MAKING DONBURI FOR DRAGONS
That day, I’d come to the southern part of the kingdom to pick plants that might make for good medicine.
The harvesting part of the whole ordeal was going smoothly, but—
“Ooh… I’m so sweaty… It’s so hard to move…”
Flatorte was exhausted. I felt like her tail was drooping more than usual.
“Are you okay, Flatorte…? You seem kinda…blah.”
It was rare to see her so lethargic.
“Lady Azusa, this is Flatorte’s own fault, so you may ignore her. I told her we would be going to a warm region, yet she insisted on coming along.” Laika sounded annoyed as she walked beside me.
Now, this might seem pretty harsh at first glance, but before we left…
“No, we are going south. You will not like it. You will immediately complain about being tired. Don’t go if you don’t have to.” (Laika)
“I’ll be fine. And I don’t have anything to do today, so I’m going, too!” (Flatorte)
…they had this conversation, so Laika’s attitude was inevitable.
“Flatorte, if you’re really that exhausted, you know you can rest, right?”
She reminded me of a little kid throwing a fit because they wanted to come with their parent to work but then complained about work being boring when they got there.
Falfa and Shalsha were generally interested in anything wherever they went, and Sandra wasn’t at all interested in traveling and rarely came with us, so I’d never experienced anything like this before.
“Mistress, I’m not that exhausted. Blue dragons are strong, so this really isn’t a problem for me. Fire spirits? The sun? I don’t care; bring it on!”
“The sun would definitely win in a fight, though.”
Her refusal to admit weakness made it hard to tell, but it genuinely seemed like she had some energy to spare. Well, not like she’s made of ice.
“But…the air is sticky, and I’m sweating, and I feel gross…”
Right, that.
“It feels so uncomfortable, like I’m being attacked really slowly…”
“I get what you mean… I’m sweating, too…”
All this humidity reminded me of Japanese summers. Shade would cool you right down in dry heat, but the humidity meant there was nowhere for us to run.
The house in the highlands was refreshing in that regard. I’d completely acclimated to all that dry air after living there for three hundred years, and now I was even more thankful for it after coming south.
“Honestly, how pitiful. You have no stamina, Flatorte. I know your kind cannot handle the heat well, but I believe you should learn a bit more patience—”
“Hey, Mistress, let’s get something to eat! I bet I’ll feel much better if I eat a lot!”
“It is important to eat well and fortify one’s body against the heat. Let us partake, Lady Azusa.”
The dragons were on the same page when it came to food!
Don’t let their cute appearances fool you; they had bigger appetites than any jock. That was a given, considering they had to maintain their massive dragon bodies, though.
“You’re right. I can stop here for work, so let’s find a restaurant.”
We went to the nearby town and came to a cheap eatery.
“I still do not know the food in this area very well. I suppose that is expected, though; I will simply order everything on this page.”
“Then I, the great Flatorte, will order everything on the next page of the menu!”
“You sure eat a lot…”
If they weren’t worried about their weight, I thought they should just eat what they could.
The restaurant worker who came to take their order was shocked. Which was the normal reaction. You don’t usually order things from a menu by the page.
“Ma’am, we have a challenge for our customers where you must eat the top-ten most popular dishes in order before you can go home; would you like to try that?”
“No! I simply want to eat a lot!”
“I see… Well…everything on that page comes as a meal, so everything will come with rice and soup. Are you all right with that?”
Oooh, good question.
In case you were wondering, some restaurants gave the option of bread or rice, but this place was rice only. After all, this was rice country.
But I kind of knew how things were going to go.
“Not a problem for me, Flatorte! Bring it all out!”
I knew it!
Dragons didn’t mind extra carbs. Actually, she probably would miss the meal staple if she didn’t order it.
I thought she might not want any of the soup…but she had been sweating a lot, so it was probably good for her to rehydrate.
Once our order had been taken, all we had to do was wait. My entrée was some chicken mixed with rice and fried. I had a feeling whatever I got would have some spicy seasoning. I got a general grasp on how things tasted here the last time we came.
