Ragu Pasta, Let's Eat First and Think Later (1)
An aroma that stirred anticipation.
Catherine's eyes lit up.
It was heavy, yet there was no mistaking that rich, full-bodied acidity. It was tomato—unmistakably so. No vinegar, however sharp, could produce a freshness like this. Had he made a stew? It was hard to deny the possibility; these days it was rare for a dish of his to appear without tomatoes in it. Raw, they offered their own savory depth; cooked, they blossomed into a rainbow of layered umami that made their uses nearly endless. They were a staple in the salads nobles ate as digestifs or palate cleansers. They were practically essential for stocks, stews, and gravies. Even in dishes where one would never expect them, a trace of tomato almost always found its way in.
Twitch—
Mary's brow suddenly twisted into a savage scowl, and a wave of pure irritation rolled off her in every direction.
"Hmm? Why the sudden change? Ah, don't tell me it's that again."
"Excuse me for a moment."
Whisk, whisk! She swiftly set aside everything in her hands, then strode out with crisp, military precision and threw open the door to the office.
"Just as I thought."
Standing outside were Karem and Gordon, Catherine's guest. And just as Mary had predicted, Karem held a large copper pot with its lid still on, a ladle tucked against the side. Gordon, for his part, gripped a second pot in both hands—two oversized forks, a thick chunk of cheese, and a grater resting on top.
"After everything I told you, this time you go and lure a guest of the tower into—"
"I didn't bring plates or utensils, so don't worry. Come on, after all the time I've spent here, you think I'd forget something like that? Besides, there's still plenty left for the other mages, so feel free to take some and come back, okay?"
"Hmph. If that's the case, then fine."
It still grated on her a little. But this much, she could tolerate. Mary shot Karem a sharp look, then offered Gordon a polite bow as if nothing had happened, stepped out of the office, walked a short distance, and vanished with a soft poof.
"Sooo."
Gordon, who had been blinking blankly as he followed Karem into the office, looked thoroughly confused.
"What was with that razor-sharp reaction just now?"
"For a second she thought I'd brought lunch and stolen her work, so she got like that."
"Don't people usually like it when their workload shrinks?"
"She's a house brownie and a workaholic on top of that, apparently."
"Average brownie behavior?"
Catherine, who had been looking back and forth between the two pots with rising expectation, waved a hand firmly.
"No, no. Even if ordinary brownies are obsessed with work, they don't flip their eyes out over having a job taken away. Just think of that one as the exception."
"Well, I'd need to have actually seen a brownie first."
"With your career, you must have run into one at least once."
"Maybe I just mistook them for hired elves."
Gordon set the pots on the guest table, sat beside Catherine, and cast his mind back. In his travels across the vast continent of Europa he had seen maids and attendants of every race in every style of dress. Humans, dwarves, and gnomes were the baseline; rarer minorities appeared now and then, even the occasional demonkin, and of course elves as well.
"Among the elves I passed on the road, maybe one or two of them were brownies."
"The two races are hard to tell apart by looks alone."
"Well, they do look a lot like elves."
"But why are we having lunch in the office today—ah."
Catherine raised a fist and stuck out only her thumb, pointing behind her. On the desk where she had been sitting moments earlier, documents of every material formed little towers, mountains, and hills.
"This is the season when every sort of paperwork comes flooding in before winter."
"Too much to finish in one sitting like before, I take it?"
"If it were only the usual work, maybe. But I've started a few ventures of my own."
"Ventures?"
"Cold-weather potions, vanilla, the territory's oil business, and so on."
Poof—
Mary reappeared outside the office. She entered carrying a tray of plates, utensils, and pink turnip pickles, then began setting the table. The moment she did, Karem lifted the lid.
A rush of hot steam—dense with the concentrated fragrance of mushrooms, tomatoes, and beef—billowed upward, vanishing just short of the ceiling as it spread through the room. Catherine blinked in mild confusion.
One pot held pasta: the widest kind, pappardelle. It gleamed as if tossed in oil. That left the other pot as the sauce… supposedly.
There was the bright, savory tang that only tomatoes could produce. But what filled the pot was nothing but minced meat. The finely chopped beef, saturated with deep red, looked nothing like a sauce.
"What exactly did you make?"
"Huh? Pasta, of course. The wide kind. Pappardelle."
"I mean the sauce. This is just a meat porridge. Did you throw tomatoes and spices into meat and cook it down into gruel?"
"Huh? Ra… meat sauce. Meat sauce."
He had nearly said ragu. Calling a sauce a "stew sauce" would have earned him a scolding for the absurd name. The dodge was painfully obvious, but Catherine latched onto the unnatural phrasing so hard she failed to notice.
Sauce. A liquid poured over food to heighten its flavor and color. Or rather, a type of seasoning. Yet this was clearly no seasoning. Seasonings were meant to melt into the ingredients. This, on the other hand—while it smelled mouthwatering—was a meat porridge. Not a seasoning at all, but a dish in its own right. And the pasta had been served separately, as if the cooking had been left unfinished. Was she supposed to mix pasta into meat porridge?
