ITK C361: Bright-Red Tomato Oath

We have introduced pasta to the farm, and Horkosfon made the most use out of it.

“One natto spaghetti, ready.”

She keeps making natto spaghetti by mixing natto and pasta together, it’s crazy.

Since then, Horkosfon has been actively cooking natto spaghetti and serving it to everyone.
As a result, our farm residents have come to have a fixed notion that pasta is something mixed with natto.
It’s inevitable, seeing that’s how they saw it from the very beginning, but…

“…This won’t do,” I think to myself as I watch the scene.

I’m not saying natto spaghetti is wrong or anything.
But pasta is not just natto. I want to tell everyone it can be combined with other ingredients to create an infinite variety of flavors.

If I don’t do something about it, natto might hinder pasta’s possibilities.
That would be unfortunate for both pasta and natto.

Before that happens, I’ll open up new possibilities!

Ah, Horkosfon started adding mentsuyu to the natto spaghetti!
If she perfects her dish, no matter what kind of orthodox spaghetti I make, it will never have the same impact!

We must make haste!

---

So, I’m going to make the real spaghetti representative with meat sauce in it.

Pasta dyed red with tomatoes is its true essence.
I don’t want my friends to think natto pasta is the norm without seeing that bright red pasta.

Anyway, I’m going to make spaghetti meat sauce!
And for that, we need…meat sauce.

We make it by combining ground meat and tomato sauce.

Tomatoes.
They’re one of the first crops to be cultivated on our farm.

I still haven’t forgotten the juiciness of the very first tomato that bore fruit on this land.

But I don’t recall having used tomatoes in serious cooking.
Up until today, I’ve only eaten them raw or cut them up and put them on salads.
We don’t even put tomatoes in our miso soup, so I’m pretty excited about the idea of cooking them today.

Well then, I’ll start by boiling the tomatoes until they no longer retain their original shape, then mash and strain them.
Suddenly, Veil appears.

“Yoohoo.”

Why is she always the first to show up whenever I cook a new dish?
Does she have some kind of sensor or something?

Normally, Platy is with her, but since Junior was born, she hasn’t been showing up as much.
She must be busy attending to Junior today, so I’ll bring her a portion later.

“Oh? Aren’t those tomatoes? Why are you boiling them?”

Veil focuses her attention on the meat sauce in the making.

“Tomatoes are delicious just as they are, why put them in hot water? Will they become hard like boiled eggs?”
“No, they won’t.”

In the meantime, the tomatoes are falling apart and turning to mush.
She peers into the pot and hits eureka.

“I know! That’s…”

Oh?

“Tomato ketchup!”

Why does she know about tomato ketchup?!
…Oh, right.
I’ve made tomato ketchup before.

That was when I made otherworldly sausages.
You could never separate sausages and ketchup, so I made it.

Huh. So, I’ve already cooked and processed tomatoes before.

“Close, but still somewhat different.”
“What? Hm, ketchup’s tasty too, so this is exciting.”

Now that the puree is ready, I put it aside and start to fry the ground meat, another necessary ingredient for meat sauce.

“Yay! Meat!”

No matter what world you’re in, people get excited when meat is present.
At the same time, I start to boil the pasta.

I recently made fresh pasta, so I also made dry ones so I won’t have to start making it from scratch every single time.

I’ll finish the meat sauce while the pasta boils.
After mixing the ground meat with the mushy tomatoes, it’s starting to look like meat sauce.

I knew exactly when the pasta would be al dente, so I strained it, put it on a plate, and poured the meat sauce on top!

Otherwordly meat sauce spaghetti, done!

“Spaghetti without natto? This one’s new!”

I knew it, natto spaghetti has become a standard on our farm!

“But it’s good! This ground meat sauce is so juicy! It’s even dyed red from the tomatoes!”

Nonetheless, my meat sauce spaghetti is also accepted.
Veil continues to slurp the spaghetti, not caring that the corners of her mouth are getting dirty.

“I love red because it’s the color of the fire we dragons breathe!”

I’m glad she likes it.
Now, let’s have Platy a taste too. I put the rest of the spaghetti on a small plate and went to look for her.

I suspect she’s with Junior, so I headed for the bedroom, and sure enough, there she was, a ghastly look on her face.

“I could smell something good from miles away, but I couldn’t leave Junior alone, so…”

She held back herself.
Needless to say, Platy savors the spaghetti I brought to her.

“Yum!”
“Wonderful.”

Make sure you eat tons so Junior also gets a lot of milk from you.

---

After getting a satisfactory response from the sample, I think I’ll start mass-producing meat sauce spaghetti next.
Then I’ll make sure everyone knows spaghetti isn’t only made with natto.
But when I went back to the kitchen, a certain amount of people had already gathered there.

What’s up?
Were they lured by the smell of the meat sauce too?

I was wrong.
Veil seems to have gathered them.

“You guys! I’m going to give you a different kind of spaghetti today!”

Would you look at that, Veil is making spaghetti herself.
Will she be able to recreate the same cooking method I used, though?

I’ve never seen her do that before, so what’s gotten into her today?
Is she getting competitive with Horkosfon, who makes natto spaghetti all the time?

“First, you boil the noodles.”

She puts the dried pasta into a simmering pot of water.
The water is salted, and the noodles are boiling just fine. She’s surprisingly good at this.

“And when the noodles are cooked just right, you take them out and…”

She puts them on a plate.
Wait. Where’s the meat sauce?

“Pour ketchup on itttttttttttttttttttttt!!!”
“What the?!”

Veil!
She’s sloshing the fridge-cold ketchup all over the pasta!!!

“Veil, no! It’s not ketchup you put on pasta, it’s meat sauce!”
“It’s too much trouble to make that! Besides, I think they’re practically the same, so it should be okay!”
“No, they’re NOT!!!”

If you put meat sauce on pasta, it’s meat sauce spaghetti!
But if you ketchup instead…

That’s just Napolitan!!!

They’re two different dishes!
The spaghetti Napolitana that Italians would never approve of has already landed in another world!
And it was introduced by someone else!

“Oh, it surprisingly tastes good.”
“But the freshly boiled pasta is half-cooled by the ketchup.”

Well, yeah! You make Napolitan by frying and mixing it with ketchup and other ingredients!
Still, it was a hit.

“Hmm, not quite the reaction I was expecting. Master! We must work together to perfect this ketchup spaghetti!”
“No, I know how to make the perfect spaghetti with ketchup!”

It’s called Napolitan!!!

When did you become this eager, Veil?!

In the end, the ‘upgraded’ Napolitan was loved by everyone.
…And the meat sauce spaghetti too, let’s not forget!

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