Food was plentiful during the growth season, so hardly anyone bothered eating fish, and these days the fish in the river were remarkably easy to catch. The three large fish together weighed seven or eight jin, and though the rest were small, there were plenty of them.
Bai Shuo started thinking about how to cook them on the way back to the tribe.
The big fish were suited to stewing into soup, while the medium and small ones could be pan-fried in oil.
There were so many small fish that even after giving each chick three, there would still be some left over, the palm-sized ones could go one each to his own family and to Wu Yan and Caihong, who’d helped out. As for the fish soup, one fish alone could fill an entire pot, so there was no need to worry about there not being enough to go around.
It wasn’t noon yet, so the fish soup could wait until later to simmer. Bai Shuo started with the pan-fried fish first.
He put a layer of moo-beast fat in the stone pot, and once the oil was hot, tipped in the washed small fish. Fish the size of a finger fried up quickly, and before long they’d turned golden.
The smell of fish and moo-beast fat mingled and spread, and the chicks who’d come back to rest immediately gathered around. Bai Shuo hadn’t gone out with them that morning, and neither had Bai Su, so everyone knew there’d be something good to eat again, and so, even with no one leading them, they’d kept working diligently all the same.
Now, catching the scent, they knew they’d guessed right, another food they’d never tried before!
Bai Shuo caught the smell too, and being closer, he smelled it even more strongly than the others. He slowly turned the small fish in the pot and sprinkled a pinch of salt over them.
The salt the tribe normally ate was coarse-grained, but for convenience, Bai Shuo had set aside half of it and ground it into a fine powder. For dishes like pan-fried fish or pan-fried meat, a sprinkle of the powder dissolved instantly, seasoned properly, the flavor came out naturally fragrant, and it suited cooking far better than the original coarse grains.
Once he’d scooped out the crispy pan-fried small fish, Bai Shuo put the slightly bigger fish into the pot. Reheating things over and over wasted too much time and firewood, so he generally cooked everything in one go to save on wood.
While this batch of fish went into the pot, the chicks had already lined up outside, the ritual of dividing up food was something none of them ever forgot.
Bai Shuo had them hold out their hands to make sure everyone had washed up, and only then began handing out portions.
Three fish per person, mixing big and small so that everyone ended up with roughly the same amount.
The few that were left, the rest of them split two apiece.
The pan-fried small fish were wonderfully crisp, you didn’t even need to spit out the bones, since they’d turned completely brittle, soft enough to chew through in two bites. Even with just salt added, they were still fragrant, all trace of the original fishy smell gone, leaving only the aroma of the fish itself, and thanks to the oil, a hint of moo-beast fat as well.
Once the two small fish were finished, Bai Shuo still wanted more, and turned over the ones still in the pot.
There were seven palm-sized fish caught in total. Bai Le was still too young, so Bai Shuo only gave him the smallest kind, and after handing one to each person, three were left over. Once they’d cooled, he tucked them into a clay jar meant for storing food, saved for Bai Xun and Bai Yun when they got back that evening.
Most of the pottery fired recently had been for food-related purposes, pots, bowls, basins, jars, and other tools had all been made in batches. The one tending the kiln fire was a member of the Feather Clan who’d been injured hunting the previous year, his wing had been slashed by a tree branch, and though the wound had healed in the end, he could no longer fly. He’d spent some time with the gathering party afterward, and Hua Yong had later assigned him to tend the kiln.
From the moment the firing began until the fire went out, someone had to watch it the whole time. The first time they fired the kiln, Bai Shuo and Bai Su had kept watch for an entire day, but now that someone else handled it, he only needed to check in every so often. Just like with the crops, one-tenth of the pottery the tribe fired belonged to Bai Shuo, and lately they fired a new batch every other day, so their family now had quite a bit of pottery.
With more pottery around, Bai Shuo had started sorting out uses for it. Since he didn’t always cook in the afternoon, he’d set aside two clay jars specifically for storing food, once filled, he’d cover them with lids, so there was no need to worry about dust getting in.
