“For crying out loud. They could’ve let me take it easy for a couple minutes, at least,” I griped to myself as I thought through my options for the evening’s meal. “If I make something that takes too long to cook, those four are gonna riot. Plus, I’d really rather whip up something simple and be done with it, anyway...”
Fel and Gon said that leviathan tastes a lot like ice dragon, but I dunno, I thought. Looking at the leviathan meat, which I’d already removed from my Item Box, it did have that same whitefish-esque quality that I’d seen in the ice dragon meat. That said, when I prodded the leviathan meat, I noted that it felt at least a little more plump and malleable than the dragon meat had.
“Guess a quick taste test is always the right place to start with new ingredients like this,” I said. I sliced off a very small portion of the meat, salted and peppered it, and then quickly cooked it up in a frying pan. It still looked like the ice dragon meat after it was cooked, and I wondered if it would also taste like cod as I popped it into my mouth. “Whoa! Now that’s really something...”
The meat really was similar to the ice dragon’s in some ways. It had that same nice, flaky texture. That said, its flavor was completely different. Its umami was out of this world, to the point that I could barely even describe it in words. It was like all the tastiest whitefish I’d ever eaten put together, then cranked up to a hundred and fifty percent. I mean, it was just plain good.
“I could probably get away with serving it up as is, but that feels like a bit of a waste,” I said to myself. “I bet this would go amazingly with all sorts of sauces. I could make a meunière, or even just grill it with some butter and soy sauce—a pretty obvious way to go, sure, but an awesome one. Oh, or I could do a butter lemon sauce! What else...? Oh, of course! This might work really well with that seasoning I saw on my Online Supermarket the other day!”
The seasoning in question had come into stock just recently. I’d realized I was almost out of ketchup, opened my skill’s menu to stock up, and randomly stumbled across a new product in the process. It was a tomato-based sauce made by a company that was famous for its ketchup, and its description claimed that it would “brighten up any dish with a burst of delicious flavor!” I’d been thinking of using it on something, and this seemed like a perfect chance.
There were three different varieties of the sauce, which meant it’d be pretty flexible, and since making tomato sauce from scratch could be such a pain, it seemed like it could expand my easy-cooking repertoire quite a bit. Plus, most importantly of all, my instincts were telling me that it had to be tasty. That brand’s ketchup and canned tomatoes had always served me well in the past, so I had faith that the new sauce would be a winner as well.
“All right, I think I know what to make! I’ll go with a simple leviathan meunière, to start!”
I quickly bought up the extra ingredients I’d need from my Online Supermarket, including the tomato sauce made by the famous ketchup brand.
“That should do it! Now then, first things first...”
I started by lightly seasoning the pieces of leviathan meat with salt and pepper, then coating them with flour and shaking off any excess. Next, I melted some salted butter in a few frying pans, into which I laid the pieces of leviathan meat, cooking them until both sides were nice and crispy. I pulled the cooked meat out at that point and got ready to use the same pans to make the sauce in.
“I’ll go with butter and soy sauce for this pan’s batch, I think. And this one can be the butter lemon sauce,” I muttered.
Salted butter and a splash of soy were all that was in the first sauce I was preparing. Once those two ingredients were nicely combined, it was good to go! The butter lemon sauce was simple as well—it started out with some salted butter too, followed by lemon juice, salt, and a bit of coarsely ground black pepper.
“Freshly grinding pepper really does make a difference! What an aroma!” I said. I was using a brand of black pepper that came packaged in its own little pepper mill. Products like that made me more grateful than ever to have access to my Online Supermarket.
Once the butter lemon sauce was all mixed together, I moved on to the tomato sauce meunière. I didn’t think that butter and the tomato sauce would work well together—it’d come out too heavy—so I cooked the leviathan for that dish in olive oil instead. The sauce didn’t need any extra work at all, so all I really had to do was crisp up the leviathan, at which point...
“Okay, I think this is ready!”
My voice, it seemed, had carried farther than I’d expected it to. No sooner had the words left my mouth than Fel, Gon, Dora-chan, and Sui came crashing into the kitchen like a raging avalanche of fur, scales, and slime.
“It is finished?! Good! Let us eat at once!”
“Finally, a taste of leviathan! It’s been far too long!”
《Tell me about it! The wait was killing me!》
《Leviathan meat! Yaaay!》
“Okay, okay, back it up! I’ll bring it out to you, so go wait in the living room!” I scolded. Honestly, talk about overexcited, I thought, holding back a chuckle as I watched them plod back out of the kitchen.
