NOVEL NEXT chapter 40
40 – The hearty aroma coming from the bubbling broth of army stew eaten after work.
After the storm-like customers had left.
“Boss, you worked hard.”
With a sigh, Andrea, who had finished washing the dishes, plopped down onto a chair.
“It’s tough.”
She looked at me, almost lying on the chair with her body stretched out like melted slime.
It was a look of intense desire for something.
And I knew what that was.
Meat, and food.
It was obvious that the elf employee who loved meat would want it.
“Andrea, let’s eat.”
“What’s on the menu?”
She looked at me with eyes full of expectation.
Her eyes were like those of a puppy who had been waiting only for mealtime.
The meat I had ordered from the butcher shop that made processed meat using Pog meat arrived this morning.
The meat was, of course, of high quality, but not raw meat.
I opened the refrigerator and took out the carefully preserved ham.
-Made ham from the meat you sent, and the taste was much deeper and better. Did you get meat from another place?
Ham and sausage.
When I found out that a butcher shop located inside the castle made ham, I had been meaning to order it from way back.
However, the reason I hadn’t ordered it until now was that I wanted to minimize the variety of menu items before the restaurant became active.
If I started a restaurant with too many ingredients and it failed, I would have to bear all the losses.
But now there was no need for that.
Most of the guests in the Britten Territory visited our store regularly.
I figured there was no need to worry about buying and disposing of additional ingredients in the future.
Now that the restaurant has a signature menu and regular customers.
‘I should start working on developing new menus.’
So I asked the butcher shop to order processed meat.
It means cutting and slicing the Pog meat I received from the barn myself.
When I sent the meat, sliced with a knife filled with mana, the face of the butcher shop owner was still vivid in my memory.
There was only one reason for doing this so meticulously.
It was because I had never once succeeded in cooking a dish with ham until now.
I thought that the empire’s ham would be inferior compared to the ham made with the 21st-century technology of my past life.
And it really was.
I had tried cooking several times with the ham supplied to the Knights, but no matter what I did, I couldn’t get the taste I had imagined.
Out of my seven years of cooking experience, this was one of the few ingredients that I had failed to prepare properly.
Even when I added various sauces to the ham, I couldn’t get the uniquely stimulating and deep taste that I had imagined.
Even if I tried to cover the taste with other ingredients, the weak taste of the original ingredient made it unsatisfactory.
But the minced meat that I had prepared myself was alright.
After having experienced this a few times, I realized that slicing and cutting with mana infused in it was the key factor in bringing out the taste of the original ingredient.
However, I couldn’t be certain that it would also affect processed meat.
I simply didn’t have the time to experiment.
This was my first attempt.
I mean, sending the meat I had personally cut and butchered to be transformed into processed meat at a butcher shop.
‘It seems to be a success, judging by the butcher shop owner’s reaction.’
I would have to check the rest myself.
I took out the ham and sliced it slightly with a knife.
The perfectly smoked and cooked meat was shining its characteristic red color.
I put a piece of the sliced ham into my mouth.
“Hmm, not bad.”
It was not bad at all.
It was one of the best-tasting hams I had ever eaten.
I was confident that it was several times more delicious than the ham commonly sold in the capital.
Is this the result of the Lucas-style mana cooking technique?
‘With this, it might be worth considering a menu using ham and sausage.’
It seemed like Mana was replacing the function of modern science.
In my previous life, I was sure that it tasted much better than the taste of ham I could remember.
‘I should try it regularly from now on?’
So far, it’s been a passing grade.
The important thing is how well it would go with the cooking in the future.
“It’s ham.”
Andrea said in a slightly disappointed tone.
“Do you prefer raw meat better?”
“Of course. When you taste the living texture of the meat you hunted yourself, that’s when you truly feel alive.”
“You’ll probably change your mind today.”
“I think you’d lose this time, boss.”
Andrea confidently looked at me.
There was pride in her face when it came to meat.
