Transition to Another World, Land Mines Included. 049

Transition to Another World, Land Mines Included.

ACT 2: UNION
049: Let’s Make Sauce! Part 2

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When we got back to Aera’s shop, Haruka and Tohya were already there. Apparently, the blackboards were quite hefty, so Yuki had decided to fetch the two first so they could help her carry them here.

“Nice to meet you, Aera-san. I’m Haruka.”

“And I’m Tohya.”

“Nice to meet you. Nao-san and the girls have been a great help to me.”

“No problem. They have lots of free time anyway, since I was busy with something else,” Haruka shared.

“Thank you. So, shall we make some Inspeel sauce now?”

“Sure. We can make tonkatsu after that.”

“OK… The kitchen is a little small for all of us, so I’ll bring everything out here.”

Aera had designed her kitchen to accommodate only one chef, so it would be impossible for all of us to fit in there. Thus, we used the kitchen to wash the ceramic pots we’d bought, then brought them to the main dining area and placed them on a table.

“So, Inspeel sauce.”

The old pot Aera was using to hold her sauce was slightly bigger than ours. Opening the lid, we could see that it was filled about four-fifths of the way with sauce. Using a scoop, Aera then divided the sauce out to the three new pots we’d bought.

“That’s not much… Will it be OK?” Natsuki asked.

Since Aera’s new pots were much larger, there was just enough sauce to cover the bottom of the pots. I’d heard of sauce in Japan being made in this manner, with some old stock being used in the process of making new stock, but this seemed to be quite a tiny amount…

“No problem. It’ll just take slightly longer to ferment, and we can help the process along by chopping up the fruits and vegetables finely.”

“I see.”

“Next, we’ll need fruits. We have Dindle this time, and since we’re using both the peel and the fruit itself, the sauce should be super rich!”

“Will we be using all the fruits we harvested today?”

We had three backpacks full of fruit. I doubt we could fit everything into the four pots.

“Oh, of course not! That would be a waste… I mean, the flavor of Dindle will become too overpowering, so we’ll need just two-thirds… Maybe even half will do.”

“…Oh, not because it’ll be a waste?” I teased.

“Absolutely! It’s all about the flavor!” Aera defended herself.

“Exactly! It’s all about the flavor,” Yuki was quick to back her up.

“Yes. We must get the flavor right,” Natsuki added too.

It was obvious that they were all keen to eat the Dindle fruit themselves.

“Well, you did pick most of the Dindle, Aera-san, so you call the shots…” I conceded.

“Yep! We’ll need to have some dessert to go with tonkatsu!”

“Agreed. So, we just need to slice up the Dindle and put it into the pots?” Natsuki asked as she started taking fruits out of the backpacks and lining them up on the table.

“Yes. Please wash them clean, remove the stems, and slice up the fruit. Please wait.”

Aera then brought over a large barrel filled with water for us to wash the Dindle in. We then started working on the fruit.

“Oh, please don’t put Dindle into this pot. We’ll use it later to make tonkatsu.”

“Oh, that’s right.”

After some time, it was clear that Aera was the most skilled out of all of us with the knife. While slicing fruit wasn’t a difficult task, Aera was the only one who could do it so quickly, her knife seemed like a blur to the eye.

Haruka and Yuki were not bad too, probably because of their Skill. After that came Natsuki.

“It’s a little embarrassing… To lose out to Yuki,” she murmured quietly.

It must be tough on her, since she used to be such a pro at cooking.

Tohya and I were, of course, at about the same level. In the time it took us to finish one fruit, Haruka and the girls would have finished two, and Aera three. We were clearly outmatched.

However, our knife techniques were much better compared to our past selves, so it must be because of the Disassembly Skill.

“Alright, that should be enough. Let’s start mixing.”

We’d sliced up about half of all the Dindle and distributed them among the pots. Now, Aera started to mix the sauce with the fruits.

The Dindle were quite soft, so after a little mixing, the pulp broke down and the mixture soon resembled ketchup. Due to the large amount of fruit in the biggest pots, most of the liquid was Dindle juice. Only a hint of the original sauce base was left, giving off a faint aroma.

“We can just leave the mixture to ferment, but mixing will speed up the process. When we make it at home, we just add the fruits in little by little, so it doesn’t matter in that situation.”

We had it a little tougher since we wanted to make a large quantity from a small amount. Usually, the process involved dumping fruit and vegetable offcuts into a whole pot of sauce and leaving it to ferment by itself.

“Next will be the vegetables. Let’s use what we have in the kitchen. I have lots of wilted vegetables to use because, you know, there are no customers… Fufu… F-Fufu…”

Aera was laughing, but her eyes were dark… Scary!

With our help, Aera moved several wooden crates of vegetables out from her fridge into the cooking area. As she said, most were already slightly wilted. So this was the result of her small profits and quick returns strategy.

“Please put the vegetables into the pots. Be careful to distribute the different types equally. I don’t think any of it has started to rot, but do keep an eye out for those,” she instructed.

“Do we put all of it in? What about proportions…?”

