Ch 125 -- I Tried Out the Oven

I borrowed the inner courtyard of the Labyrinth City Inn and set up my newly-purchased "Latest Model Black Magic Cooking Stove" while I gave some thought to what sort of meals I could prepare with it. Since Fer, Sui and Dora-chan insisted they were dying of hunger I got some fried pork cutlets out of my Item Box and put them out for the starving creatures. I had been so busy shopping we had missed lunch so I felt a bit guilty but it couldn't be helped.

Once everyone was eating I fired up the stove's oven as I had decided to make a number of dishes using it. Oven baked recipes with meat and vegetables would be simple and not take much time. I opened the Net Super and bought cooking parchment, olive oil and herb salt to start with then I started preparing vegetables.

I kept things simple, a recipe I had made before with potatoes, onion and carrots as the base vegetable ingredients. I added shimeji and eringi mushrooms and some paprika for colour and a little spiciness. I had to buy the mushrooms and paprika from the Net Super. I looked over the ingredients and nodded. Yosh, that would do fine.

For the meat, I figured I'd use Rock Bird. I cut it into large bite-sized pieces and punched holes with a fork before adding salt and pepper and then I started preparing the vegetables. The more solid veggies like potatoes and carrots I scraped and peeled then I cut them up into pieces so they would cook more evenly. The onions I sliced into circles after peeling them. I broke up the shimeji mushrooms and split the erengi mushrooms down to an appropriate size too.

Now for the baking. I put down cooking sheets on the top shelf of the oven and arranged the meat and vegetables, topping them with the paprika and mushrooms before adding olive oil and finally sprinkling everything with herb salt. I closed the oven door and fired it up with a touch of my finger and a little magical energy on the ignition button. I didn't know just how this oven behaved since the controls were unfamiliar so I cooked while anxiously watching the condition of the food on the parchment sheets inside, judging the food was ready when the vegetables seemed a little scorched.

"Oh, that looks like it's working well." I mused, peering in through the oven's glass door. "The vegetables and meat are nicely baked and, yup, ready now." I took the cooked vegetables and meat from the oven and dished them out to Fer, Sui and Dora-chan.

"Took you long enough..." Fer grumbled and then he caught sight of the food. "What, vegetables again?" Fer, don't complain about eating vegetables. They're good for you, honest.

"Something smells funny..." Dora-chan's muzzle was twitching as he sniffed at the food. That was probably the herb salt, I reckoned. I pushed the dish at him. "Go on, try it." I said, watching darling Sui-chan diving in as usual.

"This isn't just salty, yeah-? It smells nice and it's delicious." Sui thought it was good, obviously.

Dora-chan ate the roast meat and vegetables in his dish with growing enthusiasm as his suspicions of the herb salt flavouring wore off. It was clear his one serving would fill him up but I knew from long experience that Fer and Sui would be demanding "Seconds!" soon. I'd be able to satisfy them with one more serving of roast meat and vegetables, probably. This time around I melted a lot of cheese on top after cooking, letting the remaining heat do the job. It looked really delicious. I ate my portion while the second batch cooked and planned out what to do next. The oven was working out well, I mused as I helped myself to a mouthful of the roast Rock Bird meat. How would it do as a stove though? Time to find out.

Fer and Sui gobbled up the oven-roasted vegetables and meat covered in melted cheese until they were finally satisfied.

"It was delicious-" Ah, Sui-chan...

"Well, it was okay." For Fer that was high praise, I told myself. I noticed he had actually eaten all his veggies like a good boy, ummm puppy? uh ravening country-destroying invincible boss monster... I resisted the temptation to pat him on the head and scratch his ears. Time to do some more cooking.

"It'll be a while before it gets dark so I am going to prepare food for our dungeon exploration." I explained. Everyone went off for a nap, their bellies full. I would have liked to join them but I had work to do and getting them out of the way would simplify things for me. I knew that if I was cooking with them around they'd be hanging over my shoulder, asking questions and drooling.

Rice. First I have to cook rice, a lot of it. I'm Japanese after all. Rice is important.

