101: Tempura

As I walked through the market, I was in awe of everything around me. There were so many stores with amazing fruits and vegetables. It was a buzz of activity, and the air was heavy with the smell of roast meats and smoke from all the food vendors.

It was really difficult to pick where I wanted to go first, but food won out.

I approached the closest stall to me and saw what looked to be a variety of roast meats on sticks, including several that looked to be sausage or something wrapped around the skewer. I couldn’t choose, so I got one of everything he had and walked away from the stall with five sticks in hand.

The first was the sausage-like meat around the skewer, and when I took a bite, it was amazing—incredibly juicy. The meat was almost ground up and mixed with onions, garlic, and some other seasoning, then pressed around the stick.

But the juiciness was incredible!

The next two were more classic roast meat on a stick. There were no vegetables; the first appeared to be a fatty piece of Buvul, while the second one I wasn’t really sure what it was.

What I knew was that it was absolutely delicious. Like the first one, it was super juicy, with an incredible smoky flavour that tingled on my tongue.

Once I’d finished all the meat sticks, I was about to go right back to the same stall, but I was immediately reminded of how many options I had and that I should pace myself when, as I was turning around, I spotted another stall that looked to be selling some form of fried fish.

I suppose I could buy a bit of everything and store it?

But it would be better to figure out how they do it and make it myself. After all, I had absolutely no shortage of meat right now.

As I was heading to the next food stall, I was distracted on the way by a seafood shop that had something I’d never seen before. They were like the lake bugs I’d tried in the past back in Boltron.

These were almost fearsome-looking; they had enormous claws, easily the size of my hand, dark green with a hard shell that seemed to be covered in sharp edges, almost like blades.

“Ah, young sir, you’re admiring the Razor Crabs, I see,” the shop owner said with a smile.

“They look dangerous,” I said in awe. The whole crab would’ve been the size of my head.

“That they are, if they manage to catch you with their claws—but the taste is absolutely divine,” the man responded jovially.

“How do you cook them? They look too hard to eat,” I said, looking up at him.

“You boil them! Flavour your water with salt, pepper, spices, onion, some fresh chilli, and some fermented bean paste—which we also sell—then, when you’re ready to serve, you thicken it up with some root starch,” he explained, listing off the ingredients as I listened intently.

That all sounded doable. I had everything on me except for the crab and bean paste.

“How much?” I asked.

“Two silver per crab, and twenty coppers for a jar of the bean paste,” he said.

“Would you give me a discount if I purchased a lot of crabs?” I looked down to see how many he had.

“Oh? And how many would you like?” he asked, clearly getting a count himself.

“Ten, and two jars of the bean paste.” I asked.

“Hmm, what say we do seventeen for the crabs and paste?” he counter-offered.

“Fifteen,” I said firmly, trying my best to channel my inner Milo.

“Deal,” the man said with a large smile, holding out his hand. After a quick shake, he began preparing boxes.

“Oh, that’s okay,” I said. “If we can dispatch them now, I can store them all.”

“It’s important to eat these fresh. Usually you kill them just before you put them in the pot,” he said, looking at me.

“That’s fine. I have a storage that freezes time and keeps everything as fresh as when it goes in,” I explained.

“That’s handy. Very well, give me a few minutes and I’ll have it all ready for you,” he said, putting on some heavy gloves as he reached in to grab the first one out.

Sure enough, a couple of minutes later he had ten crabs sitting ready for me and two jars of a brownish-green paste.

“Now, a word of advice—that paste is very strong. You don’t need a lot in your mixture,” he said. “And don’t eat it straight, or it’ll be very unpleasant.”

I stored everything and, after thanking the man again, left his stall to carry on.

The next place that caught my eye wasn’t a food stall, but instead looked to be selling everyday equipment—cooking equipment! As I walked up to the table, I observed all the pans hanging off hooks behind the owner, with small utensils displayed up front on the table itself.

“Hello, young sir! Come to buy a gift?” he said jovially.

“Oh, not a gift, no. I was actually hoping to buy a large pot—preferably as large as you have,” I responded, looking around, but I couldn’t see anything that fit what I was after.

“Hmm, we don’t really have anything out here, but how large are we talking?” he said, rubbing his chin.

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I pulled out one of the crabs I’d just purchased. “Large enough to fit ten of these, plus all the liquid and ingredients to go with it, with enough space for it not to boil over.”

The man’s eyes widened at the sight of the crab, but he rapidly turned all business.

“I don’t have anything that size here, but back at the shop I have some pots large enough to fit what you’re after. They’re not cheap, though—a lot of metal goes into them,” he said.

“That’s fine. I can pay. How large are we talking, and how much?” I asked.

The man used his hands to roughly show me the size of the pot, and it looked to be exactly what I was after—a really large stock pot that I’d be able to boil the crabs in. But more importantly, I believed I could fit an entire junior-phase spider into it as well.

“Cost will be three silver,” he said firmly.

Honestly, this was far cheaper than I was expecting, and in the past I would’ve handed over the coin then and there. But after finding out how many times people had taken advantage of me without me knowing, I pushed my luck.

“I’ll buy it if it’s as you say. Currently, I’m staying at the adventurers’ guild—any chance you’d be able to drop it off there this afternoon?” I asked.

“You don’t look like much of an adventurer,” he said with a chuckle. “No problem, I’ll have someone deliver it to the guild. Your name?”

“Trevor,” I said happily, looking forward to the new pot.

“Just Trevor?” he asked.