“Don’t worry, the sauces should turn out fine. Just be careful when distributing the vegetables which have a stronger flavor.”

We started to wash and slice ingredients again. I wish we had a food processor, since it was clear that most of us, especially Tohya, were getting a little tired. Aera was the only one who kept up the pace.

“You’re such a quick worker, Aera-san,” I commented.

“Ahahaha! It was tough being a chef’s apprentice. I used to spend half a day just peeling potatoes. But I was young and passionate with big dreams… Compared to those times, slicing fruits and vegetables is a super easy task.”

I’d heard that cooking school in our modern era was tough, but it seemed even more so in this world. Without any machinery to help with work, most of the prep and cooking had to be done manually. In other words, all of that fell onto the shoulders of a newbie.

“But you really wanted to become a chef, right?” Haruka asked.

“Yes. I used to cook for my friends back in my hometown, but I wanted more people to enjoy the food I made, so owning a restaurant became my dream. I worked hard at cooking and saving up money… Just thinking of my own restaurant kept me going through the tough trainings. It took me a long time to get to this point, and I finally have my own shop… But…”

We were all speechless.

Who was it!? The scoundrel who scammed this poor girl! We looked at each other and nodded. We had to help her, or we’d never be able to live with ourselves.

“A few days ago, I was so helpless, and didn’t know what to do… So I’m really grateful to Nao-san for coming to my shop,” Aera finished.

“Oh, don’t worry about it. I was just wandering around the area. We’re glad to have met you too, Aera-san. Right, guys?”

“Yep! It’s great to know a place that serves good food.”

“And you’re teaching us how to make Inspeel sauce.”

“I’m glad to hear that.”

We continued slicing vegetables, putting them into pots, and mixing everything together. Finally, we emptied the wooden crates, and each pot was at least 80% filled.

“Thanks for your help. We’re almost done, but we need to work on the potatoes now.”

Aera brought out another wooden crate, this one filled with what looked like potatoes from our world. I knew these were really cheap, since many people ate them as a staple food instead of bread.

“These can be sliced and put into the pots as well, but since they determine the sweetness, we have to be careful with how much we put in. I like to make my sauce sweet, so please add about five potatoes into this pot.”

“So for our smaller pot, about four will do?” Haruka asked.

“Yes… But since there’s only Dindle fruit in there, you can even add up to five.”

Following Aera’s advice, we sliced up five potatoes. For Aera’s huge pots, we ended up putting at least ten into each.

“Next is herbs. We’ll put those that we harvested today into the pots. Like the vegetables, let’s not put in too many of the strongly-flavored ones, though that will depend on your personal preferences.”

Tearing up the herbs by hand, we added those to the pots as well. Not really knowing the exact amounts, we made sure to ask Aera and follow her advice closely.

“Lastly, spices. We’ll add just a little bit of salt, as well as other spices. Adding too much will spoil the sauce,” Aera explained.

“What if we make a mistake and add too much?”

“Then we’ll just have to adjust the volume of sauce and make more. I did it once, when I accidentally dropped a whole bottle of spice into the sauce… My mum got so angry at me,” Aera recalled with a wry smile.

For normal dishes, we could just throw it away if we messed up. However, Inspeel sauce was a base for making more Inspeel sauce, so dumping it out was not an option.

Maybe we should keep our sauce in two separate containers after it was finished, just in case. If we messed up making the sauce, we’d still have a backup.

“Now, we just have to mix it, and leave it to ferment for a week. We can mix it during this time to help it ferment quicker.”

Aera brought out what looked like an industrial-sized wooden spatula from the kitchen and used it to mix up the sauces. There was so much sauce in the huge pots that I wondered if stirring it did any good. In contrast, our pot was smaller, so the mixing process was much easier.

“Uuuh, it’s really thick.”

“Let me do it, Aera-san,” Tohya offered.

“Oh…”

Aera glanced at the huge pots, then at Tohya. After some thought, she handed the wooden spatula over.

“Sorry, but thank you, Tohya-san.”

Compared to Aera, Tohya was much more powerful, and though he easily managed to mix the contents in the pots really well, it looked nothing like sauce at this point. In fact, it looked more like a salad with chopped up ingredients.

“Is this OK, Aera-san? It doesn’t look like sauce at all,” I asked doubtfully.

“It’s no problem. It may look like this now, but the moisture will be removed overnight. It’ll start to look like sauce after about three days. With some mixing, we should have a nice smooth sauce after a week.”

“Just a week…?”

I understood the part about removing moisture, since we’d used the same method with salt to pickle meat and forcefully draw out all its water content overnight. However, I wasn’t sure how the same process could work over a week to turn this mixture into sauce. The bacteria at work must be really powerful at metabolizing things.

Or was the black sauce some type of bacteria itself, or even like some slime…

Damn! That’s not a good train of thought. I shouldn’t think of that delicious sauce in such a manner.

“Anyway, the main process is finished. Thanks to everyone!”

“Thank you too, Aera-san. Now it’s my turn.”

“Finally, tonkatsu!”

Aera smiled as she leaned forward in anticipation.

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