Chapter 73 14 – Ironclad Chef

Making noodles was, in theory, surprisingly easy. Or so I'd been told. Yomi was the one who explained the process to me, telling me that she'd had ample experience doing so in the kitchens of her old sect.

Apparently it was part of their assassin's training, to have some measure of skill in the culinary arts. Wasn't my place to question the how and the why of that, but I suppose it could be handy if anyone needed to play the role of a lethal cook.

The process, such as Yomi described it, began with making a ball of dough formed from flour, water, and salt, similar to making dough for a loaf of bread. That much at least was familiar to me, something I had done a few times in the company of my gran when I'd been just a lad.

After you had the bowl you had to leave it for a short spell, but also regularly oil it. Mikan, being the angel she was, supplied us with what we needed at a reasonable price.

It all sounded simple enough it was just... well the execution was important. And more complicated than I had anticipated.

"The ratio is important," Yomi had said, rolling her first parcel of dough. "Between the flour and the water, I mean. Can't have it too dry, nor too runny, and it's important to keep in mind that the temperature can play a factor in the ratio too. You just gotta work with both until you can get a texture like this."

I stared at her dough during that lesson. It was unassuming, but she worked her hands with the speed and grace of a master. She'd gotten it right with easy.

My dough, on the first few attempts, were flaky, crumbly messes. It took some time, and more attempts than I cared to admit, before I made a parcel that remotely resembled one as good as Yomi's.

Once the oiled dough had had time to settle, as Yomi called it, the time came to shape it further. It stretched with remarkable elasticity, beyond the width of her shoulder span, and she whipped and warped the mass of dough between her palms at a rising speed.

Rolling, weaving, stretching, shaping... when she had the dough between her hands it came alive like some great dancing serpent, and it was almost hypnotic to watch her at it. Reminded me of the rope dancers I sometimes saw with the travelling troubadours back home, those folks who could take a seemingly ordinary and inanimate rope and make it move like a living organism.

And then, once she had shaped and twisted the dough into a long and broad mass, she sliced it into a few segments and then... well, it was witchcraft of some kind, watching the way she would work a dough length back and forth, and on each pull of her palms she'd come away with an ever-increasing array of noodles in her grasp.

"That's all there is to it," she had said. "Once you get a handle on the movements, the rest is easy enough. So, give it a try."

Gods above, but she made it seem so easy.

So I got to work, and tried my best to emulate her. Though... it shames me to admit how poorly my early attempts went. I worked my hands with great care, ever mindful of my own strength, but I just couldn't work with Yomi's casual ease and dexterity.

On my first attempt the damn noodles came out lumpy and stumpy and far too thick compared to Yomi's, or even those of the roadside ramen cook.

By the time of my third attempt, Yomi sighed and moved in behind me. "You're too nervous about it. It's throwing off the movement of your hands. Dang, you're stiffer than a corpse. You gotta be confident, Amon. What, you'll fight a legendary yokai without a care, but making noodles makes you as anxious as a girl fumbling with her boyfriend for the first time."

"Fighting and killing are about the only things I'm actually good at. Well, I used to be good at mending fences back in the olden days. Of course I'm confident in committing violence, even if I don't like to. This is... different." Doing something creative, well, it felt nice on a fundamental level. I wanted to be good at it, to say that I could do things other than simply destroy like a maddened beast. Easier said than done.

"Like this," she said, guiding the movements of my hands with her own. "You have to be firm, and swift. You gotta move with confidence, like you know what you're doing... even if you don't."

Having gone at my dough like the world's clumsiest, drunkest accordion player, Yomi's guidance did help my movements significantly, and I let her lead me for a time.

Movement by movement I wove the mound of dough into a growing series of noodles strands. They were still a bit misshapen in places, and probably lumpier than they ought to have been, something wrong with the dough I reckoned. Still, they were noodles and that was what mattered.

No doubt, with enough practice, they would start coming out better. That was what I hoped, at least.

Hell, everyone had to start somewhere.

"See?" Yomi stood on the balls of her feet, but only then her gaze only partially came up from over my shoulder. I felt her hands gripping the backs of my own, and that was enough to briefly stop me from focusing back on the task.

A tension overcame me, mixed with some strange combination of excitement and dread. A tender touch... now that was rare.

"I..." Slowly, carefully, I set my noodles on the counter. "Thanks. I needed the help."

How strange it was, having somebody I could rely on. People I could trust, even for such minor things.

"Clearly," Yomi said with a playful smirk. She stepped away from me, and we exchanged a brief glance. "Aw well. It's kinda cute," she said as she made her way back around to the counter. "Now all that needs doing is cooking them. Being frank, making the noodles by hand is perhaps the hardest part when it comes to creating ramen. The broth, the vegetables, the meat? Much easier to deal with. Course the ratio is important there. People can be..." She raised a hand, rotating it slightly from side to side, "particular when it comes to ramen."

"How do you mean?"

"Some people want their noodles drowning in broth, some people want only a small dribble of the stuff. Some folks want a lot of vegetables, some want none at all. Fact is if you brought a dozen Tsukians together and asked them what the ideal bowl of ramen is, you'd have a fistfight on your hands in no time flat."

"Mm. People were the same with pot pies back home." Now those I had experience in cooking. Suppose we could add those to the menu here.

"At any rate," Yomi said, plucking a knife from a small rack above the stove. She sauntered to the cutting board, already marked with a few faint scars in the wood. "Let's continue. We'll make a ramen cook of you yet, Amon."