To be precise, it was time to make breakfast. How about making my favourite Japanese breakfast dish?
Naturally, I would not shortchange my familiars. Let’s have a nice full-course Japanese breakfast!
Today’s menus would be:
– Miso Soup with Potatoes & Onions (harvested from Alban’s field)
– A Sweet & Spicy Meaty Tamagoyaki made with minced Cockatrice meat
(It’s like making a meaty omelette, just beat cooked minced meat into the egg and roll it up as usual)
– Beef Shigureni or Simmered Dungeon Beef with Ginger
– Rice Balls with Bonito Flakes
– Pickled Eggplant
– Pickled Cucumber
Oh, and there’s tea for anyone who wants it.
Fer and Grandpa Gon froze in place at the sight of this beautiful breakfast. They must be very impressed.
Kukuku…
[1]
“What happened to the m-meat?”
“What do you mean?” I asked innocently. “It’s in the Tamagoyaki and look, isn’t this beef a pure meat dish?”
“T-tiny!! The bowl is too tiny!!”
I swear, Fer actually shrieked.
“Master, aren’t the portions…”
“Hmm, eat if you like, you can have seconds too, you know?” I said, beaming over my set tray of Japanese breakfast set, complete with a reasonable one-person portion of Beef Shigureni.
“Kuuuhh…”
“Umu…”
Breakfast happened under the same bitter silence.
Heh, I could continue this you know? I won’t stop giving you the promised three meals a day, but nothing states that I have to give you a stupid amount of meat for every single meal. Furthermore, there’s plenty of meat in the food I gave you. Lots of university students would cry tears of gratitude and joy for this, you know?!
However, if you two apologise to me, I may consider stopping. Not that I expect an apology from these two titans of power. The concept of apologising to the weak probably doesn’t exist for them.
If that’s the case, please continue to enjoy the Limited Edition – Mostly Vegetarian Meals, courtesy of Mukouda.
For lunch, I decided to go with [2] Krapao Rice.
Naturally, it’s Krapao Rice with plenty of vegetables.
As a side dish, hmm, since I’m serving a Southeast Asian main dish, let’s go with a Vietnamese Salad Roll stuffed with crab-flavoured fishcake.
First order of business, purchase ingredients such as rice paper for the spring rolls, oyster sauce, basil leaves, nampla sauce, the crab-flavoured fishcake and some sweet chilli sauce.
Once I have gathered my ingredients, it was time to cook.
Let’s get started on the Krapao Rice.
First chop the onions, carrots, eggplants, and green peppers into 1cm cubes. Next, finely mince the garlic and chop the Hawk’s Claw Chilli into rings.
Heat the frying pan with some oil and stir-fry the chopped onion and chilli (I used fewer chillies since Sui is sensitive to spicy food). Fry until everything is fragrant.
Next, add the garlic. Once the garlic has browned a little, add the minced Dungeon Pork and Dungeon Beef. Fry until the meat had browned and is a little crisped up before adding the carrots. When the carrots have cooked through somewhat, add the eggplant and green pepper, and continue frying.
When everything has more or less cooked through, stir in the fish sauce and oyster sauce that had been pre-mixed in a bowl.
The finishing touch for Krapao was a few torn-up basil leaves.
Serve the Krapao on a bowl of rice with a sunny-side-up egg on top.
After prearranging several bowls of rice, Krapao and egg, I put the Krapao Rice away in my [Item Box] and got started on the Spring Rolls.
To make the spring rolls, first, tear the lettuce into appropriate sizes. Cut the carrots and cucumber into thin strips. The Crab-flavoured fishcakes I bought were the size of wieners so I could put about one and a half sticks into each spring roll.
To assemble, first, dip the rice paper in warm water, quickly take it out and place it on a flat surface. Arrange the vegetables and fishcake close to the bottom half of the rice paper and quickly roll it up before the rice paper dries. Cut the Spring Rolls in half and arranged them nicely on a plate. Garnish with sweet chilli sauce and more lettuce.
“Fufufu, yes, yes, green is indeed beautiful~”
Now, shall I show everyone my masterpiece~?
“Everyone~ Lunch is ready~~”
……………..
………
….
“Pu~ kukukuku~”
I know it was bad form of me to laugh, but remembering the look on Fer and Granda Gon’s faces was just-
“Puh hah! Hahaha!”
-the way their eyes and mouths popped open and going ‘m-meat’ and ‘where m-meat’ was just too pathetic. It was as though their entire world had ended. It was despair! I had just witnessed pure despair and misery on the titan’s face!
Ah, but after three meals of mostly vegetable dishes, even Sui and Dora-chan were saying something like ‘I want meat, meat’. Hmm. Well, I was determined to stay strong when Fer suddenly said.
