Elf's Kitchen (3)

Elfina was a trainee in Kang Jinwoo's cooking class, Elf's Kitchen.

Known by another name—Elf-jok-i #1—she had been nursing a deeply suspicious heart. Right up until the moment she laid eyes on the umami bomb sitting in front of her: onion soup.

I... I had no idea the soup would be like this.

In the elven society of Nuardel, onion soup ranked about as high as vegetable stew. The pan never got past the temperature of a halfhearted warm-up, a stir that was more suggestion than cooking. A stingy pinch of salt went in, and if the elf in question actually cared about flavor, one precious pinch of pepper besides. Tear off a bit of flour-and-water dough, boil the lot together, and—ta-da! Nuardel-style vegetable stew, better known as yellow slop, complete.

Starch that had only half escaped the carrots and potatoes clung in a gluey film from the flour. The broth itself was a pale, snot-yellow wash, the sort of color that could kill an appetite you didn't even have. Before Kang Jinwoo's Elf Enlightenment Campaign, Elfina had eaten that kind of vegetable stew without a second thought. But she was an ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠enlightened elf now, her eyes opened by his cooking, and to someone like her there was a reason the cookbook of her own country—Nuardel vegetable stew, onion soup, Elskit, and the rest—was suspiciously thin.

Elfina could no longer bring herself to eat Nuardel's traditional food. The new wind Kang Jinwoo had brought with him—tomato sauce and pizza, ratatouille, risotto—meant that only the cooking of Earth's Europe could satisfy her palate. In that light, his announcement of onion soup had been something of a shock.

Why... why would you leave all the delicious food alone and make that snot?!

She had even given up her morning sleep, dragged herself out at dawn, and sliced onions until her arms gave out. All of that, for nothing but that dreadful onion soup? So when Kang Jinwoo said he was making it, Elfina had been bitterly disappointed. Of course she hadn't let it show. Do that, and his elf-loathing tirades and curses would come pouring out. She tucked every trace of discontent away and watched in obedient silence as he explained.

It didn't take her long to understand. The onion soup taking shape under Kang Jinwoo's hands was nothing like the dish she knew.

You sauté the onions until they turn a deep brown. Not burnt—caramelized. The residue stuck to the bottom is called the fond, and you scrape it up. To lift that fond cleanly and dissolve every last bit of savor left in the pan, you deglaze.

A parade of technical terms and techniques, pouring out in the blink of an eye. Elfina forgot her complaints entirely and crammed the knowledge into her brain as hard as she could. And then, as if by real magic, the flavor of the onions began to change.

It wasn't that she had never tasted sweetness in a raw onion, but the heat and the sharp bite had always come with it. The brown onions Kang Jinwoo had caramelized, though, were sweet. And an umami she had never once sensed in an onion was humming through them. At that point Elfina set her doubts aside, and shouted in her heart.

Great Jinwoo! I knew I could believe in you!

When he scolded, he said things too awful to repeat, and no matter how hard she tried, he only ever found fault with her. But in the end, the reason she had walked into Elf's Kitchen was Kang Jinwoo's skill. Elfina did not regret her choice. Beside her, Elf-jok-i #2—Luena—seemed to be thinking much the same.

The closer the onion soup came to finished, the harder Elfina and Luena pestered him, a drumbeat of hurry, hurry.

"All right. It's done."

And there it was, set down before them: Kang Jinwoo's onion soup. The aroma seemed to skip her nasal passages entirely and drive straight into her central nervous system. Elfina shivered.

"Th-this is a soup made from nothing but those onions?"

The onions she had sliced could turn into something this beautiful? Cheese had melted into a form as fine and smooth as untrodden snow. Where it lay thinner, pale shards of bread showed through—toasted crisp once, then left to drink the broth until they softened. That particular pleasure only the initiated know: something crisp, deliberately soaked in a delicious soup. Elfina, whose horizon of taste had widened under Kang Jinwoo's cooking, could guess at least a little of the devastation waiting in that bowl.

She swallowed a mouthful of saliva as if she were already swallowing the soup itself. She wanted nothing more than to shovel it in until her mouth was full. Appetite stormed behind her eyes.

Her share was portioned off with a soft tap, a spoon set beside it. The moment the tasting began, she lifted that spoon faster than anyone, and packed her mouth exactly as she had imagined.

"Mmph—hot!!"

"For crying out loud, Elf-jok-i!!! When are you going to start acting like a person—when?! Anyone can see it's hot!"

Elfina spat the onion soup right back out the instant it hit her tongue. The soup had been kept hot the whole time, then sealed under a lid of cheese and melted in the oven. The heat trapped underneath was beyond anything she had pictured.

"Ugh... hoo— hoo!"

Slowly, stubbornly, she cooled it. This time she took a proper, generous mouthful.

Hup... haah!

