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Chapter 23: Cleria’s Story 1 (Part 1)

 

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Translator: SFBaka

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The facilities of the kitchen I was guided to were quite extensive. They were also well-ordered.

“This is the kitchen Milady and Tara-sama often use for cooking.”

It seems like this mansion actually has several kitchens. Un, it’s certainly an enviable environment.

“The ingredients and cookware present here are the same as what we have in the main kitchen.”

“It’s quite a splendid kitchen. Well then, what should I make? What are the staple sweets in this country? It would be dull if I made something already commonly available, so could I trouble you to teach me?”

“Certainly. This is the staple sweet we have in this country. There are different flavors available, but they are essentially the same product.”

Jonas-san handed me a basket filled with sweets. They appear to be similar to cookies.

“Can I taste one?”

“Of course. Please go ahead.”

I tried one, and it really was a cookie. It was mildly sweet, crunchy, and delicious.

“This is quite tasty. But, are there no other sweets available apart from these?”

“Yes. These are the only sweets we have. They are made from wheat flour and are baked.”

So they only have cookies for sweets huh? But there’s a lot more stuff we can make.

“I see. Well then, I’ll need to check the available ingredients next.”

I checked out an ingredient jar that resembled porcelain first. Is this sugar? Yep, it’s sugar alright. It wasn’t white, but was light-brown in color. It tasted fine. It wasn’t as sweet as the sugar I’m used to, but it would do just fine. There were also some salt, honey, a number of different herbs and wheat flour. Hm, so what should I make?

“There are also some chilled ingredients available.”

Jonas-san opened up a large shelf. There were eggs and other ingredients, either bound by cloth or put into porcelain containers, inside. Waves of cold air were wafting out of the shelf.

“Oh! This isー!?”

“This is a magic tool used for refrigerating ingredients. Foodstuffs that go bad quicker are put inside this box in order to prolong their shelf life.”

“This is great! To think you had something like this as well.”

The shelf contained things like meat, dried fish, eggs, butter, milk, cheese, and various other ingredients. Great. Since there are eggs, butter and milk, I can easily make a wider variety of sweets.

I do get the desire to make cookies using these ingredients. But I’m going to whip up something different. I’ll make something simple so I won’t accidentally botch up and ruin it.

Let’s go with a standard Earth-style steamed egg pudding. I personally like baked pudding more, but I’m not familiar with using the type of oven they have in this kitchen. Since that’s the case, it would be better not to force it.

I took out all the ingredients I need. Milk, eggs, and sugar. Just these three.

Next would be a suitable mold. I looked around the kitchen and spotted a shelf containing various tableware. It also had a lot of small containers that looked perfect as pudding molds. Hey, there’s also a strainer here. It was a bit rough, but it’ll do.

I also found a large lidded pot that I can use for steaming. I looked for something I can use to hold the containers above the water while steaming and found a smaller lid from another pot. It was just the right size as well. I successfully got myself an improvised steamer set.

“How many should I make?”

“Let’s see. How about five for your group plus five more, Alan-san?”

Jonas-san also included Elna’s share as well.

“Understood. I’ll make some extra portions, just to be sure.”

I ran over the recipe in my head while considering the number of servings. Looks like we’re good. The ingredients we have here would suffice. We also had enough containers.

“By the way, how much does this ingredient cost?”

“Ah, sugar, is it? A pot of this size would cost about five silvers.”

That’s unexpectedly cheap. Or is it? Five silvers are enough for a two-night stay at an average inn after all.

I checked the cookware before I started making the puddings. There were two platforms that resembled stoves in the kitchen.

“Um, are theseー?”

“These are magic tools that emit flames. This is how you use them.”

Jonas-san pulled down the lever on the side of one of the stoves. When he did so, the stove immediately spouted flames. It seems you can use the lever to adjust the intensity of the flames.

“This is also quite amazing. I actually want one myself.”

“I could introduce you to one of our partner stores that have them later if you wish.”

Man. They really sell a large variety of merchandise, don’t they?

I’ll start with making the caramel sauce.

I put an amount of sugar corresponding to the recipe in my head inside a small saucepan, added some water and heated the mixture over low flames.

I left the mixture to simmer for a few minutes until the color turned light-brown. I poured some more water bit by bit to adjust the thickness of the sauce.

I then poured the finished mixture from the saucepan into another container to let it cool down. Once the mixture had cooled down properly, I poured portions of the finished caramel sauce inside the containers I was going to use as molds for the puddings.

I decided to make fifteen servings this time.

