Delicious or Disgusting? (Shokugeki No Soma)

5: Rivals

Seira's POV.
I looked up and saw that two people had walked over to my kitchen space. "Yes, that's me!" I smiled politely at them, resisting the urge to knock them out and get back to work. 'Just be nice now Seira, don't get into trouble Seira.' I repeated in my head as I inspected the duo. The boy in front had blonde hair, while the slightly chubbier one behind him had black.

Extending my hand, I ignored the anger of being disrupted. "Nice to meet you! What's your names?"

The blonde hair guy just huffs, disregarded and walked pass me, bumping my shoulder in the process. "Your not even worth considering, I guess the introduction speech was just a hoax." I clenched my fists. 'Don't fight Seira, you quit aikido ages ago.'

The black haired guy smiled at me. "Hi there! I'm Isami Aldini, and the blonde haired guy over there is my older twin, Takumi."

Wait. Brothers? Twins? They must be fraternal twins, because they're nothing alike, look and attitude-wise. Even though Isami looked more intimidating, he's much nicer than his brother, who had returned back to his bench.

"Nice to meet you, Isami-Kun. Let's get along!" I watched him return to his kitchen then checked the clock.

"Eh?! Thirty five minutes?!!" I narrowed my eyes. I haven't even started and most people have already put the beef to stew!

"Heh, look the transfer student's sisters flustered."

"Serves that her right."

"I mean, what a useless bitc-"

The last person faltered. That may be the fact that a knife had lodged itself into the wall behind him, millimetres away from his face. The whole class just stared at me, slightly shocked, with the acceptation of a few. Isami claped his hands as if to praise me, while his brother just raised an eyebrow.

Retrieving the knife I composed myself. 'Well, there goes my innocent facade.' I muttered to myself, not realising that someone else also heard.

Looking at the classroom, I go back to smiling brightly. "Sorry! My hand slipped." Turning back to my bench I gaped at the time. "Wha-What? Thirty minutes!?" Groaning, I looked over the recipe, trying to remember everything about Beef Burgundy.

Beef Bourguignon is one of many examples of peasant dishes being slowly refined into haute cuisine. The particular method of slowly simmering the beef in wine originated as a means of tenderizing cuts of meat that would have been too tough to cook any other way.

Those basics weren't going to help me. If I was going to soften the meat even faster, what could I do? Closing my eyes, I thought for a while. 'Wine, fruit juices, honey, marinate-!' Snapping my eyes open, I grinned. That's the perfect way to tenderise the meat and enhance the flavour.

Unraveling my ribbon, I tied my hair up with it, and put on my grey apron. Taking my knives out of their black polished case, I began to take off the carrot tops and the outer onion layer, before quickly washing them and the baby mushrooms.

"Woah-"

"S-So fast!"

"You can't even see her hands!"

After doing that, I quickly moved on to tenderising my meat. Ignoring people's jeers on about how my meat will never be tender enough in twenty five minutes, I pulled out a frying pan, and melted some butter over it, before adding the onions, garlic and mushrooms. I added some Burgundy wine and brought it to a boil before simmering it until I had a nice, rich brown sauce.

Taking my piece of meat out, I tenderised it with a meat mallet before soaking it in the sauce. After, I put the vegetables and beef into a stockpot. Twenty minutes. Plenty of time.