Chapter 403: Stir-Fried Dungeon Pork Liver [9]
Translated by Zzonkedd
Edited by Gumihou
So, an energy replenis.h.i.+ng dish.
When it comes to energy replenis.h.i.+ng dishes, the best idea would be a ‘Stamina Dish’ or an energy replenis.h.i.+ng dish.
In short, a bold and cla.s.sic Pork Liver Stir-Fry.
I have some pork liver from our last dungeon run, which should work. [1] More importantly, it was something I had been meaning to eat for a while now.
Pork Liver Stir-Fry is not something that I would want to eat all the time. However, there are times when I find myself craving it.
Which is why I am going to make it now.
Of all the mansions I had rented thus far, this had the fanciest looking kitchen. So, it feels kind of funny to be making a very basic dish in such a fancy kitchen like this.
Well, anyway, let’s get the necessary ingredients from [Net Super] first.
Let’s see, the basics for a Pork Liver Stir-Fry are garlic chives, bean sprouts, grated ginger and grated garlic (I got both in a tube to save myself some time), oyster sauce, granulated chicken stock and [1] a couple of cartons of milk. [8]
I have most of the general seasonings already, so this much is fine.
With the ingredients at hand, [8] now for the prep work.
“Let’s prepare the liver.”
The liver should be wash with cold first, get rid of whatever blood clot you can see and remove whatever tough strings you find before slicing it into smallish pieces. After that, soak the pieces of liver in milk for 15 to 20 minutes to remove whatever unpleasant smells.
Meanwhile, I chopped the chives into 5 cm pieces and set them aside.
[8]
Then, I mixed the marinade and the seasoning sauce. [1] To make the marinade, combine saké, soy sauce, grated ginger and grated garlic together and set them aside. For the sauce, mix oyster sauce, soy sauce, sugar and granulated chicken stock in a bowl.
When I do stir-fries, I like to add some potato starch powder into the sauce so that it sticks better to the food. [8] Normally, I would stir in the starch powder with the sauce, but since I would be cooking a lot, it is better to make a potato starch slurry on the side and add it as needed.
It is now time to remove the liver from the milk. After draining the milk off, rinse the liver in plain water. Drain that off and pat the liver down with kitchen paper to remove any excess moisture. Once the liver is reasonably dry, mix in the marinade and let it sit for about 5 minutes.
Heat a pan on the stove. Once the pan was hot, add sesame oil and placed the liver pieces, flat side down in one layer. Let them sizzle for a couple of minutes before removing them from the pan.
Next, roughly wipe down the pan with a kitchen paper and add sesame oil again. This time, fry the garlic chives and sprouts for a minute. Once the vegetables have softened a little, add the liver back and stir-fry for a bit before adding the seasoning sauce. Let the Pork Liver Stir-Fry simmer for a bit before adding the potato starch slurry and let the sauce thicken for a bit.
And it’s done!
[8]
[10] “Alright, it’s done. Wow, it smells great. Smells like it will go great with rice. Let’s make a Pork Liver Stir-Fry Bowl for everyone.”
“Good, it came out quick.”
“”Yes, yes! Quick, quick!””
““Time to eat~ time to eat~””
Everyone suddenly started crowding into the kitchen.
“Ah, hey… can’t you wait in the living room? I’ll bring it out soon.”
My familiars reluctantly returned to the living room.
As for me, I quickly prepared more portions of Liver Stir-Fry on Rice for everyone and ferried it over to them.
[10] “Right, this is an energy filled Pork Liver Stir-Fry. It’s really great with rice, so we’re having it on rice.”
[11] “Liver Stir-Fry? Is that the source of this delicious smell?” [3] Fer wrinkled his nose at the bowl.
[11] “”It smells good, but the meat is… is this really liver?”” [3] Dora-chan sniffed curiously at the meat.
Meanwhile Sui was already eating it, [3] “”Yummy~ this is really yummy~”” [5]
“Look, Sui’s already eating it,” I said encouragingly. “And yes, the meat is part of the offal package I had gotten from the meat dungeon.” [5]
[11] “Part of the offal? Hmm, I don’t think organs ever smelled like this before. Still, doesn’t it have a lot of vegetables?”
“That’s because it’s Pork Liver Stir-Fry! It’s the rule! Pork Liver Stir-Fry must have garlic chives and beansprouts on it!”
“Still…” [3] Fer was wrinkling his nose against the vegetables.
No matter how much he hated vegetables, he can’t just not eat them.
“”Hey, Fer. This is pretty good, the sauce is flavourful and delicious and tasted good with this white grain,” came Dora-chan’s unexpected support. [5]
““Aruji~ seconds, please~ [5]”” [3] Sui clearly showed her support by asking for more.
“Mu,”
“Don’t you ‘mu’ me. Just try it. Have I ever served you anything bad? [5]”
Fer still looked reluctant. [6] I, however, was too busy to bother myself with him and portioned out more Pork Liver Stir-Fry for Sui.
Finally, he took a nibble before eating properly.
“Humph, I guess it’s not bad. But I still prefer more meat in it.”
After giving Fer a bitter laugh, I served myself some rice and Pork Liver Stir-Fry.
“As expected, rice and Liver Stir-Fry goes really well together.”
