Chapter 372

Chapter 372: Tomato Hotpot

Translated by Zzonkedd

Edited by Gumihou

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“Right, time for food,”

““Hungry!””

““Sui’s tummy is emptyy~~””

“Yes, yes, I understand. Ugh, it’s really chilly here,”

Right now, we’re at the foot of the mountain. For some reason, it gets really cold whenever the wind blows. [1] At first, I thought we could just make do with some pre-made travel food but the cold was making me crave something hot.

Something hot…

Like a hot pot?

Hmm…

Still pondering, I looked through [Net Super] and clicked on the page for soup base options.

“A Tomato Hotpot? I had those before and they were pretty good. It would be a nice change from the usual kind of [8] Japanese style hotpot we’d been having lately…”

The soup base I’m looking at was from a famous manufacturer of [9] ketchup and tomato juice. [1] According to the description, the soup based was made with fully matured tomatoes to make a rich and sweet soup that would go well with both vegetables and meat. Deliciousness guaranteed.

The second soup base that caught my eye was from a famous manufacturer of yakiniku sauces of all things. The soup base was made with ripe tomatoes, basil and cheese for a rich and mellow soup.

“This one looks good too, let’s buy both and compare.”

With that in mind, I put both types of soup base into the shopping cart along with ingredients such as cabbage, onions, carrots, broccoli, shimeji mushrooms and wieners. Additionally, I’ll be including Cockatrice meat into the tomato hotpot too.

After cutting the Cockatrice meat into bite-sized pieces and setting them aside, I trimmed all the vegetables into appropriate bite-sized pieces. For harder vegetables like the carrots, I cut them into thin circles. The weiners were sliced into diagonal pieces.

Next, I squeezed out the soup base into a clay pot and arranged the ingredients on top, covering it and letting the pot slowly heat up to a simmer while [8] I did the same thing with the next pot but with the basil and tomato soup base.

[8] As the pots of tomato nabe heated up, I gulped, and in a fit of recklessness, dug out my packet of mixed cheese and threw them onto all of the nabe pots.

[8] There is no cuisine that cannot be improved with more cheese! Cheese is justice!

[8] The cheese melted almost immediately when it touched the hot surface of the hotpot. The snow-white cheese looked really beautiful against a red background with steam rising into the air.

“Woah, it looks really good…”

“Oi, can’t we eat yet?”

““Hurry up!””

““Looks yummy~~””

Everyone was staring at the mouth water spectacle before us. Fer and Dora-chan’s faces were too close to the hotpot, but more importantly… [5]

“Oi, you’re going to drool into the hotpot!”

The two monsters quickly looked away.

“Wh-who’s drooling?”

““Tch, wh-who knows…””

““Master~~ Sui is hungry~~””

[6] Ahh, Sui-tan is squishing against my ankle. It felt rather cold, but you’re cute so I’ll forgive you~~

“In a bit, it’ll be ready in just a bit~~”

I quickly turned off the fire and set down two claypots before each of my familiars.

[5] “Hmm, they look kind of similar, but this one,” [8] Fer sniffed the basil+tomato hotpot. “This one smells like the flatbread thing we had back at the mansion.”

[8] ““Sniff, sniff, huh, yeah! That’s a kind of herb, right?””

[8] “Oh, you two remember the Margherita pizza?”

[8] “No meat, but I guess it was not bad,”

“Please go ahead and try it. The vegetables simmered in tomato sauce are delicious when eaten with the cheese, but it’s really hot so watch out.”

“Fumu, vegetables again. However, since it smells good, I shall try it.”

Was Fer’s begrudging reply as he sent a gentle breeze over his food to cool it off. Dora-chan was doing the same thing but Sui had already oozed into the hotpot and was digesting the piping hot cheese and tomato hotpot.

““This is sooo yummy~~~”” [5]

““Ah, I’m kind of envious that Sui could eat hot food like this,”” said Dora-chan. ““I mean, I could cool it by using Ice Magic but that would ruin the food.”” [5]

“Umu, umu, I guess it’s pretty decent,”

Look at you going umu, umu while stuffing your face into the hotpot. This is your definition of ‘decent’? [5]

[6] Anyway, while my familiars ate their portion, it’s time for me to try mine too.

