Chapter 168 Cooking and Baking
Eisen walked past the different bags and barrels that they had, containing just the most basic of basics of ingredients, such as sugar, flour, salt, and some general condiments and dried herbs.
"Hmm, alright, I guess we'll start working on the bread first of all, huh?" Eisen muttered to himself, before looking at the Head-Chef. "Can you help me bring some of these things over to that large bowl there?" He asked, before the Dwarf slowly nodded, taking some of the sugar and salt with him, while Eisen grabbed a large bag of flour, bringing it over to one of the containers he had made with his element where he would now begin mixing the dough.
For some reason, it seemed like the Head-Chef was feeling kind of passive at the moment. He wasn't doing anything on his own, and maybe even lost some of the passion that had made him want to become a chef in the first place. Hopefully, Eisen could change that today. But Eisen would be concentrating on actually preparing food, and this other goal could be considered a secondary accomplishment.
First, in a separate bowl, Eisen mixed some yeast with warm water, and stirred it together, while working on the main-mixture in a bigger mixing bowl, which was just made up of sugar, a little bit of salt, and a large amount of flour.
When the yeast-water mixture had some bubbles forming on its surface, Eisen added some oil into it and mixed it in, then poured it into the flour mixture, which he then began to stir together, adding more flour to it until he got a pleasant, soft dough to work with,
And after spreading some flour on a different surface, Eisen grabbed the giant ball of dough and brought it over there, summoning two things that he hadn't in quite a while, his 'Mana Doubles.'
He activated his skill with his pre-infused mana, so the resulting 'Demon Doubles' were also already fully transformed, with a set of wings and horns as well. Mentally, he now began to control them while the head-chef stood at the sidelines, somewhat scared at the sudden appearance of two more of these beings.
Now, as Eisen himself began kneading the dough, the two doubles did the same and worked on other areas of the dough to evenly work through it. While they were doing that, Eisen turned toward the Head-Chef and asked him to start working on something else.
"I'm sure you still have some leftover cow or bull bones, right? Place them into the oven that I made with my magic, please." The old man requested before the Head-Chef shrugged and did as directed. This kind of way of working actually really annoyed Eisen, but he let it slide for now. He would only work on this man's attitude as a secondary objective, after all.
Either way, for now, Eisen continued working on the dough, which soon enough was quite smooth and ready to be set aside to let the dough rise, which the old man did by merely placing the mixture back into the large mixing bowl he made with his element, which would continuously supply it with an above-room-temperature conditions.
And then, Eisen simply covered the bowl up and helped the head-chef with placing some bones into the Flame of the Earth Oven, closing it up to let the bones simply bake for a while.
After that, he called Caria and Melissa back inside to have them bring Eisen some of the vegetables they made to add to the beef broth later. And so, Eisen began roughly chopping up some carrots, leeks, and onions, as well as a few different herbs with which Eisen wanted to achieve different effects.
First, he added 'Palma Eldath,' a herb meant to warm up one's body. At first, Eisen thought such a thing might be useless and just brought it with him just in case, but in the end, he felt he had to add this no matter what. And there was a pretty simple reason for that. This building was unpleasantly cold.
Despite being in a tropical zone, this building was directly next to the city walls and positioned in such a way that it barely got any proper sunlight that could warm anyone or anything up, and on top of that, the dense brick structure seemed to insulate the whole building and keeping it generally cool. It was quite pleasant most of the time, sure, but Eisen could imagine it had quite an adverse effect on sick people as well as children with a low immune system. And even then, the herb simply brought your body to a cozy temperature, and wouldn't let you overheat. It was just as if you drank something that filled out your whole body with warmth.
And then, Eisen also added 'Ur,' a herb that can be used as a direct replacement for food just on its own, even if it's not healthy to live only off of, if he added this to the broth, it would probably make it just that much more filling and satisfying to eat.
The rest were simply herbs to add a bit more flavor and nutrients to everything, and none of which that Eisen knew to have any special effects, and he would only be adding them around the end of the simmering so that the flavor could be developed and enhanced into the broth, giving it a richer robust flavor. So for now, the old man simply chopped these ingredients up and distributed them among a multiple of the large pots that were already in the kitchen, since he was going to prepare as much broth as possible.
The broth was something relatively easy to store for a quite a while and an excellent base for numerous incredibly filling dishes, after all. Once the bones were baked correctly, and the Chef's apprentice returned to the Kitchen. They all distributed the roasted bones to the pots, and then Eisen added enough water to cover all the ingredients, and looked around the kitchen a bit more, although he didn't find what he was searching for, so he turned to the Chef and his apprentice once again.
