Bonus Short Stories
Cooking Lessons in Another World
“So...” Mel glanced between the three of us. “There is food in the temple, but who can cook well?”
“I can at least heat things up,” said Momo.
“If I’ve got instructions, I can cope...” Anna answered with an apologetic expression.
I shrugged. “Usually, I just eat what I can get.”
Mel let out a big sigh. “Fine. I will make something. The food we bought in Cornet was delicious, though...”
Ah, well, she lived underground for so long, so I guess it makes sense that she’s still thinking about all the different dishes she got to sample in Laphroaig. Mel is always looking after us, so I want to pay her back somehow... I glanced around the fields and saw all sorts of crops growing. There’s so much variety in the food back on Earth. Perhaps, as an otherworlder, I can offer her something you don’t usually find in this world.
“Huh? Those are...”
There—I’d found several ingredients that were familiar to me.
◇
“Elementalist, are you sure this will taste good?”
“Makoto, should we really be eating that much oil?”
“Is this the right temperature, Sir Makoto?!”
Mel and Anna were watching me skeptically, and Momo was my assistant. I wasn’t great at cooking, but I was able to rely on my memories from Earth to prepare something.
The ingredients were:
Potato (well, something similar)
Fish (caught from the mountaintop pool of water)
Oil (from some fruits that looked like olives—I’d squashed and pressed them)
Salt (from the temple’s stores)
Flour (from powdering the wheat in the fields)
Those five ingredients were what I needed to cook the traditional meal of England: fish and chips.
This is about the best thing I can prepare.
Some sliced potatoes and floured fish fillets were crackling away in the hot, bubbling oil. The bubbles had been massive at first, but they were gradually getting smaller. Meanwhile, the potatoes and fish were turning a lovely golden brown.
Nearly done...
Using some makeshift chopsticks—twigs taken from a tree—I lifted the chips and fillets from the oil. I set them on some large leaves that we were using as plates. The final touch? A sprinkling of salt.
“Sir Makoto? Why are you salting the food with your hand so high up?”
“It tastes better that way.”
“Oh, I see!”
Actually, I was just repeating what I’d seen on some cooking program. Now that I thought about it, that show had used olive oil pretty frequently. I’d made this meal the same way by accident.
“It’s done,” I announced. “Fish and chips.” I couldn’t tell them the dish was from another world, so I just said it was from my hometown.
“Hm...” Mel scrutinized the food. “You just fried it and added salt.”
“W-Well,” Anna stammered. “He made it for us, so...”
The two of them hesitantly tucked in. After a bite, their eyes widened.
“So good!”
“It’s delicious?!”
They both quickly took another bite.
Yup, fried food is the best!
Contrary to their enthusiasm, Momo was just staring at me.
“You’re not going to eat?” I asked.
“I...” Her gaze dropped to my neck.
Ah. Apparently, she preferred her food raw.
“Here,” I said, undoing some buttons on my shirt and tapping my neck.
“Th-Thanks for the food,” she said before starting to drink.
While she was doing that, I picked up a chip and bit into it. Better than expected. Maybe even the best meal I’ve eaten in this era.
Junk food was officially added to our party’s repertoire.
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