[5] First off, let’s try the one from the ketchup and tomato juice manufacturer.

Hmm, hmm, yes, cheese and tomato go really well together. [5] It was a very decadent experience, almost like eating gooey pizza toppings~

The broth was tasty too~

“Phew, that was really good”

[8] Let’s try the one with the basil next. Hmm, the scent of herbs in the soup, there’s more than just basil there. There’s oregano and something else. The soup itself has a thicker texture to it. Perhaps due to the cheese product (which can’t really be real cheese, can it?) the broth was more of a creamy pink than proper red.

[8] I’m glad I put extra cheese on both.

[8] Fufufu, the cheese pull is really fun too~ [5] [5]

[6] “Gah, carbs, I want carbs. It’s almost like eating Margherita with everything but the pizza base. Hm? Pizza base? Oh, oh, let’s have the hotpot with bread!”

I quickly took out a few loaves of the orphanage made bread and tore off a piece to dip into the tomato broth.

“Woah, as expected bread goes really with cheese and tomatoes~”

“Nu? Is it that good? Give me some too,”

““Me too!””

““Sui wants to try too~!””

Suddenly, everyone wanted bread…

“Okay, but don’t forget we still have the finale to look forward to, so don’t eat all the soup, alright?”

“Ou, that’s right,”

““The part where you put rice or noodles in the soup? Those are great~!””

““Sui likes those too~””

After many ‘seconds’, I collected and reheated the remaining soup from the ketchup manufacturer’s soup base and added cold cooked rice into it, letting the rice simmer into a sticky risotto.

[8] For the second soup, since it was quite thick and enriched with extra cheese, I decided to boil some pasta and make some sort of spaghetti with tomato, basil and cheese sauce… in fact, let’s grate a touch more cheese just before serving. [5] [5]

Feeling warm and comfortable after the hot meal, I set up our box shape building with Earth Magic and we all wrapped ourselves in our nice warm futons, ready to rest ourselves for the next day’s challenge.

[Gumi really, really dislikes inconsistencies, check Note 8 for rant. Also, red sauce after the red tornado incident? You can’t tell me Mukouda isn’t hard core]

[1] Structural Change: Combine 2 paragraphs

[2] Structural Change: Combine 3 paragraphs

[3] Structural Change: Combine paragraph & dialogue

[4] Structural Change: Change passive sentence to dialogue

[5] Delete Repetitive or Pointless Information.

[6] Additional Information for Aesthetic Purpose

[7] Add Dialogue Tag

[8] Creative Licence Taken – instructions were the same for soup>ingredients>cheese, which made Gumi question the necessity of buying the cheese+tomato+basil soup base.

Indeed, the cheese was never mentioned again and they were only raving about the basil herb which they have never tasted before…EXCEPT they totally did during the pizza arc where they had Margherita Pizza which consisted of wow, mozzarella cheese, tomato sauce and le gasp! basil?!

[9] The soup base here was probably inspired by the brand Kagome

https://www.hktvmall.com/hktv/en/main/Pure-Source/s/H1079001/Supermarket/Supermarket/Seasoning/Japanese-Sauce/Japanese-Soup-Base/Tomato-Hotpot-Soup/p/H0888001_S_10139039

[10] No idea where this imaginary soup base came from, the only cheese + tomato soup base that I could find was from… Kagome too…

It was probably a limited item product that never caught on despite the proliferation of tomato-based hotpot soups. Because cooks adventurous enough to try tomato soups would probably prefer to add their own cheese products onto their soups.

Also, visually speaking, a gently simmering red soup with a small wheel of camembert or shredded mozzarella melting gently on the nabe would probably look better than having a ‘cheese in’ kind of nabe.

A ‘cheese in’ nabe would merely be a… milky nabe? If I were the manufacturer of a cheese+tomato nabe, the cheese product would come in a separate packet to be put on the nabe after it was done.

Grating extra mixed cheese with mozzarella on top of a tomato-based nabe would give you a nice cheese pull effect when you pick out the ingredients on top.

I should try and make this.