Chapter 161 -- Giant Tarepo, Having Eaten It Before (Sort Of)
Well, what should I make for dinner today? It would be Giant Tarepo meat, of course. Oddly enough I had actually eaten ostrich meat previously. One time I was out eating dinner in an izakaya and ostrich meat was on the menu. I asked for it because it was unusual to see something like that listed. My recollection was that it was quite delicious, a lean red meat not typical of bird meat's flavour and texture. Now I had the Giant Tarepo meat to hand I decided I'd try to make the same sort of thing I had back then, seared ostrich meat in a cutlet. I should add that ostrich meat can be eaten raw like a Korean dish, seasoned yukhoe-style with a raw egg or even as Italian-style carpaccio, sliced thinly after being cooked very rare and then coated in sauce. The carpaccio option was tempting but thinking about it a little more the seared cutlet route meant beer as an accompaniment and that settled it, seared cutlets it would be.
Yosh, I started with getting ingredients from the Net Super. I bought sour ponzu sauce to start with, planning to treat the Giant Tarepo meat like pork. The cutlet would be cooked Milanese style, I decided so I'd need flour and herb salt, eggs, bread crumbs and powdered cheese and of course olive oil because, well, Italian? Bellissimo! (about the only word of Italian I knew...)
Oh, and beer. Don't forget that. I assembled the ingredients for the cutlets under the watchful eyes of the Gluttonous Trio and quickly changed my mind -- I'd first make some carpaccio-style cold cuts and store them in my Item Box for later. I'd make the cutlets afterwards.
"Is Fer able to do Ice magic?" I asked. I vaguely remembered Ice magic was listed on his Status but...
"Nuuuu, Ice magic? I can do it." Fer replied.
"Well, can you make a little ice and put it in here?" I held out a large bowl to Fer, the sort of large bowl I had never needed when I only cooked for myself back home. Feeding my three contracted monsters in this world had required a serious upgrade to the capacity of my cooking utensils.
"Got you." Fer concentrated for a second and a big lump of ice fell into the bowl. "There you go."
"Ah, it’s too big..." I said, "Hold on, I'll buy an ice pick and break it up a little." I started to open Net Super but Fer interrupted.
"Too big?" When I nodded the lump of ice in the bowl suddenly shattered into lumps. I blinked as Fer asked, "Is that enough? I can break it up more if you like." I sometimes forget just how powerful Fer's magic was and how off-handedly he could use it. I supposed I wasn't really used to magic even after spending months in this world. Never mind, I got on with making dinner. Some carpaccio-style Giant Tarepo cold cuts to start with, I decided.
First I put salt and pepper on a large piece of Giant Tarepo meat and cooked it in a frying pan with olive oil until the outer surface was seared. I cooled the piece of meat down in the ice bath Fer had prepared to stop the centre of the meat cooking from the residual heat and wiped off the moisture with kitchen paper before cutting the lump into thin slices about 5mm thick. I laid them out on a plate and dressed them with ponzu citrus sauce before trying a nibble.
Oooh, it has a rich texture. The Giant Tarepo looked like an over-sized ostrich and its taste was similar to the ostrich meat I had eaten once before but it wasn't, on further reflection, exactly the same. It was more like lean beef with only a little fat marbled through it, a surprise since it was supposed to be bird meat. It was definitely tasty and went well with the ponzu sauce I had dressed the cold cuts with. Anyway, being a low-fat and firm-textured meat should make it a good candidate for deep frying, so cutlets were next. As for the cold cuts I'd save them for later. Or so I thought.
"Hoi, what are you doing with those?" Fer interrupted as I started to put the cold cuts away in my Item Box. "Pass the dish over here." Ah- the Empty Belly Army can't wait, it seems.
"I was just experimenting. I'm going to make different food for dinner and I was going to save this for later but do you want to try it now? It's nearly raw, you know."