"Ohohohoho. If you keep talking like that, you'll regret it later."
Gordon chuckled lightly and shook his head as if to say she had it all wrong.
"When he offered me a taste, I nearly ate the whole pot."
"It only looks like red meat porridge. The smell alone is something else."
"I swear the taste is even better than the smell."
While Gordon licked his lips and described the flavor to Catherine, Karem got to work. He plunged a large fork deep into the pot, scooped up a mass of noodles, and twirled them around the tines with a spatula. The glossy, wide ribbons of pappardelle gathered like a river of light flowing into a single current. At first they clung to the fork in a luminous whirlpool; then they swelled like a thrashing school of fish. Once the nest was a little larger than a grown man's fist, Karem tipped it onto a plate, set the utensils aside, and seized the ladle resting in the sauce.
Squelch. Sluuurp—
Normally the excess sauce would have poured right off. Instead it mounded high on the ladle, looking nothing like something meant to be scooped. Even at a glance one could feel the weight of it. Fleeting glimpses of sauce caked thick along the pot's walls only reinforced the impression. This was not liquid; it was a sticky mass of chunked meat. The surface did not spring back at once—the ladle left a deep crater that filled only slowly, like sand in a pit trap. Honestly, the half-fluid state of finely minced meat particles with red liquid forced between them and clotted there could not, by any stretch, be called appetizing.
But the smell. Through the dense beef aroma cut a clean, bright note. The invisible mass of umami that had claimed the office the instant the ladle rose made Catherine's mouth water.
And then—splat!
Splat! Splat!
Three generous ladles in a row. The meat sauce heaped so high that the first scoop slid down and buried the pasta completely. The sound and the sight snapped Catherine back to herself; the moment the finished plate entered her field of vision, the corner of her eye twitched.
"Hmm. So how am I supposed to serve this?"
"Just mix it and feed it to her."
"With a fork and spoon, then? Very well."
"Ah—aaaaah! Wait!"
Karem stopped Mary just as she raised the utensils. He had nearly forgotten the most important step of all. Snatching up the cheese and grater, he began showering Catherine's plate.
Shhhk-shhhk-shhhk-shhhk!
The block of cheese shrank visibly with every pass. Long white flakes drifted down like snow, blanketing the ragu; the heat began to melt them at once, only for fresh snow to bury them again. When Karem finally set the cheese and grater down, Mary met his eyes, read the silent affirmation, and put her hands back to work. She mixed the pasta exactly as he intended. The pure white hill was swiftly overrun by greedy red, its color stolen. The meat sauce had already been dry to the point of stiffness; the cheese, as if taking revenge for the corruption of its purity, began stealing what little moisture remained.
"Mm, this is quite dry. Is there a reason you made it this way?"
"I cooked off the moisture to the absolute limit to concentrate the flavor."
"That… wasn't quite what I meant."
Even so, once Mary kept mixing without pause, the cheese became a binder. Sauce and noodles finally clung together into something that looked, to Catherine's eye, almost presentable. She noticed the change at once. The aroma of the pasta had transformed. The deep, concentrated acidity of tomato and the rich meat fragrance now carried a faint, funky, nutty note of cheese. Catherine drew a long breath and filled her empty stomach with scent alone.
Mary scraped the leftover meat sauce and cheese from the rim of the bowl between the tines of the fork, then twirled a clean portion of pasta. The sauce and cheese had long since robbed the noodles of their sheen, and the natural thickness of pappardelle meant only a few strands clung to the fork. Yet those uniquely broad ribbons wrapped the dry, crumbling meat sauce so tightly it had nowhere to escape.
"I see. You drove off the moisture and used the widest pappardelle for exactly this reason."
"The sauce is so stiff it doesn't mix easily with the noodles otherwise."
"So you wrap as much sauce as possible and make up the missing cling with cheese. Couldn't you simply have left a little more moisture?"
"Oh, just try it first."
Karem smiled with complete confidence, chin lifted.
"I'm reaching the absolute limit of my patience here—could you please just eat already?"
Gordon could not tear his eyes from his own towering plate of meat-sauce spaghetti buried under grated cheese; his voice was taut with urgency.
"For some reason, hearing that makes me want to admire it a little longer."
"I'm a guest—do you really think it's right for the host to torment me like this?"
"Don't tell me you were about to eat before the host has even taken a bite? Surely not."
"Damn it! I can't even argue!"
Gordon's mouth had gone dry; a faint tremor ran through him. Even so he kept his expression rigid, glaring at the pasta as if he meant to burn a hole through the table rather than take the first bite.
Deciding she should end this before her guest actually committed a breach of manners, Catherine finally gave Mary a nod. She opened her mouth and accepted the pasta that looked ready to slip free yet still held the cheese and meat sauce in a perfect grip.
Attached Materials
— Ragu Pasta —
This is a picture drawn by ChatGPT.