Sauce only tastes like sauce.
I’m a salt person.
Why? Because salt is for connoisseurs. It allows you to enjoy the natural flavors of the ingredients. Salt is the ultimate destination.
However, sometimes when I’m eating salt-grilled chicken skewers from a street stall, I think…
…Damn, it’s too bland without sauce.
First off, what is sauce?
Well, Japanese sauces have set main ingredients, but let’s use yakitori tare (yakitori sauce) as an example.
The four necessary ingredients for yakitori tare are soy sauce, mirin, sake, and sugar. The ratio of mirin, sugar, and sake can vary, but the one indispensable element is soy sauce. Without soy sauce, you can’t get that sauce flavor.
Yup. Soy sauce. Yup.
Next, the soy sauce recipe.
The main ingredients are soybeans, wheat, and salt.
Hey, that sounds doable, right? I thought so too. We don’t have plain soybeans, but there are similar beans in this world.
But there’s one crucial hidden ingredient missing.
Koji mold.
…Koji…?
Basically, it’s a natural mold culture… the microorganisms needed for fermentation…
But it only exists in humid places like Japan, East Asia, and Southeast Asia.
…Yeah, I quit!
Can’t make soy sauce! Automatically can’t make sauce either! Let’s drop this!
But seriously, what’s the deal with soy sauce? Whenever I try making Japanese-style food, soy sauce always gets in the way.
Not that I’m a Japanese food supremacist or anything. I’ve adapted enough to this world that I’m not desperately searching for rice, miso, and all that.
It’s just that, having been Japanese in my previous life, my cooking repertoire leans heavily toward Japanese cuisine. Without soy sauce and miso, I can’t even make proper soups and stews. Get my frustration? I had no choice but to become fanatically devoted to the Salt Religion.
By the way, you also can’t make miso without koji mold, so I can’t have miso soup either. What a shitty situation. No, talking about miso while bringing up shit isn’t good. It’s an excretory matter, to be precise.
Why don’t koji and soy sauce exist more universally?
If we can dig up rock salt, why can’t we dig in a desert and have soy sauce gush out? Or punch a pikehopper hard in the gut, and have that foul vomit-like substance coming out of its mouth actually be soy sauce?
Ah, I crave sauce so much. I want soy sauce.
My fishing preparations are solid, but my post-catch recipe options are woefully limited. I want sashimi, damn it.
But longing for what’s not there won’t make it rain soy sauce.
If it’s not available, an excellent guildsman finds a workaround.
So I decided to search the markets for seasoning ingredients.
“Bizarre cuisine…great discovery!”
“What is it?”
“From now on, we’ll scour the markets for traded goods from all over and find tasty seasonings!”
Raina, Ulrika and I arrived at the market.
Not the shady black Haze market swarming with bugganes, but the lively, legitimate one.
“…You said we were going shopping for fishing gear, and now it’s seasonings?”
“I’m actually quite excited. Lots of foreign goods have been showing up lately, right?”
“I thought we’d use what we already have…”
“No, that’s the wrong mindset, Raina! Culinary richness comes from adventure! You’re still young, so you need to actively seek out all kinds of new foods!”
“But I’m already an adult…”
READ THE ORIGINAL TRANSLATION AT GADGETIZEDPANDA.COM
Shut up, Raina’s still a hundred years too young to be considered an adult. No, a hundred is an exaggeration – two or three years too young.
“Anyway, we’ll sample all sorts of seemingly seasoning-like items! And buy anything that has potential!”
“…But Mongrel-senpai, why these seasonings? I get using them for fish dishes and all…”
“While I do want ingredients for fish dishes…my main goal is to recreate the flavors of my homeland as much as possible.”
“Ah…Mongrel-san’s homeland…”
Even without soy sauce or miso, there are plenty of substitutes.
Japanese-style soy sauce substitutes, fish sauces, galrums – by gathering an assortment of such seasonings from various other worlds, I’ll have options to use when needed.
Plus, seasonings keep well. No harm in stocking up.
“…Got it! I’ll do my best to find the seasonings you need, Mongrel-san!”
“Excellent enthusiasm, Ulrika. I’m counting on you both – your taste preferences will also help guide me.”
“…Well, if that’s the case, I’ll try too.”
With that, our market tour commenced.
While unfamiliar fruits and dried goods were quite tempting, I resisted the urge to sample them all and focused on my seasoning quest.
However, most of them are powders.
herbs, spices, that sort of thing. Liquid seasonings seemed rare, likely due to transportation difficulties.
The few liquid ones I tasted were generally quite pungent, fishy, intense in umami but also reekingly funky.
Truth be told, I’m not too familiar with fish sauces, nam pla, and the like.
I have no idea what simmering them with alcohol, sugar and other additions might produce in terms of flavor.
Raina and Ulrika tried tasting some too, but didn’t seem enthused, especially put off by the intense aromas they weren’t used to.
“You’re just buying a bunch of spices, Mongrel-senpai.”
“But those aren’t really what you were aiming for, are they Mongrel-san…?”
“Well, no. But I figured they could be useful, so I bought them.”
My haul ended up being mostly powdered and dried spices.
While not curry powder per se, sprinkled on meats they should provide a nice flavor kick.
…As I continued searching fruitlessly, the thought of just compromising with this started crossing my mind.
Maybe I really can’t find what I’m looking for…?
We were all on the verge of giving up…when suddenly!
“Oh, th-this is…!”
“You found something, Mongrel-san?!”
“Dried seaweed!”
It wasn’t kombu…but unmistakably some large leaf-like dried seaweed resembling giant leaftail fronds.
The surface had a faint white salted sheen. Scratching it with my fingernail revealed a thick, sturdy texture.
“A preserved seaweed from the Allied Lands. You rehydrate it in water, then grill and eat it. Never had it myself, though.”
“Rehydrate it, then grill?”
“Supposedly has a meaty flavor. No idea if that’s true, though.”
A meaty flavor? I can’t even imagine it, but it implies good umami at least.
Regardless, seaweed is seaweed – I can use this to make dashi broth! …Probably!
“Interesting, I’ll take this.”
“Sure, they’re bundled in sets of ten, so buy as many tens as you want.”
“Gimme three bundles then.”
“Ah, happy to help out. I’ll throw in an extra bundle on the house.”
“Thanks a ton!”
And so I acquired an ingredient that may let me recreate a taste of home.
“Is this what you were looking for, Mongrel-senpai?”
“Yeah. We ate something similar back home, so it should be edible at least.”
“I’m glad for you, Mongrel-san.”
“Thanks to both of you. Ah, is there anything you want to get? If it’s a big shopping trip, I can at least carry stuff.”
“For real? Then I’d like some things for the Clan House.”
“Me too!”
So I ended up with some spices and what seems to be kombu-like seaweed.
I didn’t find a soy sauce substitute…but I can probably make do with some random sauce from this world.
For now, I can immerse myself in creative cooking with these new ingredients.
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