Fish Cake Broth Drunk at a Street Stall After Braving the Cold Wind That Reddened My Nose and Ears
Fish Cake Broth Drunk at a Street Stall After Braving the Cold Wind That Reddened My Nose and Ears
There's a debate that never fails to surface when sundae is on the table.
—What exactly is the best thing to dip it in?
The salt faction, the ssamjang faction, the soy sauce faction, the salted shrimp faction, the vinegared chili paste faction — arguments fly in every direction.
This one's better. No, this one.
They all had their points, but for my personal taste, sundae dunked in tteokbokki sauce still sat at the top.
That beautiful sight — a piece of sundae submerged deep in spicy-sweet tteokbokki broth and pulled back out glistening.
The way the sauce coated the tongue, mixing with that signature sundae richness — the flavor was impossibly good. Hard to describe.
The bold, aggressive broth also masked the faint gaminess some people couldn't handle in sundae, which helped.
And come on — is there any better color combination in the world than black and red?
A sauce that pleased the eyes, too.
For all these reasons, I'd always maintained that tteokbokki broth was the undisputed champion.
'Of course, what you dip it in is purely personal preference.'
Honestly, with Byeongcheon sundae, I'd take salted shrimp or ssamjang over tteokbokki broth any day.
Everyone's palate is their own.
"Try it."
But I couldn't resist pushing my own agenda.
Riman was the first to spear a piece of sundae with a toothpick and dip it into the tteokbokki sauce.
Half the dark sundae vanished into the red sauce, then resurfaced.
"Ooh?"
The moment he saw it, his lips twitched.
A curious scent tickled his nose.
The taste of the first bite of plain sundae hadn't even fully faded yet.
He'd been worried when he heard it was made from offal and blood, but there wasn't a trace of any rank or gamey smell.
The deep, meaty aroma of Pog, the springy chew of the offal.
And now a spicy chili-seasoned sauce on top of it — anticipation swelled in his chest thinking about how it would taste.
Saliva pooled in his mouth.
Every cell in his body clamored at him to hurry up.
Riman popped the sauce-dipped sundae into his mouth, hope held tight.
A chewy texture, rich meatiness, and the MSG-loaded tteokbokki seasoning tingling on his tongue.
"Whoa..."
He stared at the tteokbokki and sundae with open admiration.
Had he ever eaten food this good in his life?
The savory umami that coated his mouth was so intense, it felt like he'd swallowed the concentrated extract of Pog and cow simmered together for hours.
"Heh heh heh."
Laughter slipped out.
He just kept laughing.
Next, he stabbed a piece of red tteokbokki rice cake.
The chewy, springy texture and the tongue-tingling sauce.
An unusual food, texture-wise.
Lucas had told him it was made from pounded and steamed rice, and even knowing that, the first bite was so novel that he found himself chewing it over and over.
The particular sensation — chewy but never sticking to his teeth — was fascinatingly subtle.
"Hmm~."
Riman hummed contentedly and fished out a piece of fish cake from the tteokbokki.
The fish cake that came with it brought a completely different character.
If the rice cakes were springy and chewy and drenched in seasoning, this fish cake... how to put it.
'It's absorbed every last drop of broth.'
It had soaked up sauce all the way to its center, so every chew sent broth and savory juices dancing together across his palate.
Being made from ground fish, its texture was soft too.
Depending on the ingredient, even the same sauce delivered a completely different flavor.
Fascinating.
It was almost like alchemy.
Just as the same base materials produced entirely different reactions depending on which magic you linked to them, which method you refined them with, and which specific substances you chose.
'Cooking... might actually be fun to try.'
Riman chewed on another piece of tteokbokki, turning over the thought that cooking and alchemy were, in some ways, remarkably alike.
While Riman was spellbound by the tteokbokki, Bldi was...
"Shho good. It's sho good. Sho good..."
...beaming with happiness as she ate the sundae.
"Fuh heh heh heh."