"Do you have any red wine around here? That's what I usually add to broth like this." He said, and the chef nodded slowly, seemingly nervous to tell this to a person with such a frightening body, despite him being quite nice and kind for the most part. "We do have wine, yes, but we have to keep it for special occasions. For example, if the Lord comes to visit. He has to make it at least seem like he cares about this place, not that he actually does though. If we don't have anything for him to drink, he's going to cut our budget even further. It's troublesome here as-is, and if we have even less money to work with, everyone here will starve."
With a loud sigh, Eisen looked back at the Head-Chef, now feeling like he took it over the top. "You're saying that, but is that really the case? You obviously have everything you need to make quite a large amount of bread and some broth. That alone should be enough to keep everyone above water for quite a while. Directly outside of your window is a place perfect for cultivating and growing different plants and vegetables. If you don't have money, you need to work with what you have.
As you can see, even leftover bones have a purpose in the end. You're making excuses. If you find it so troublesome, why are you still working here?" The old man, in his demonic form, asked as he towered over the Dwarven Chef, who began grinding his teeth audibly, seemingly wanting to say something in anger, but Eisen interrupted him again.
"Don't even try to start a fight. You know exactly that what I'm saying is the truth. You're just lazy. Maybe you thought it would be nice having such a carefree job here, or simply stumbled into this situation. But that's what it boils down to, for now, don't worry about the Lord, and give me that wine. I'm going to pay for more, but I'd prefer for everyone here to have a nice dinner tonight."
Quietly, the Dwarf nodded, seemingly rightly convinced, and maybe even a little bit intimidated and startled by the sudden anger in this being's voice. So, the Head-Chef walked over to a cabinet and grabbed a bottle of red wine, which seemed to be more expensive than all of the equipment and any of the ingredients currently in this room.
With a sigh, Eisen grabbed the bottle and pulled out the cork, taking a quick sip to see how it tasted. "Should be good enough." He said, and, actually somewhat wastefully, poured in some of the wine into each of the pots, before handing the bottle to the Dwarf.
"Here you go, there's still a little left in there. Give that to the Lord if he comes for all I care." Eisen told him, as he placed the pots on top of the burners of the Flame of the Earth stove, manipulating the flames to have a good, consistent heat as everything began to simmer.
And now, Eisen was left standing there in this room with currently nothing much to do, when he looked over at the Dough he had prepared. Usually, things went a lot faster in this game than in real life, and since half an hour already passed, maybe it had properly risen already.
Luckily enough, when Eisen uncovered the pot, the dough had already doubled in size. With a smile, Eisen quickly punched the dough down and grabbed it, placing it on the floured surface again, before then summoning his Mana Doubles, or in this case Demon Doubles, again to help him shape the dough.
One after another, Eisen formed the dough into many different balls and placed them into the oven. Which was currently on low heat right now, and since Eisen could precisely manipulate how hot everything was inside of the oven, and simply created a few small 'support' walls to make sure the dough would stay round shaped. Eisen now needed to wait for a little while and let each of the individual dough-balls to rise.
For a while, they now all waited in silence, until the group that went out to buy the ingredients returned, with many helping hands carrying quite a large load.
The majority of them seemed to be merely young teenagers, as the nun from before had said, and they set everything down with hungry eyes as they began to sniff the air.
"Something smells really good…" One of them, an especially scrawny, effeminate boy muttered out, while another one, a tall and well-built individual responded. "Sure does, aye? Didn't know the- What the fuck is that?!" The tall boy yelled out as he looked at Eisen, nearly dropping the bag he was holding. With an annoyed face, Kiron then stepped up behind him and set down the bags he was carrying.
"Please, do not talk about My Lord in such a manner, young Parc," Kiron told him before Parc turned around with a light flinch.
"S-Sorry Dragon dude, I didn't know he was the one you were talking about before." He muttered as he scratched the back of his head with a carefree expression, and the skinny boy lightly hit his side.
"Stop talking to adults like that."
"Sorry, Rouge," Parc responded, and Eisen chuckled with a smile as he looked at the two boys, who were the only ones left in the room because all the other kids seemingly had already left. The nun walked up behind them, smiling at Eisen as she held up the bag with the left-over coins toward him.
"You two, please be quiet. Thank you, Sir, for allowing us to buy extra food with your money." She said, slowly becoming emotional as she motioned to the Demon to take the rest of the money back before Eisen shook his head. "Keep it, Money isn't a problem for me, but it is for you," Eisen told her, before looking at Parc and Rouge, asking what was on his mind.
"And you two, thank you for helping with the shopping. I'm Eisen, the Golden-Eyed Demon." He said, introducing himself in a way that he would be recognized as a Demon by everyone in this room, and while the Nun was wiping her tears of joy out of her eyes, the boys looked at each other, before Parc replied with a smirk.
"This is Rouge, and I'm Parc. And we're this town's best craftsmen!"