"Hand it over." Fer ordered. Okay, okay. I took the Giant Tarepo cold cuts and divided them into three dishes before putting them down in front of Fer, Dora-chan and Sui-chan who immediately dived in.
"Oh, this food's texture is wonderful." was Fer's opinion after his share had been vacuumed up. I didn't understand what Fer was going on about, the carpaccio was basically raw in the middle so it was actually quite tough and chewy.
"This bitter taste's kinda refreshing, makes me wanna eat more of it." was Dora-chan's opinion. So you liked it too? The ponzu citrus sauce works well with meat cooked like this.
"Aruji-, seconds?-" Sui-chan had already finished her portion? I needed to hurry making the cutlets now all the cold cuts were gone. First, I put bread crumbs in a plastic bag and broke them up very fine, mixing in powdered cheese and herb salt. I pounded pieces of Giant Tarepo meat thin, to break up the sinews and dusted them with with salt and pepper before coating them with flour and beaten egg as a binder for the breadcrumb and cheese mix coating I had prepared earlier.
To cook the prepared cutlets I used a frying pan with about a centimetre of olive oil heated to near-boiling rather than deep-frying in regular cooking oil as I normally would for cutlets and kaarage. When the cutlets were crisp on the outside they were done. I didn't bother with extra seasoning since the breadcrumb coating included herb salt but I did add some lemon juice since it's an option for Milanese-style cutlets if you like that sort of thing.
I fried lots of cutlets, three each for Fer and Sui and one for Dora-chan, dishing them out on plates and putting them down so they could eat. "The juice coating is lemon, see how you like it?" I explained as Fer gave the cutlets a sour look before he gobbled them up.
"Umu," he declared, head tilted before he nodded. "Yeah, more like that."
"I'm fine with this too." Dora-chan agreed, working on his own dish. "But one is enough for me."
"Sui is also good with sour for seconds-." Sui-chan's dish was already empty, of course.
Okay okay. I was already frying more Giant Tarepo cutlets Milanese-style for Fer and Sui, including some for myself this time round. And of course, fried food meant... pssssh, glug glug glug. Oh yeah, beer is delicious. I meant to have some after eating the cold-cut carpaccio but on second thoughts beer goes better with hot food like these cutlets.
I bit into the cutlet, crispy and delicious with the cheesy taste from the crisp coating adding a noticeable tang to the meat. Beer to chase it down, glug glug glug and then another bite of cutlet. Ahhh, what was it about fried food and beer that make them work together so well? Oops, I forgot the lemon juice. I sprinkled a little on the rest of my cutlet and took another bite. Oh yes, the refreshing sharp taste combined with the lean meat juices, yummmm and then wash it down with more beer.
""Seconds"" I put down more cutlets for Fer and Sui, this time leaving the lemon juice off for a change, to see how they liked it. Both of them agreed they preferred the cutlets without the "sour stuff" as they announced they were full up. I had a second cutlet on bread with ketchup and shredded cabbage and that worked fine too.
I marked up the Giant Tarepo cutlets as a success and made a lot more of them while I had the ingredients to hand, putting them away hot in my Item Box to keep in reserve. After tidying up I put out Fer and Dora-chan's futons in the inn's stables and Sui and I returned to our room.
Sui was full up and went to sleep straight away but I had more to do. I wanted to see how the magic bag worked for marinating and soaking meat since Fer had said that time didn't stop for goods stored inside such a bag. My first experiment would be with meat marinated in miso. I diced up Orc and Bloody Horn Bull meat and put them in oversized plastic bags partially filled with miso and other ingredients. I deposited the bags into the large magic bag, intending to make miso-yaki dishes with the results the next morning.
I wasn't quite finished though, I still wanted to make a lot of minced meat with the excellent Mithril mincer Sui had made. I fed large pieces of Orc and Bloody Horn Bull meat into the mincer's hopper, amazed again at how little effort it took to turn the handle as the minced meat poured out. After producing a ridiculous amount of minced meat I tidied up, put everything away back in my Item Box and went to sleep.