I sighed as I alternately ate a mouthful of rice before eating a spoonful of the Liver Stir-Fry. [12] The taste of the liver was making me crave beer.
I always thought that the slightly pungent smell of liver goes well with beer~
“Hmm, the sauce is really flavourful and delicious. Tasty, but I really want beer. A beer!”
We have to go to the dungeon tomorrow, but surely just one beer would be fine?
Before I could change my mind, I took out a can of cold beer from my [Item Box]
Gulp, gulp.
“Ahhh, delicious! I knew it! Liver Stir-Fry is awesome with beer!”
[10] “Oi, are you drinking alcohol? Aren’t we going to the dungeon tomorrow?” [3] Fer’s disapproving voice suddenly sounded.
[10] “It’s fine, I’m only having one.” He must recall that time when I had a beer party with a group of people and were all destroyed by the drinks later.
[10] “Humph, if you say so. Don’t forget we’re going to the dungeon no matter what.”
“Yes, yes,”
[10] “I want seconds of this,” [7] Fer nudged his bowl towards me.
““Me too!””
“”Sui, too~””
“Alright, let’s eat as much as we like!” [7] I crowed, cheered by the beer in my system.
[5]
Please read this at dot com ~
After getting out of the bath, I took a break in the living room.
Fer had already gone to sleep. Dora-chan and Sui had their fruit milk directly after our bath and have gone to sleep in antic.i.p.ation of tomorrow’s dungeon drive.
“Fuuhh… so we’ll be going to the dungeon tomorrow… Well, it should be alright since I have my familiars with me, and Absolute Defence. Ahh, somehow I still don’t feel ready for it. Just thinking about dungeons make my legs shake, but everyone is looking forward to it, so I’ll have to give it my best.”
I finished my canned coffee and was about to go to bed when I realised something.
[10] “Wait, the offerings! It’s not quite one month yet, but there’s less than a week to the deadline. [5] There’s no way we’ll be back within a week, right? I guess I could… advance them two weeks’ worth of offerings? Would that be alright? I mean, it would take a lot more time to prepare a month’s worth of offering than two weeks…”
[13]
Who knows what the difficulty level of this dungeon is like, but compared to Doran and Avering’s dungeon, surely it could be completed within two weeks?
Also, we have the teleportation stones from the [Ark] party that sends us directly to the 30th Floor. So… we could reasonably return here even if the Tower dungeon proved to be difficult to complete.
More importantly, I rented this place for two weeks. So we had better return here within that time.
[13]
[5a]
[Gumihou: I don’t know what is the fuss about doing 2 weeks vs 4 weeks’ worth of offerings? It’s not like the offerings varied much. Suspect it’s only there for word count.]
[1] Structural Change: Combine 2 paragraphs
[2] Structural Change: Combine 3 paragraphs
[3] Structural Change: Combine paragraph & dialogue
[4] Structural Change: Change pa.s.sive sentence to dialogue
[5] Delete Repet.i.tive or Pointless Information… starting to delete pointless scenes now
[a] Deleted ending, since it appears repet.i.tive and contributes nothing but additional word count.
[6] Additional Information for Aesthetic Purpose
[7] Add Dialogue Tag
[8] Creative Licence Taken – Cooking instructions. Not exactly wrong, but not quite in the right place either. So, cooking related fixes.
[9] Pork Liver Stir-Fry
Natural dialogues
[11] Fixed reaction to the concept of eating liver
Okay, first. Liver? Animals/monsters turning up their noses at liver? Dude? You never seen animal planet before?
Okay, this clearly shows the author’s bias as a city boy. Carnivorous animals will always, ALWAYS, go for the stuff inside the belly. This means the liver, heart, and kidney possibly the intestines too because those are soft warm and easy to eat. There should be no eww factor. Switched their reactions to ‘curious, hmm this is liver?’ rather than ‘ugh, is this liver, like eww’
Also, I’ve seen this ‘eww, liver’ reaction before in other food related j.a.panese drama/anime. It’s almost like they are showing off their ability to eat liver to foreigners (in this case Fer & Dora-chan). Except, your ‘foreigners’ are predator/monsters who likes meat.
Dude, context.
[12] Alternating rice and dishes.
Okay, I tried looking for rules about this in English, but can’t find it. However, it DOES exist. I’ve seen a twitter post about it in j.a.panese (can’t find it now).
If you mix up your rice and side dishes (even if it’s already on your bowl) in polite company, it’s considered uncouth and one of the ‘unspoken etiquette rules’ of eating.
NEVER mix rice and dishes, UNLESS it is meant to be mixed.
Eg: When you eat katsu-don, or, in this case, Pork Liver Stir-Fry with rice. Eat a mouthful of rice first, followed by a mouthful of the stir-fry. Do this until all your food is gone as much as you can. This holds true for gyoza, mabo tofu, etc.
This is considered ‘The ultimate way’ of enjoying food.
Pairing your food with beer?
The divine combo is: rice > dish > beer, rinse and repeat
So, if you ever see anime characters do this and go, ‘aahhhh’ know that this is considered the ‘golden rule’ for eating.
[13] Rearranged information so that it makes more sense than the information vomit/extra word thing.