Culinary God in Wilderness

The parachute had collected so much water that its center was sagging completely to the ground, like a small bathtub.

Lin Chen first placed the other ingredients next to the parachute. Then, he boiled a pot of water inside the shelter and submerged the entire grouse in it.

𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒆𝙬𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝒎

The foul smell of feathers scalded by the high temperature made him wrinkle his nose.

"When I was a kid visiting the countryside, it smelled just like this when my grandpa slaughtered chickens. In the blink of an eye, more than a decade has passed."

He sighed, muttering to the camera.

He didn’t stay idle while waiting for it to soak. He ladled some clean water from the parachute and washed the blueberries, wild garlic leaves, wild mushrooms, and Jerusalem artichokes one by one.

The feathers on the scalded grouse came off with a gentle tug. He then gutted the bird, tossing the inedible organs and glands into the fire.

The plucked feathers didn’t need to be thrown away. After drying, they could be used as decoration or kept as a trophy.

"Strange, how do you tell if this kind of grouse is male or female? It doesn’t have a comb on its head."

He stared at the cleaned grouse for a good while but couldn’t for the life of him tell if it was male or female.

"There are no eggs inside. Does that mean it’s a male?"

"But it’s hard to say. The breeds that lay eggs frequently are domesticated. The characteristics of a grouse might be different from the chickens we’re familiar with. Oh well, it’s not important."

He couldn’t be bothered to overthink it. He sliced up the fresh, thick king boletes and other wild mushrooms. He tossed a small amount of the yellow chicken fat he had rendered into a pan, and once it melted, he added the mushrooms and stir-fried them quickly.

After a few tosses, as the aroma of the mushrooms grew stronger, the chicken fat in the pan slowly disappeared, absorbed by the fungi.

He poured a little clean water into the pan, using the heat from the evaporating water to simmer the mushrooms and draw out their juices. The chicken fat they had absorbed now seeped out again, coating the surface of every slice with a savory liquid.

"This step is just to pre-cook them. Not only does it shrink them, making them easier to stuff into the grouse’s cavity, but it also prevents too much moisture from seeping out and affecting how the meat absorbs the flavors."

Seeing that nearly half the water in the pan had evaporated, Lin Chen grabbed a handful of chopped wild garlic leaves and tossed them in, quickly mixing everything with his branch chopsticks.

A fresh, garlicky fragrance with a hint of spice wafted out, blending with the already fragrant wild mushrooms to create a unique aroma.

Right after cleaning the grouse, Lin Chen had rubbed a thin, even layer of salt inside its cavity and all over its skin.

By the time the liquid in the pan had mostly reduced, about ten minutes had passed.

He didn’t start the next step immediately. Instead, he placed the pan on a nearby rock, using its conductivity to cool it down quickly.

Only when the pan was completely cool did he stuff all the filling into the grouse’s cavity.

He grabbed a handful of blueberries, scattered them in the pan, crushed them lightly, and poured them into the cavity as well.

"The blueberries are a substitute for sugar. In Great Xia cuisine, we often add a little sugar to enhance a dish’s umami. The blueberries’ own sweet and sour taste will also elevate the grouse’s flavor. It’s the same principle as pairing roasted meat with fruit jam."

He picked up a relatively sturdy, thin branch from the ground nearby. He stripped off the bark, washed it with clean water, and sharpened one end. Like a sewing needle, he used it to stitch the skin on both sides of the grouse’s cavity shut with an S-shaped pattern.

"This sealing method is common in the southern coastal regions of Great Xia. It’s a technique used for making roast duck and roast goose. The difference is that with roast duck and goose, you pour a prepared marinade into the cavity during the curing process. The skin also undergoes special treatment, including being brushed with sugar water and air-dried, before finally being roasted in a fruitwood-fired oven."

"I’m sure any viewers who have had Peking duck know what I’m talking about. The flavor of roast duck is very similar to Peking duck. With Peking duck, the meat is sliced and eaten wrapped in spring pancakes with cucumber, scallions, and sweet bean sauce."

"Cantonese-style roast duck, on the other hand, is usually chopped into pieces and served with a scallion-ginger oil or plum sauce. There are many Cantonese restaurants in North America where chefs hang roast ducks and geese in glass display windows facing the street to attract passersby."

After speaking, he used a fishhook to hoist the entire grouse up. He then built a wooden frame nearby and hung the grouse from it.

"Since it’s raining outside, I can’t air-dry it in the open. I have to use this method to slowly dry the grouse’s skin by the fire without causing too much of the subcutaneous fat to render out."

The grouse was hanging about half a meter from the fire. He held out his hand to feel the heat. Aside from waves of searing warmth, the temperature wasn’t excessively high.

Having done all that, he dashed back out into the rain and returned with a few branches he had chopped from a nearby wild apple tree.

He mashed the cleaned wild apples into a pulp and rubbed it over the grouse’s skin with his hands.

"Wild apples are about as acidic as lemons. Rubbing them on the skin acts like white vinegar, speeding up the drying process. This way, the skin will form a paper-thin, crispy shell when it’s roasted later."

"If I had to point out one regret, it’s that I don’t have any maltose. I can’t brush the skin with sugar water, so the roasted color won’t be that alluring, date-red hue."

After all this, he tossed the remaining wild apple pulp into his soup pot, added a few fresh slices, and filled it with clean water. He placed the pot on the fire, further blocking the direct heat from the flames.

"Normally, air-drying a grouse takes five to six hours. With my limited setup, I’ll have to manually turn it and see how long it takes. It’s not like I have anything better to do, anyway."

He had been busy all morning, and he hadn’t had a full meal in two days. Faced with the temptation of the plump grouse, Lin Chen couldn’t help but swallow, wishing he could just put it over the fire and roast it right away.

The thought flashed through his mind for only a moment before he suppressed it with immense willpower.

A grouse naturally has a lot of fat, not to mention all its skin. A single bird would provide him with far more fat than five or six Red Salmon combined.

If he didn’t go through these preparations and just roasted it directly over the fire, not only would a huge amount of fat render out, but the skin would burn long before the inside was cooked. It would be a total waste of a precious ingredient.

Maintaining the current temperature would dry the skin while also allowing the grouse’s interior and exterior to slowly reach the same temperature, similar to low-and-slow roasting.

The low heat prevents moisture from evaporating too quickly, while the air-dried skin will seal that moisture in. This combination ensures the roasted grouse will be tender and preserves as much of its internal fat as possible.

If there was a downside... it was that the process took an incredibly long time. He didn’t even know when he would finally get to eat.

When the apple soup finally came to a boil, he quickly moved the pot to a rock to cool and placed the pan underneath the hanging grouse.