Chapter 431 Ran Out of Berries
Gumihou: Hmm, there is some ambiguity here… anyway, filled in the weird gaps
I went to the kitchen and got dinner started.
Back at my parent’s place, we used to harvest a lot of berries at home. There was so much that we ended up not knowing what to do with them and would often give them away. Anyway, one day I saw a recipe on the internet and decided to try it out…
The recipe I looked up back then was basically a berry sauce that’s served with meat. Hmm, considering how much my familiars like meat, let’s serve the sauce with three different kinds of meat. Since my familiars wanted something ‘special’ let’s give them three different plates with three different types of meat served in the most stylish way possible!
[8]
In fact, considering how much berries we have, let’s make dessert too!
Fufufu, how’s that for ‘special’?
I can even make use of the magic fridge!
Well, I say I want to make dessert, but I can’t do anything too difficult. So, let’s make a [9] Yogurt Jelly with Violet Berry Sauce. I’ll just up the sugar for the dessert sauce.
Let’s make the jelly first since it takes time to harden.
I happily took out the Magic Fridge from my [Item Box].
Fufu, it’s pretty exciting to use a new appliance~
“Hmm, according to Fer, I need to power up the Magic Fridge with a magic stone. Let’s see, just place a small magic stone on this depression, here…”
The moment I placed the magic stone into the dent, a light flashed and a dull hum was heard. Looks like… it worked?
I opened the Magic Fridge and placed my hand inside…
“Oh, it’s pretty cold.” As cold as any normal fridge from my previous world. “Right, since the fridge works, let’s make the yogurt jelly.”
First, stir the powdered gelatine with a little water. Then, warm the milk and sugar in a pan, add the dissolved powdered gelatine and stir until the sugar has dissolved. Next, turn off the fire and add plain yogurt into the milk and gelatine mixture. Stir until everything is even.
All that was left was to pour the Yogurt Jelly into bowls to be set. Normally, I’d pour this into little shot cups or ramekins, but, considering my familiar’s appet.i.te, I poured the jelly into three oversized gla.s.s bowls, bought from [Net Super] no less, and set them inside the fridge to cool and harden.
Next, let’s make the dessert berry sauce. A single berry was as large as a melon. It was actually easier to work with these huge berries. I used two berries to make the sauce. First, cut up the Violet Berries into half and peel them. Then, after covering the berries in granulated sugar, I left them in a pan to slowly macerate. There’s no need to add water since the sugar will draw water out of the berry anyway.
Once enough water came out of the berries, I added some lemon juice and slowly cooked the berries over very low heat. The liquid will eventually thicken into a sauce. While the berry sauce was bubbling, I squashed the berries down with a spoon, making sure to get as much liquid out.
When the sauce was deemed done, I sc.r.a.ped it into a bowl and placed it in the fridge to be cooled.
Well, now that the dessert’s chilling in the fridge, let’s deal with the meat next.
For the three types of meat, hmm, let’s go with Gigantic Minotaur, Rock Bird and Red Boar. That’s beef, chicken and pork. That way we could enjoy the special berry sauce with different types of meat.
In fact, let’s cook the meat in different ways!
[8] [8a]
Gigantic Minotaur – roast in oven, slice and serve with berry sauce
Rock Bird – sauté large pieces in a pan and simmer in berry sauce
Red Boar – quick sear on pan and serve with thickened berry sauce.
Well, roasting takes up a lot more time, so let’s do the Gigantic Minotaur first. While the meat’s roasting, I made the Violet Berry sauce. Instead of sugar, this berry sauce was made with red wine, soy sauce, balsamic vinegar, honey, salt and black pepper. Otherwise, the cooking process was pretty similar.
Goodness, cooking has really been getting much easier for me. It’s like I have an instinct for how much heat to use and an innate understanding of different ingredients.
Anyway, once the sauce has been simmering for a while, I got started on the Rock Bird and Red Boar meat. The Red Boar meat was cut into fairly fine slices, kind of like thick bacon, so that it could be cooked through quickly without becoming too tough.
As for the Rock Bird, after the skin was crisped up, I flipped the meat over and pour a cupful or two of the berry sauce. This would deglaze the pan and soak properly into the bird meat.