Still hot, but bearable. A clean vegetable stock, simmered long from nothing but onion, carrot, and celery. The caramelized onion filling, with exquisite precision, the one place where that cleanness fell a little short. Not a grain of sugar or a drop of honey had gone into the dish, and yet the gentle sweetness and the warmth pulled a smile out of her on their own.

Stock drawn separately. Caramelized onions sautéed separately. Soup bread toasted and laid on top separately. Ingredients cooked apart like that can easily go wrong, each flavor playing its own tune and never quite meeting. What prevented that disaster was the salt worked through every stage—the bridge between ingredient and ingredient, taste and taste, aroma and aroma. Salt, the very face of saltiness, took components that had lived apart and, once they were finally assembled, bound their flavors into one perfect whole.

Elfina spooned up the broth with the corners of her mouth twitching, then turned her ambitions on the bread, sodden with soup. There was a cruelty in taking something cooked to a crackling crisp and deliberately drowning it. But no technique is without its story, and that cruelty had a reason. Bread brushed with olive oil and baked until crisp carried a savor close to something fried. Carbohydrate, its umami doubled by that once-through toasting, then pierced to the core by a broth that was itself an umami bomb. At that point the bread was no longer just bread. It was something whose flavors had stacked and stacked until they blew straight through the damage meter—an exponential detonation of savor.

"Hehk. Heeehk..."

Under the merciless work of her spoon, the bread—left with nothing but the skeleton of its crispness—crumbled away. She dunked the sodden piece all the way to the bottom, then lifted it back up together with the cheese on the surface. Sliced, fried, drowned. The cheese stretched after it as if grabbing the poor thing by the pant leg. Don't you feel the least bit sorry for this bread, after everything it's been through?

Hehe. Be a good little bite and get eaten.

Elfina swallowed the bread without hesitation and slurped the cheese down after it. Every time she chewed the broth-logged crumb, the stock that had soaked in through its air pockets sprayed back out the other way—a cheerful little rebellion from bread she had thought resigned to being eaten. A delicious revenge play unfolded on her tongue.

"Hup—slurp!"

Well. That was only from the bread's point of view. The power of life and death over the onion soup belonged entirely to Elfina, and she had no intention of letting this bewitching soup live.

I'm going to eat it. Every last bit...!

She did not stop spooning. A bite, another bite, and another. Before long her spoon was scraping an empty bowl. She had demolished it at last—the onion soup that had been her share.

"Huh? M-more, please. Chef!"

"No. There's nothing left anyway."

She demanded a refill with desolate eyes, and what came back to her was a soup pot gone stone cold. Only then did she come back to herself.

This onion soup... is dangerous.

Set the cheese aside, and everything in it was made from vegetables. For a human, that would have been ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a drawback. For an elf, it tasted like a mouthwatering delicacy. Of all the dishes Kang Jinwoo had shown them so far, wasn't this the most dangerous? Elfina thought so as she licked the innocent spoon.

The other apprentice elves seemed to feel the same. None of them could take their eyes off their empty bowls; they just clutched spoons that no longer had anywhere to go. Even Iseria, who had lived alongside Kang Jinwoo longer than any other elf, was doing it. That alone was enough to guess what kind of destructive power onion soup held over elves who favored vegetables.

Into a silence that held nothing but regret, Kang Jinwoo spoke.

"So? Looking at you now, I feel like I don't even need to ask."

"It's so good! To think I'm only learning about this now. I've wasted half my life as an elf!"

"I think the cheese could even be left off, and then it would be completely vegetarian! Perfectly elven!"

Wow. Wow. The apprentice elves worked themselves into a fervor, praising the onion soup's tremendous flavor. Kang Jinwoo looked from Iseria to Elfina, face by face, and then he said to Elfina:

"Eh. Me?"

"Yeah. The cooking I just taught you, a proper knife hand, an accurate recipe. With those, you can make it."

"I... I could make a dish like this?"

From the first day until today, Elfina had never once been praised—only scolded. She had volunteered for Elf's Kitchen because she loved good food, only to feel ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the absence of talent and grow unsettled. To that Elfina, a single sentence from Kang Jinwoo offered hope. She herself could make food this delicious.

She pictured herself mastering everything he taught and cooking for her family—a family that had lived their whole lives with a wall between them and fine dining. At a dinner shared by her mother, her father, and Elfina's little sibling, the onion soup she had made was set down on the table.

Inside the imagining, her family passed their joy along, each in their own way. A future that had not happened—and yet might. Elfina laughed. Not a twitch of the mouth. Not an awkward lift of one corner.

"I'll work hard. Chef!!"

Deep enough for the dimples to bloom, she broke into a radiant smile.

From the moment the lessons began until now, it felt like I'd done nothing but chew out Elf-jok-i #1. So I'd tossed her one stock line of comfort and motivation, nothing more, and—

"I'll work hard. Chef!!"

Elf-jok-i set her jaw with the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠most beautiful smile I had ever seen on her. Well. I wasn't complaining. The reaction was better than I'd expected, and it startled me.