Then our food arrived. Along with an extra table. Otherwise, none of Flatorte’s rice or soup would have been able to fit…
I could hear some other customers wondering, “Is this an eating competition?” In a way, they weren’t wrong.
“Yes, time to fortify my body against the heat! I’ll get even stronger!” Flatorte gave her convenient explanation of her meal before digging in.
I slowly partook of my own locally seasoned dish. Well, I wasn’t eating all that slow, actually, but compared to Flatorte, everyone seemed slow.
Also, Laika was eating with impeccable manners, but each bite was so big that she was proceeding fast, too.
“This is seafood dressed in a starchy sauce. We don’t often eat this at home, so it is a new experience for me. This is the fried fish. The meat is so soft and plump. This small dish here, encased in a wheat-flour wrapper, is also very good. This soup has a rather unique sourness to it. Moving on to the next dish.”
“You eat so much; I almost can’t take my eyes off you.”
Money wasn’t a problem for us, but I kind of wanted to kill a few more slimes per day and collect more magic stones for a bit.
Meanwhile, there was an unbelievably messy scarfing noise coming from Flatorte.
To be honest, I was worried. I didn’t remember her ever making noises like that during our regular meals, so this was probably less of a problem of table manners and more of a food issue.
“Mmm, chomp, this rice stuff is…chomp, chomp…kind of, chomp, sticky.”
“Flatorte, don’t speak with your mouth full.”
Flatorte gulped down everything she had in her mouth before continuing. “It looks like it’ll fall apart, but it’s sticky when I bite into it. It doesn’t dry out my throat as much as bread does.”
That sounded like an opinion coming from someone who wasn’t accustomed to eating rice.
That said, this rice was longer and a little looser than the kind I was used to in Japan. As an ex-Japanese girl, this rice didn’t feel all that sticky to me, but Flatorte was having a different experience.
“Right, people don’t really eat much rice where we live.”
Strictly speaking, the edible slimes and the leaf slimes I made around the same time are both mochi products, but that way of using rice and this kind of rice are totally different.
At this point, I no longer considered rice just a way to fill my stomach.
“Rice does not take well to colder climates. That is why bread is the staple carbohydrate in the north,” Laika explained.
“Yeah, that makes sense.”
They grew rice up in Hokkaido, too, but I think that was as a result of crossbreeding… I bet the rice was shocked about it, too. Huh? What do you mean we can grow in places this cold?
Still, even with all that knowledge, it didn’t seem like Laika was sold on this particular staple.
I scooped some of the rice into my own spoon.
As I stared at the oil glistening on the grains, a thought came to me. I’d eaten this stuff every day in my past life, too many times to count.
Maybe it was about time I took a shot at cooking it with the stuff in this world.
Personally, it brought back a lot of memories, but…
When I watched Flatorte and Laika partaking in their meals—Laika quietly, Flatorte violently—I had a feeling that rice suited them better than bread did.
But simply swapping out one staple for another wasn’t very interesting, and I wasn’t sure if they’d go for that. I’d been eating mainly bread for the past three hundred years, too. If I had the choice between the two, I’d probably pick bread. That was especially the case for the rest of my family.
I had to make something that needed rice.
“You full already, Mistress? I’ll eat it for you.”
“No, I can keep going… I didn’t stop because I was full…”
I stared hard at the rice in my spoon, searching for some kind of hint. What I saw was a bunch of white grains mixed with chunks of chicken.
“Hey! That’s it!”
A light flipped on in my head. The second I got back home, I was going to make it happen.
“Lady Azusa, did you come up with a good combination for that dish? Shall I order some more?”
“I’m perfectly fine with this, Laika!”
Dragons never compromised when it came to food. But watching them was only making my idea take shape.
“Let’s go to a shop that sells rice later.”
“Oh-ho. Will you be making poultices?”
“Not at all. I want to see my options for food.”
That was when I remembered video games had rice balls that recovered HP, so I wondered if there was any part of Japan that saw rice as a health-recovery agent… Thinking about it, though, it was kind of odd that just eating a rice ball could make an injured person better.
