Gu'er looked at the prepared wild boar meat, an idea already forming in her mind of what to make.
She brought a pot of water to a boil and added the boar meat, which had a good balance of fat and lean, to stew.
Back in the hamlet, this method was called "plain stewing." The goal was to savor the meat's original flavor. In truth, it was a cooking style born of poverty—people couldn't afford many seasonings and didn't know other methods. Just getting to eat a pot of meat stewed this way was considered a luxury.
She chose this simple stew because she knew that while the middle-aged man wanted to taste her cooking, what he truly craved was a taste from his memories. And the taste from his memories was precisely this kind of stew.
Gu'er was making this stew to serve the middle-aged man a memory. Without this particular wild boar stew, even if all her other dishes were delicious, the man would inevitably feel a sense of regret, that something was missing.
