Side: Yuki
Under the summer sun, under the blue sky, we played with all our might in the azure sea.
After catching up with everyone out in the open water via jellyfish alongside Seraria and Labyris.
After catching up with everyone out in the open water via jellyfish alongside Seraria and Labyris, I rode dolphins with Aslin and Filia, went swimming with Tori and Riel, teamed up with everyone to teach Jessica—who actually couldn't swim—and got cornered by Eris and Cleana. I also went for an underwater stroll with Rurua, Sheila, Killue, and Samantha, and joined Milly, Ratz, Derieu, and Kaya to gather seafood ingredients.
In short, we did all sorts of things.
And after all that playing, no matter how high our levels were...
"Ugh... I-I'm hungry..."
"Ria, that's rather pathetic."
Jessica said that, only for her own stomach to growl immediately afterward.
"You're hungry too, Jessica!"
"I-I can't help it!! I practiced swimming that much!! But I can endure it!!"
She frantically explained to everyone around us.
It was rare to see Jessica get this flustered.
"Calm down. It's not an emergency or anything. Feeling hungry is a sign that you're healthy, so you don't need to be embarrassed."
"Right~?"
"Ugh... Ria, you need to show a little more restraint as a woman..."
Jessica covered her face with both hands and shook her head from side to side, making her side ponytail sway.
Hmm... Restraint as a woman, huh? Personally I don't mind at all, but Jessica must have her own image of how she should be as a woman and as my wife.
And her inability to swim probably had something to do with it. Everyone had to teach her, and since she had originally been a knight, she probably had some pride and dignity issues about it.
"Well, not just because Jessica's stomach rumbled, but we're all hungry anyway, so why don't we cook up various dishes using the ingredients we gathered? I'll handle the main cooking. They're probably all ingredients you haven't seen much of, right?"
"Yes. Yuki-san, please do!" (Milly)
"...I only know how to boil octopus or make takoyaki out of it." (Kaya)
"How are we supposed to eat this long, white octopus?" (Derieu)
"Nfufufu, this seems like it could become the seed for a new business item." (Ratz)
It seemed they'd gone around collecting every ingredient they could find with the help of the Sahuagin.
As expected, they didn't really know what to do with most of them... Well, if it were just about eating, roasting them over a fire would suffice, but if I was going to put in the effort, there was no reason to stop there.
I should serve dishes fitting for a summer sea. Of course, the classic seafood dishes too.
Now, getting fired up was all well and good, but with nearly 20 people to feed, cooking alone would take until sunset... On top of that, they had gathered enough seafood to match that crowd. Just scaling the fish alone would take over an hour...
"So, as expected, the usual cooking staff alone won't be enough, so I'd like everyone to help out. Well, if you find filleting fish uncomfortable, I won't force you."
I said that expecting some, like the princesses, to opt out, but every single one of them volunteered.
It made sense for Seraria, who normally took to the battlefield and treated field rations or foraging as second nature, but I didn't expect Rurua or Sheila to join in. They'd grown up sheltered, after all.
They might have seen filleted fish, but putting a knife into a fish with its eyes staring at you is another matter... Even in Japan, there were housewives who couldn't bring themselves to cut up an entire fish.
As for why I could do all this stuff... Well, I'd done survival training when I was younger. Otherwise, I wouldn't have survived. Because there was no delicious food! Like in the middle of a jungle!
Anyway, enough about the past.
Since those skills are useful now, let's call it even.
* * *
"Alright, let's start with the basics of filleting fish."
We returned to the cottage, and I demonstrated everything on the table while explaining each step.
Seeing something firsthand is better than hearing about it a hundred times. Though, of course, seeing it and hearing the explanation is even better.
First was Ikejime—or rather, bleeding the fish.
This was necessary to preserve freshness. Large fish caught far out at sea would lose their freshness and develop a smell if they were not bled properly. Depending on the size of the fish, you can bleed it either at the base of the tail or between the gills and pectoral fins. However, the fish we had caught were exceptionally fresh, so I skipped that step this time. None of them were particularly huge, either.
The next step was learning how to identify a fresh fish.
Again, everything had just been caught, so there was no need to sort them carefully. Still, the first thing to inspect was the fish's eyes. There was an expression about someone having "the eyes of a dead fish," and fish freshness could indeed be judged by looking at the eyes. Fresh fish had clear, transparent eyes, while spoiled fish had cloudy ones. You can also inspect the gills and scales for freshness, but that's enough for now.
