daddy?" a child asked.
"Yeah. If you want octopus, a lot of them got caught in our nets today," the father
answered.
"Really?! I want to try it!"
"Sure thing. Normally I throw them back, but let's try it."
It seems there were a lot of conversations like this one in many villages by the
sea.
"Our next ingredient is this."
After we had finished eating the well-received octopus skewers and returned to
our seats, Poncho opened a new box in front of us. When we saw the thin brown
ingredient covered in dirt inside...
"Are these... roots?" Liscia said.
"I think they're roots..." Juna added.
"They don't look so good... Are they really edible?" Tomoe asked doubtfully.
Liscia, Juna and Tomoe all acted like they had question marks floating above their
heads. Aisha and I, on the other hand, were completely unsurprised.
"Oh, burdock root, huh?" I said.
"That's burdock root," Aisha agreed.
Well, I had heard burdock root was seen as a strange thing to eat in the West, so I
didn't find it strange that it wasn't eaten here, but that Aisha, who looked like a
Westerner, knew about it surprised me.
"In the forest, we have to eat everything we can, otherwise we would succumb to
malnutrition in no time," Aisha said, staring off into the distance.
Perhaps that food situation was what had made her the hungry dark elf she was
today.
"Since they're being introduced here, that means you can eat them, right?" Liscia
asked, to which I nodded.
"You can eat them. But rather than enjoy them for their own flavor, you enjoy the
flavor of the broth they were stewed in, or their texture. They're mostly dietary
fiber, which you can't digest, but they have a medicinal effect and can help keep your
bowel movements regular. They're a good friend to those who are constipated."
"...I wish you wouldn't talk about bowel movements and constipation while we're
eating," Liscia said.
"It helps expel waste products from the body. Of course, it's good for your health
and beauty."
"Urkh. When you say that, it sounds tempting, but..."
Well, now that Liscia's been talked into it, shall we get down to eating? I thought.
This time, I kept it simple. After scraping off the dirt using the back of a knife, I
cut the burdock into long, thin shavings, coated it with potato starch, and put it into
the pot of oil we had used earlier. Once it was properly fried, I took it out of the pot
and split it into two bowls. One of these, I sprinkled salt on, while the other I
sprinkled with sugar. With that, the burdock chips (potato chip-style and rusk-style)
were complete.
As for everyone's reactions after eating them...
"Huh, they're crunchy and delicious." said Liscia.
"These... would probably go well with beer," Poncho said.
Liscia and Poncho were munching away at the salted ones like a snack.
"The oil that comes out when you bite into them melts the sugar, and the
sweetness spreads through your whole mouth," said Juna.
"I'd sure like to let both my moms try this," said Tomoe.
Juna and Tomoe, who were eating the ones with sugar, gave comments that were
worth full points as a food critic and a child respectively.
As for Aisha...
"If you eat them together, they're salty-sweet and delicious!" she announced,
munching away at both.
Yeah, sure, I guess it's okay to eat them that way, too.
The next edible ingredients were red bear's paw (bear paw), sword tiger's liver
(tiger liver), and whole cooked salamandra (whole cooked giant salamander), but
we only went as far as introducing them.
It was true that they weren't customarily eaten in this country, but rare delicacies
that only an adventurer could hope to catch weren't something I wanted people
going out of their way to acquire. If they happened to get their hands on them by
some chance, I just wanted them to know to please eat them, not to throw them
away. Besides, even I don't know how to prepare bear paw.
Ah, by the way, at the ingredients selection stage I removed blowfish, poisonous
mushrooms, and anything else poisonous from the list. I knew they could be eaten if
prepared properly, but if starvation-stricken amateurs were to try their hand at
them, it was clear it would only end badly.
Mind you, even the poisonous parts could be eaten if you really wanted to. In
Ishikawa Prefecture, there's "blowfish ovaries pickled in rice-bran paste," and in
Nagano Prefecture, there are regions where they eat the famously poisonous fly
amanita mushroom.
...The human appetite sure is something, huh?
Getting back to the story, the next ingredient shocked all of us.
"This here is our next ingredient, yes."
"""""Th-This is..."""""
This time, all of our eyes went wide.
Inside the box Poncho opened, there was a bluish-green gelatinous object.
"That's... a gelin, right?" I asked.
It was one of the soft-bodied slime creatures that could be found in fields
everywhere. They looked and acted just like the enemy from RPGs. Their defining
characteristic was how weak they were. If you cut them, they'd die. If you smashed
them, they'd die, too. They attached themselves to living (or dead) creatures and
sucked nutrients from them. There was no male or female: they multiplied by
division. They were probably what you'd get if you had an amoeba or other singlecelled organism grow to a gigantic size.
Huh? We're eating that? Or, rather, can we even eat that?
Then I noticed Aisha seemed to be cocking her head to the side in confusion.
"Hold on. Is that gelin dead?"
"Yes. This gelin has already been finished off," Poncho said.
"That can't be. I've never heard of a gelin corpse before."
"Oh, that's right. Now that you mention it, it is strange," Liscia agreed, seeming to
have noticed something.
I, on the other hand, didn't get it. "Liscia, could you just tell me what's up
already?"
"What's with that tone...? Gelins are weak. They have a thin membrane, and if you
cut them just a little, gush, out flows all their bodily fluids. It's the same if you
splatter them with a club. All you have left is a bluish-green puddle."