After putting away the pan-fried small fish, Bai Shuo put out the fire and went to check on the remaining fish. He planned to simmer the fish soup that evening, if he cooked all three fish together, the pot wouldn’t hold much water, so today he’d only prepare one. The other two he salted lightly and hung up to dry at the mouth of the cave.
Then he started thinking about something.
The fishy smell on his hands after washing the fish today wasn’t limited to just his hands, the backpack-basket carried a strong fishy odor too. Raw fish smelled completely different from cooked fish, the latter left only a faint trace of fishiness, and after the scallion leaves worked their magic, you could barely notice it at all, while the smell of raw fish was strong and hard to get rid of in a short time.
The cleaning agent the tribe currently used was wood ash. Water steeped with wood ash had strong cleaning power, but it had a downside too, the water was highly alkaline, and if used for too long, or in too large a quantity at once, it would leave your hands peeling and uncomfortable.
Bai Shuo was wondering whether he could make soap.
With that thought, Bai Shuo began searching for the materials he’d need, and in the end found he was missing lime. Naturally, there wasn’t any lime around, but there were river mussels in the river, the chicks had caught some before. He told the chicks he needed shells, and one immediately ran off to fetch some.
To the chicks, something so readily available in the water wasn’t anything rare, they’d given some to Bai Shuo this time, but they could always catch more next time.
Bai Shuo took the shells he received and roasted them over the fire, and once they’d changed color, took them out and handed them to the chicks to grind up. This kind of work the chicks had long since gotten good at, putting the material into the stone mortar and stamping the foot pedal back and forth.
While the chicks were busy at it, Bai Shuo wasn’t idle either. He lit some dried mugwort, which drove away the mosquitoes nearby while leaving behind wood ash, he heated water and filtered out a wood-ash solution, then poured the crushed shells into it for a second filtering. What came out from that was an alkaline solution.
The filtered solution was slowly poured into heated moo-beast fat, stirring as he went, until the mixture turned into a paste somewhat like yogurt, at which point he stopped. He packed it into bamboo tubes and set them inside the cave to wait and set.
Once that was done, he saw that it was getting late, so Bai Shuo began cooking the fish soup.
Before putting the fish in the pot, Bai Shuo first had Wu Yan help cut the fish into small pieces, then fried them in the pot until the surface turned faintly golden, at which point he poured in water heated in a clay jar and kept adding firewood to cook it. About twenty minutes later, the fish soup was ready.
Once done simmering, the fish soup had turned a milky white. Bai Shuo cut up some chopped scallions and sprinkled them on top, scooped out a spoonful, and tasted it, not bad at all.
The fish soup didn’t have as strong a fragrance as the pan-fried small fish, but it tasted good too. Bai Shuo drained his whole bowl in one go, put out the fire under the pot, and called the chicks over to fetch their bowls, this was the reward for the shells they’d traded earlier.
Fish meat had bones, and Bai Shuo was afraid the chicks might choke, so he didn’t dare let them eat it, instead each one got two scoops of the soup, and the chicks drank it up without the slightest complaint.
Bai Shuo ladled out a few more bowls for Bai Su, Bai Le, and Wu Yan, then covered the pot. The gathering and hunting parties wouldn’t be back too late, and the stone pot was large and held heat well, so it wouldn’t go cold before dark.
Bai Shuo’s guess turned out to be right, it wasn’t long before the Feather Clan members who’d gone out searching for food began trickling back one after another.
The hunting party that returned first was the larger one, they’d caught two baa-beasts. Since they were missing the Feather Clan member who led them, the group hadn’t gone after moo-beasts.