Now it was finally time to properly clean the fish.
First, you need to remove the fish's outer armor. In other words, its skin—or rather, its scales. If you don't remove them, it's hardly edible. Some fish don't have scales and instead have a slimy coating that serves the same purpose. For those, rubbing them with salt works well. Of course, that's not exactly a cooking method people in medieval Europe would use when salt was precious.
Anyway, back to removing scales.
First, wash the fish—fresh water is preferable, but seawater works too. The purpose of washing is to clean the fish—in other words, to remove pathogens from its surface. Of course, you can't eliminate every single one, so you'll have to trust your immune system to take care of the rest. Next, remove any dangerous, sharp fins, as they can cause injuries.
Then, finally, we get to scaling the fish.
The basic way is with a knife from the tail toward the head, but the modern world has blessed us with convenient tool called a 'scale remover'. I handed these out to my wives to let them scale the fish. The former adventurer group and the two maids, who knew the hassle of fish prep, praised this tool to high heaven... They'd been delighted by vegetable peelers too. Apparently, they didn't have the time or resources to make convenient little tools like these.
Once the scales were removed, we could finally start cutting up the fish.
Whether you remove the gills depends on what you're cooking and various other factors, but since we're not doing anything particularly fancy, I just chopped the heads off. There are various ways to remove the head, but a simple angled cut works fine. Rather, it's the easiest.
Next was gutting—removing the internal organs.
Depending on the creature, some organs can be eaten normally, but they have distinct flavors and might contain undigested fish or parasites, so I wouldn't particularly recommend it. Since the head was already off, you could open the chest from there, or run a knife along the belly to pull them out.
And from here, we finally entered the process of cutting out the edible meat.
This is where you get techniques like filleting a fish into three pieces. What all methods have in common is separating the flesh from the bones.
The well-known three-piece fillet involves facing the fish and dividing it into right fillet, central spine, and left fillet. The remaining rib bones can then be removed separately, although unless you're making sashimi, you can usually just leave them in and cook the fish as-is. Back-splitting and chest-splitting are similar methods for removing the spine, but these are mostly used for small fish like sillago. For small fish, bones other than the main spine don't affect texture that much, so once the spine is gone, you can grill and eat them whole.
Now—once you're this far, all that's left is to cook the fillets.
Of course, the meat is delicious enough to eat raw, too, so we could dip some in soy sauce and have a little taste.
"Oh my, delicious."
"Narjia-san, did you bring some sake!?"
"Of course!! Ahh, this is wonderful. Freshly caught fish tastes amazing!!"
Seraria, Milly... and for some reason, Narjia-san was here too.
Well, whatever. Sake with sashimi was a natural pairing.
"Alright, that's pretty much all the fish filleted. Killue, do the shellfish look like they've purged enough sand?"
"Yes. They've been soaking since last night, so I believe they're ready."
"Um, Danna-sama. What does 'purge enough sand' mean?"
"I've never heard of it before."
Rurua and Sheila seemed to be hearing it for the first time.
Well, Japanese people eat shellfish like clams so often that we might just assume it's common knowledge.
"Sand purging means exactly what it sounds like—getting the sand out. Shellfish inhale water when they breathe, and they sometimes take in sand along with it. If you leave that alone and cook them, you'll end up with sand in your food. They can store quite a lot of it, so you put the shellfish in a bucket filled with clean seawater, without any sand, and let them breathe there. They'll naturally spit out the sand they've accumulated. After that, there should be little enough sand left that you won't notice it when eating."
""Ohhh...""
The two of them peered into the bucket of sand-purged clams with genuine curiosity.
"Alright, everyone, put as much rice as you like into your own bowls."
Right.
We already had mountains of fish fillets prepared, and it would be rude to make everyone wait any longer.
All I had to do was quickly prepare the rest, so everyone could start eating.
"Um, Yuki-san, why?"
"The food isn't ready yet, right?"
Riel and Tori tilted their heads as they said so.
Most of the wives looked over here in wonder as well.
However, among them, Ratz and Eris were quick on the uptake.
They immediately filled their bowls with freshly cooked rice and thrust them toward me.
"You can do it yourselves, you know..."
"Now, now, everyone doesn't seem to get it."
"That's right. Please."
When put like that, I had no reason to refuse, so I arranged the fillets on top of the rice to make it look visually striking.
