Special Chapter 2: Steamed Potatoes with Butter

Special Chapter 2:
Steamed Potatoes with Butter

I remember it like it was just yesterday.

A full season had passed since I had started working at the Restaurant to Another World. That was around the time when I first ate “it.”

***

I typically work from early in the morning before Nekoya opens its doors, all the way until after the last customers leave.

The first thing I do when I come in is clean myself under the warm water. I use this lovely scented oil that completely washes away all the dirt and filth on me. It’s amazing! When I run the soft cloth in the “shower room” over my skin, it gets all sudsy and everything! Apparently, the oil I use is called “body soap,” while the stuff for washing my hair is called “shampoo.” Crazy, huh?

The master of the restaurant always tells me to make sure that I’m nice and clean before I start working. According to him, a place that serves food to customers always has to be clean, and that includes the employees!

To be honest, I always feel a little reluctant about using his stuff to clean myself. It feels like I’m wasting his precious belongings. But I guess since he wants me to, it’s not too big a deal.

At the end of the day, I can’t afford to lose this job.

So anyway, after I wash myself, I’m always shocked by just how nice I look! Not a speck of grime or dirt on my slightly tanned skin, and I end up smelling really wonderful!

After that, I put on the comfortable undergarments that hug my body perfectly and slip into my otherworldly waitress uniform. It’s a tiny bit embarrassing because you can see so much of my legs, but it’s a lovingly crafted uniform!

After eating a delicious breakfast with the master, I clean the dining room and help him out with all sorts of chores before the customers arrive.

“Hrm, just the meat and potatoes aren’t gonna be enough at this rate. I’m gonna go grab some stuff, so can you come with me?”

“Of course!”

That particular day, the master apparently didn’t have everything he needed to make a dish, so he took me with him to go get the rest of the ingredients.

I follow him through a silver door and into a small room in the back of the kitchen. After the master presses the second protruding square from the top, the room starts to shake a little, and we exit into a completely new place.

This is the room where the master keeps all the food he uses for cooking. There are all kinds of brown boxes, strange see-through bags filled with packaged food, and all sorts of other things!

“All right. I’m gonna grab the meat, so you get this, Aletta. Just take it straight to the kitchen. It may be a little heavy for a girl your size, so be careful.”

The master then heads to the cold room in the back where the food is stored, leaving me to carry a small box.

“No problem!”

It’s a little heavy, but it’s no trouble for me! I grab the box and enter the moving room, pressing the second protrusion on the wall. After putting the box in the kitchen, it isn’t long before the master returns with a large piece of meat in hand.

“Perfect. Time to get this party started!”

He puts the meat down and opens the box I brought down for him.

“Ah, are these cobbler’s tubers?”

I’m very familiar with the foodstuffs the master takes out from the box. They’re lumpy cobbler’s tubers still covered in dirt. Oh! Apparently in his world, they’re called “potatoes.”

The other world’s vegetables are sometimes super strange! For example, the karoots over there are pointy, and peeled oranie are white on the inside. But tubers are different. They look exactly like the ones from my world.

“Ah, I guess potatoes are the only ones that look and taste about the same in both our worlds, eh?”

The master examines the cobbler’s tubers and comments, almost as if he’s responding to my inner thoughts. I bet he must feel weird when he sees how different our vegetables are compared to the ones he’s used to!

“Hm? What’s up, Aletta?”

After inspecting the goods for a bit, the master places them in the cleaning space and calls out to me, a worried expression on his face. He’s probably concerned because I was staring at the tubers for so long.

“Oh, no, I’m fine. It’s just…I don’t have many good memories when it comes to tubers.”

I try my best to smile.

“I didn’t realize you weren’t a fan.”

I shake my head in response. “It’s not that. All the dishes you make with tubers are really delicious. I love them! But when I use them to cook, it never turns out very good…”

I tell him the truth, even if it does make me a little sad.

I honestly don’t hate tubers at all. In fact, I think they’re pretty tasty when warmed up. But when I look at uncooked tubers, they just remind me of my life before the master took me in. It brings me back to when I was eating cold tubers all alone.

Day after day, they were all I could afford to eat. At some point, I stopped seeing them as a food; they were just a means with which to keep myself alive. Before I found my way to Nekoya, filling my stomach was priority number one. I didn’t have the luxury of worrying about taste or anything else.

And unlike the master, I can’t really cook. I spent so many of my days making vegetable and tuber soup or just boiling tubers on their own. That’s about the extent of my cooking abilities.

“I see… That’s right, you did say something about not being able to cook.”

The master stops for a moment and then smiles.

“All right, how about I teach you how to make a simple but delicious potato dish?”

“Huh? You mean me? Cooking?”

I blink in surprise at the master’s sudden offer.

“Aye. I remember Gramps telling me a while back that you folks over there don’t really steam foods. Truth be told, steaming potatoes is really, really easy. I figure you can pick up how to do it pretty quickly. Of course, this’ll be after we close for the day.” The master points to the tubers. “In the meantime, could you wash those for me, Aletta? You just have to get the dirt off,” he says before splitting the meat and beginning to prep for cooking.

