The Abandoned Duchess Seems to Want a Peaceful Life - Chapter 28

Chapter 28: Walnut Biscuits and Simple Stew

Though she led a fairly busy life, Melfina made a point of properly taking the Sabbath off.

Work was not something you could simply push through by grinding at it. A proper break raised efficiency and brought some richness to the days.

That was half an excuse. The biggest reason was that if Melfina did not rest, Marie and Cedric would work as a matter of course.

Not once had they nodded when she said she would be shut in the study all day and that the two of them were free to do as they liked.

*—Not that they would spend a day off however they pleased, even when I do make it one.*

After a slightly later breakfast than usual, Melfina was standing in the kitchen. Over her favorite cotton dress she wore a white apron.

The other day, the children of the former serfs' settlement had brought a basketful of walnuts.

When she asked how they had come by them, they said that with autumn arriving, the Forest of Moltre was in its season of harvest. Especially this year, the first autumn since the ban on free-range pigs, there was a wide variety of things to gather.

"Acorns were just rolling around everywhere, we couldn't pick them all up!"

As in her previous life, for children they seemed to be wonderful toys, to be competed over for shape, size, and whether they still had their caps.

The children showed off their favorite acorns one after another on their palms, and indeed each had its own features: one round with a fluffy cap, another slim and glossy.

"Children, you mustn't get in the way of Lady Melfina's work."

"Okaaay!"

"Aw, hey, Lady Melfina, will you come to the village again?"

At Eli's word, the children, reluctantly, but all the same, took on the air of breaking up.

"Yes, of course I'll come and visit. I'm sorry I couldn't let you stay longer. Be careful going home before it gets dark."

"Promise!"

"See you, Lady Melfina!"

They had made a promise to meet again and sent her off, but the children kept looking back and waving their arms wide.

"Lately, since you haven't visited the settlement, Lady Melfina, they've been lonely."

Eli, Nid's wife, came in from the former serfs' settlement as a commuter, so Melfina mostly heard the news from her. Holding back about the children was probably out of consideration, so Melfina would not worry.

"Is that so. I wish I could move around more lightly..."

With so many communications concentrated on Melfina, she had tried to stay as close to the lord's manor as possible, but it seemed the children had been missing her.

Calling it the former serfs' settlement all the time did not sit well anyway, so she should establish it anew as a village and give it a name. Residents would have their own wishes about it, so she planned to talk with Nid about it again.

At any rate, since she had received them, she decided that enjoying these walnuts would be how to spend today's day off.

The outer husks had been properly removed, and they were the familiar shape of walnuts. They were a little smaller than those in her previous life's memory, and now and then there were marks where a squirrel had gnawed, which was part of the charm.

"By the way, how do you crack a walnut?"

"So even you don't know some things, Lady Melfina?" Marie asked in puzzlement, and Melfina could not help a wry smile.

"Well, yes. There are plenty."

Melfina's knowledge was skewed toward noble education, and in her previous life's memories, walnuts were already shelled and processed.

*—They were in chocolate, and in cake... Chocolate is out of reach, but caramel should be possible sooner or later, so trying to recreate that snack with the squirrel mark might be fun.*

While she was thinking about that, Cedric took out a knife, thrust it into the seam of a walnut, and twisted his wrist. With a crack, it split. The shell rolled away, and inside it small walnut meat was packed.

"Treating a knife like that, won't it get damaged?"

"Not by something like walnuts. It was something I used roughly in the first place."

The knife's blade, apparently cast, was thick, and certainly looked sturdy. It was probably the type of knife used to press and split things rather than to cut with a sharp edge.

For a while she took the meat out of the walnuts Cedric cracked, and once most of that was done, she washed them thoroughly. After draining the water she set a frying pan on the magic stone stove and dry-roasted them, and the sweet, fragrant smell peculiar to nuts rose up.

They looked delicious just to nibble on, but since she had time, she decided to put in a little extra effort.

"What are you making?"

"Walnut biscuits, for now. While I'm at it, let's get a start on lunch, too."

She put chicken bones into a pot, added the green part of a leek and ginger, brought it to a boil once, skimmed off the scum, and left it on low heat for a while.

The ingredients for the biscuits were only flour, butter, lard, and finely chopped walnuts, minced with a knife. Spices could be added, but this time it was the simplest type.

For the flour she used so-called whole wheat flour, milled together with the bran.

The wheat grown around here was basically hard wheat, a variety high in gluten, so-called bread flour. It was a variety suited to bread, which grew stickier and chewier the more you kneaded it.

*—It fills the stomach, but it isn't suited to making crisp things like biscuits or tempura.*

Soft wheat, the source of cake flour, was grown more and more the farther south you went. Even in the south governed by Melfina's family home, the House of Crawford, some soft wheat should have been harvested toward the far end of the south.

Still, she had no intention whatsoever of contacting the House of Crawford. She doubted they were paying attention to her movements, but if they found out she had run out of the ducal manor and was a lord at the far end of the north, there was no telling what they might say.

*—If I had trade connections farther south, with the Spanish Empire or the Romana Republic, I might have managed something, but I don't.*

And there was no use wishing for what she didn't have. Since her previous life's memories returned, she had made do with what there was, and she would go on doing so.

