Leaving with the gorilla, I went to Hunt, the green-haired poetess, who was stretching noodles while her glasses fogged up.
The little gorilla approaches her agilely by knuckle-walking.
It’s a surreal sight.
「Ah, thanks for your help, Jin.」
「Uho」
In reply to her thanks, the gorilla shows its affection by clinging to her white leg.
Ehto, I shouldn’t laugh but I feel like laughing….
「Master, can you check its firmness?」
「Eh? A-ahh, firmness.」
It is indeed bad of me to laugh since I’m the one who made the gorilla in the first place.
Firmness, firmness….?
「I don’t know how firm it should be so I made it this way.」
「It’s okay. Just cut it as it is.」
There’s no way I could tell how firm it was like this.
I’ve only ever eaten dried noodles.
-0-
I returned to the boiling pot and threw all the ingredients in it.
I sipped some of the dashi for test tasting but all I tasted was a light saltiness.
I couldn’t taste anything else at all.
Is this okay?
…..I guess I’ll just have to give it a try.
I poured equal amounts of dashi into several cups and tried making several kinds of sauce by changing the amount of fish sauce, white wine, and sugar.
Let’s start with the cup with more dashi and lesser others.
The taste is thin but it’s good.
I couldn’t help but drink it up.
It’s really spicy when you drink it all at once.
The taste is completely different when you use fish sauce instead of soy sauce but I was impressed by how close it was to the dashi I remember.
Next, a cup with half dashi and half other ingredients.
This is too thick.
This is basically flavored fish sauce.
I think I prefer a much lighter flavor.
「I like this sauce because you can clearly taste it.」
「I like this better too. The first one is a bit bland as if it was a sauce for pepperoncino…」
The two natives of this world who were taste tasting the sauce prefer the one with thicker flavor….
Culture shock….or is it because my former Japanese tongue is too sensitive?
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While I was making different kinds of sauces while boiling the noodle dashi, Hunt brought the somen noodle dough to the pasta machine.
I told her to boil water for it too and then, I started cooling the noodle dashi.
After all, the sauce tastes better when it’s chilled in the refrigerator.
I put the pot of dashi on top of the ice I made magically and moved to the pot of somen noodles.
Somen only take a short time to boil.
It would be better for me, who has some experience, to do it first to make sure it won’t be a waste.
When the water is already bubbling, I throw the raw somen noodles into the pot.
I timed it for one minute in my mind.
With a lightning-fast chopstick, I scooped up a strand of somen noodles and placed it into my mouth.
……yeah?
…yeah, it’s udon.
Right, the noodles made by the pasta machine are so thick…..
「This is so refreshing.」
「It feels great down to your throat and this sauce makes it better.」
「It’s a little soft but its texture will be reversed for the better once it’s cold. 」
The udon, however, was a big hit.
It seems like the thicker sauce suited everyone’s palate better. Laura-san, Seele, and Hunt happily slurped down their cold udon noodles.
Well, I guess it was a great success…..
I was not sure what to think about the udon noodles since they suddenly came out when I was expecting to eat somen noodles.
「It’s delicious but if make the noodle thicker, put some egg, and sprinkle it with a mixture of dashi and fish sauce, it would be better.」
「Really? I’d like to try.」
「There’s still some dough left so I’ll go process it right away!」
「I’ll boil some water.」
The bukkake udon was also very popular.
I think this is another mage-only menu item since you can’t eat raw eggs unless you have a magic spell to kill bacteria.
「This will be better if you boil it on the warm soup I cooled down earlier.」
「What did you say? I’d like to have some of that.」
「I’ll start boiling it then.」
「Master, please tell me how to make that sauce.」
After all that effort to cool myself, I ended up enjoying udon noodles in midsummer.
It was understandable though.
Once dashi and udon are combined, nothing could go wrong.
「Master, I think that this will be a hit if the stalls sell it.」
「Let’s make a thick pasta machine and spread it around the world!」
「I’m sure our chef would be happy to make it.」
「Well, I’m glad it suits your palate.」
「Somen recipe, I’m done writing it.」
….somen, is it?
Ah, no!
Given its thickness, it’s not somen!
It’s udon!
Before it became the next pepperoncino, I explained to them carefully that it was udon politely.