It wasn't only No. 1. The response to the onion soup itself was feverish across the board. Even Iseria, who had already eaten that elven cheat item known as tofu, ate with fire in her eyes. Of course the other apprentice elves were scraping the bottoms of their bowls like maniacs.

Anyway, I'd shown them once and walked them through the recipe and the technique. About an hour left until breakfast. Start now, and it would come out right on time—still hot, not gone cold. Perfect. I looked at every elf standing in front of me.

"All right. Your turn."

"What?"

"Make the onion soup. You planning to send the guests to breakfast hungry?"

Get it together. Get it together. You think you came here to play? You came to learn how to cook, and to cook. I laid down the law for the apprentice elves and set them to work.

"The hotter it is, the faster laundry dries, right? So if we sauté the onions over high heat, won't the moisture leave even faster?"

"Mm-hm, sure, sure. You're going to die anyway, so die by my hand right now."

"Hieeeeek..."

Here and there I checked carefully that nobody was doing anything unhinged, and I watched the cooking come along. Fortunately, everyone had their heads on straight. And for whatever wind had blown through her, Elf-jok-i #1 turned out something good: a deep brown, and not a single scorch—a perfect caramelization. Bread toasted just right, and salt worked in without a miss at every stage. The one who was usually the biggest hole in the lineup—what had gotten into her? Showing her the dish earlier must have lit a real fire.

"It's done, Chef!"

"Good. The guests should be along any minute. Ah—they're already here."

At the restaurant tables, elves were already seated and waiting the moment mealtime arrived. We portioned out onion soup for every guest who had come, melted the cheese, and finished the bowls.

"Today's menu is onion soup! Come and get it!"

"Onion soup? That's what the wolves on the back hill eat... huh?"

"Ahem, ahem! Seeing the care that went into it, I suppose I ought to try a bite."

Elves who had been wrinkling their noses at the words onion soup changed their tune the instant they saw it and caught the smell. We had also prepared bowls without cheese, for those who preferred it that way, so it was a menu that considered every elf's taste—nothing if not elf-friendly.

And once the meal began, the restaurant erupted into what could only be called a roaring celebration.

"To think a food like this existed in the world—I've been so pitiful until now!!"

"As of today, I withdraw my support of Kang Jinwoo. From this day forward, Kang Jinwoo and I leave behind the relationship of supporter and supported, and become one body, a single—"

"Hey, hey, hey."

Elf guests praising me nonstop, stunned by the shocking taste and aroma. But every bowl of this food had been made by the apprentice elves. Aside from the onion soup I'd cooked as a demonstration, I hadn't made a single pot. The apprentices, who knew that perfectly well, wore expressions that were hard to put into words. Worry, hope, anxiety, nerves, relief, pride, joy—faces that held every joy and sorrow a thinking creature can feel. In the end only the pride remained, drawing out bright, unburdened smiles.

More elf guests kept arriving, drawn by the smell of soup that had escaped the restaurant and drifted all through the manor. Between them the pots were scraped to the bottom, and breakfast was over in a flash. I spoke to the apprentice elves, dead on their feet.

"Starting to get it? The reward in cooking."

"Yes. I felt it in my bones."

"We're going to work even harder from now on!!"

Each of them burned with a new light in their eyes, renewing their passion for the craft. When you see someone eat what you made and light up, the busyness and the ache turn into joy. These apprentices had done nothing but suffer all morning, and still their faces were full of delight. At that point, you could call these elves proper cooks. Their attitude was exactly what it should be, and I found myself grinning along with them.

The warm mood was just about to keep rolling.

"K-Kang Jinwoo, sir!"

"Huh. Elioren?"

"Dad?"

Elioren, who never missed a meal, had shown up late for once—and not with the look of a hungry man, but with the fluster of someone being chased. Even Iseria seemed startled that her father would come bursting in like this. She was in the kitchen, and still the word Dad came out of her by habit.

What on earth was going on.

Did Arthur and the Duke come to rescue me or something?

I entertained a useless little fantasy. They'd be starting to notice I was gone by now, but how would those people even get here? Elioren, having caught his breath for a moment, spoke.

"Please come with me at once. The outer district has been reduced to rubble!"

"Sorry? What does that have to do with—"

"Duke Kailan of Silbaerin is saying that if we don't bring Sir Jinwoo to him, he'll smash whatever's left as well!"

"He'll what?"

What is even happening.

While I stood there blank, unable to follow the flow of events, Elioren shouted.

"Aigoo. You'll have to come with me for now, I think! Let's go!"

"No, wait a second."

Regardless of my will, Elioren seized my hand and pulled. Why was this guy so stupidly strong? I couldn't resist that desperate, overwhelming grip, and I was dragged out of the manor.

The moment we cleared the doors, a roar rolled in from the outer district, where Eilenna's brewery stood. Boom. Crash. So he really was on a rampage. Only now, with the situation starting to make a little sense, did I break into a dead run.