The difference between a hunting party’s captain and its ordinary members lay in exactly this, a captain had the ability to pierce a moo-beast’s throat with a single strike of the claw, leaving it powerless to resist, whereas ordinary members could usually only manage to slash it. The gap between the two might look like just a bit of extra strength, but in reality the difference was enormous, if the kill wasn’t clean in one blow and the prey went into a frenzy, not only would whoever had struck it be in trouble, but the entire hunting party’s Feather Clan members could come under attack.
Capturing large game required having the captain present. Often it was simply the presence of one more strong captain that let the catch increase by half again.
On this point, Hua Yong could speak with real authority, he knew just how strong the tribe’s warriors were, but even he didn’t expect today’s haul to be quite this large.
The first thing Hua Yong did upon returning to the tribe was to ask Bai Shuo whether he could still make fishing nets.
Fishing nets could certainly be made, but before answering, he wanted to know about today’s catch first. “I can make them, Uncle Hua Yong. How many oink-beasts did you catch today?”
“Three big ones, thirteen small ones.” Even after being happy the whole way back, Hua Yong’s face still carried a smile now, usually catching even one oink-beast was already something to be pleased about, but today they’d caught three outright, plus a whole batch of small oink-beasts, and caught alive at that.
But then, thinking of something, the smile on Hua Yong’s face faded a little. “The last oink-beast was too strong, it tore the net apart.”
“That’s fine, I’ll mend it tomorrow with hemp rope.” Bai Shuo said, and having said this, went to look at the small oink-beasts.
The small oink-beasts were all quite tiny, each one probably not even ten jin, packed into backpack-baskets, curiously peering out.
The small oink-beasts were clearly a bit bolder than the small cluck-birds. Bai Shuo had the tribesman carrying the basket set them down next to the cluck-birds, though he hadn’t known for certain whether small oink-beasts would be brought back today, he’d already prepared a spot for them just in case, much like the one for the cluck-birds, an area fenced off with wooden poles and hemp rope, the poles reaching up to about Bai Shuo’s waist.
Bai Shuo’s plan was to use this section specifically for raising smaller prey, and once they grew large, move them behind the mountain. Since the divider was made of wooden poles, the two sides could see each other, and the small cluck-birds, curious about the newcomers, dashed out the moment the adult Feather Clan members left, peering through the poles at them.
By comparison, the small oink-beasts that had just arrived were more cautious, sniffing around everywhere as if searching for their mother.
Bai Shuo grabbed a handful of tender grass leaves and fed them to the small oink-beasts. The chicks had just picked these that day, most wild grasses the small cluck-birds would eat, but when fed tender leaves, they’d eat more of them.
The more they ate, the faster they grew, and since they clearly preferred tender leaves, of course they’d be fed more of them. Picking grass leaves every day had become one of the chicks’ regular jobs, and to make feeding easier, the backpack-basket holding the tender leaves was kept right beside the small cluck-birds’ pen.
What Bai Shuo didn’t expect was that the moment he’d fed the small oink-beasts, the small cluck-birds instantly erupted, chirping and squawking up a storm.
Having fed the small cluck-birds for so long now, Bai Shuo could already tell several of their moods apart, and this, clearly, was anger.
Bai Shuo was puzzled, they’d been perfectly fine just a moment ago, so why the sudden displeasure?
He turned his gaze back to the small oink-beasts, watching the bolder one about to eat, then looked at the small cluck-birds, wings nearly bursting with agitation, and understood, they were guarding their food.
Bai Shuo grabbed two more handfuls and fed them too, and once there was food, most of the small cluck-birds quieted down, only a few still called out at their neighbors.
The small oink-beasts paid not the slightest attention to the noisy neighbors next door, heads down, eating with abandon, having gone without food since being caught, the small oink-beasts were now unusually hungry.
The small oink-beasts adapted well to their new environment, with food in their bellies, all was right with the world, and not a trace of timidity remained from leaving their mother. The more Bai Shuo watched, the more he felt these were easy to raise, if a few more litters of such prey came along, would there really be anything to worry about for food during the rainy and snow seasons?