“You’ll find out when you taste.”
As soon as I got the ham and sausage, I thought of a menu.
It was Budae Jjigae, the traditional Korean stew.
‘Egg-fried, spam, gimbap, sausage, and vegetable stir-fry all come to mind, and thinly-sliced potato with ham and stir-fried onion is also good, and putting ham pieces in rolled omelette too…’
However, the representative menu that comes to mind when it comes to ham is undoubtedly Budae Jjigae.
It is the best stew made by boiling the Red Beans and minced meat with broth, adding a generous amount of sauce, then placing various types of ham and sausage on top, and finishing with green onions, kimchi, and tofu.
A miraculous stew that can be customized with additions according to one’s taste, such as rice cakes and dumplings.
A dish that symbolized Korea’s poverty, boiled with leftover ingredients received from US military bases.
I was thinking of making the legendary K-stew.
“Andrea.”
“Yes, boss?”
“Set the table while I make the stew. And bring out the green onions and onions, and get the flour noodles from the refrigerator.”
“Understood!”
While she moved, I cut the ham and sausages into bite-sized pieces.
I sliced the sausages diagonally, long and thin, and long vertically.
I cut the square ham into appropriate sizes and shredded it, creating various shapes in the process.
After that, I chopped the green onions that Andrea brought, and thinly sliced the onions to place them on a wide pot.
The blue-green onions and white onions were neatly arranged on the black pot bottom.
On top of them, I neatly placed the freshly cut ham and sausages.
Next to it, I had prepared minced meat to be used when the ham came in.
I also cut the tofu, which I had made yesterday, into appropriate sizes.
I thinly sliced the kimchi and placed it on top of the sausages.
Ham, sausages, green onions, and onions, along with minced meat, tofu, and kimchi.
“The ingredients are all set.”
I sprinkled doenjang (soybean paste), minced garlic, gochujang (red pepper paste), chili powder, soy sauce, and pepper along the side of the meat.
I poured in the beef bone broth made from boiling Tuo’s bones.
The ratio of water to bone broth was 3 to 2.
If the broth was too thick, the soup becomes heavy, and if there was more water, the taste would be a bit bland, so I personally preferred to keep this ratio.
I turned on the flames of the flare range and waited for the soup to boil.
Bubbling.
“Is it done…?”
Andrea asked, just watching the soup boil as I did.
Her nose twitched vigorously.
Even now, as she was asking me, she sniffed the budae jjigae (army stew) smell.
“I’d say 90% of it is already done.”
“It looks easier than I thought, huh?”
“It’s not a difficult dish, as long as you have enough ingredients.”
I added canned beans, sold in the empire, on top of it.
They had a similar taste and texture to the baked beans in the original world, so they were quite good.
Bubbling away.
As the soup began to boil, creating larger bubbles, I used a ladle to mix the seasoning and ham here and there.
The soup gradually turned red, boiling and splattering with rough bubbles.
“Ah, I crave ramen.”
Adding ramen to the army stew makes it a great meal as well as an appetizer for alcohol.
Sadly, there was no ramen.
Instead, I prepared a thick wheat flour noodle.
In other words, it was an udon noodle.
The smell of properly boiled army stew wafted softly throughout the restaurant.
I placed the portable flare range on the table set up by Andrea and placed the pot of fully cooked army stew on top of it.
Bubbling, bubbling, bubbling.
It was driving me crazy.
Simply looking at it made my mouth water continuously, as I had only eaten a late breakfast and had been fasting since then.
“This is a success.”
I could tell just by the smell.
This was the best ham dish I had cooked so far.
“When can we eat, miss?”
Upon Andrea’s question, I looked at the boiling army stew for a moment.
It was good enough to eat right now.
Except for the green onions and minced meat, the ingredients had already been cooked once.
However, I waited a little longer for the soup to become thicker.
It needed to be a little thicker for a deeper flavor.
