Chapter 47: Do Not Give Up on Your Ambitions
Hello, it’s Ren. And so I’m currently having lunch with everyone in an office inside the guild. Obviously, I wasn’t wearing my hood, and as expected Lily and Salena were staring quite intensely at me, I was a bit troubled. But the guild master looked like he didn’t care that much? There were some other guild staff around us, but I wouldn’t be able to continue with the meal if I kept worrying about it, so I stopped paying attention to it.
Now then! Today’s lunch is my treat! Or rather I actually made it! Anyway, let’s just quickly introduce the menu already~
First up, the soup. It was shrimp soup. I created a rich broth through cooking the shrimp head and shells. Afterward, I also adjusted the taste. But this isn’t the only thing I prepared, I have more. Shrimp Chili. This was a bit hard to make. I made potato starch for the coating, but I didn’t have any broad bean chili paste…….since I didn’t have enough ingredients to make it, I ended up having to make the broad bean chili paste using Creation Magic.
But since I found chili oil in the northeastern forest near the river, I somehow managed to complete it during my spare time. I also made ketchup and vinegar, and then finished preparing the scallions and other ingredients, but in my own opinion it was still a bit crude. I still needed to fine-tune the flavor.
The main dish was steamed rice. In this world, the cooking method for rice was basically just to boil it or fry it, which was quite lacking to me. As such, I made a clay pot and steamed the rice. The result was quite amazing. I added the chopsticks, and done!
But when I finished taking the dishes out, everyone only stared silently. No one moved.
“Um, help yourselves?” “That…this..what is this?” “It’s a dish using shrimp.” “Shrimp, you mean that gritty and smelly thing?”
Ahh, did they perhaps not remove the digestive tract of the shrimp? Hm? Was this world’s shrimp cuisine only at that level?
“Ah, it’s only like that if you don’t properly prepare it.” “Prepare?”
Hmm, there weren’t a lot of recipes for seafood, so perhaps they don’t know how to prepare it? The other types of dishes were fine and the dishes from the village in the south were all fine, so I guess this was just a problem limited to the inland areas.
“Um, basically I’m saying it’s alright. Please try eating it.” “……I see, in that case.”
Lily reached out with her fork. The other two are watching her with bated breath. So they’re using someone younger than them as a poison-tester, how devious.
She brought a shrimp to her mouth and began eating it. …….But just as I thought she was finished, she froze and her shoulders started trembling. Then she swallowed.
“……What is this!”
After Lily shouted that, she began eating ferociously.
“This! This dish! It’s the first time I’ve ever! Sheesh!”
The other two became stunned after seeing her reaction, but then the two returned to themselves and also began eating.
“……What is this? This is the first time I’ve eaten something so delicious.” “Even the first-class restaurants in the royal capital don’t come close…….” “And this soup. It’s incredibly rich……so this is the taste of shrimp? When I ate it before, it had a grainy and bad smell to it so I didn’t really like it.” “But this rich flavor goes well with the rice. I can eat a lot of rice with just this soup alone.” “So this is a shrimp dish? This is dangerous. I can’t stop my hands.” “This spicy aftertaste, it’s just……wait Lily! You’re eating too much of it!”
Hahahaha. There’s still plenty more, so eat up?
In the end, the three of them stuffed themselves until their stomachs were bulging. Looks like they finished all the rice I prepared……perhaps they’re eating a bit too much?
“I can’t go on anymore……” “I also can’t eat anymore.” “I’ve eaten too much……can’t move.”
But I wasn’t finished yet.
“Then I guess you won’t be able to eat this.” “““!?”””
I took out some fruit jelly. There were pieces of fruit inside. I thought over it quite a bit. I managed to get sugar from the maple syrup, but I didn’t have any milk or eggs. Though I do have some butter. In this world, there were soybeans so things like tofu existed in the village in the south. They could also produce soymilk, but that was about it, the quality of the soymilk wasn’t suited for baking sweets and would produce something quite horrible……I found this out after some experimenting at the village, but during that time I had managed to find some Gelidiaceae that washed up onshore. And so I collected and processed it.
“What is this…….” “……It’s transparent and pretty……like a jewel.” “And it has a nice scent too.”
I made grape jelly this time. I also mixed in a bit of red wine which was why it had a nice scent. So I guess it would be more oriented towards adults? The flavor was adjusted using fruit juice and sugar, but the sweetness was kept at a moderate level. I experimented quite a lot with it.
Eh? Weren’t grapes supposed to be out of season? Not at all, since I picked them last fall. When I was living in the forest, I found them growing, so I collected and stored them. Although it should’ve been a wild species, the grapes were sweet and big as if they were domesticated. As expected, the vegetation in this world was rather strange.
“But since everyone appears to be full, I guess it’s impossible to eat…….” “No, no, I’ll eat it! Please let me eat it!” “I would also like to eat it! Since sweets are an entirely different matter!” “I want to eat it too! The dish we just ate was ridiculously delicious! I just can’t imagine what this will taste like!” “Um, in that case, help yourselves?”
But since this was the first time they’ve seen something like this, all three of them brought the spoon to their mouths rather gingerly. They began chewing and then swallowed.
“Fwah…….” “Delicious…….” “It’s sweet, but not too sweet. And the balance between the sweetness and grape flavor is absolutely superb. And the fragrance that spreads throughout my mouth……this is quite astounding……”
Lily ate wordlessly, while Salena was in complete bliss. The guild master ate while commentating like some gourmet food critic.
Yep, it’s my complete victory. Although that was just my own opinion.