“Well, considering how they look, I’m sure they’re only eaten in some coastal regions. My hometown is one of them, though,” Juna gently explained.
Well, even back on Earth, in Europe (excluding Italy and Spain) they’re called “devilfish,” and in some countries people refuse to eat them… I guess? I thought.
“But they’re so tasty…” I said.
“A-Are they?” Liscia asked.
Once she heard they were delicious, Aisha was ready to dig in. Her being my bodyguard meant we often ate together, so I already knew this, but this girl was quite the glutton. She had a special weakness when it came to sweet foods (like the snacks that came as offerings for the king and maids), and she would munch away at them to the point that the maids jealously grumbled, “How does she eat so much and still maintain that figure…?”
“Yeah. There are divergent opinions about how good it is raw, but if you just rub salt into it, wash off the mucus, and boil it, it’s good like that. Cooked, fried, served with rice, it’s delicious any way you like it.”
There was silence.
“Aisha, you’re drooling,” I added.
“Whoops… Pardon me.”
“Honestly, it’s high-protein, low-calorie, so it’s great if you’re on a diet, too.”
“High-pro? I–I’m not sure what that is, but my ears pricked up when I heard the word ‘diet’…” Liscia seemed to be ready to dig in now, too.
Honestly though, I thought Liscia could stand to put some more meat on her bones. Maybe it was because she was in the army, but she was pretty slender.
“I don’t think you need to worry so much about your weight,” I told her.
“Souma… A girl stops being a girl the moment she stops caring about her weight,” Liscia admonished me with eyes that seemed to be staring off into the distance.
Since Juna and Tomoe gave firm nods as well, I guessed that was just how it was. Aisha was the only dissenter, with a face that seemed to say, “Forget that, I want to eat already…”
“Okay, then… For now, shall we get to cooking?” I asked.
We moved to the kitchen attached to the cafeteria and began to prepare the octopus. The cooks who worked there protested, “If you had just said something, we would have done it for you ourselves…” but I liked cooking, so I decided to do it.
First, I put the octopus in a large bowl, cutting out the guts, ink sack, and eyeballs with a kitchen knife. (This elicited an “Uwah…” from the girls, but I ignored them.) Then I rubbed salt into it, waited for the slimy surface to harden, then washed it well with water. I cleaned the suckers thoroughly, as well, because there can be mud in them sometimes.
After that, I brought water to a boil, dropped it into the pot legs first, and then that very octopus-shaped creature (I mean, it was an octopus) boiled up. Watching until its yellowish-brown flesh turned a firm reddish-purple, I pulled it out, and a fine example of a boiled octopus was ready. After it had cooled a little, I cut the legs into bite-sized pieces. It would already be delicious like this.
“Eh, good enough. Time to eat,” I said.
“Wha?!” Liscia and the others were shocked to see me nibbling at it already with zero hesitation.
When I popped a bite in my mouth, yep, it sure tasted like octopus. That slightly salty taste was great. And because it was so great, I couldn’t help but lament that there was no soy sauce in this world yet!
“…Is that really edible?” Liscia murmured.
“Come on, Liscia. You could just try it and find out, you know?”
“Uh, no… I’m not emotionally prepared just yet…”
“You sure? It’s delicious.”
Ignoring the hesitant Liscia, Juna popped a slice in her mouth.
“Ahh, no fair, Madam Juna!” Aisha cried. “Fine then, me too!”
Seeing that, Aisha went chomp, and—
Hey, wait! Don’t just bite right into the head! Just how much of a glutton is this dark elf?!
“Oh! It’s crisp and delicious!”
“…Is it now?”
…Okay, time to get back in control of things.
I coated the bite-sized pieces of octopus in wheat flour, egg, and white flour, putting them on skewers three at a time. Then I put the whole skewers into a pot of hot oil. I let them fry until the batter was light brown and crispy. I pulled them out of the pot, and once I had put on the finishing touches with Worcester sauce, which they had even in this world, and a homemade mayonnaise I had made with eggs, vinegar and other things, they were done.
“‘Fried octopus skewers’… is what you’d call them, I guess. Go on, try eating them.” I offered each person one skewer.
Liscia and Tomoe timidly brought them to their mouths. The moment they took a bite…
“What is this?! It’s delicious!”
“It really is… very delicious, Brother.”
Their eyes went wide at how good it was.
Nice! I thought, giving myself a mental thumbs up.
“It really is delicious. The octopus hidden inside the crispy batter is very juicy,” Juna said.
“I–It really is! Even I didn’t know octopus would go this well with Worcester sauce!” Poncho cried.
“This white sauce goes well with the octopus, too. Splendidly done, sire,” Juna added.
“Y-You can cook, too, sire! That surprised me, yes.”
Juna and Poncho gave commentary like professional food critics. Since both of them had eaten octopus before, they could both take the time to properly savor it. Meanwhile, Aisha was chomp, chomp, chomping away and producing a massive pile of empty skewers.
…There’s nothing more I can say about that.
“It really is delicious,” the broadcast said. “Wrapped outside in a crispy batter, the octopus inside is very juicy.”
“…Hey, Daddy?” a child asked.
“Yeah. If you want octopus, a lot of them got caught in our nets today,” the father answered.
“Really?! I want to try it!”
“Sure thing. Normally I throw them back, but let’s try it.”
It seems there were a lot of conversations like this one in many villages by the sea.
“Our next ingredient is this.”
After we had finished eating the well-received octopus skewers and returned to our seats, Poncho opened a new box in front of us. When we saw the thin brown ingredient covered in dirt inside…
“Are these… roots?” Liscia said.
“I think they’re roots…” Juna added.
“They don’t look so good… Are they really edible?” Tomoe asked doubtfully.
Liscia, Juna and Tomoe all acted like they had question marks floating above their heads. Aisha and I, on the other hand, were completely unsurprised.
“Oh, burdock root, huh?” I said.
“That’s burdock root,” Aisha agreed.
Well, I had heard burdock root was seen as a strange thing to eat in the West, so I didn’t find it strange that it wasn’t eaten here, but that Aisha, who looked like a Westerner, knew about it surprised me.
“In the forest, we have to eat everything we can, otherwise we would succumb to malnutrition in no time,” Aisha said, staring off into the distance.
Perhaps that food situation was what had made her the hungry dark elf she was today.
“Since they’re being introduced here, that means you can eat them, right?” Liscia asked, to which I nodded.
“You can eat them. But rather than enjoy them for their own flavor, you enjoy the flavor of the broth they were stewed in, or their texture. They’re mostly dietary fiber, which you can’t digest, but they have a medicinal effect and can help keep your bowel movements regular. They’re a good friend to those who are constipated.”