NOVEL NEXT Chapter 404
Catherine did not have particularly fond memories of horses.
To be precise, it wasn’t that she hated horses.
The problem was the eating.
As a former S-Class Adventurer, Catherine had amassed a wealth of experience through countless quests on her way to achieving that rank.
Naturally, she had tried horse meat a few times.
Of course, it wasn’t intentional.
In modern terms, horses were valuable labor and transportation means.
Historically, labor and transportation methods were treated with great respect.
For that reason, unless an unexpected variable arose during a quest, an adventurer wouldn’t have any reason to eat a horse.
Unless the horses died due to a beast or monster attack, or in case of a large-scale extermination quest where supplies were cut off and the horses were slaughtered just to maintain morale.
In that process, Catherine had no choice but to eat horse meat occasionally.
Every time she did, she found herself thinking the same thought.
“My word, how can meat be this tough?”
There was nothing wrong with the taste.
In fact, it tasted quite good like beef.
The problem lay with the texture.
It was so tough that her teeth couldn’t make a dent.
Every time she attempted to chew, the meat would push her teeth away.
Thus, ever since she first ate horse meat, she had only put it in her mouth in situations where she had to choose between eating it or starving.
Suddenly—
“Oh, our guests have arrived!”
“Kitty, Karem! Alicia has been waiting!”
Before me lay a large portable stove, charcoal, and a grill placed above it. A pot was boiling, various vegetables were prepared, and there were chunks of meat presumed to be various parts of a horse, freshly butchered.
Just looking at the scene in the private kitchen, I could tell how hard Zigmeser had worked to prepare everything.
“I’ve never seen anyone prepare so much just for horse meat.”
While Karem wondered about the ‘just,’ Zigmeser turned to them and asked, “Huh? Have you tried horse meat before?”
“As an adventurer, you inevitably come across it, whether you want to or not.”
“Ah, then that reaction makes sense. It’s only natural to react that way when you’ve had no exposure to it but through such unfortunate means.”
What kind of reaction was he talking about?
Curiosity sprang up in Catherine’s heart.
However, before she could utter a word, Zigmeser guessed at her experiences.
“Of course, if you’ve only tried it in an environment far removed from proper cooking or with improper tools, it’s no surprise that you’d have that reaction. I’m sure they just grilled it over an open flame, right?”
“Given the conditions, that was the only option.”
“Zigmeser, what’s wrong with that?”
“Um… how can I put this?”
Zigmeser, who had been focused on something with his back turned, suddenly paused his chopping and tapped the cutting board with his fingers.
“Well, just think of horse meat as a particularly nasty type of beef.”
“Nasty, you say?”
“Yes, if the cooking method is even slightly off, the texture becomes as tough and firm as an ogre tendon!”
Because of that, in Europa, horse meat was regarded as food of the low class, only eaten by those who had no choice but to devour it out of desperation.
Seophone Island was no different.
No matter how earnest one was about meat, you couldn’t enjoy it if you couldn’t chew it!
But Iceland was different.
Specifically, it was out of sheer necessity.
“Nobles couldn’t afford to give up horse meat in this frozen land where people are starving!”
“So you managed to devise a cooking method just to eat it.”
That seemed plausible.
Even if they wouldn’t touch oats to maintain their noble honor, it was likely that those nobles, despite it being dead horse meat meant for the low class, would not want to give up eating meat.
The credibility was so high that doubts didn’t even arise in Catherine’s mind.
“That’s why I was surprised in Iceland. Who would have thought raw horse meat could be so delicious!”
A response she never anticipated.
Catherine had been hoping for some secret culinary technique to make horse meat tasty, and she stumbled a bit.
“Wait, what did you say?”
Unlike Karem, who seemed to understand, Catherine looked taken aback.
“Kitty, your reaction is strange.”
“I’m not Kitty, I’m Catherine. No, are you saying you eat it raw?!”
“Is that really such an unusual method?”
“Sure… but.”
Eating raw food is a rare cooking method in Europa, but it wasn’t entirely nonexistent.
Karem sometimes made it too, with carpaccio being a representative dish using raw meat or seafood from Servianus, commonly found at banquet tables.
But raw horse meat?
Catherine had never heard of such a method.
Yet, Zigmeser claimed that was a hasty generalization and a culinary fallacy.
“In Eisenbart, like Servianus, there’s a dish where raw meat is consumed. Though it’s pork, not horse or cow.”
“Raw pork? That’s something I know doesn’t exist outside of Eisenbart.”
Karem felt like he could almost guess what this raw pork dish was, recalling that it had been mentioned before in a show about bizarre food preferences in Germany.
“Are you talking about Mett?”
“Huh? Have you tried it? It’s spread on bread.”
“Oh, that’s not it.”
It wasn’t a complicated dish.
Finely minced pork mixed with seasonings like pepper, salt, and herbs, served on bread with onions on top.
Karem had heard of it too, as there was a similar dish in Germany in his past life.
The issue was that it was made from pork.
‘Eating pork raw?’
In modern times, cleanliness was taken seriously everywhere, and people ate pork less cooked than beef, but just a few years ago, they had warned against eating pork that was even slightly undercooked due to parasites.
Yet here in Europa, raw pork?
The reason Karem only thought of salmon sashimi was due to parasites.
“However, there’s a unique point: here in Iceland, they always use horse meat that has been frozen once for raw consumption.”
“Oh, then that changes things.”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
“Nothing at all.”
Only then did Karem understand how the culture of eating raw horse meat had come to be in Iceland.
Nobles, who were serious about their meat and couldn’t give it up, must have experimented countless times until they found a method that was safe, like blowfish.
