Chapter 15: Making a Bento
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 15: Making a Bento
We moved from Tojo's room to the kitchen to practice cooking.
"So, what are you going to teach us to cook?"
She had already changed into an apron.
I had brought my own from home, so I tied it around my waist and said, "You probably won't be able to follow anything too difficult, so I think we should start with some simple side dishes."
I had three candidates in mind: karaage, Vienna sausages, and rolled omelets.
Even a complete beginner could handle these. Plus, they're bestsellers when it comes to bento side dishes.
The two of them must have thought my suggestions were good, because they both nodded.
Kishimoto asked in a cheerful voice, "So what are we making first?"
"Vienna sausages."
If I had to rank them by difficulty, this one was the easiest of the three. All you have to do is score the sausages and pan-fry them.
Hearing this, Tojo immediately picked up a kitchen knife.
"...Something about you holding that feels a little ominous."
"You wanna die, punk?!"
As expected of a kendo club member, she was used to handling a blade, swinging the kitchen knife through the air with dazzling skill.
Maybe it was the combination of her red hair and fierce glare, but she looked incredibly menacing.
Anyway, after waiting for her to calm down, I placed the red Vienna sausages on the cutting board and explained simply.
"Just think of it as cutting about a third of the way up the sausage. If you do it twice, you get four legs. Four times, you get eight. Easy, right?"
"Hmph, a little something like this is nothing!"
With that, Tojo began skillfully prepping the sausages.
With the two of us working, the whole bag of sausages was prepped in no time.
I decided to add a little decoration.
Kishimoto, who was watching us cook from the side, muttered, "Black sesame seeds?"
"You have to give the octopuses eyes, don't you?"
I said, poking the black sesame seeds into the octopus-shaped sausages with a toothpick.
With that, the prep was done.
I put a frying pan on the stove, and once it was hot enough, I tossed in the prepared sausages.
──Sizzzzzle!
As the heat hit them, the sausages began to curl outwards.
Unlike Korean Vienna sausages, which are mostly brown, the Japanese kind are characteristically red on the outside and white on the inside.
The red comes from dye in the casing, and the white interior is because they have a high flour content, much like sausages made with fish paste.
It didn't require any special cooking skills, so I just cooked them until the outside was golden brown and arranged them nicely on a plate.
Right after, Tojo, who had followed my lead and plated her own cooked sausages, dusted off her hands with a proud look on her face.
"Heh! When I'm on the case, something like this is a piece of cake!"
Having confidence while cooking isn't a bad thing.
We presented our plates to Kishimoto, our designated taste-tester, at the same time.
Kishimoto cleared her throat, "Ahem," and picked up a pair of wooden chopsticks, making a gesture as if stroking a beard.
After dabbing it in some yellow mustard, one of my sausages disappeared into her small mouth.
Snap!
"Mm!"
Her eyes widened the moment she put it in her mouth.
"It just tastes like a normal Vienna sausage, though?"
"Well, yeah. It's not like I added anything special."
After tasting mine, Kishimoto tried one of Tojo's.
"Ah, this one's pretty good too, aside from being a little burnt on the outside."
Hearing her comment, I picked up one of Tojo's sausages with my chopsticks and popped it in my mouth.
Chew, chew.
"The heat control could use some work, but for your first time, I'd say this is a passing grade."
Hearing our assessment, the corners of her mouth twitched upwards.
But we still had a long way to go. Two great mountains of the bento side dish world—rolled omelets and karaage—still remained.
*
Our eventful cooking lesson finally ended about two hours later.
Tojo Karen, who had gained confidence from the easy Vienna sausages, had completely lost her motivation after a series of failures.
"Haaah... I never knew cooking was this hard."
"It's okay! You'll get better in no time if you keep practicing!"
You can't expect to be full after the first bite, but even considering that, this girl was seriously terrible at it.
For starters, her insistence on using only high heat was a major cause of failure.
I never imagined there was someone in this world who didn't understand that a gas stove has low and medium settings.
While I looked away for a moment, she complained it was taking too long and cranked up the heat on her own, creating a charcoal omelet and some karaage from the twisted nether. After tasting her own creation, she made an indescribable face.
