And so: dinner.
The elves and Katia had worked a full day and were visibly, powerfully hungry.
For the record, I’m not committing the faux pas of charging them for it.
Even back in Japan, I was always team bring-the-movers-juice-and-snacks.
They’re building MY house. This much is the least I can do.
Now — the elves are vegetable-eaters at core, while my household is fundamentally carnivorous.
Dwarves reportedly eat more or less anything…
So: what single dish lets EVERYONE eat well?
I’d been turning it over since noon, and really, there’s only one answer.
Via offering box, I summoned a certain item.
—Chanko hot pot soup base!
Yes. The hot pot beloved by all humankind.
Vegetables in delicious bulk, meat in delicious bulk.
And crucially: it works as all-veggie AND as all-meat, plate by plate.
Into the pot went the S-rank rare-delicacy boar the palm-top rabbits took down in the cave, plus mountains of bean sprouts and napa cabbage from the field.
With over ten mouths, the quantity was industrial, but—
“H-hey, YOU?! Boku has never eaten anything this delicious in my LIFE!”
“The work of forest spirits?! The cabbage and sprouts are absurd enough, but the BROTH… the broth is too delicious!”
“Meat, meat, carrot~♪ Meat, carrot~♪”
“It’s guuud~ this here is GUUUD~”
“Oi, thou? Couldst thou not at LEAST have made it curry hot pot…”
“Magnificent as ever, Lord Tatsuya!”
“Yum yum yum~♪”
“Master’s cooking is the strongest in existence!”
Demon Lord Cornelia — attending via walk-in, uninvited — was the sole dissenting review. Everyone else: rave notices.
And seriously, this boar meat is SPECTACULAR.
The fat runs sweet, the meat is outrageously juicy, and every chew squeezes out another endless wave of umami.
If I opened a chanko restaurant with this… it would conquer Japan, no contest.
I say that because I have never ONCE eaten a hot pot this good.
Hot pot truly is at its best when you commit a mountain of ingredients to one broth.
Every ingredient donates its dashi, everything compounds on everything else, and the result breaks the scoring system.
I made it in the giant stockpot, mind you. It vanished almost immediately.
The palm-top rabbits simply eat too much. Where it goes inside those tiny bodies, science cannot say.
Having recently discovered the joys of rice, the rabbit contingent then dumped cooked white rice and carrots into the remaining broth and started building zousui porridge.
“It’s guuud~ the zousui’s GUUUD~”
“Yum yum~♪”
“It’s the soup of the GODS~”
The rabbits ate with such transcendent bliss that everyone lined up for a share of the zousui…
“YOU?! Rice was THIS delicious all along?! Boku is nothing but astonished today!”
“Not even the great forest spirits could cook THIS, you know?”
“Rice, rice, carrot~♪ Rice, carrot~♪”
“Zousui’s best when ya slurp it, like THIS~”
“Oi, thou? Couldst thou not at LEAST have made it curry zousui…”
“My first zousui — and it, too, is delicious, Lord Tatsuya.”
“Master, I shall finish eating now. Someone must ready the cleanup…”
And so — one Demon Lord excepted, as usual — dinner at our house closed to universal acclaim once more.