Just a few minutes later, I brought out the plates of leviathan meunière to serve to everyone. “I decided to make a few simple meunières this time,” I explained. “This one uses a butter soy sauce, this one’s a butter lemon sauce, and this one doesn’t have a sauce yet, buuut...”
I brought out my secret ingredient: the three varieties of tomato sauce I’d purchased. One of them was a fairly standard sauce made with onions and crushed tomatoes, one had a ton of garlic in it and was supposedly very flavorful, and one was made with a base of tomatoes and red peppers and was slightly spicy. Apparently, that last one was based on bravas sauce, which originated in Spain. I topped everyone’s currently sauceless leviathan pieces with a little of each flavor.
“Oh! Actually, Sui, the bravas sauce—that’s this one—is a little spicy. Maybe we should skip that one for you?” I suggested. I’d taste tested a dab of the sauce, and it definitely had a decent kick. I had a feeling that it might be a bit much for Sui’s childish palate.
《Aww, but Sui wants to try all of them!》 Sui complained.
“Okay, but just a little to start! If you end up liking it, I’ll put more on the rest of them.”
《Okaaay!》
With that, everyone had a grand total of five flavors of meunière to sample. The gluttonous quartet wasted no time digging right in.
“Ahh, yes. Leviathan meat is truly as delectable as I remember!” Fel said.
“Yes, indeed it is! This flavor matches my memories of this meat precisely, but my liege’s cooking has made it all the better!” Gon agreed.
《Holy crap, this stuff’s awesome!》 Dora-chan exclaimed.
《Leviathan meat’s sooo yummy!》 Sui chimed in.
Their long wait for leviathan meat had finally paid off, and clearly, it was living up to even their hyperinflated expectations. They polished off their first portions in the blink of an eye and asked for seconds right away. The bravas sauce really did turn out to be a bit too spicy for Sui, by the way, so it asked for the four nonspicy sauces for its second serving.
I think it’s time for me to dig in too! I went straight for the tomato sauce dishes, which I’d been excited to try since the idea had sprung into my mind. I started with the basic tomato sauce version, which turned out to be really refreshing, with the perfect amount of acidic bite. Yeah, that’s as good as I thought it’d be!
Next, I sampled the more strongly flavored garlic sauce meunière. Oooh, this one’s great too! It’s hitting all the right flavor notes for me. Let’s give the bravas sauce a try next... Yup, that’s got a bit of a punch! Really tasty, though. It’s got that spicy kick that kids like Sui just can’t quite appreciate yet. It’s really good, though—in fact, all of them are! And I bet they’d be even better with some bread on the side!
Fortunately, I had plenty of Theresa’s homemade sourdough stashed in my Item Box. I brought out a loaf, cut myself a slice, and dipped it in the tomato sauce. Yup, just as good as I thought it’d be!
I moved from the bread to the meunière, then right back to the bread again. It made for a dangerous combination—if I wasn’t careful, it felt like I’d just keep eating forever...or I might have, if it weren’t for the fact that it was only a matter of time before I’d be interrupted.
“Hey! I require another serving of these two, at once!” Fel demanded, gesturing at the garlic tomato sauce and bravas sauce meunières.
Yeah, no surprises there. Those would be the ones that Fel would be into.
“More for me as well, my liege! These two suit my taste,” Gon said, indicating the butter soy meunière and the plain tomato sauce meunière. He’d taken a liking to the most basic flavors, it seemed.
They’re basic for a reason, I guess. Nothing beats the classics.
《More for me too! I’ll take these!》 Dora-chan added. He picked the butter lemon sauce and the bravas sauce as his favorites.
I can get behind that—the lemon really brings something out in the dish, and it’s light in a way that makes the strong, spicy bravas sauce taste even better in comparison.
《Sui wants more too! Of, umm, all of them!》
Ha ha ha! All of them except the spicy one, I’m guessing. That slime’s appetite never fails to impress.
I served everyone their third helpings, and barely a few minutes later, all four of their voices rang out in unison.
“More!”
“Already?!”
They were eating at an even more rapid pace than usual. Maybe the lengthy wait explained why they were scarfing it down so quickly?
“My hunger is nowhere near sated. I assume you have prepared an ample stock of the leviathan’s meat for us?” Fel asked as he polished off his portion, then licked his lips.
“I’m still hungry as well, my liege!”
《Same here! I’ve never had this stuff before, and I wanna make my first impression as complete as possible!》
《Sui can eat lots and lots and lots more too!》
“I’ll, uh...go cook up a bit more,” I replied, my eyebrow twitching slightly. The gluttonous quartet, it seemed, was going to keep me locked in the kitchen for most of the evening.