Once the rice was completely covered, I handed the bowls back to the two of them.
"Ah!? Is that sushi?!"
Milly seemed to associate the sight of that bowl with sushi.
"It's something similar. Anyway, there are plenty of fish slices right in front of you. Put on as much as you like, then pour soy sauce over it like Ratz and Eris did..."
The two poured soy sauce over their bowls and immediately began wolfing down their seafood rice bowls.
"M-Me too!!"
"Me as well!!"
Seeing them, everyone else immediately started making their own custom seafood bowls.
While they were doing that, I decided to make another summer-at-the-beach classic.
Killue and Sarsari had prepared plenty of vegetables cut into bite-sized pieces, noodles, and sauce. Anyone who couldn't figure out what I was making didn't know anything about summer at the beach.
We had mountains of seafood, so I started by cooking the harder vegetables, then added the seafood and noodles before mixing everything together with the sauce.
"Is this... yakisoba!?"
"...Nn, smells great."
"Cleana-san, what is Yakisoba? It smells wonderful."
Samantha hadn't participated in the summer festival, so it was natural she didn't know.
The others looked over here, stopping their shoveling of seafood bowls.
"Here you go. Seafood Yakisoba."
Yes, the classic Yakisoba from a summer beach shack.
Of course, since I was using a mountain of fresh seafood, it was on an entirely different level from the yakisoba you'd normally get at a Japanese beach hut.
"""""Deliciousssss~~~!!"""""
I placed the finished noodles onto a large platter as they were done.
Chopsticks immediately reached out, and the four helpings of yakisoba vanished in an instant.
However, this wasn't the end!
"Killue, Sarsari, you two handle the tempura. I'll take care of the shellfish."
""Yes.""
Small butterflied fish were hard to eat raw like sashimi. In that case, frying them up crispy as tempura was the way to go.
As for me, I moved on to the shellfish dish.
First, I melted butter in a heated frying pan.
"The butter smells so good..."
"...Oh my god. There's still more? This is terrible, our husband is trying to fatten us up." (Seraria)
"I care not! I shall exercise later, so all is fine!" (Derieu)
"This looks like it would go great with alcohol~!" (Milly)
"Yes, absolutely~!" (Narjia-san)
While everyone waited and snacked on the freshly fried tempura, I tossed the shellfish and the remaining fish fillets into the frying pan and sautéed them.
It was a simple butter sauté.
Pour in some wine to get rid of the fishy smell, flambé it, sprinkle it with salt and pepper, and you have something simple but incredibly delicious. Serve it with lemon and lettuce, and it's done.
You could squeeze some lemon juice over it and eat it with rice for a lighter meal, or wrap it in lettuce and eat it that way.
By the time I finished cooking, everyone was staring over here.
"All right! Eat up, eat up!!"
""""""Yay~~~~!!""""""
I also made some old-fashioned dishes: small fish skewered and grilled over a fire, sprinkled with salt, and a miso soup called arai-jiru, made by adding the leftover fish pieces to the broth.
Every single one was undeniably delicious.
And even after we'd run out of seafood ingredients, my wives were still eating happily, so I got carried away and started making meat dishes like barbecue too.
Naturally, those disappeared into their stomachs as well.
The result...
"Ahhh..."
"I-I can't..."
"Y-Yuki. I believe I've become pregnant again..."
"No, Derieu. You just ate too much. Ugh..."
Like that, swimsuit-clad wives were scattered all over the cottage, lying on their backs with swollen bellies facing the ceiling.
Eating until you literally can't move is quite something.
"M-My tummy is so full..."
"Unyu~ Anii-sama, my stomach hurts..."
"...Yuki, it's painful."
"...Ugh, I don't want to move."
The little ones were lying down on the spot without moving an inch either.
Honestly, all four of them ate a surprising amount.
Still, looking at this state, dessert was definitely out of the question. I had prepared shaved ice, but this was impossible.
"I had a new dessert ready, but it doesn't look like anyone can eat it. Well, I'll make it another day—"
However, I was naive.
Women have two stomachs.
One for regular food.
And...
"""THERE'S ALWAYS ROOM FOR DESSERT!!"""
One exclusively for dessert.
Women are truly formidable.
Though, as expected, the staple of shaved ice...
BRAIN FREEZE!
"""Nnnnngh~~~~!?"""
It seems that was unavoidable.
