Chapter 80
Ch 80 -- "Cheese In" is Justice!
I decided to make a lot of dishes to put in my Item Box, things I can store after I prepare them and then just pull them out when we want to eat. The smell of cooking so much food would linger in my room so I used the inn's courtyard instead after asking permission.
So what did I decide on? First of all, I made Orc General meat marinated in miso. It's easy, just put the meat and miso in a plastic bag and let it soak in. I could grill the meat afterwards but I'll probably deep-fry it since that seems to be a staple for us these days. I can do that any time if I've got the meat already marinated.
There are two types of rub, soy sauce based rub and salt based rub for the other meats, of course. I used Black Serpent, Rock Bird and Giant Dodo since they were like chicken. I coated half of each type of meat in the soy sauce based rub and the other half using the salt based rub. I was preparing an enormous amount of meat so I washed and drained some rice before I started cooking it.
After putting more money into the Net Super I bought yet another portable cooking stove and another big earthenware pot. I only bought one extra stove because I can't really manage more than four stoves at one time. It would be terrible to burn food if there's too much going on for me to cope with and I make a mistake so I made pots of rice on three of the stoves while I was also frying a lot of meat marinated in miso on the other stove. Given the eating habits of Fer and Sui I was cooking large amounts of food. Each pot of steaming-hot rice was stored in the Item Box when it was ready so that we could eat cooked rice anytime. I cooked more rice again on the three stoves, but this time only two pots of rice went into the Item Box for later and I held back one pot of rice to make onigiri.
"Fu ~, finally finished getting everything ready."
I took out the rice pot which I had put in Item Box so that it would stay warm after cooking, ready to make onigiri.
"Onigiri hmmm, I'll need nori, salmon, mix in some wakame and maybe whitebait too?"
I bought the fillings from the Net Super and made lots of onigiri. OK, some of the onigiri (a lot of them) were badly shaped but that was kind of normal and entertaining in its own way, and it didn't affect the taste. To tell you the truth I'd really have liked to to make some onigiri with mentaiko but it's kinda sticky and messy so I didn't bother.
I still had ambitions even after all this work. "Fahahahahah, I've wanted to get this since I saw it on the Net Super." It was a hand-operated mincer, sold in the cookware department. I could make minced meat with this.
I decided that I was going to make hamburger. Everyone likes fried or grilled hamburgers, right? I intended to fill some of them with cheese Japanese style ("Cheese In"), the two tastes go so well together. First of all, I had to mince a large amount of meat. I could use ground meat for all sorts of dishes so I decided to make a lot of it. I started with Bloody Horn Bull meat, turning it into ground meat.
Put the meat in the mincer and turn the handle, turn and turn............ I don't know how many times I turned the handle but finally I had a lot of Bloody Horn Bull mince ready to cook with. However I wasn't finished. Next I had to mince up a lot of Orc General's meat too. Like mincing the Bloody Horn Bull's meat, I put in the Orc General's meat and turned the handle, turned it and turned it and turned it and turned it............ I minced a large amount of Orc General meat that way.
"Well, I'm worn out but I can make hamburger now." I said, looking at the piles of minced meat with the satisfaction of a job well done.
I chopped up some onions to start with. Some folks like to fry the chopped onions beforehand but it's a pain so I don't bother. I decided I'd make the ground meat ratio for these hamburgers 60 percent Bloody Horn Bull and 40 percent Orc General meat.
I started mixing the ingredients. I added some milk to bread crumbs in a bowl and left them to soak while I mixed the minced meat with the onions, eggs, salt and pepper and then added the milk-soaked bread crumbs afterwards. I formed the mixture into patties of the right size, arranged them on trays I bought from the Net Super, wrapped them in film and put them in my Item Box for safe keeping. I made more the same way, and more... I finally got to the point where I could move on to the next step so when I was making the last batch of hamburgers I put cheese in the middle of each patty, Japanese style.
Afterwards, I cooked deep fried meat so I'd have it ready to eat when we wanted it. After warming up the oil, I deep-fried half of the marinated meat, cooking it twice to make the outside crisp. I also fried chicken cutlets and pork cutlets. I put cheese into a bunch of pork and chicken cutlets and fried them too since it seemed like a good idea. "Cheese In" is Justice!
"Ok, the oil is still nice and hot...how about fries?" I opened up Net Super again and bought some frozen fried potatoes, wedges with skin on as well as regular thin French fries. I could use them as sides for the fried meat and hamburger and fried potatoes go so well with beer, so I deep-fried a lot of potatoes.
"That's enough deep-fried food, I think." It was time to fry some hamburger. I used a shallow frying-pan, cooking both sides thoroughly without any oil. At home I ate them with a sauce I made with ketchup. After taking out the cooked hamburgers I added ketchup and Worcester sauce to the fat which had oozed out of the ground meat and reduced it in the pan, stirring regularly until it thickened. Some people might add sugar but not in my kitchen. Heathens.
I fried up some "Cheese In" hamburgers and made sauce for them as well.
"Alright, all done." Now for a taste. I was looking forward to...
"Gruuumble..." came the sound of a great empty belly behind me. I looked back and sure enough Fer was standing there, saliva dripping from his jaws. Sui was sitting next to him expectantly.
"Of course..." I gave into the inevitable and quickly prepared hamburgers for the two gluttons.
"It smells nice," munch*munch*munch "Oh, this is delicious." Fer paused thoughtfully. "Both are delicious, but the ones with the soft white stuff inside taste better."
"True, this is real good. The sticky white stuff inside is delicious." Sui agreed. "Cheese In" hamburger is popular, it seemed. "Cheese In" truly is Justice! I like "Cheese In" too of course. I had some fresh-cooked rice with my "Cheese In" hamburger and yes, it was delicious.
I worked hard cooking all day, so I decided I'd have some premium beer with potato fries as a reward. *Psssshh...* Ummm, that's nice.