Kochugunshikan Boukensha ni Naru

I found Verse practicing cooking some omelet rice by himself when I went back inside the kitchen. It looks like he’s cooking some for his wife and daughter as well.

“Ou, Alan. Just wait for a bit. I’ll wrap this up quickly. We will head for the market straight away after I finish cooking this.”

“Yeah, okay.”

 

Verse finished cooking the meals in a flash, and the two of us finally went out of the inn and headed for the market.

“Now then, what type of dishes should I teach you, I wonder.”

“Let’s see. How about something like that omelet rice, but with a different cooking style this time? That kind of dish isn’t something an average chef can come up with after all.”

“I see. So he wants to learn unusual dishes, huh…”

Hm. Maybe pizza and pasta would be nice. I have managed to encounter a good number of different kinds of dishes in this city, but I haven’t seen anything like those yet. I’ll cook them in the Italian style. Maybe risotto would be nice as well.

Oh, but making some pizza dough from scratch right now will be a bit challenging. This planet has yet to develop yeast after all. Well, they do have something similar, but it’s mostly taken from nature and is considered rare. Just how many hours will it take to make the dough, I wonder.

“Do you have some bread dough set aside for today?”

“Let’s see. Yes, I do have some back at the inn. There are some guests who prefer bread after all. And if there are leftovers, I can just use them to make breadcrumbs.

He’s really passionate about fried food as usual. I’ll try using the bread dough to make some pizza, then.

“I’ll use some of it later then.”

“Go ahead and feel free. I’ll pay for all the ingredients later, so if you see anything interesting, just buy as much as you need.”

We finally reached the open-air market. I started going around the different stalls with Verse. It was decided that I will be in charge of picking out all the ingredients for the new dishes, and Verse will be in charge of procuring ingredients for regular use at the inn. My head has already been filled with different recipes for pizza and pasta.

First, I went over to the stall where I bought some river prawns last time we went here. They’re selling some fine-looking prawns today as well. A seafood pizza does seem nice. This ingredient wasn’t all that pricey as well, so I ended up buying quite a good amount of them.

Verse has a lot of tomatoes in stock, so I don’t have to buy some myself. There’s also an ample stock of meat. So that just leaves the cheese huh.

“I wonder what kinds of cheese they have available here?”

“Oh, there are a number of different kinds on sale. The shop’s over here.”

When we reached the specialty shop selling cheese, I found at least five kinds of cheese variants up for sale. They ranged from the soft cheeses suitable for making pizzas to hard cheeses suitable for turning into powdered cheese.

Verse has bought quite a lot of ingredients for use at the inn so I didn’t have to buy a lot of stuff myself.

“Oh, is this smoked meat, by any chance?”

I managed to find a stall selling something that resembled bacon.

“Oh, those are some smoked Big Boar meat. It’s a type of preserved food.”

“I didn’t find something like these at the inn, so does that mean you don’t use these for cooking?”

“These are tough to chew, and there’s not much reason to specifically use preserved food for cooking, right?”

“No, no, that’s not true. We can definitely use these!”

“Oh, so ya do understand, laddie! These are really good, y’see. But I was surprised this type of food wasn’t really popular round these parts, so I was feelin a bit down in the dumps, since I went to the trouble of haulin them all the way down here.”

The shopkeeper started a conversation with us all of a sudden. Hm. Judging from his earlier words, I guess he’s a traveling merchant.

“Did you come here from somewhere far away?”

“I came all the way from Starveek kingdom, y’see. Oh, but now it’s called Alois kingdom huh.”

“Can I try a bit of these?”

“Go right ahead, laddie!”

I snapped a small piece from the bacon strips hanging in front of the stall and gave it a taste. It was a bit more salty than the bacon I was used to. It was a bit hard to chew as well, but I can definitely use these.

“These are wonderful. Please wrap some up for me.”

“Thanks for buyin’ my goods, laddie!”

After buying the bacon and an herb resembling basil, I finally finished procuring all the ingredients I needed. I then helped Verse out with his own shopping list, and we finally left the market after a short while more.

“There actually aren’t a lot of new ingredients, are there? Will these really be enough?”

“We’ll be fine with just these. I plan on using some of the ingredients you bought too, so we have more than enough.”

When we got back to the inn, we brought the ingredients inside the kitchen and finally started cooking.

Let’s make some pasta first.

Oh, and it looks like Sara-chan is also gonna observe from the side.

“Father told me I was in charge of taste testing, so I didn’t have lunch earlier. As a result, my stomach is quite empty right now, Alan-san.” Sara-chan explained.

“I see. Let’s get to cooking then. First, I’ll show you how to cook a dish called pasta.”

“Hou. What kind of dish is it?”

“We’ll take some wheat flour, and fashion them into long strips. We will then boil them in water and use them as the main ingredient for the dish. Have you heard of something like this before, Verse?”

“I did hear that some country had this type of dish in their cuisine a while back.”

“Oh, so you’ve heard of something similar! This will probably be a bit different from the one you’ve heard about though. Let’s go ahead and cook some then. First, let’s prepare the pasta dough.”

I mixed wheat flour, salt, vegetable oil, and eggs. I then started to knead the mixture and gradually shaped it into a round shape.

“I’ll give you the specific amounts to be used for each ingredient later, so you don’t really need to memorize anything.”

I kneaded the mixture thoroughly. I guess this should be just about right. I wrapped the dough with some clean cloth and let it sit for a while. I’ll make the meat sauce in the meantime. For pasta, I want to teach Verse the basic meat sauce first.

I’ll first have Verse make some tomato sauce by himself. I’ll have to use it for making the pizza sauce as well, so we’ll have to make a nice amount.

The cooking method is basically the same as what we did when we cooked the omelet rice. I also had Sara-chan help by making her process some ground meat by using the magic mixer and food processor.

I sautéed some minced garlic on the frying pan, added some onions, and then some minced carrots. I then added the ground meat afterward.

Once the ingredients were nicely cooked, I poured the tomato sauce Verse made. I sprinkled some herbs to add some nice aroma to the sauce. I finished it off by using some salt and pepper for some light flavoring. I then tried some with Verse. The umami of the meat has been brought out quite well, but it still wasn’t quite up to my standards. It just wasn’t as tasty without using some consomme. I’ll just make do by adding some ketchup and the Japanese-style sauce that Verse developed to give it that extra kick it needs.

Mm. That came out rather nicely. I had Verse try some again.

“How is it?”

“Yeah, it’s really good, Alan. Is this actually a type of sauce, by any chance?”

“That’s right. This is the sauce we’ll be pouring on top of the pasta later.”

The pasta dough should be ready by now. I used a chef’s rod to flatten the dough and stretched it out while sprinkling some flour on top. When it became nice and thin, I sprinkled some more flour on top of it and folded it. After I finished folding it into a cylindrical shape, I used a knife to cut it into portions that were one centimeter thin. I then spread the newly cut portions out, and finished making the flat pasta, tagliatelle. Let’s go ahead and boil them then.

I put an appropriate amount of salt on the boiling water inside the pot and put the pasta in afterward.

That should do.