I had been using a big earthenware pot to cook rice before but just one wasn't going to be enough to cook the amount of rice I intended to cook. I opened Net Super and bought another ten pots just like it. I also bought a lot of rice and stored it in my Item Box to save me from having to buy it from the Net Super in the dungeon. I washed the rice in water, letting it soak while I prepared some fried food. Both Fer and Sui liked fried foods and Dora-chan probably would too given his eating habits. Kaarage would work very well as stored ready-to-eat food for the dungeon exploration.

For the meats I used up most of the remaining Red Serpent, Black Serpent, Rock Bird and Giant Dodo in my Item Box, dressing them with a soy sauce rub and a salt based rub alternately. I put pots of rice on three of the stove's burners to cook while I dedicated the fourth burner to deep-frying meat. I also fried up all the minced meat cutlets I had left over in my Item Box while I was at it. I cooked rice, I deep-fried meat, I cooked rice, I deep-fried meat, I cooked rice...

"Fuu," I said, finally finished putting all the cooked food away in my Item Box where it would stay fresh and hot. "That's enough fried food and rice." What next? It still wasn't dark, I could cook something else. How about gyuudon beef bowl? My three contracted monsters seemed to like it, and Elland-san too, I remembered. I wondered how he was getting on with the disassembly of the Earth Dragon. OK then, beef bowl it is. Nice and easy and a real treat over rice.

"What sort of beef bowl should I make?" I had lots of Bloody Horn Bull meat which was the obvious choice but I decided I'd use Wyvern meat as well this time as an experiment. It seemed a bit wasteful to use such high-quality meat in a cheap dish like gyuudon beef bowl but I had lots of it, even more than my stock of Bloody Horn Bull meat so it wouldn't be a disaster if it didn't work out.

I looked at my Black Magic Cooking Stove. The burners were a lot bigger than the little gas-bottle portable cooking stoves I had been using before so I could use a bigger stockpot to cook the meat for the gyuudon. Sadly the Net Super didn't offer a real restaurant-sized cooking pot, the largest pot I could find was about half that size. They were still quite big though so I bought two of them to start with. I might buy more stockpots later if I needed them, I decided depending on what I might cook next. Stew? Fer had really liked the stew I had made for him before. However I was making gyuudon today. I cooked up a half-size pot full of Bloody Horn Bull meat beef bowl and used the other half-sized pot to prepare Wyvern meat beef bowl. I tried undercooking the Wyvern's meat a little since it was so tender compared to the more robust Bloody Horn Bull meat.

After that I made a roast for dinner. I still had some Giant Deer meat left over and I decided to use that up. I cut the meat into large pieces, covered them in olive oil and added more herb salt before laying them out on a cooking sheet and putting them in the top shelf of the oven where there was plenty of space so the meat would cook evenly. I turned the temperature up high to scorch the surface and once that happened I took the meat out and wrapped it in aluminium foil to let it cook through with residual heat. Once it had cooled a little I sliced it thinly. The meat was cooked through but still pink in the middle as it should be, soft and tender to the touch. Yosh!

I could have left it as it was but I added sauce, a commercially available sour-citrus ponzu and onion flavored steak sauce since I didn't want the hassle of preparing a sauce from scratch. It was totally dark by the time the Giant Deer roast was completed.

"Dinner's ready..." I announced, rather pointlessy since when I turned from the stove all three were waiting attentively behind me.

"Oh, isn't this delicious?" Fer said after swallowing his first mouthful of sliced Giant Deer roast.

"This sour-tasting sauce is yummy." Dora-chan liked the flavour of the ponzu sauce, it seemed.

"The meat is soft and delicious-" Sui commented. Hearing sweet gourmet Sui say that made me happy as I bit into my own serving of Roast Deer, letting the meat juices fill my mouth. MMMMmmm! Not overbaking it and let it cook through with residual heat was the way to go and using the oven made that easy to achieve.

Although Fer and Sui requested "Seconds!" several times I could serve them immediately since I had roasted a lot of Giant Deer meat to start with. It was a big help not having to make more servings from scratch as I usually had to with the small portable stoves I had relied on before. Buying the Black Magic Cooking Stove had turned out to be a really good move on my part, I congratulated myself.

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