“I’m sorry.”
“Eh?”
“Indeed, please accept our apologies.”
“… do you even know what you’re sorry for?”
“Uhh,”
“Umumu..?”
“Haaahhh, never mind. It’s fine. I’ll forgive you this time,”
“Then…”
“…meat?”
“Yes, yes, I’ll serve you guys plenty of meat for dinner tonight,” after all, as annoying as those two were, they were still my main income earner. I would not be in this position without them. I should grill them some High Ranking Dungeon Beef and Gigantic Minotaur Steaks.
Ah, speaking of which, since it’s still early in the afternoon, let’s have a look and see whether the Uranus monster meat are ready…
Please read this at kitchennovel dot com ~
When I reached the Adventurer’s Guild, Willem-san rushed past me in a hurry.
“… …?”
“Ah, Mukouda-san, please go straight to the warehouse, Johan will handle your business for you!” then, with a final wave, he disappeared…
Oh, right, he had to go to the Royal Capital soon. Right. Thus, I made my way to the warehouse where Johan-san greeted me with an ‘Oi, you’re here’.
“Yes, the Guild Master asked me to come here.”
“Ou, hold on a minute, I’ll give you the breakdown.”
“No, meat first,” Fer said.
“Ah, but-”
“Meat.”
“Um…”
“Meat.”
Great, now Grandpa Gon had joined him too. I sighed and said, “Just bring out the meat.”
“Ahem, well, ah, we have dismantled a Cockatrice, a Rockbird, an Orc…”
Chomp.
Nom.
“Oi! Why are you eating them raw!?”
“Meat.”
“Meat.”
“Oi, you two, if you eat too much now, you’ll spoil your appetite for later.”
“Muu, why can’t I eat it?”
“It’s raw!”
“Raw is fine.”
“Indeed, it is fine for me too,”
“… so you don’t want dinner?”
“Gunununu…”
“Nuu…”
Taking pity on them. I cut a bit more of the raw meat and tossed it to them. “Okay, fine. Have a bit more first, but I’m telling you now, it’s best you don’t overeat so that you can enjoy dinner better, okay?”
“”What are we eating tonight?”” asked Dora-chan.
“I’ll be making steaks, all kinds of thick and juicy steaks~”
“OOooohhhh…”
Eww, the drooling was disgusting, but at least they had stopped eating my raw ingredients.
“Ahem, Mukouda-san? We still have a few more…”
“Ah, yes? Alright,” I followed after Johan-san who led me to a different cooling room.
I diligently put all the meat away into my [Item Box].
“This is the last one,” said Johan-san as he wheeled in a… rather conspicuous-looking piece of meat.
“It’s the Giant Mimic Frog.”
“… yes, I could tell…” how could I not? The meat was still in the shape of a frog…
“To be fair, it would be great if we could buy this one,” Johan-san said wistfully. “The quality of meat is the highest I had ever seen, I’m sure people would be scrambling to buy it.”
This grotesque frog-shaped thing?
I was just on the verge of telling Johan-san to just take it away when Grandpa Gon said, “That’s one of my favourites, Master. I look forward to seeing how you would improve it.”
Kuuhh… is that a challenge? If that’s the case, I have no choice but to take it. I placed the Giant Mimic Frog into my [Item Box] with a stiff face.
“Right, now that all the meat has been put away, let me explain the material breakdown. First, there’s…”
I did try to pay attention, but Johan-san’s explanation was so detailed that I more or less blanked out for most of it.
“… the total comes to 3610 gold.”
I blinked, finally coming back to myself.
“Wow, that’s… that’s quite a lot, isn’t it?”
Johan-san laughed, “That’s mostly because you brought in beasts from Uranus. Anyway, I’ve prepared platinum and large gold coins as well. Please confirm.”
I confirmed the amount in the sack.
“My, my, life is definitely more interesting with you around, my brother. Bring something interesting next time too, eh?”
“I shall endeavour to do so, but perhaps in moderation. Otherwise, the hair that Willem-san has so painstakingly grown on his head will fall out.”
“Bwahahahaha! There’s that too!”
“See you again.”
“Ou!”
Now that I have collected both meat and money, it was time to return home.
Time to cook the promised steaks for my gluttonous familiars~!
[Gumihou: Hmm, deleted the entire ‘yay, we go home, steak’ scene, because it made the ending draggy.]
[1] Adjust breakfast making scene, and adjust the text so that the menu looks like… a menu. Scrap the narrative style for something more dramatic. And, yes, I put in the “Kukuku…” too, lol.
[2] Krapao Rice or Pad Krapao – Thai Holy Basil Stir-Fry on Rice