A Cry from the Heart
“Uwaaa~! A mountain of treasure!!”
That’s what I yelled out in the pantry, making Belle and Mr. Athos start vibrating like they were on buzz mode.
“No one but you, Young Lady Joan, would look at a pantry and say that.”
“Eeh, but look at all this! Isn’t it the best?”
Just at a glance, there were plenty of summer vegetables lined up. Corn, nasu, tomets, and so on.
“In autumn, we’d have mushrooms and mountain greens too.”
Apparently, since the Burst territory is surrounded by mountains, they get plenty of mountain harvests.
“Huh? What’s this…?”
A basket filled with green fruit caught my eye.
“Oh, those are oume. Here we usually pickle them in salt, but they’re sour, so some people don’t like them.”
Waaah—plums, plums, pluuums!!
With these, I can make plum wine. Syrup, jam too.
This is bad, this is bad! Burst territory is the best!!
“Pfft…”
“Eh?”
“Ahaha, thank you, Joan. I’m glad you like the Burst lands so much.”
“Eh? Wait, huh?”
“Heheh… Young Lady Joan, you said that all out loud.”
“Ah—um… sorry?”
“Why are you apologizing?”
“… Just felt like it?”
“Ahaha, that’s so like you. So, can you make something with oume?”
“Of course~ Jam, syrup, plum wine, all that.”
“That much?”
“That much! Mr. Athos, can I take some and try?”
“Of course. What’s here is just part of the harvest—there’s plenty more, so use as much as you’d like.”
Mr. Athos carried the basket of oume for me as we returned to the kitchen.
“Alright, let’s make syrup and plum wine. First, wash the oume… um, can anyone use Cleanse?”
“Ah, I can.”
After washing, I dried them with a clean cloth, pricked out the stems with a fork, then had Mr. Aramis use Cleanse on them.
“Next, to help release juice, we’ll prick them with a fork. Normally, you just layer them with sugar to make syrup, or sugar plus alcohol to make plum wine, but it takes a long time. To shorten that time, you freeze the fruit first… but even a freezer takes too long, so I’ll use a little trick.”
“““““A trick?”””””
“Just a sec… Paaarl~!”
I opened the kitchen door and called.
(What is it~?)
“Could you help me out?... Ah, Mr. Aramis, can you cast Cleanse on Pearl?”
“Eh? On the dog?”
(I’m not a dog. I’m a Fenrir.)
“Whoa! It spoke!!”
“Ah, Pearl’s my familiar. That’s why she can talk.”
“Ah… a familiar. I see.”
Once Pearl was cleansed, I brought her into the kitchen.
(So, what do you need?)
“Could you freeze these oume?”
(Roger~)
With her water attribute, Pearl froze the plums. We then packed them into sterilized jars. After that, Pearl trotted off saying she was going for a little walk. Wonder where she’s going?
“Okay, now we layer the oume and sugar. For sugar, we’ll use this.”
I pulled out rock sugar from storage—the kind I bought from Taiki before.
“Is that… ice?”
Kitty asked.
“Nope, it’s called rock sugar. It’s higher purity than normal sugar. You can make syrup and plum wine with regular sugar, but rock sugar dissolves slowly, letting the juice seep out gradually. Plus, unlike normal sugar, it won’t leave grains behind.”
“Hee~ Didn’t know that. Never seen it before, either.”
“Wait, Young Lady Joan, isn’t this stuff rare and expensive…?”
“Yes, it’s not cheap… But for delicious food, if it’s within my means, I’ll spare neither money nor time! And besides, I bought it with my own earnings, so no one can complain!”
I declared with clenched fists.
“Young Lady Joan might be more of a cook than a cook.”
Mr. Athos chuckled.
“Nah, not at all. I can’t beat the pros.”
“Anyway, let’s continue. For syrup, just layer the frozen plums and rock sugar, and done. For plum wine, add alcohol until it covers the fruit and sugar.”
“Any kind of alcohol works?”
“Yep—brandy or whiskey work, or sake made from rice in the eastern lands—”
“““““Rice liquor!?”””””
Ah right, here rice is animal feed, so of course they’d be shocked.
“Um… want to try it?”
“You have some? Ah, no, forgive me… do you really have some?”
“Ahaha. Mr. Porthos, you don’t need honorifics with me.”
“No, no, no, no, no. Impossible.”
“But our household cooks drop formal speech with me, you know?”
“That’s because they’re family. For me… no, for me to talk like that… impossible.”
“Well, I won’t force you… but really, don’t worry so much. Anyway, here’s some sake.”
I pulled sake from storage and poured small servings into cups. Everyone was of age, so enough for all.
“Mmm~ the aroma rising through the nose is nice.”
“Whew, packs quite a punch.”
“Rice can be used like this…?”
“To think we fed this to livestock…”
“Damn livestock, acting all spoiled!!”
From top to bottom—that was Athos, Porthos, Aramis, D’Artagnan, and Kitty. Yep, Kitty was still spitting venom.
What do you think about this chapter?
