Elf Tensei Kara no Cheat Kenkoku-ki

「The other’s did more flashy stuff….this feels too plain.」

「It’s a bit disappointing.」

As expected these young Fire Foxes were quite honest with their words.

I smiled wryly and opened my mouth.

「Certainly it doesn’t have the same feast feel as the others. But this kind of unobtrusive deliciousness is what we seek from the soup.」

They tilted their heads towards me. It seems they didn’t really understand what I was trying to convey.

「Simply put, if delicious flavor is all we sought then we would use boar meat instead.」

That meat would have more fats and a stronger flavor.

「However, both the potatoes and boar dishes are both full of fat and are heavy dishes. If the soup was the same then it’d be too much of a good thing. There would be some indigestion」

Indeed the goal of this soup was to let the main dishes shine more brightly.

In this sense using deer was the perfect idea. It doesn’t have much fat and has a pure meat flavor that mixed surpassed boar meat.

Simply taking some time and effort would make the soup taste perfectly good.

「Ahh, I can understand that. If you’re eating a lot of rich food sometimes you want something light to break it up.」

Kuu nodded in agreement. As expected of the Chief’s daughter, she was used to a more plentiful existence.

「Plus just because it isn’t showy doesn’t mean it isn’t delicious. Let’s make a simplified version real quick.」

I took a small pot and put in the ingredients. I then used wind magic to make it into a pressure cooker while Kuu cooked it with fire magic.

I cooked it quickly without skimming the scum so the taste would be at least 1 rank worse than usual…but even so it would still have a decent flavor.

「Okay everyone, it’s taste test time. Well for some people here it seems like it’ll be an established practice…」

「Hauu, I’m sorry…」

「But it smelled so good….」

The guilty Fire Foxes confessed and apologized.

I simply smiled and accepted the apology and offered them some soup.

「Ah, it has a really gentle flavor.」

「Truly…It’s kind of calming.」

「It feels like I can drink a lot of this.」

This soup was the ideal dish for resting your mouth after eating a nice big steak.

「Well this is just the simplified version. If you make it properly it’s even better. It might be a bit hard to constantly stir it, but do you r best. Even if you say it’s plain we can add these to it.」

I said and revealed my ultimate weapon for the day, bean sprouts.

These soy beans had been amongst the goods I stole from the Empire. Once I got back I had been raising them inside a dark room in my workshop.

「What are these?」

「These are soy bean sprouts I raised in the dark. They’re filled with nutrients and feel good to chew. If we add these to the soup at the end then it’ll become even more amazing.」

Bean sprouts were an all purpose vegetable. Rather than eating them as is, I felt it’d be better to add them to a dish.

「But do you see the little whiskers attached to them? If you don’t remove them the flavor will worsen. You need to remove them one by one.」

The quality of the final dish would change based on whether or not you removed these whiskers.

However, doing so was quite demanding. In all honesty when I made my own soup I didn’t bother.

It was just that in order to show off the Fire Foxes in the best light I had to give in and ask them to remove the whiskers.

「We’ll do it. Please leave it to us.」

「If it makes it even tastier then I’ll do it.」

「I’ll return the favor. If you’ll be eating this Cyril then I’ll do my best.」

I’m glad that all of the Fire Foxes were good honest girls.

I looked towards Kuu and she looked back at me happily.

「Okay then, I’ll leave the soup and beans to you guys. Everyone else who’s left, if the potatoes and steak are the main dishes on the surface, then this next dish is the main dish in the background. We’ll be making the traditional Fire Fox dish, Deer Sausage.」

In order to make this properly I had purposefully not removed the deer’s insides.

「Cyril-sama…what do you mean by Fire Fox Traditional dish? We’ve never heard of this kind of food…」

「It’s fine Kuu. We’re introducing this dish to the Elves as such. The Elves have never had a dish like this before so it’ll never get exposed. It’ll have more impact than if you simply give them dishes that were all ordered by me right? If they think that the Fire Foxes specially made their traditional dishes for them they’ll get happy and excited.」

Since the Fire Foxes never used potatoes in their cooking, passing off French Fries and Potato Chips as ‘traditional Fire Fox cuisine’ was fairly impossible. It was possible to do this with the steak, but since Elves had had steak before it wouldn’t have enough impact.

On the other hand, none of them had ever had sausage. It was a dish that could be called ‘Traditional Fire Fox Cuisine’ without any suspicions.

Sausage made from deer was extremely delicious. Deer sausage was good enough that you might not be satisfied with pork or beef sausage after you tasted it. Also since it was easily preserved you could eat it daily.

If the Fire Foxes brought such a dish to the table then the impression would be great.

「Even so that’d be like stealing Cyril-sama’s accomplishments…..」

「That’s fine even so. That’s the objective of this party. The most important thing is for everyone to enjoy themselves and to let you Fire Foxes mix in with everyone. My main goal is to get you guys to like each other.」

「Truly Cyril-sama is….really…..」

Kuu’s eyes reddened as her tail started wagging slightly.

「Thank you very much. Well then please show us how to make it.」

「Also, saying it’s Traditional Fire Fox Cuisine won’t technically be a lie…it’s just I’ll be teaching you now and it’ll be a traditional dish from now on.」

「So bad~ such sophistry.」

Kuu said as she giggled.