The prickling bite of gallek, the pure sweetness of blood, the varied textures of multiple ingredients, and lastly, the MSG tying that harmony of flavors together.
A vampire who once knew only the taste of blood and gallek was steadily being corrupted by proper meals.
"Try the liver too. The lung's also surprisingly good."
Riman still found the offal a little too much and mostly stuck to the sundae and tteokbokki, but to Bldi, who had spent a long time drinking blood and eating things raw, organ meat was an utterly natural dining staple.
The crumbly liver disintegrated the moment it hit her mouth.
An unusual flavor.
Nutty but with a faint lingering bitterness — it suited her palate exactly.
'Raw liver is good, but cooked is good too...'
Fufufu.
A smile formed.
She didn't mean to smile — was it the delicious food? Or the persistent tingling running through her body?
Laughing, she dipped a piece of lung into the tteokbokki sauce this time.
She bit down on the small crunchy bits of cartilage woven through the spongy, chewy-soft texture of the perforated lung.
Crunch.
A pleasant resonance hummed through her teeth.
Organs that offered little outstanding flavor besides the meaty aroma of the offal itself — more than half their taste here came purely from the tteokbokki sauce coating the lung.
"Sho good."
Bldi smiled blissfully, her cheeks stuffed with sundae and organ meat.
"That good, is it?"
She nodded brightly at her employer — her master — Lucas's question.
"Yes. It's good."
There was a line in an old classical text.
No one who gives you food can be a bad person.
The reason Bldi, with her zero social skills and deep fear of interacting with others, could feel at ease around Lucas and Lucas alone — it was precisely that. He was a good human who regularly gave her delicious things to eat.
Good humans could be trusted.
One who gave her food this delicious — even more so!
It had started as a misunderstanding, but by now, Bldi considered meeting Lucas, the owner of this place, an act of divine fortune.
Otherwise, she'd still be drifting through the night sky right this moment, searching for her daily sustenance.
Of course—
"Bldi, you really do like things made with blood, don't you?"
"...Ah, ahh, uh, ah, uhhh..."
—a sudden conversation with anyone other than Lucas still left her completely frozen.
'If I want her working here, she's going to need a lot more practice communicating.'
I watched Bldi turn to solid ice the second Andrea spoke to her.
In that state, she'd never function as a proper employee.
'Maybe I should just have her do late-night delivery runs.'
Except I don't deliver. So, no.
I set that thought aside for now.
I poured some fish cake broth into a side dish.
'The real thing needs to be drunk from a paper cup...'
A freezing winter day so cold your breath plumed white.
Standing outside in the biting wind for about an hour, body shivering, until you finally duck through the plastic flaps of a pojangmacha and the whole smell of a street-food stall hits you.
—Ma'am, I'll have some odeng.
—Eight hundred won per skewer.
Ladling the broth into a paper cup yourself with trembling hands, orange ladle and all — that moment, that fish cake broth.
"Kkeuaah!!!"
A cry of admiration burst out before I could stop it.
Insane.
Just imagining it gets me drunk on fish cake broth.
Sadly, today was still on the mild side rather than genuinely cold — not the weather you need to properly savor it.
That said, I couldn't exactly cast ice magic inside the restaurant.
'We do have a mage on hand, though...'
I glanced at Riman, who was still devouring the tteokbokki in a daze.
'I'll ask her later.'
With that in mind, I took a sip of the broth from the side dish.
"That hits the spot."
Even without the weather buff to carry it, the gentle way it soaked over the tongue was full of the deep harmony of sea and land.
The perfect golden ratio of dried anchovies, radish, green onion, and a touch of MSG.
On top of that, the flavor of ground fish drawn out from simmering the fish cakes for hours.
I pulled out a skewer and dipped it in soy sauce.
The fish cake, boiled soft while submerged in the broth, melted gently on my tongue.
How sweet and delicious could a broth-soaked fish cake be?
To produce a flavor like this, that fish cake must have endured the hot currents inside the pot for all that time.
'Delicious.'
