Ishura - Volume 5 - Chapter Aft

Afterword

Thank you for reading. I am Keiso. Ishura has been continuing for a fairly long while now, and because of the support from everyone reading this story, I’ve been able to publish five full volumes now. With this volume, all eight matches of the first round have finished. If I was to label all the shura introductory episodes—up until the beginning of the Sixways Exhibition in Volume 3—as part one, then with the last episode of the next volume in the series, I believe that the second part of the story will have come to a close.

The fact that I was able to continue the Ishura series up until this point is thanks to Kureta, for all the wonderful illustrations they have provided the story; to Nagahori, who I am constantly giving deadline-related nightmares; to all the many people involved in publishing and marketing Ishura, as well as to all of you, the readers. I am truly grateful. I will continue to work hard until I’m able to bring the story of Ishura to a close.

In honor of the fifth volume, I will write out how to make a five-meal serving of Napolitan spaghetti.

First, spread oil in a deep saucepot and cook half an onion, diced, until translucent. Once the onions have cooled slightly, add three hundred grams of ground beef and pork mixture directly to the pot. After adding in five grams of salt, one egg, and ground pepper and nutmeg to taste, you should take whatever you used to stir the onions around—either a spatula or a ladle—and mix the meat with the onions, pressing it all up against the sides of the pot as you work it. By doing this, it’s possible to create the main base of hamburger steak inside the pot without ever having to get your hands dirty. If your style is to use bread crumbs or some other ingredient to keep it all together, add that in as well. Apparently, you can use leftover rice to do the same thing. I don’t really feel like it does much to add to the flavor at all, so I generally don’t throw anything else in.

Use your spatula or ladle to divide the hamburger-steak base into three sections, and if you use the walls of the pot to adjust how it looks, you should be able to bring them together into the shape of a rugby ball. From there, heat them up, and after heating them on high to get a nice char, flip them over, following relatively the same motions as when you shaped them, and then finally place the lid on the pot. Heat them all the way through on low to medium heat, and your hamburger steak is finished. You’ll make three at once, so you’ll be able to have three meals’ worth of hamburger steak all set to go.

Wait, I just remembered, but I actually mentioned how to make Napolitan spaghetti at the beginning. As long as you aren’t cooking your hamburger steaks only after they’ve been completely packed together, there should be leftover pieces of ground meat and oil on the bottom of the pot. Use this oil to fry up bacon or any leftover ground meat. You should also have a leftover half of the onion as well, so thinly slice that up and cook it, too. Once everything has been cooked through enough, season it with a suitable amount of butter and ketchup, add in cooked spaghetti, and you will finish your Napolitan spaghetti. You can adjust the amount of sauce you’ll end up with through the ratio of ketchup you add, but using the half onion as a baseline, I believe this will result in about two meals’ worth of Napolitan spaghetti. You’ll only need to wash your spatula and pot, seeing as it doesn’t even use a bowl to mix together the meat—making cleanup a total breeze as well.

If you calculate out the one hundred and fifty grams of the ground beef and pork mixture to be around four hundred and fifty yen, one egg around thirty yen, and one onion around eighty yen, then when you exclude the cost of any seasonings and the pasta, you’ll be able to cover five meals with just five hundred and sixty yen. You can eat hamburger steaks and Napolitan spaghetti for little more than one hundred and twelve yen a meal! This is the biggest advantage to cooking for yourself. Why don’t you all give it a try? Nothing would make me happier than if you used the money you saved up by doing this to purchase the next volume of Ishura.