I dipped a spoon into the still simmering sauce. It coated the spoon nicely. I touched the spoon to my tongue.
“Woah, this is pretty good. While the beef rest in the oven and the bird meat is soaking in the sauce, let’s serve up the pork first-”
I twitched, and turned around suddenly.
All my familiars, Fer, Sui and Dora-chan were staring from the doorway.
“Oi, why are you eating on your own?”
“”Yeah, no fair!””
“”Sui is hungry too~~””
“I’m taste testing. Anyway, the first course is ready now, so please wait in the living room.”
While the grumbling trio moved away from the door, I got out some large white plates and begin to plate the food. On a large white plate, I mentally mapped out where I would place the food. Then, I discarded the idea. Placing all three kinds of meat on a single plate might be a good idea for most people, but my familiars were literal monsters who could devour several plates of food in one sitting.
Let’s just get more plates and serve up all three plates to each familiar.
[8a]
Plate 1 – Finely sliced roasted beef is arranged in the shape of a flower with a few mint leaves on the outside as accent. A generous drizzle of the purple Violent Berry Sauce in the middle of the meat flower.
Plate 2 – The sautéed Rock Bird is taken out and grilled for another 30 seconds to bake the sauce into the meat before it was sliced into neat strips and laid out on the plate with a drizzle of sauce and a few decorative mint leaves to accentuate the deep purple colour of the skin and delicious looking white flesh.
Plate 3 – Sliced Red Boar meat was arranged in the shape of a fan on the plate, double layered, of course. I decorated the ‘fan’ with the sauce and mint leaves, doing my best to create something like a scenery with food.
Woah, these are so pretty~
I’m a genius~
[8]
I can’t wait to see what my familiars would say about these beautiful dishes.
“This is good. The berry sauce matches well with all the meat. How mysterious, yet delicious.”
“”What he said!””
“”Yummy~””
“… …”
While I am happy that they like it, I am disappointed to see them mindlessly chomping down on my nicely plated dishes. It was a mistake on my part to expect these gluttons to appreciate fine dining… [5b] [5b]
Well, after many rounds of seconds, I cleared my throat and said, “Ahem, we have dessert next. Do you still want it?”
“”Yeahh!!””
I brought out the giant gla.s.s bowls of yogurt jelly from the Magic Fridge.
““Woah, that looks like a pudding!””
“”Pretty~””
“Umu, it’s made from the Violet Berry?”
“Yup, I used up the last of the Violet Berry to make the sauce and this dessert. So, please enjoy.” [5c]
“”Yay!””
“Oh, wait, before that,” I took out a jug of sweet berry sauce and poured it over the yogurt jelly. The deep purple of the Violet Berry contrasted very nicely against the white of the yogurt jelly.
Needless to say, the jelly disappeared very quickly.
Sui was fairly vibrating with pleasure, “”Aruji~! I want more~~””
“Ah, sorry, Sui. We’re out of the berries. I mean, I can make more jelly, but not with Violent Berries.”
“”No more~?””
Ahh, Sui-tan is depressed. I felt like a villain!
[Gumihou: There was a big deal about minor things that were not at all interesting, close to 500 words of it were yeeted from this chapter. Also, didn’t he have 5 sacks of berries and only used 2 berries for sauce? Sir? Your math?]
[1] Structural Change: Combine 2 paragraphs
[2] Structural Change: Combine 3 paragraphs
[3] Structural Change: Combine paragraph & dialogue
[4] Structural Change: Change pa.s.sive sentence to dialogue
[5] Delete Repet.i.tive or Pointless Information… starting to delete pointless scenes now
[6] Additional Information for Aesthetic Purpose
[7] Add Dialogue Tag
[8] Creative Licence – Adjust cooking related text so that it is more… delicious? Yes, delicious is the word.
[a] Bullet point style for clarity. Otherwise, it’s just too messy.
[b] Deleted details of what the heck they were eating since it was all repeats of oh, this is x? Yummy, chews, yum, this is good too, right? Yummy (360 words of it)
[c] Deleted fridge related explanations. Because, who cares?
[9] Yogurt jelly – personally, I think it sounds kind of… weird and disgusting, but, eh…
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