Chapter 116

A few days had passed since Mari was granted independence.

But even so, we couldn’t leave the Elf Village, and that was because Mari and Aisia needed time to prepare their hearts for parting…

It wasn’t for the same romantic reason.

The reason we couldn’t leave the Elf Village.

It was simply because I had squandered most of the money our party had gathered.

Thanks to that, Mari made a face I had never seen before, like a ghost, and scolded me. In the end, I had to earn money to replenish the spent funds.

“I’m sorry, Kurt. I want to help, but Marisia’s glare is too scary…”

“Sorry, Kurt! But Mari said absolutely not to help this time!”

“…I know. It’s all my fault, so there’s nothing I can do.”

Karina and Serena also tried to help me earn money by taking on adventurer requests, but Mari, who noticed this, glared at them with axe-like eyes and said they absolutely must not help this time. So, earning money was entirely my responsibility.

“I can’t believe it! Last time, you squandered all our money on strawberry cake, and even though I took charge of finances, you learned nothing!?”

“…But it was delicious, wasn’t it?”

“What!? Is that what a Lizardman who squandered all our money while the finance manager was down should say!!”

“…I didn’t squander all of it, I left a little…”

“Huh? What did you say?”

“No, nothing. I just said that soon, we’ll almost replenish the spent money.”

“…Sigh. Still, I’m always grateful that you cook for us, Kurt. But even so, I think it’s too much to spend the money we all gathered for the party without consulting us.”

“Marisia, don’t be too hard on Kurt. If you think about it, we also share the blame for not stopping him while he was cooking.”

“That’s right! Kurt didn’t mean to spend all the money. It’s just that he has a condition where he can’t control himself when it comes to cooking!”

…Are they defending me, or are they mocking me now?

Anyway, that’s how the so-called ‘Vegetarian Cooking Class Safe for Elves’ started, and on days without work, I had to hunt and earn money in the Elf Village without moving.

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The ingredients also became pitifully scarce due to the backlash from making rice cakes, and for the time being, food expenses were strictly limited more than before.

Not only could we not dream of expensive spices like sugar, but we couldn’t even afford ordinary spices.

And that was the same for my cooking class, where I taught the Elves to cook and used the completed dishes as meals to save on food expenses.

In a hunting ground far from the Elf Village, where even if fire was used, the chance of it spreading to the World Tree was almost zero.

At a place where I had temporarily cut down all the surrounding bushes to make a hut for making tofu, a few Elves and I gathered.

“For that reason, today’s dish is onion soup.”

Onion soup.

A soup loved by the poor, so much so that it could be called the soup of the poor, was made using onions, which were relatively fast-growing and nutritious before potatoes appeared.

Even the ingredients could be extremely simplified to just onions and water, and its characteristic of developing a subtle sweetness when cooked for a long time made it a food loved by the poor since Roman times.

Moreover, the method is simple.

Put thinly sliced onions in a pot. Fry them. Add water. Done.

The exact recipe is as follows.

Maintain a low heat so the onions don’t burn, and keep frying the sliced onions in the pot.

At this point, onion soup could be made without adding anything, but if possible, it’s better to add fat to assist in frying the onions.

Using bacon fat or butter is preferable, but in this case, considering the Elves would eat it, olive oil is used as a substitute.

Add a little salt to season and help draw out the onions’ moisture.

Then, fry until the onions become transparent, then until they become mushy, and then until they turn yellow again.

This is to maximize the sweetness inside the onions by removing all the moisture while applying heat, a process called caramelization.

The frying time for onions is about 3-4 hours.

Simplified recipes say 30 minutes is enough, but to bring out the complex sweetness inside the onions, 30 minutes is woefully insufficient, and you need to keep frying for about 3-4 hours.

In fact, places that truly insist on the ultimate taste of onion soup fry onions for over 12 hours, so the importance of this frying process in onion soup is self-evident.

By the way, there are recipes that add sugar or soda to accelerate this caramelization, but that recipe was unusable in my current situation.

No money.

So, I substitute it with time and labor.

Onion soup is a dish where, due to its simple ingredients, you substitute with time to enhance the flavor.