They likely discovered during the process that eating frozen meat posed no problems since bacteria and parasites that cause food poisoning and indigestion are killed at low temperatures just as at high ones.
While the two servants were lost in thoughts about different topics, they glimpsed a dish made with the strange ingredient Zigmeser had prepared.
Thinly sliced meat that almost appeared transparent, topped with arugula for texture and freshness, with cheese dusted lightly like autumn snow and dressing.
“Carpaccio?”
“That’s correct, your Highness. As I mentioned earlier, this is carpaccio.”
“But the portion is small.”
“For now, just have a taste while you wait.”
And with that, Zigmeser promptly brought forth the portion of carpaccio for the two guests.
“In my 300 years, I never imagined I’d be eating raw horse meat one day.”
“Well, we do eat beef and venison slightly undercooked or even raw sometimes.”
“That’s beef and venison; this is horse!”
“The texture issue shouldn’t matter much if it’s sliced this thin.”
Karem pointed across the table.
Catherine watched as Alicia cautiously sampled a piece of carpaccio.
Crunch, crunch, chew—
“Mmm. It’s so tender! And even though it’s thin, it has such a rich flavor…”
Cough. “Princess Alicia, how does it taste?”
“Overall, it’s similar to beef carpaccio. However, there are some superior aspects in texture and flavor.”
“What do you mean?”
“The sweetness is quite subtle.”
Catherine furrowed her brows incredulously at Alicia’s words.
As her mouth opened slightly, her fork moved rapidly.
“Huh!?”
Karem moved without hesitation.
But Catherine couldn’t find it in her to criticize.
Alicia’s description was spot on.
The thin horse meat carpaccio did indeed have a sweetness.
It wasn’t the refined sweetness of sugar, but rather a sweetness mixed with the sourness or tartness of fruits.
To put it simply, it was the sweetness of freshly caught seafood.
The difference is the land and the sea, but it was somewhat reminiscent of the flavor she had experienced with fresh shrimp.
“Kitty, isn’t it as delicious as Princess Alicia mentioned?”
“Yeah, for sure… What Alicia and Zigmeser said is true.”
Catherine slowly brought the carpaccio on her tongue to her teeth.
With the resistance all but gone, the feeling against her teeth was comparable to being incredibly tender.
When she tore into it, the crunchiness of the arugula surrounded within enhanced the texture, outdoing even the tenderest cuts of beef.
Before her tongue could adapt to the rich flavor of beef, the bitterness of the cheese and the tang of the dressing transformed it with a new bite.
Then when she chewed the thin horse meat, beauty arose again.
The soft texture brought a chewy sweetness that was unlike anything she had experienced before.
They say people can lose their minds when they are too absorbed in something.
Overwhelmed by a texture and flavor that was on a whole different level from any horse meat she had ever encountered, Catherine was left in utter awe.
“Catherine? Catherine? What on earth was the horse meat you ate before that you’re having this kind of reaction?”
“It must have been tough and chewy!”
Thud! Zigmeser, responding to Catherine’s remark, placed the portable stove on the table and set the oiled grill on top.
“Now that you mention it, you should see how tough it really is.”
“Yes… but it feels familiar somehow. Did we always grill horse meat this way?”
“Huh? Oh? No. Usually, we grilled it quickly to medium-rare. But this way, it gets a nice smoke flavor, and slicing it small means we can eat it much faster.”
With a deft move, he flipped over two pieces of horse meat.
It was a sight that seemed overly familiar to Karem.
‘Setting it up like this makes it look just like a meat shop.’
A grill filled with charcoal, the sizzling grill heating up, and two pieces of horse meat cut into bite-sized portions.
“Ahh. Chef, that smells delicious.”
“Many misunderstand, but horse meat is undoubtedly delicious. It’s just that it’s too expensive and difficult to prepare for it to be treated like other livestock.”
“Is it that hard?”
“It is indeed.”
Zigmeser responded to Alicia while flipping the meat.
Juices dripped, sending smoke and sparks flying.
“As I mentioned earlier, it’s usually meant to be grilled rare or medium-rare, but… Okay, this should be done. You can eat it now. Karem, you too.”
At those words, Karem and Alicia took the grilled horse meat without hesitation.
“Oh, this is much better than I expected—”
The moment they took a bite, the juices gushed forth.
With a deep flavor on par with beef and a subtle sweetness inside, they couldn’t help but be impressed.
“Delicious, uh… oh…”
“I told you clearly, didn’t I?”
Catherine shot Karem a look as if to say, “What did I say?”
Indeed, Karem understood perfectly why Catherine had been so hesitant.
No matter how much he chewed, the meat just wouldn’t break apart or shred; it was only tough, and even with force, he could feel its firmness and elasticity.
After chewing to the limit, it still felt like it was just being tough and resisting.
In that case, there was only one way to handle it.
Using divine power to eat meat is already a ridiculous notion.
Boom, crunch—
The sound that shouldn’t have been heard while chewing caught everyone’s attention.
“Karem, don’t push yourself. If it’s poorly cooked horse meat, it’s usually—”
“Ugh, no. I mean, I tried to really chew it, but it’s just so tough. There really is a reason why you grill it rare or medium-rare!”
Crunch, crack, crunch—
Catherine stared blankly at Karem, who calmly muttered while chewing, making sounds that shouldn’t happen.
She too had tried a piece, only to spit it out moments later.
Zigmeser, witnessing that scene, wondered if this horse meat was somehow different, and he tried a piece that was overcooked.
“Ugh.”
Catherine knew the answer but decided to keep her mouth shut.
No, more importantly, if it was that tough, just spit it out! Do you really need to use divine power to chew it?