When I finished my meal, the dragons were eating fruit for dessert.
“Man, just looking at you makes me feel full!”
When we left, the one staff member said to us with a smile, “Come back anytime!”
They saw us as perfect customers…
I went to a grocery store, picked a rice variety with the perfect kind of stickiness, and bought it.
I was glad the dragons were around. They could carry anything I ordered—and I needed to stock up while we were here.
We didn’t have any convenient appliances like a rice cooker, so I also bought a specialty pot. All that was left was to find the perfect preparation method through a little trial and error.
“Are we going to eat rice at home, too, Mistress?”
“Yep. There’s something I want to try out. We’ve been eating bread as our staple so far, right? So… Hmm, I guess the best way to put it is I’m going to make something more rice-friendly.”
Breaking the routine every once in a while wasn’t so bad.
“So we will be eating both rice and bread, then. That will be worthwhile!”
“That’s not what I meant!”
They weren’t thinking of bread or rice; they were thinking of bread and rice…
After getting back to the house in the highlands, I immediately started putting together my menu in the kitchen. I say “putting together,” but I actually had the completed image already in my head. All I needed to do was get as close as I could to it with the ingredients I had in this world.
“Oof… The rice is still al dente… It won’t absorb any flavors like this… And I don’t think the broth tastes very good, either. And the batter is way too hard. This would hurt the inside of somebody’s mouth. Did I fry it at the wrong temperature?”
The family would occasionally come in and peek at what I was doing, but it was hard to explain, so I just said I was thinking up a new dish. It wouldn’t be easy to describe something that didn’t exist in this world.
Meanwhile, somebody else was in charge of food today. That was Halkara—she came into the kitchen and started washing the vegetables.
“You’ve been quite passionate about this, Madam Teacher~”
“I’m not sure that’s a good thing, considering I’m supposed to be a witch who makes medicines, but I guess it’s the truth…”
She was right that I’d been particularly enthusiastic about this culinary experiment.
“I’ll be making a salad, and that’s much easier. I just need to be careful I don’t include any poisonous mushrooms.” She sometimes included mushrooms that could be eaten raw.
“But your salads are great, Halkara. Even my daughters clear their plates.”
Neither Falfa nor Shalsha liked vegetables very much—same for the dragons. Although, the dragons didn’t so much hate vegetables as find them less filling.
“I believe it must be my special, homemade dressing~ I spruced it up a bit to make sure you keep coming back for more!”
Halkara looked proud. Maybe elves were the only ones who knew how to make vegetables taste good.
“Huh. How do you make this mystery dressing anyway?”
“Would you ask the magician to reveal her secrets?! But I suppose I have nothing to hide, so I’ll tell you.”
It wasn’t a genuine company secret, so she was ready to give it up right away.
Halkara took out the designated dressing bottle. “This is our usual dressing.”
“Uh-huh.”
The dressing was sold in Flatta and was a faint-orange color.
Then Halkara took something else down from the kitchen shelves.
It was full with a dark liquid. The label read ELVIN and had a picture of an elf man waving.
“I put in a dash of elvin, an elf’s best friend at the dinner table, and it deepens the flavor in a jiffy!”
“Ohh, you use that stuff!”
Elvin was a seasoning much like soy sauce, made from fermented beans. It was apparently a unique seasoning to the elves, and it was Halkara who first told me about it.
…Wait a second.
If it was like soy sauce…wouldn’t that be a revolution for my own personal project?
“Halkara!”
I grasped her arms.
“Oh, Madam Teacher… Is our forbidden household romance finally igniting…? I accept all of it and all of you!”
She sure was quick to accept…
She was getting the wrong idea, but it was too much trouble to snark at her.
“Do you have any more of this elvin?”
“Oh yes… You won’t even explain that I have gotten the wrong idea. I see… I have three unopened bottles so far, so you may use one in your experiments…”
I immediately decided to use the elvin to make broth and dipping sauce.