After frying for about 3-4 hours without burning, when the onions are sufficiently caramelized, finally pour water over them to adjust the soup’s concentration.

At this point, using broth from bones instead of water would be better, but bringing that out in an Elf cooking class would be perfect for causing mass food poisoning.

Finally, add pepper to the onion soup, adjusted to a normal soup concentration, for flavor, and it’s done.

At least I always had salt and pepper on hand, so even with ingredient cost restrictions, I could use them to some extent, which was fortunate.

This completes it.

The soup I started making right after breakfast was now finished, and it was already lunchtime.

As I smiled contentedly while tasting the onion soup, an Elf learning cooking from me rubbed my shoulder and said,

“Ugh… Hey, Transcender. Isn’t three hours for one dish a bit too long?”

“That’s right. If left alone, the onions will burn, so you can’t do anything else… You have to stir the onions for hours without moving…”

“Huh? For an Elf’s sense of time, three hours should be quick, right?”

“Even an Elf’s sense of time has its limits! Who cooks for three hours straight!?”

“Transcender, your sense of time is strange, isn’t it?”

I thought that for an Elf, cooking for three hours, or even frying onions for twelve hours to extract the ultimate sweetness for onion soup, would be entirely possible.

They lack perseverance, it seems.

As I thought that, the Elf, looking incredulous, chuckled and said,

“…Who would have thought I’d be scolding a Lizardman about time sense as an Elf. Live long enough, and you’ll see everything.”

“Ugh… My shoulders are so stiff. I can’t possibly do this at home.”

“Though you can’t store it long in warm weather like now, if it gets colder, you can make a large batch and eat it over several days, so it’s not bad.”

In fact, onion soup is best eaten in winter or autumn when it’s chilly.

“That might be true, but spending hours just boiling soup seems inefficient…”

The World Tree bears fruit all year round, so it seems they don’t understand the human struggle to figure out how to eat delicious food with cheap ingredients to save on food expenses.

No wonder their culinary culture doesn’t develop.

“Well, whether to use this recipe or not is a personal choice, so I won’t force it. But since it’s lunchtime, let’s share the completed food.”

“Haha… Now that I think about it, we gathered right after breakfast, and it’s already lunchtime.”

“Ow… My arms are stiff, and I’m so hungry I can’t stand it.”

The Elves, perhaps tired from today’s cooking, each groaned, but they didn’t complain enough to refuse eating, so they all agreed and sat at the table with a plate of onion soup each.

“Then, let’s eat.”

“Ah. I hope it tastes good after all this hard work.”

“Really…”

The Elves each said so and started eating the onion soup spoon by spoon, and seeing that, I also scooped some soup and put it in my mouth.

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“What!? The soup is sweet!!”

“That’s strange! We definitely didn’t add sugar!!”

What I felt when I put the soup in my mouth was the unique vegetable aroma of onions blending with a subtle but unmistakable sweetness.

“Of course. When you apply heat to onions to caramelize them, the components that create spiciness break down into sweetness, and that sweetness is absolutely not inferior to sugar.”

In fact, the same amount can produce dozens of times the sweetness of sugar.

Of course, the component contained in onions is in trace amounts, so the resulting sweetness itself isn’t as intense as sugar.

“But this sweetness… What is it? It’s different from any sweetness I know.”

“That’s right. I’ve eaten fruits, honey, and even sugar a few times in my long life, but none of them felt like this sweetness.”

Instead, since the component that creates this sweetness isn’t added as a sweetener but is inherent in the onions themselves, it sublimates into a sweet flavor that blends with the ingredients themselves, something you can’t feel in dishes where sugar is added for sweetness.

Because of this unique sweet flavor of onions in onion soup, in modern times, it’s classified as a high-end dish due to its luxurious taste and the labor it requires.

If onion soup were just a cheap food for the poor, I wouldn’t have recommended it to the Elves.

As they tasted the soup they made, the Elves’ faces no longer showed dissatisfaction from stirring onions non-stop for three hours in front of the fire.

Rather, they all had satisfied expressions, as if onion soup might become a trend in the Elf Village this winter.

In this way, I spent my days teaching the Elves to cook, and not long after, I was able to replenish the money I had squandered.