"Mph... Mmph... Hah!"
With a slightly teary, flushed face, Tojo managed to swallow what she'd put in her mouth instead of spitting it out. After that, however, her chopsticks only ever reached for the food I had made.
She treated her own cooking like it was garbage.
For Tojo, who lacked patience when cooking, I taught her how to use a timer.
For someone with a short attention span like her, it was better to have a set time for when the cooking would be done.
We had to call it a day due to the time, but I wrote down the recipes and cooking methods in a notepad and urged her to practice again.
Tojo clutched the recipes I'd written for her to her chest as if they were treasure.
"Well, we should probably have dinner before it gets too late."
I checked the remaining ingredients after making the bento dishes and decided to make my specialty: Chinese food.
─Sizzzzzle!
I coated a large wok with oil, threw in a generous amount of thinly sliced green onions, and stirred them with a ladle.
This was to make scallion oil, a process that infuses the oil with flavor and adds umami to the dish.
A typical home stove wouldn't be able to produce the high heat needed for Chinese cuisine, but this place had a commercial-grade one, so there was plenty of firepower.
Seeing the scallion oil come to a boil in an instant, I added the pre-beaten eggs and instant rice to the wok and mixed everything together.
Clang! Clang!
Like a ship caught in a storm at sea, a golden wave of rice leaped inside the black wok with every shake of my arm, mesmerizing the onlookers.
Finally, I seasoned it simply with just salt and pepper, packed it into a rice bowl to shape it, and flipped it onto a plate.
The Golden Fried Rice, completed in about five minutes, revealed its beautiful form on the plate.
"Woooow!"
Kishimoto's eyes sparkled at the appearance of carbohydrates.
Tojo, beside her, was the same.
As soon as I handed them spoons, the two of them began to devour the fried rice.
I had set aside a portion for myself, and as I was savoring it, Kishimoto suddenly asked me a question.
"Ryu-chan, when did you get so good at cooking?"
Hearing her question, I searched my old memories.
"When was that..."
The first time I decided to make my own bento was during the second semester of my first year of high school.
Unlike in middle school, when my school was close to home, I had to leave by 7 AM at the latest to get to school on time.
My mother used to wake up at the crack of dawn every day to make my lunch, but seeing her tired face always made me feel guilty. So, starting that second semester, I decided I would make my own.
The first day I tried, I woke up at 4 AM to start, but I failed to make anything edible and ended up skipping lunch.
The next day, I learned the basics, like how to handle an egg without breaking it, and barely managed to finish around 7:30 AM. Naturally, I was late for school that day.
As time went on, the time it took me to make my bento gradually shortened. One day, I realized that even when I woke up at 4 AM to cook, the sun was no longer rising by the time I finished.
By repeating the same act every single day without fail, I had reached a certain level of mastery.
My father, who had silently watched all my efforts from the sidelines, finally gave me permission to enter the restaurant's kitchen after that day.
It felt like he was acknowledging me as the successor to Mikoya, the set-meal restaurant that held all of my parents' youthful memories.
After listening to the story I had calmly recounted, Kishimoto took out a handkerchief and dabbed at the corners of her eyes.
"Sniffle! To think you'd make your own bento for your hardworking mother... that's so touching!"
"Who makes yours?"
"Hm? My mama makes mine with lots of love, of course!"
This ridiculously devoted daughter.
As we ate and made small talk, the fried rice on our plates quickly disappeared.
I smacked my lips, wishing there was more, and asked the two for their plates so I could do the dishes.
Tojo tried to stop me, saying the household staff could do it, but as a guest, I didn't think that was polite, so I cleaned up everything myself.
She offered to give us a ride home in her car like before, but I declined since the subways were still running.
So Tojo walked us to the subway station herself. She mumbled for a moment before bowing her head deeply and saying, "Thank you both for today. I won't forget this favor."
Kishimoto smiled happily and took the initiative to ask Tojo to exchange email addresses, then waved and said, "See you at school tomorrow!"
It seemed the two of them had naturally become friends after today's events.