As I thought, I could immediately tell that I’d taken a huge step toward the right answer, at least compared to all the trial and error I’d gone through so far. Soy sauce and rice were best friends.
—And then a week of experimenting passed.
“This is it!”
With a great spark of inspiration, I brought rice dishes into this world.
…Of course, the demons had probably already created something similar, but I’m not going to count any weird coincidences.
I honestly wouldn’t be surprised with whatever the demons came up with… I mean, they had curry and ramen and stuff…
When the dragons finished their run and came into the dining room, I turned to speak to them.
“Hey, you two, I want you to taste test something for me. That okay?”
“I shall be right there, Lady Azusa.”
“If it’s going to take time, then I’ll just go take a jog until it’s ready.”
Both Laika and Flatorte gave me their willing consent and eagerly waited in the dining room.
I was already ready to go, so I got straight to cooking.
“Can you tell us what it is, Lady Azusa?” Laika asked from the dining room.
“It’s something with rice, actually.”
“I thought so. I have seen you experimenting with it recently.”
She was so clever; she already seemed to have an inkling as to what was going on. Or maybe she’d just noticed what I’d been doing in the kitchen all week.
“Hey, it’s starting to smell good! You’re using elvin, aren’t you? And it smells kind of like egg, too.”
On the other hand, Flatorte’s wild instinct sniffed out all my ingredients…
“Both of you always eat so much. That’s why I wanted to come up with a dish that will leave you full and satisfied.”
“I see… I would be, um…happy…with a larger serving… I thought about keeping my food intake down in the past, but…” Laika’s face went red from embarrassment.
“Oh, it’s all fine! Don’t starve yourself, okay?!”
One reason why Laika started eating more was because Flatorte’s unapologetic appetite had influenced her. In her efforts to keep up with her fellow dragon, she stopped minding her portion size.
As a result, Flatorte had smashed down the walls of hesitancy that Laika had built up around herself. At the end of the day, the two of them had created great synergy between them.
My cooking, by the way, was going great.
People weren’t really fans of runny eggs in this world, so I made sure to cook the egg thoroughly. I was basically at the final stages of preparation already. I couldn’t really handle dishes with too many steps anyway.
I scooped a whole bunch of freshly cooked rice into a deep bowl. Ladling that much into such a deep bowl made me want to call it a meal instead of just rice.
The rice was cooked perfectly. It was not too gloopy and not too dry—the grains were holding together on their own.
On top of it, I slid the mass of the chicken and egg from the pot.
I didn’t have any Japanese parsley for the garnish, but I sprinkled on something very similar.
I stuck in the spoon, and it was done!
“It’s ready! First we have Azusa’s special oyakodon!”
Yes—the first thing I made was, of course, oyakodon: chicken and egg over rice.
This would surely satisfy the big eaters.
I placed two bowls of the oyakodon in front of them.
I could almost see their eyes shining. Anyone who liked rice would certainly enjoy it. They could finish it in an instant.
“I’m using rice that’s a bit on the stickier side. So just give it a taste, and—”
But they were already chowing down.
They concentrated on nothing but putting their spoons in their mouths; their entire worlds had shrunk to the oyakodon before them.
They were so focused on eating that they didn’t stop to offer compliments after the first bite, like most food reporters did…
In a way, that was the greatest honor to the one who made the dish, but it was going to be a while until I got to hear their thoughts…
Well, whatever. It wasn’t like either of them were going to be full after one bowl of oyakodon, and I was going to make another dish anyway. I decided to get started on that one.
Cooking it was very similar to the last. I just had to dip the pork into bread crumbs and fry it in hot oil. If I nailed the katsu, it’d work out.
After working for a while, the two of them finished their oyakodon.
“That was delicious, Lady Azusa. I believe around five servings would be enough for me.”
“I think any dish would fill you up after five servings…”
Their bowls were completely clear; it almost made me think they’d been starving.
“Mistress, I shouldn’t lick the bowl, should I?”
“No! No licking! It’s improper!”
“I didn’t much care for rice initially, when it’s so difficult to handle, but placing something juicy on top of it makes it the perfect combination. The rice absorbs the juice.”