“Yes, of course!”

I’m super curious as to what this “steamed” food is, but I decide to focus on doing the job asked of me first. I use the mysterious magic tool that produces water just by turning a handle on it to wash the tubers, and eventually it’s time for the customers to start showing up.

So begins my day of work.

***

It’s nighttime. After seeing off the last customer, carrying her large pot of stew home, the master emerges from the kitchen with some sort of tool in his hands. He places it on the table.

“Um, Master? What is that?”

“Ah, this here is a steamer. This is what we’re gonna use to steam those potatoes. That said, as long as you don’t let them get moist from the steam, you can also use a strainer.”

The master takes the lid off the “steamer” and quickly washes out its insides. He then tosses in some of the potatoes, each one with a plus mark carved into them. The master then grabs a shallow pot just large enough for the “steamer” to sit atop of and pours some water into it. He doesn’t attempt to fill it up, instead settling for less than half.

“Huh…? Master, is this going to be enough water?”

At this rate, the tubers are going to end up half-cooked! But the master simply laughs in response.

“Yup, this is just right. Too much water and it’ll take too long to boil. You see, steaming isn’t about boiling the food. You know how if you heat water in a pot long enough, it’ll start to give off steam? We’re gonna use that steam to cook the food.”

The master places the pot on top of the magical tool for producing fire and lights the flames. It’s not long before white steam begins exiting the top of the “steamer.”

“I had two cooking teachers growing up. One of them was Gramps, the other was a man who specialized in things like dumplings and steamed foods. He had me making fried rice and these kinds of foods over and over again for practice. Making shumai and manju takes quite a bit of work, but steaming potatoes ain’t so tough.”

The master seemed to enjoy himself as he watched the white steam rise out of the pot. He always looks like he he’s having so much fun when he cooks.

“Wow…”

I also can’t help but stare as the white steam billows out of the “steamer.” I can sense something delicious in the air.

“…All right, that about does it.” The master whispers to himself, stops the flames, lifts the “steamer” off of the pot, and opens it up.

“Wooow…”

I can’t help but raise my voice when I see the cobbler’s tubers inside.

The meat of the tubers visible from the plus-shaped cuts in them is golden brown. They smell so good I can hear my own stomach growl!

“You can tell whether it’s been cooked properly or not by jamming this into one of them. Give it a try.”

“O-okay. Ah.”

Just as the master says, I take the thin, pointy stick from his hands and stab it into the tuber. It takes almost no effort to pierce, gently sliding right into the food.

“Just like that. If it goes straight through with no trouble, you’re all done. All that’s left is to season it how you like.”

The master disappears into the kitchen and returns with all manner of seasoning in hand.

“Salt, cheese, miso, soy sauce, ketchup, mayo… Topping steamed potatoes with something salty seems to be a thing folks do, but as far as I’m concerned, this is the one true answer.”

The master drops a single square-shaped something or other right on top of the tuber and hands it to me on a plate with a fork.

“A steamed potato with butter. The absolute basic of basics.”

Sitting on top of the plate is a piping hot cobbler’s tuber topped with melting butter that slowly starts making its way across its surface.

The scent of melted butter mixes with the hot tuber’s aroma, melding into one irresistible scent.

Meanwhile, the master prepares a tuber for himself, also using butter as a topping.

“Thank you, oh god of demons, for this, my daily bread. I offer you my gratitude.”

I watch the master as he cuts a small piece off the tuber with his fork and deliciously eats it. I say a quick prayer and immediately start my own food journey, incapable of holding out any longer.

I copy the master’s technique, cutting out a small piece before blowing on it to cool it down.

As I bite down into it, my mouth is filled with the sweet flavor of the cobbler’s tuber and the slight saltiness of the butter.

It’s wonderful!

Instead of words, hot air escapes my mouth as I attempt to eat without burning myself. The cobbler’s tuber is still piping hot, and each time I open my mouth a little to release the heat, I can feel it further crumble atop my tongue.

But because of the melted butter, it’s easy to eat and comfortably goes down the throat despite its temperature.

Its richer-than-usual flavor must be because of the unusual way in which the master cooked it. It’s delicious!

I’ve never had a cobbler’s tuber that tasted this amazing in my whole life, and before I know it, all that remains is the skin.

“You see, the thing about steamed potatoes is that they’re delicious all on their own. You can pretty much season them however you want. Ah, would you like another?”

I immediately nodded my head to the master’s offer. He’s always so kind and thoughtful. Right now, I feel like I could eat a million of these!

I wonder if I’ll really be able to cook them, too.

Sarah has a pot and a strainer at her house, which means I have everything I need to give it a shot.

It’ll probably take tons of practice before I’m able to do it like the master, but even so… Before the master saved me, I had eaten nothing but boiled cobbler’s tubers every single day. If there’s a chance I can make something way tastier than those all on my own, I can’t afford to be scared of messing up.

First thing’s first. Once I get home, I’ll give it a try.

I poured a little bit of mayo on my tuber while thinking to myself.

It was in this very moment that I finally understood that cobbler’s tubers weren’t just a thing I ate to keep myself alive, but a delicious food in their own right.