The rich smell of beef bones, pork, green onions, and various seasonings mixed together, stimulating my sense of smell.
‘Now is the time.’
I scooped a ladleful of the bubbling army stew and handed it to her.
A hearty ladleful filled with white tofu, sausages, ham, and green onions in the red soup.
After serving the army stew in my own bowl as well, I added the prepared noodles.
“Enjoy your meal.”
“Try the soup first.”
At my suggestion, Andrea took a spoonful of the soup.
“…Huh?”
“How is it?”
Her eyes widened as she looked at me.
“This… this is what it tastes like with ham in it?”
“I told you, this would be different.”
I knew what the taste was like.
The fact that the picky and prickly Andrea was making that expression just by tasting the soup.
It had already far exceeded the passing grade.
I followed her and took a spoonful of the army stew soup.
“Wow!”
The deep taste of the hot and spicy army stew.
The rich, mouth-watering taste created by the mixture of beef bones, pork, kimchi, gochujang, and various seasonings stimulated my palate.
“This is it.”
This is army stew.
No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t make this taste until now.
Surely, there must be the taste of my own hands at work in this dish.
I was satisfied.
I scooped up ham and green onions with a spoon and placed them over the steamed rice.
A spoonful of rice mixed with the sauce.
“Ah, it’s so hot!”
Too hot, wasn’t it?
It almost burnt the roof of my mouth.
But regardless of that, it was seriously delicious.
“This is it. This is the taste.”
I reveled in ecstasy every time the red broth of Budae-jjigae soaked my lips and tongue.
As expected, the king of stews was Budae-jjigae.
‘I’m really craving ramen now.’
I picked up wheat flour noodles that looked like udon with tongs.
The broth was coated smoothly on the white noodles.
I picked it up with some ham using chopsticks.
“Slurp!”
The well-cooked carbohydrates met the ham and broth, creating a perfect harmony of taste.
When I had finished about half a bowl of rice,
There was a scraping sound in front of me as a chair was pushed back.
Andrea stood up from her seat.
“Where are you going while we’re eating?”
“Well, the thing is…”
She was holding an empty rice bowl.
“I was going to get another bowl…”
“Is the dish made with ham tasty too?”
“Uhm, y-yes, it’s delicious.”
Earlier, she had said the ham tasted bad, and now she seemed embarrassed, unable to meet my eyes properly.
“I told you it’s delicious.”
She hurriedly walked towards the rice cooker.
She scooped twice as much rice as she had before and hurriedly returned to her seat.
“I’ll enjoy the meal.”
“Eat well. And you don’t have to greet me every time.”
We silently finished the entire Budae-jjigae.
Next time, I should try to make ramen noodles somehow.
“It’s so good.”
***
After another late-night shift, Andrea returned to the accommodation that Lucas had arranged for her.
“Ugh, I’m so exhausted.”
Working from morning until late at night, her body felt always felt completely drained.
“I need to train… “
Normally, she would always practice with her sword before going to bed, as it was part of her daily routine.
It was a warrior’s habit to survive in the wild.
However, since starting work here, she hadn’t even thought about nighttime training.
She worked too hard at the restaurant.
Who would have thought there would be so many customers?
She spent nearly every day working, except for the designated day off.
There was one thing she realized after working here for over three weeks.
“Is Lucas some kind of monster?”
How could he work like this without showing any signs of fatigue?
In fact, he was working just as hard as her, if not more.
Wasn’t he the one in charge of preparing all the dishes in the kitchen by himself?
“If you consider my physical strength, I’m not an ordinary knight…”
Why was such a talented person rotting away in a restaurant?
“I shouldn’t be lazy about training either.”
After finishing my night training and washing up.
Andrea, who got up with that resolution, felt different than usual.
How should I put it?
My body feels heavy.
‘Am I tired?’
It was when I was looking at the mirror, thinking about it.
“…Huh?”
Hasn’t my muscle definition become blurry?