“Yes, exactly! Rice is delicious when it soaks up all that broth!”
Rice in any kind of broth or sauce was good on its own. The person who first came up with it honestly deserves a Nobel Peace Prize.
“The sweet and salty flavors were perfect! I, Flatorte, even licked some off my bowl!”
“And after I told you it’s improper!”
Well, I couldn’t complain about a positive review, at least, so my tinges of worry vanished. It was pretty nerve-racking to have someone test out a new creation of yours.
This wasn’t just about the skill of the preparation but also a question of cultural differences. Japanese people eat rice from a young age, but people who grow up in bread cultures have a harder time with rice in bowls.
“Oh, and I made sure to cook the eggs through. You like that, right?”
“Yes… I would be a bit hesitant to eat them if they were not completely cooked.” Laika’s reaction was somewhat apologetic. I guess they don’t eat raw eggs in her culture.
“What about you, Flatorte?”
“I sometimes eat whole eggs raw, shell and all, and those are pretty good, too.”
“What the hell?”
Flatorte might not mind a runny egg, but I decided to go with the fully cooked version for our first time.
“I’m making dish number two right now, so sit tight.”
“I’ll eat as many as you make!”
Well, it’s not like I have an endless supply… I probably underestimated how much dragons eat.
Now, then. I filled a deep bowl with rice once again.
And this time, I put tonkatsu dressed with egg right on top!
“Dish number two is katsudon! The breading is perfectly crispy, so I hope to hear some love for that!”
I thought it was a fantastic bowl of katsudon, if I do say so myself, but I wondered how they felt.
Once again, they attacked their meal with spoons as their weapons.
I guess I wouldn’t be able to hear their thoughts on the breading until they were done eating… Oh well. I should be happy they were so enthusiastic about it.
I thought it was fun talking about food that looked pretty—or Insta-worthy, as I used to say. It was fun to enjoy things with our eyes and noses, too. I don’t like rules that make food boring.
But it’s also nice to have someone devour the food like a predator.
Both of them were very serious about eating their katsudon—but on closer inspection, I saw slight differences between Laika and Flatorte.
Laika didn’t mix the toppings with the rice very much but instead broke down the katsu bit by bit into the rice.
Flatorte mixed it together right from the start, making an even blend of the egg and katsu elements all over.
If this was curry, then I’m sure she would be the type to mix the sauce and the rice first… I did the same thing as a kid, but I stopped doing it at some point.
“That is a messy way to eat, Flatorte,” Laika warned her, unable to condone her manners. “If you mix it all together, you will be unable to differentiate the ingredients and differences in texture. You need to insert your spoon vertically—”
Laika stopped there—but not because Flatorte was talking back. Flatorte was saying nothing.
She wasn’t minding Laika at all, instead only concentrating on her mixed bowl of katsudon with a big smile.
“My dragon instincts tell me it’s delicious!”
Ahhh… Even if it looks like a mess, I had nothing else to say when she smiled so brightly. It reminded me of the real significance of a meal. I was going to make more things she could enjoy.
“Yes, I suppose that is the way you eat.”
Laika withdrew her statement and returned to her meal. Her expression had softened, too. She wasn’t going to start copying her fellow dragon, but she was beginning to acknowledge that Flatorte had her own way of life.
I was glad I’d made the oyakodon and katsudon.
Even though white rice and side dishes weren’t common in this culture, I was right to guess that they would accept rice bowls like donburi.
I had the dragons act as a test audience this time, but their reactions told me that Falfa, Shalsha, and Halkara would be happy to eat these dishes, too. There were basically no vegetables in them, which the kids hated anyway. Maybe I should leave out the garnish…?
There came the dry plunk of a spoon hitting a bowl.
Both of them had completely cleaned out the katsudon.
There wasn’t much point asking them what they thought now that they’d finished.
“This is quite substantial, Lady Azusa. I had never imagined rice could serve such a purpose. You do indeed have quite a broad perspective.”
“Aw, shucks, you’re too much.”