"Put the flour in a coarse cloth and beat it, sift the flour, fry half in the pan, and when it turns lightly brown, mix it with the rest of the flour, add the walnuts beaten fine, and mix in the butter and lard. Be careful not to knead it as much as possible at this stage."

"Why mustn't you knead it? With bread you knead it a lot."

"Kneading makes it sticky, and for bread that makes it bake evenly, but for sweets it makes them very hard after baking."

Though this time, the bran was included and the frying inactivated the gluten, so it shouldn't get very sticky. She had increased the amount of fat to improve the mouthfeel, but just in case she mixed it lightly.

*—I want baking powder. At least baking soda, or rice flour...*

Truly, in this world, whenever you tried to make something, it was nothing but things that weren't there.

*—I'd assumed that Maria made macarons at the palace simply because it was a game for women, but it was probably for this reason.*

In the game, the thing the heroine Maria used as an item to raise the capture targets' affection was colorful macarons. In particular, if a macaron the same color as a capture target's eyes was accepted, their affection rose considerably.

The ingredients of macarons, boiled down, were only eggs, almond flour, and sugar. Sugar was quite a luxury, but not something you couldn't get at the palace.

*—How did they color them in all those colors, I wonder.*

When the dough came together in one piece, she rolled it out with a rolling pin, folded it over a few times, and cut it with a knife into easily eaten sizes. It would have been nice to put a cute pattern on them, but she decided to just prick holes with a fork.

She set the roasted, roughly broken walnuts on top, and after that all that was left was to put them on a baking sheet and bake in the oven. She made half with walnuts and half without.

The magic stone oven handled almost exactly like a home appliance in her previous life. After fifteen minutes of baking, a fragrant, lovely smell began to drift out.

"Until they're done baking it's just waiting, so you can do whatever you like, you know?"

"No, I am your bodyguard."

"I'd like to actually watch them bake."

Not only did no one leave, but Ed and Cliff, catching the smell, showed their faces in the kitchen.

Since their hands were free anyway, she decided to prepare lunch.

She put vegetables and meat into the pot where the chicken bones had been simmering, cooked them through, and added the white part of the leek.

Leek was a kind of green onion commonly grown in this area, looking like the long green onion often seen in her previous life made thick and short, but very sweet, and an ingredient that turned meltingly soft when stewed and went wonderfully in soup.

While the soup was simmering, the biscuits finished baking, and she took out the baking sheet and let it cool a bit. She had worried that with no sugar in them they wouldn't take much color, but it seemed the larger amount of fat had helped, and they were baked a faint fox-brown.

"I think they taste better after they've cooled than while hot, so I'll let them cool a little."

While she had the baking sheet out of the oven, she covered the pot and turned off the heat. It was a thick cast-iron pot, so the rest would cook through in the residual heat.

From thin dough baked flat to bread left over and dry-baked, though the forms differed from her previous life, cookies and biscuits were comparatively popular in this world as well.

Sweet biscuits with sugar were, for the most part, sold by monasteries, and there were many variations. Like the temple's ale, these were mostly bought by nearby nobles and wealthy merchants.

The church and the temple, goddess worship and male deity worship, existed side by side, and far from causing religious wars, they even served as a deterrent to wars between territories and countries.

And yet, the church and the temple were traditionally said to be on bad terms.

The temple healed injuries and was rooted in daily life, receiving many small daily donations; the church healed illness for high fees and presided over weddings and funerals, asking for alms each time, so on the whole the church had the worse reputation, but since weddings, knighting, and funeral rites could only be entrusted to the church, people, whatever small grievances they harbored, could never leave the church.

When the baking sheet had cooled to a good point, Marie made corn tea, and they gathered around the table for a taste test.

When she brought a biscuit to her mouth, it split with a crisp sound. Without sugar, the flavor was very plain.

The texture was a finish somewhere right between pie and biscuit. She had wanted something a little crisper, but this wasn't bad in its own way.

"This is delicious."

"I like it, too. The walnuts are fragrant and go well with it."

"They've got some bite. Good when you're a bit peckish, or for breakfast."

The reviews were generally favorable. When chewed well, a faint sweetness of wheat and the aroma of walnuts lingered in the mouth.

"With sugar they're sweet and delicious, but these have another good use."

She opened the lid of the pot where the vegetables had cooked through and poured in milk.

"Stew? You're not making white sauce today?"

"And here, this. I crush the biscuits."

She crushed the biscuits with the rolling pin, and put the finely broken pieces into the pot. After stirring around for a while, it was done.

"Please have a taste."

When she held out a small dish, the first to take it was Marie. She put her mouth to the small dish with its white steam, and her expression brightened at once.

"It's delicious."

"The ingredients of a biscuit are butter and flour, so when making white sauce every time is a bother, you can crush leftover biscuits and put them in with milk."

Soup made with a stock of chicken bones is delicious with just salt, and with milk and biscuits added you can enjoy a stew easily. It was a good way to eat when you wanted something warm without fuss in the cold season.

"That's perfect when you want to turn the breakfast soup into a stew."

"Yes, it's going to get colder and colder, and they keep about as long as bread, so if you bake a lot and have some left over, using them in stew is a good idea too."

A thick soup was something that warmed you through to the core. Having biscuits nibbled at breakfast and stew at lunch might be a good idea.

Incidentally, Melfina went on to bake biscuits several more times afterward, but they were apparently so popular as daytime snacks that there was never enough left over to put in the stew.