I’ll make the pudding mixture next. I put an appropriate amount of sugar and milk inside a large pot and heated the mixture using the magic stove.

I then added some eggs to the mixture after heating it for a while. I also cracked a number of eggs over a porcelain bowl and started beating them. I added some salt to adjust the flavor as well.

Let’s prepare the steamer as well. I poured water inside the large pot I found earlier, placed the small pot lid several centimeters above the water line, placed the large pot on top of the stove, and turned the flames on.

The milk has been sufficiently heated at this point. I stirred the milk mixture to make sure the sugar has properly dissolved. Afterward, I added in the egg wash into the mix.

I then had Jonas-san help with pouring the heated milk and egg mixture over the strainer. We repeated the straining process two times just to be sure.

We poured the completed pudding mixture inside the molds slathered with caramel sauce. We managed to fill all fifteen containers with the mixture. It looks like I nailed the mixture amount. After these are steamed inside the pot, the puddings would finally be finished.

The improvised steamer is good to go as well. It seems it wasn’t possible to fit all fifteen molds inside the pot, so we steamed them in two batches. We put in half of the containers inside the pot and steamed them over low flames. It should be enough to steam them for ten minutes or so.

After ten minutes, we removed the containers from the pot. They were quite hot, so we had to be careful in taking them out. I poured some more water inside the improvised steamer, and once the water came to a boil, we steamed the second batch as well.

Let’s give the pudding a taste test. I put one container inside a pot half-filled with chilled water in order to cool it down. I’ll put the rest inside the refrigerating magic tool later once they’ve cooled down enough.

We took out the second batch from the steamer after ten minutes. We let them cool down as well.

“We’re finally done. We just need to put these inside the refrigerating magic tool to chill them.”

“So they are done. It was quite a remarkable cooking method, I must say. I haven’t heard or seen such a method until today.”

“These sweets are called puddings. Do you want to give it a taste, Jonas-san?”

“I would love to! I have no idea what the flavor would taste like at all, so it’s quite exciting.”

I took out the pudding mold from the chilled water.

“You’ll need to take out the pudding from the container like so.”

I used my fingers to scrape part of the the pudding mixture that was sticking on the rim of the mold.

“Take out a plate, flip the container over and lightly shake it on top of the plate until the pudding comes out. There we go.”

“Oh! So this is pudding!”

It does look great, at least. The dark-brown caramel sauce dripped down the cream-colored pudding.

I cut the pudding into two portions and put one half on another plate. I offered one half to Jonas-san for him to taste.

Mm, delicious. It wasn’t chilled enough yet, but the creamy taste of the pudding matched well with the bittersweet flavor of the caramel sauce. The recipe actually includes an ingredient from Earth called vanilla, but things from Earth are considered luxury goods and are pretty hard to acquire. Once it’s chilled to a certain degree, I bet it’ll turn even tastier.

I turned around to check with Jonas-san, only to find him petrified on the spot with bulging eyes.

“Alan-san! What exactly is this!? I have yet to taste sweets as delicious as this. How wonderful! Simply magnificent!”

Even if you ask me that, I can only say that it’s pudding y’know. But I’m glad that he actually likes it.

“It’ll taste even more delicious once it’s chilled. Will the madam like it?”

“She will certainly enjoy it! I can already picture the blissful faces of Milady and Tara-sama!”

“It would be great if that’s the case. When should we serve these? They need to be chilled a bit more, so I don’t think they’ll make it for lunch.”

It’ll be midday soon.

“Ah, and I’m planning to find an inn we can stay at for the evening later, so we’ll be leaving the manor in the afternoon.”

“Is that so? Understood. I’ll need to confirm with Master, but he’s currently out on business at the moment. He should be returning soon though. Would you like to take this chance to go around town in the meantime?”

“I understand.”

I returned to our room after we put in the rest of the pudding in the magic fridge. Beck and Thor were also back inside the room.

“Listen to this, Alan-san! They finished assessing the value of our goods, and they’ve actually quoted a price double that of the last time we came here!”

“I see. That’s great, huh. It looks like they really beat down the prices in your previous visits.”

“Well, that’s part of it, but according to Katolle-san, the cotton we brought was of very high quality, so it’ll fetch quite a bit once sold.”

“Is that so? I’m happy for you guys.”

“Yeah! This is also thanks to Alan-san. This wouldn’t have happened if we didn’t have Alan-san with us after all.”

“It’s not like I did something all that significant, guys. Well, you can say we were really lucky for getting acquainted with such great people. You better make sure to treasure this opportunity.”

“”Yeah!””

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