Chapter Text
Xiangling enjoyed coming back to Springvale, especially since they still served her special dish from the cooking contest. They couldn’t serve it with the special preserved boar, though, but that was to be expected, and it still tasted pretty good with regular forest boar.
Their tea wasn’t half bad either. It wasn’t the same as the kind served back home, of course, but it was still energizing. The locals said it was made of Windwheel Asters.
Xiangling poured herself another cup from the pot on the stove. She had a long day of hunting and foraging ahead of her, and she needed all the energy she could get.
“Don’t brew the tea too long,” said a voice, “or it’ll get bitter.”
It was Brook, the woman who lost the cooking contest. Xiangling suspected she might still be a bit salty about that.
“Yes, I’m well aware,” said Xiangling. She took the pot off the stove and scooped out the tea leaves. “Back home in Liyue, we make tea all the time.”
“Oh. Right.” Brook left, looking a bit embarrassed.
Xingqiu and Chongyun walked up the path. “Did she just lecture you on how to brew tea?” asked Xingqiu, trying not to laugh.
Xiangling almost laughed herself. “I know, right?”
“Where does she think her tea comes from?”
Chongyun took a bite of his ever-present popsicle. “Probably the tea man in the city.”
Xiangling and Xingqiu both lost it. “The tea man!” they exclaimed as they doubled over laughing.
Turns out the tea man was a real person. And he wasn’t just selling the Mondstadt blend, he had tea from Liyue, Inazuma, and Sumeru. He had a host of other wares from all over Teyvat, including salty licorice from Snezhnaya, oranges from Fontaine, and a spiky yellow fruit from Natlan.
The tea man said the fruit was called a pineapple, but it didn’t look like a pine or an apple. Her curiosity piqued, Xiangling bought one anyway and brought it back to Wanmin Restaurant that night to figure out how to cook it.
The next day.
It took Xiangling’s biggest knife to cut open the scaly behemoth, but she eventually managed to get it into bite-sized chunks. While the stove was warming up, she sampled a piece. It tasted exactly how she imagined sunshine tasted-- wonderfully juicy and sweet with just a hint of acid. Xiangling surmised that the best way to cook it would be to grill it, then serve it alongside some meat. And not just any meat would do. She didn’t have any more of that extinct boar left, but she knew where she could find a close second.
The pineapple tasted even better once it was grilled. All the juice had caramelized, giving the fruit a more nutty flavor that offset the acid in the best way. Xiangling took it off the stove, placed it in a special box next to the fire to keep it warm, then packed her bag and set off for Dragonspine.
Entering Dragonspine was as cumbersome as Xiangling remembered. If not for the help of a very nice man and his goulash, she would have turned into a human popsicle long before she reached the Snowboar King’s lair.
Now she was in danger of turning into a human kebab. As soon as the boar saw her, it started charging right at her with its big long tusks. She tried to scream but got drowned out by the wind.
At the last second, she managed to side-step its charge, letting the great beast slam headlong into the rock wall behind her. Now she had the upper hand.
“Guoba! Get them!”
The fight went on like this for a while, with the advantage swinging back and forth between Xiangling and the boar. But just as the sun began to set, Xiangling managed to get a decisive spear-jab right between its ribs and it toppled to the ground.
Thoroughly defeated by the power of goulash.
Xiangling brought the frozen boar steaks back to Wanmin Restaurant that night and grilled them to perfection. Before she mixed the meat in with the pineapple, she took a small sample of the meat. It reminded her of the ham she and Lumine had put on the special pizza during their victory celebration after the contest.
The gears started turning in Xiangling’s head…
The meat tasted like ham.
Ham is good on pizza.
The whole point of the meat was to pair it with the pineapple.
Before Xiangling could finish processing what exactly she was doing, she had chopped up a handful of snowboar steak and a handful of pineapple into mini cubes, arranged them artfully on a flat round of dough, and stuck the dough in the oven.
Xingqiu and Chongyun weren’t sure about the combination of meat and pineapple on a pizza. Yaoyao and Beidou both thought it was great, but they always liked Xiangling’s cooking. Xinyan thought it could use more spice. Hu Tao was just glad it wasn’t slime condensate again. Lady Ningguang applauded her for her ingenuity to put a sweet item in a savory dish. Yanfei and Yun Jin both asked for seconds.
Meanwhile, the out-of-towners were less than convinced. Geri and his sister Freki wouldn’t even try it. Diona thought it would make a great addition to her menu, which Xiangling quickly realized meant she thought it was disgusting.
“What the Abyss? Is this some kind of joke?” Brook demanded. “Why would you put fruit on a pizza?!”
Xiangling just shrugged. “Why not?”