Flying Somen

“So should we just head back to your place?”

“Why bother, right here is just fine.”

“Are you serious? Right here along the riverside?”

“I don’t see why not. Give me one good reason not to.”

“I wouldn’t exactly call this a clean environment.”

“Oh don’t worry so much.”

“Well excuse me for not wanting to catch anything.”

“There's really nothing to worry about, just take it off already.”

“Ugh fine. You don’t have to be so aggressive about it.”

She pulls the kanzashi out of her hair, turns it into its brush form and hands it over to him.

“Thank you Minori, I’ll get started with the kitchen prep right away. Before I get started though, is it possible for me to get things out of my kitchen without teleporting back and forth.”

“Yeah, just draw and write the specific location you want to connect it to. It’ll open up a small opening for you to reach into.”

“Awesome. That’ll make it much easier to make a quick delicious meal.”

Haru conjures a portable camping kitchen and starts pulling out utensils from the small portal he made to his kitchen.

“I was thinking we could have salmon with nagashi somen. Does that sound ok to you?”

“Yeah that works for me.”

“Cool, do you want to help me catch one?”

“Catch what?”

“A salmon for me to cook. Unless you see noodles floating down the river for us to catch?”

“Aren’t you just hilarious? I’d much rather just continue laying here and waiting for you to be done.”

“Oh come on, are you scared that I might catch one first?”

“Don’t think you pulled the wool over my eyes. I know what you’re doing, but since I like to win so much I’ll play along. Should I just make us two fishing rods?”

“No that’ll take forever, we can just dipnet for them.”

“Is that one of those nets you throw in the water from overhead?”

“No it looks more like a sixteen foot butterfly net that you catch fish with as they swim downstream.”

“Do they just stay in the net until you pull it out of the water?”

“Yeah as long as you flip the net once they enter it.”

“Were you trying to leave out that detail on purpose?”

She gives him a look of suspicion before making the nets.

“Why don’t I go a bit further upstream so you don’t accuse me of scaring your fish away.”

“Yeah you do that.”

After a mere three attempts Minori manages to catch a huge salmon and pulls it into shore.

“Would you look at that? I won!”

“Yeah yeah yeah. “

“That was just as easy as the goldfish scooping game at festivals.”

“I seriously doubt you’re patient enough for that goldfish game.”

“Of course you would doubt my abilities.”

She hands the fish over to him after humanely killing it with the iki jime technique.

“Are you going to help me with the food prep?”

“No, I already caught that salmon for us since you couldn’t handle it yourself. I’m leaving the rest in your hands.”

“Fine I guess you’ll be serving the both of us once I'm done then.”

“Yeah that works for me. I’ll just be over here supervising.”

Haru begins by scaling, fileting and deboning the salmon. He then sets it aside in a white miso marinade. Next he combines soy sauce, mirin, sake, kombu and katsuobushi in a saucepan for the mentsuyu. As he's waiting for that to come to a boil he slices cherry tomatoes and juliennes some cucumber.

“Wow it looks like you actually know what you’re doing.”

“Maybe that's because I do.”

“We’ll have to wait to see how it tastes.”

The mentsuyu begins to boil so he puts it down to a simmer to ensure the kombu doesn’t become bitter. Just as it's finishing up he boils the somen noodles and sets everything besides the salmon in a cooler. He now walks over to the hibachi grill and cooks the salmon starting with the skin side.

“Oh that smells good. I hope it doesn’t disappoint.”

“No worries I'm sure you’ll love it.”

“Mhmm.”

“Get ready, it's almost time for you to start serving us.”

“You make it sound like it's going to take me so long to do.”

“That’s because it probably will.”

He pulls everything out of the cooler after cooking the salmon and begins wrapping small bundles of toppings and noodles in their own kombu pouches tied up with butcher’s twine.

“Haru! Why are you tying up the food like that?”

“Like I said it's almost time for you to serve so I thought I’d make it interesting.”

“This better not be trying to do another food roulette thing.”

“No, you told me I couldn’t do that, remember?”

“Oh yeah. I'm glad you remembered.”

“So explain to me what I’m seeing right now.”

“The river water isn’t really clean enough for us to do a traditional nagashi somen that we could catch with chopsticks so I decided to change it from flowing noodles to flying noodles and toppings.”

“Wait, what do you mean when you say flying?”

“I'm going to take these little kombu pouches I made to keep the food safe and shoot them in the air with this modified t-shirt cannon I made. All you have to do is catch them and then serve it to us with the mentsuyu sauce over there.”

“I guess I’ll give it a try. Start shooting.”

She immediately catches the first 2 pouches in a large bowl with ease.

“Oh come on, did you think that was supposed to be a challenge for me?’

“No, that was just a warm up for you.”

He reaches under the little kitchen work area and pulls out two large multi-barreled t-shirt cannons.

“I hope you’re ready!”

“He manically starts laughing as he rapidly fires them high into the air.”

She grew overwhelmed by the sheer number of them flying in odd directions.

“Way to amp up the difficulty to max!”

“She runs up the nearest tree, turns her kanzashi into a net, leaps into the air and bounces around the area like a ninja catching every single one of them.”

“That was impressive. I honestly didn’t think you could catch them all. That’s why I split each ingredient into so many pouches.”

She went over to mentsuyu and served them both as she wore a contemptuous smile, basking in the success of her feat.

“Here you go.”

She then sat down and tasted it.

“Oh wow I have to hand it to you. This is absolutely delicious.’

“I’m glad you like it. Maybe if you’re lucky I’ll cook for you again soon. Maybe after our little camping trip.”

He winks over at her as freezes in awe having completely forgotten about that wager until now.

“Is that coming up?”

“Yeah, most likely tomorrow if I can find the perfect campgrounds for such a special occasion.”