"Is that how it is?"
Aisha nodded, as well. "Yes. That's why such a neatly preserved corpse seems
impossible."
I see... Aisha as a warrior and Liscia as a soldier have experience fighting gelins, so
they noticed something was odd here.
"So, what did you have to do to get the slime like this?" I asked.
"Well, you see, there's a slight trick to it. This is a technique I learned from a tribe
that lives far to the west, in the Empire. They use a thin pole-like object to strike the
nucleus without breaking the membrane. If you do that, the gelin will maintain its
shape in death. In that area, they called it 'ike-jime for gelins.'"
Ike-jime? Come on, this isn't like draining blood from fish... But, still, that makes
sense now. It looks like I wasn't wrong to think of them like single-celled organisms.
"The fluids of a gelin gradually lose liquidity and harden once the core is
destroyed," Poncho added.
"Like rigor mortis, I guess," I said.
"Yes. If you leave it longer, the fluids will evaporate and it will turn into a dry
husk, but around two hours after death, while it has hardened somewhat but the
flesh is still supple, it is possible to cook it. That would be the state this one is in,
yes."
Hmm... I get that you can cook it, but isn't that a separate issue from whether you
can eat it? As I was thinking that, Poncho took out a knife and began making a
vertical cut in the gelin.
"When the gelin is in this state, you can insert the knife vertically and cut it into
pieces without the body collapsing. The fibers of the gelin's body run vertically, so
doing it this way gives it the best texture, yes."
Poncho skillfully cut the gelin into long thin strips, like making ika somen. It was
turning into noodles with an udon-like thickness. Poncho took those and put them
into a pot of boiling water.
"Now, if we boil them in a pot of water with a little salt, the flesh will firm up
more."
Now it was seriously starting to turn into something like soba or udon. As they
were boiling, that vibrant bluish-green color had darkened, starting to look
something like green tea soba, too. Then Poncho added things like dried mushrooms
and kelp to the pot with the boiling gelin.
Is he boiling those to get broth out of them?
Lastly, after adding more salt to adjust the flavor, he served them to each of us in
a bowl of soup.
"Here you go. This is Gelin Udon."
"He's even calling it udon!" I exclaimed.
"I-Is something the matter, sire?" Poncho asked.
"Oh, no, nothing."
I heard this country's language as Japanese. "Udon" was probably some other
word that had gotten translated into that. How confusing. Though, well, setting that
aside, what was laid out in front of us looked exactly like Kansai-style green udon in
a clear broth.
Red Fox and Green Gelin, is it? I thought. Yeah... Now's not the time to escape reality
by remembering old commercial jingles for instant udon. Huh? Wait, I seriously have to
eat this?
When I looked around, everyone was looking at me as if to say, "Go ahead, go
ahead."
I haven't put up my hand and said "Okay, I'll eat it," yet, you know!
...Well, I guess I've been making Liscia eat things she's not used to. It wouldn't be
fair for me to be the only one who runs away! Time to dig in!
Slurp...
"?!"
"W-Well, how is it, Souma?" Liscia asked with a worried look.
"...This is surprisingly good," I responded.
Yeah. I wonder what it is. This is completely different from what I imagined.
I had been imagining something like ika somen, with a slimy texture and fishy
flavor, but these were smooth and chewy, no fishy flavor at all. Rather than udon, it
was like kuzu-kiri that you cook in a pot, or Malony noodles. However, when you bit
into it, there was a unique squeaky texture. Was that fiber, maybe?
If I were to describe it as a whole, I would say, "It looks like udon, tastes like
kuzu-kiri, with the texture of a regional dish from Kyushu."
Yeah, it's not bad. Not bad at all.
"You're right... It's surprisingly good," Liscia said.
"It's delicious the way they've absorbed the flavor of the broth," Juna agreed.
"Is this really gelin? I'm shocked," Tomoe said.
"SLURRRRRP."
That was Aisha.
It seemed everyone who ate after me had a good impression of it, as well. Well, of
course they did, because it was delicious. If you were to ask which tasted better, this
or normal udon, I would say the question was nonsense. It would be like asking
which was more delicious, soba or udon: it's just a matter of personal preference.
"By the way, what sort of nutrients are in this stuff?" I asked.
"Nutrients... I don't know what those are, but I suspect that its similar to the
gelatin you can extract from bones," Poncho said.
"Collagen, huh."
So they have the protein you find in animal bones with fiber like you would find in
plants, huh. It really is hard to decide whether gelins are plants or animals.
"Anyway, it sounds like it should be fine nutritionally," I said. "Gelins are
everywhere. If people eat them, it should alleviate the food crisis a fair bit, don't you
think?"
"Yes, I suppose so. Raising gelins is easy. If you just give them raw garbage as
food, they'll grow and multiply on their own," Poncho said.
"...Uh, no, I don't want to give weird stuff to something I'm going to be eating," I
said. "I don't want to eat a gelin that's absorbed toxic chemicals and have it give me
food poisoning."
"I-I suppose not."
"Anyway, let's try raising them as an experiment. Hunting them in the wild is fine,
too, but I wouldn't want to reduce their numbers too much and have it impact the
local ecosystem..."
"I think that would be for the best," Poncho agreed.
All of that aside, we greatly enjoyed the rest of the gelin udon.