Ch 168 -- I Want A Barbecue Stove

Next morning as we were walking along the street towards the Adventurers Guild, Fer suddenly wrinkled his nose and said "Nuuu, isn"t that burning meat I can smell?" Flying alongside us, Dora-chan"s muzzle twitched. "Yeah, I can smell it too."

I sniffed and sure enough there was definitely a smell of roasting meat in the air. Following the smell to its source led us to a food stall on the street near a general store. Fer and Dora-chan naturally headed towards the stall since food was involved.

"What the-" The ojisan behind the stall was surprised to see a big Wolf (Fer) and a tiny Dragon (Dora-chan) suddenly appear in front of him.

"Ah, sorry. They"re my contracted monsters, it"s fine." I explained quickly, much to the stallholder"s relief.

"Oh, are they Tamed? I though they were real monsters. Hahaha..." Fer and Dora-chan were staring hard at the meat skewers cooking on the ojisan"s stall and a moment later Sui jumped out of her bag obviously attracted by the smell. Sui is a Slime and doesn"t have a nose but it seems she can smell things like other creatures. Of course she"s not a normal Slime, she can grow into a Big Slime and make recovery potions and Elixirs and forge mithril items and use Water magic to pew-pew S-ranked monsters. Maybe ordinary Slimes couldn"t smell things like she could, I had no way to know.

Anyway it was pretty obvious why Fer, Dora-chan, and Sui were lined up in front of the stall staring at the meat skewers... Didn"t you guys eat your fill this morning before we came out? I sighed.

"So, do you guys want to eat some of this?" I asked redundantly.

"Umu" Fer muttered telepathically.

"Eat, eat, eat" Dora-chan chimed in.

"Eat-" Sui echoed.

It"s unanimous then. "So how many skewers do you guys want?" A couple each, three maybe? They just finished a big breakfast--

"I can handle 30 of them." Fer said, his eyes still rivetted on the stall"s grill.

"Hmmm, I want 15 or so." Dora-chan said.

"Sui can eat 30 too-" Sui added.

Boy, you guys can really eat. "Excuse me, I want 76 skewers." Thirty plus fifteen plus thirty and one for me. Yeah yeah, I know, I had just had breakfast as well but the smell of the charcoal-grilled meat was getting to me too.

Each skewer held 3 large-ish pieces of meat and cost 7 iron coins. I handed 6 silver coins to the ojisan to pay for the meat, adding a bit extra to compensate him for the nuisance value of having Fer and company camped out in front of his stall and preventing other customers getting near.

"Is that all right?" the ojisan asked after I told him to keep the change. "Thank you for that." He scooped all the cooked skewers, maybe fifty or so off the glowing grill onto a large wooden platter. "Here"s the first lot. I"ll cook some more for you right away but you can have these for the moment."

I got out some dishes from my Item Box and stripped the meat off the skewers into the dishes, about sixty pieces of meat for Fer, sixty for Sui and thirty pieces for Dora-chan. "Help yourself." I said and stood back as the Gluttonous Trio launched their cla.s.sic frontal attack on the food in front of them.

"Is this Horn Rabbit meat?" Fer grumbled telepathically. "Compared to the meat you cook for me it"s almost inedible. Still..." I noticed his jaws didn"t stop moving though. Hey Fer, you smelled it being cooked and wanted to eat it, that"s why I bought it for you isn"t it?

"I gotta admit, this is nowhere as good as what you serve up for us." Dora-chan agreed. "It"s not terrible but, well, it"s tough and salty-tasting. The way it"s cooked is good though, I can eat it okay." He had liked the smell too but like Fer the actual taste was a disappointment to him.

"The meat that Aruji cooks is the most delicious-" Sui-chan added. "This meat is a little tough but it"s juicy and delicious-"

Thank you Sui-chan. I thought about the stall-holder"s cooking technique, he was grilling the skewers over charcoal. The meat he was using must be cheap if a skewer only cost 7 iron coins but it was still not too bad grilled this way according to my three gourmands. What had Fer called the meat, "Horn Rabbit"? I asked the ojisan and he confirmed it was Horn Rabbit, the most common meat sold from street food stalls in Doran. It was popular with customers because it was cheap, apparently.

It turned out the stallholder had only recently moved to Doran and he had just started selling skewers here today. "My first day," he said with a smile, "and I"ve sold so much already. It just shows opening this stall was a great idea."

Well, my Gluttonous Trio are big eaters and you shouldn"t rely on us being your main customers but still, ganbatte stallholder-san.

"Here you are, the rest of your order is ready." The ojisan handed over another platter-full of cooked skewers. I stripped the meat from the skewers and served them out in the now-empty dishes on the ground -- thirty pieces of meat from ten skewers each for Sui-chan and Fer and fifteen pieces from five skewers for Dora-chan.

"Be careful because it"s hot." I warned but my three contracted monsters were already digging in. Serving Fer, Sui and Dora-chan their portions left one skewer on the platter, for me to try. I bit into it, chewing hard. The only seasoning was salt but cooked over a charcoal fire it smelled wonderful and tasted... okay. I had gotten used to Wyvern and Orc General and even Dragon meat, the Horn Rabbit was not in that cla.s.s, it was denser and didn"t fall apart in the mouth the way the others did but, still, it was okay. I put that down to cooking the meat over a charcoal fire, it made it smell irresistible as the outside of the meat got seared from the intense heat. As I took another bite of Horn Rabbit meat and chewed it I thought to myself that Orc General meat, b.l.o.o.d.y Horn Bull meat and Wyvern meat would taste wonderful if it was grilled over charcoal. Add in the various seasonings I could buy from the Net Super and they should taste even more delicious.

Ah, I want a barbeque stove. Barbequing meat like this is great, of course but after we left Doran we were heading for Berleean, a fis.h.i.+ng port city and that meant seafood which is even better barbequed. I really needed a barbeque stove... if I had seen a barbeque stove in the Net Super I would have bought one already but they just weren"t on sale there. Table-top stoves, yes but no barbeque stoves. The Net Super didn"t offer big items like that, unfortunately.

Is a barbeque stove something that Sui could make? No, I didn"t think so. She"s only been able to make things I can show her, a knife, a sword, a mincing machine but I don"t have an barbeque stove she could copy. I know what they look like and I could draw one and explain to her how it works but I doubted she"d be able to make it properly just from that. Besides I wanted a big stove, I"d have to cook a lot of meat at a time to feed certain hollow-bellied creatures I was acquainted with and could Sui-chan make something that large inside her? I regretfully put the idea of having a barbeque stove aside for the time being. Maybe I could figure out something later.

Fer and company seemed to have finished eating and my own skewer was finished too and we had things to do today so I tidied up the dishes, said goodbye and good luck to the ojisan and went into the general store next door to buy a couple of gift baskets before we headed off to the Adventurers Guild to receive the payment for the dungeon drops we were selling.