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C136: RED JEWELS
“Fashion something delicious with ingredients from the flote,” was the order given to me.
I thought this may be how gourmet manga protagonists feel when they’re given an unreasonable task, but a real gourmet manga has crazier tasks, so I’d say my situation is still relatively okay since I have the freedom to choose anything I want, as long as they’re marine products.
My customer is a god, someone who must never be disobeyed.
And if I clear his task, I’ll be able to receive a divine reward in return, thusly I decided to go along with it.
Several days later…
“Hmmmmmmm…”
Whenever I go to the kitchen during my breaks, I only keep groaning in distress.
The gods have already left, standing by till I finish preparing my dish.
Poseidon said, “Harken thee! I desireth nay ordinary dish but the supreme flote dish that doth reside out of this world! Something far superior to the bamboo-shoot rice and the green-peas rice enow to silence Hades!”
And with the raising of bars, he accordingly gave me an extension of time.
Maybe it’s precisely because he’s a god that his concept of time is different, but not having a set deadline is a huge help. Still…
“Hmmmmm…”
Whenever I actually start working on it, I’d always face a dead end.
Today’s theme is marine products.
And that primarily means… Fish.
At first, I thought I could just turn that into something, but the only cooking methods I could think of were grilling, steaming, or making sashimi out of it.
And these methods…
“…seem too plain.”
After Poseidon raised the bar and extended the deadline, I don’t think he’ll be satisfied with some superficial dish.
Besides, a dish’s quality depends on what one’s fancy dictates.
Even if you’re confident about the food being delicious, you can never make everyone think the same.
I mustn’t forget that the bamboo-shoot rice and green-peas rice that made the gods go “ooh” are, without a doubt, farm produce brought by blessings of the earth.
But its individual ingredients—bamboo shoots, green peas, and rice, are all food from my world.
I also mustn’t forget that my world is far more civilized than this world. Selective breeding in agriculture has made it possible to produce superior crops in taste and appearance. And because of “The Hand of Supremacy,” I can easily grow such crops from scratch.
The gods highly praised the bamboo-shoot rice and the green peas rice precisely because of their advanced quality.
In comparison, all the fish dishes I’ve prepared thus far are from this world.
None of them are boosted in any way.
On top of that, there’s no other way to obtain a god’s approval other than putting emphasis on the dish itself.
Yet, the only dishes I could think of were grilled fish or sashimi.
If anything, I have to make the best use of the ingredient’s flavor.
“The Hand of Supremacy” may be able to reproduce the same skills of a professional cook.
If so, I must come up with a novel dish that could make the people of this world, or rather, the gods, surprised.
That way, I can live up to my status as an otherworlder.
With that in mind, I started preparing the fish in hopes of an idea to come.
We have an abundant stock of fish thanks to the recent fishing trip the orcs went on. With the improvised freezer Puffer the Witch of the Bitter Cold made, we can preserve them for a long time.
Then, when I was taking out the fish guts after slicing its abdomen open…
“…Hm?”
I found a certain item that gave me the perfect idea.
What caught my attention upon seeing the fish’s stomach…were its ovaries packed with eggs.
I can poach these in salted water and make cod roe out of it!
I’m sure they’ve never had cod roe.
Still, my customer is a god, one who must never be taken lightly. I’m going to put in more effort just to increase my chances of gaining his seal of approval.
After the roe was done, I dipped it in red pepper marinade, and after absorbing all that spicy goodness, what I made was…
An evolved roe—spicy cod roe!
It’s strikingly red in color and has a transparent glow to it.
You won’t be able to experience the same taste and texture in other food with its thin coating, countless characteristically chewy roes, and tangy and spicy flavor!
They’re just like red diamonds of the sea!
“All right! This one’s a winner!”
It may seem like everything went smoothly and easily. In reality, I spent so much time failing over and over again, particularly the roe’s sauce. I wouldn’t have done it successfully without Platy, Garra Rufa, and Puffer’s help.
Luckily, most of the fishes the orcs caught were pregnant, so I could even mass-produce cod roe.
They’re pretty similar to walleye pollocks in my world, and according to Platy, this world is teeming with them.
This is great because, with this, I can continue to make spicy cod roe!
It’s the birth of a new farm specialty!
As for the remaining white fish parts, I made them into kamaboko.