A completely different taste from the fish cake in the tteokbokki.
This was exactly why I insisted on ordering tteokbokki and fish cake soup separately.
The broth that rinsed away the burning, aggressive aftertaste left by the tteokbokki and reset the palate — that, too, was a reason to order fish cake soup.
After finishing clean with the broth and eating a piece of danmuji to rinse my mouth, I looked at my staff.
All of them had wide grins on their faces as they speared tteokbokki, sundae, and fish cake with toothpicks.
'They're really enjoying it.'
Bldi in particular couldn't suppress her smile.
"Boss, this flavor is really unique!"
Andrea, the meat fanatic, seemed satisfied as well and kept eating.
'Maybe I should try making plain rice cakes to go with it later.'
Mulling over new menu development in my head, I skewered one more piece of spicy tteokbokki and ate it.
***
At the viscount's castle — the heart of Viscount Britten's territory — the knights were sighing again today.
"Training again..."
"Surely he could let us off a little early, just for today."
Their grumbling stemmed from the training load that had been increased a few days ago.
"The physical examination results that came in today were shocking."
A few days earlier, the order had conducted physicals.
Commander Lancelot looked at his knights with an expression of utter disbelief.
"The weight of every single member has increased by five kilograms. Some showed improved endurance and muscle strength independent of weight gain, but there were also individuals with larger waist circumferences. I won't specify who here."
Every member of the order had put on weight.
What Commander Lancelot, speaking with a grim expression, neglected to mention to the others was that he himself had gained two kilograms.
"Effective today, training time is extended by two hours daily for one month. One hour in the morning, one hour in the afternoon."
This was an admonition directed at himself and every knight who had grown lax.
"Commander, if we do that, the Knight Restaurant will already be open by the time we're done."
At Hamilton's tactless remark, a chill fell over the room.
"Are you serious right now?"
"...My apologies."
"At any rate, training time will be extended. I expect everyone to be mentally prepared."
"Understood."
They called it complaints about longer training, but the training itself wasn't hard.
It was what they'd always done, and their hardened bodies had withstood far harsher regimens than this.
No, the reason the knights were suffering like this was—
"It'll already be full today too, won't it...?"
"I heard they even have a waiting line these days."
"Sigh... The food there really is something else."
"It's stranger not to fall for Sir Lucas's knightly diet."
"They say people from nearby villages are making the trip on purpose lately."
"It used to be our hidden gem..."
—because they couldn't go to Lucas's Knight Restaurant.
By now, Lucas's Knight Restaurant had become part of their daily lives.
Food that anyone walking the path of chivalry was obligated to eat.
Heimer, especially, had visited the restaurant every day with the spirit of offering a reverent prayer.
And now they couldn't go!
It was unfair.
'I broke all my personal records.'
But a knight order was a team.
Collective responsibility was the most basic principle of soldiering.
And yes, his waistline had indeed grown.
—You look like you've put on some weight lately, you know?
Liana had said as much to him.
"Lunch won't be sold out by the time we get there, right?"
"Looking at the recent customer numbers, it probably will."
"Haah."
It wasn't for nothing that talk of several new restaurants opening near the Knight Restaurant was popping up.
As everyone sighed over their lost gastronomic pleasures, Hamilton spoke up.
"I've got a great idea for how we can get to the restaurant. Want to hear it?"
This was Hamilton — the same Hamilton who had once secretly eaten Sir Lucas's bone broth that should have been presented to his lordship and caused an incident.
Watching him grin with total confidence, Heimer started worrying before he'd even heard the plan.
"Skipping training without permission is absolutely out of the question."
"It's nothing like that."
"Then what?"
"We become workers at the Knight Restaurant."
"Become workers?"
"Yeah. It's a 'Knight' Restaurant, right? If we offer to help, wouldn't Sir Lucas accept? When you really think about it, cooking is just another form of discipline."
"You— you absolute moron—!"
Heimer shouted before he knew what he was doing.
"That plan — let's do it. Right now."
Actually, that's not bad?