This wasn’t my original idea—I’d just used past knowledge.
“I believe three bowls for dinner would be perfect.”
“You’ll be too full to sleep!”
I’d been making them extra-large servings to begin with, but maybe it still wasn’t enough…
There was clear delight on Flatorte’s face as her hand rested on her stomach and she leaned back.
“That was good. I feel like I’ve had a good meal.”
It was a simple impression, but I understood well how she felt.
My cooking repertoire had grown, and that was just the cherry on top. I’d say this was a win-win.
But then, both of them turned to look at me.
““Where is dish number three?””
They asked in unison.
Oh no! So expectant! I had no plans for a third dish!
Well, shoot. I really wish I could put myself fully in a dragon’s shoes.
Wait, I still had ingredients. I still had rice. I was clever enough to come up with something, right?
“Just hold on a sec. Let me whip something up.”
I took out all the sauces and dressings we had in the house and mixed a bunch of them together.
It slowly approached the vague completed vision I had in my mind.
“I think it’s a bit too sour. Not sweet enough. Still too runny, maybe…”
I felt like it’d been a while since I started focusing on this in the kitchen.
I had patrons waiting for their third dish out there, after all.
Finally, I came up with a sauce I was satisfied with, and the rest was easy. I once again fried up some tonkatsu.
I put the katsu on the rice and poured a bunch of my homemade sauce on top!
And for a final flourish, I added peas!
“Yes! The demi-glace katsudon is ready!”
That’s right—there were different kinds of katsudon.
There was the traditional kind, the one encased in egg. There was the kind where the katsu sat on a bed of thinly sliced cabbage and soy sauce was poured on top. There was misokatsu, where a miso sauce was poured on top. And then there was the demi-glace kind!
*They sometimes call it a demi-glace sauce, but I’m used to just demi-glace.
I placed the katsudon down on the table where Laika and Flatorte were waiting.
Once again, they both dove into the world of food right away.
I felt like a great mage who’s built her own personal bubble!
“Isn’t it good? The sauce is decadently sour, which is a perfect match for the rice, and it adds such a nice sheen to the katsu! Katsu can take on so many gorgeous forms!”
I couldn’t ask what the people who were eating thought, so I decided to praise myself.
It wasn’t long before two empty bowls sat side by side on the table.
““That was delicious!””
It almost seemed like it wasn’t just their voices but their smiles that were in unison this time.
“Yes, your positive review was reason enough to have made it.”
I had three new dishes in my repertoire now. I had to write down the ingredients for the demi-glace before I forgot about it.
““What is dish number four?””
You know that feeling when you’re sure you’ve beaten the final boss, and then they throw another one at you?
“Honestly, how much can you dragons eat? Can you eat forever?”
“No, I cannot eat forever. But rice dishes are healthy, so…” Laika was hesitant as she talked, but she wasn’t joking around; she was being genuine.
“So you think using rice makes it healthy…?”
“I get what Laika’s saying. There isn’t a whole lot of meat. Half of it is rice. The rice is doing just as good work as the meat is, Mistress.”
I’d made a big mistake.
“Dragon meals…are all about how much meat you can eat; I see…”
It didn’t matter if it came with bread. Or rice. All that was just extra fluff for the dragons.
“Lady Azusa, could you do the same thing with boar meat next time?”
“Then I, Flatorte, want the same but with extra mutton on the side.”
They were thinking of rice like extra veggies on the side with a steak!
What was I supposed to do…? I didn’t doubt there were places where boar and mutton with rice were a thing, but I didn’t know how to make them! I didn’t have the skills to make them stop tasting gamey!
“We’re done for today!”
I now had an excellent sense of just how difficult it was to fill a dragon’s stomach, and it didn’t matter if it was with bread or rice.
By the by, Falfa and Shalsha both enjoyed my cooking immensely, but…
“Can you take off the peas from the demi-glace katsudon, please?”
“The green is ruining the visual harmony. It feels more complete without them.”
“You don’t like the peas…? I guess I understand…”
I decided not to put the peas on anymore.
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