「Make sure you get everyone’s story in order before you guys go out there. If everything gets wasted by some loose lips it won’t be funny.」

「Of course we can’t allow Cyril-sama’s considerations to come to nothing.」

「Okay! Then let’s get started.」

I said and grabbed some deer intestines.

Herbivore intestines are very long. They are designed to absorb as many nutrients as possible so they extend to nearly 20 times the size of the animal.

For this deer in particularly there were around 40 meters of intestine to work with.

「First we clean it.」

It was cheating a bit, but I used water magic. I controlled the water in a nearby jug and sent it through one end of the intestine washing through it completely.

Then on the other entrance water and excrement came out.

I was able to finish the cleaning in about a minute.

After washing I cut it into an appropriate size and let it soak in water.

「A sausage is simply taking deer intestines and stuffing them with meat before smoking it. Since we’ve prepared the intestines for stuffing we now have to prepare the minced meat. Sausages can use pretty much any meat you can think of.」

I said and placed some deer meat on the chopping board.

「First cut it up vertically and horizontally and hit it with your knife. Then place it in the bowl.」

I minced up the meat and placed it in the bowl.

「Then you add some salt and knead it into the meat. Then you stuff it into the cleaned intestine and smoke it. However, just doing that will make it weak.」

Indeed deer meat was light in fat and would taste insipid.

If you left it as it then the boar steak would stand out too much and make them forget about the sausage.

「So we have to reinforce the flavor! In order to do that we’ll use this.」

I pulled out a deer’s liver. Indeed this was the part of the deer with the most unique flavor. A taste that made you almost want to eat it raw.

I minced the liver and put a small amount into the bowl.

By doing this the flavor would thicken and make it much more delicious.

「Then we’ll add this as well.」

The finishing touch was adding a bit of lard to the meat.

Deer meat was plain if you were to say something bad about it…but because of this adding in some lard and other ingredients wouldn’t clash with the meat and would instead increased the flavor and quality.

In order to remove any leftover bad smell I rubbed it with wasabi and put in some rock salt.

Once the liver and lard had properly mixed in I stopped kneading it.

「With this the filling is finished. Now we stuff it into the casing.」

I cut up the intestine at intervals of 1 meter as I stuffed it with meat.

I used the tool I had made out of a wild boar’s stomach to squeeze out the filling. I placed the tip of the bag to the entrance of the intestines and squeezed until it was filled.

Then after a certain distance I twisted the ends of the intestine to create the shape of the sausage.

「Then we hang these up and let them soak up the smoke. We just need to make an open air fire and hang these above to smoke. It’s easy. Now let’s give it a try.」

The recipe was surprisingly simple so as long as they followed my instructions they should be fine.

Usually sausages are made of pig and sheep intestines. However, deer intestines taste better, have better texture, and don’t smell bad. Especially since the meat preserves the flavor of the lard and liver, this batch of sausage should be really delicious.

「Cyril-sama…it’s a bit shameful to ask but…」

Kuu timidly opened her mouth. I could see another young girl hiding behind her back.

I was sure that she was the one with the hard to ask question. She had probably requested Kuu ask me about it.」

「Can we also taste test the sausages?」

「Hmm, it should be fine…but it’ll take an hour to smoke it at least…ah I have something else you can taste for now.」

I took some of the packing meat out of the bag and placed it on the iron plate. I began grilling using their powers. I was making a hamburger for them.

I handed them the lightly grilled burger.

「This isn’t sausage, it’s hamburger. The ingredients are the same so it should taste fine. Take a bite and see.」

Once again the Fire Foxes gathered around me.

Now that I looked closely I could see some of the potato group mixed in.

It looks like the other groups were also guilty of swiping food.

「So soft and tasty.」

「I might like this better than steak.」

「The juices just burst out of it.」

「I wanna eat as much as I can.」

It looks like this was a great success as well.

More complex dishes like this may seem even more delicious to the Elves and Fire Foxes because their meals were usually simple and plain.

「If you’re saying this much just from the stuffing then once everything is properly made you might lose your mind from the deliciousness.」

I said to all the excited Fire Foxes. They couldn’t help but gulp at the thought.

「I’m…glad I’m alive.」

「True. I thought that if living was going to be so painful then I might rather die…but I’m glad I’m alive too.」

「But I wanted to let my little brother try this stuff too…」

「I told you to stop saying stuff like that!」

「But….」

Their conversation was going off in a weird direction.

I had a bad feeling about this so I quickly clapped my hands loudly and snapped them out of it.

「Now everyone, the break is over. Get with the sausage making.」

「How much should we make Cyril-sama?」

Kuu understood my intentions and directed the conversation away from the landmine topics.

I’m quite grateful.

「Make as much as the ingredients allow. We can easily preserve these so even after the party we can make and eat these. It might be harder than the other groups, but do your best.」

「Of course we will. If we do our best here then everyone can enjoy a delicious meal!」

Everyone started to get motivated.

For now my food lecture duties had finished.

All that was left was to watch over them to make sure the food turned out alright and to help whoever needed it.

The main feature of this party today was food.

This was a chance to let the Fire Foxes meld with our village.

I couldn’t allow any missteps. If we tried this again these foods would not have the same impact as they had this first time.

End