Volume 7 - CH 3.18

「I think that the plant that they were planting was Licorice, since it is a plant that is often planted near the river banks. It is a plant that has poison in its roots, flowers and leaves, and because of that peculiar quality the majority of animals usually don’t come near it, which in turn prevents the riverbank from collapsing upon itself due to the burrowing of the ground performed by the smaller animals. And besides, even if the plant itself is poisonous, the poison itself can be easily removed by rinsing the Licorice plants in water, which makes it possible to use its plants as food in case of emergencies.」

Sherry explains to me about the so-called Licorice plant. Is this what they call the wisdom of life? Or perhaps I could call it lifehack? Whatever the case may be, I am glad to know that a convenient plant like that actually exists in this world. Also, let me check the list of Miria’s Jobs real quick:

Diver Lv.31, Village Chief Lv.1, Pirate Lv.1, Villager Lv.5, Merchant Lv. 1, Explorer Lv.1, Warrior Lv.1, Herbalist Lv.1, Swordsman Lv.1, Monk Lv.1

Hmm, so even though Miria was helping with the planting of the Licorice plants, she was still unable to obtain the Job of a Farmer, huh? And here I thought that we would be able to use it for our own purposes if we ever needed to plant those plants for ourselves. But it’s actually strange, you know? She has a Herbalist Job due to picking up medicinal herbs in the Labyrinth and helping with the harvest of the herbs in our garden, so why does she not have a Farmer Job as well?

Maybe it’s because Licorice is classified as a poisonous plant? If you plant plants like that, does that mean that the Farmer Job is not going to be unlocked for you? Or maybe it’s not about the planting? Maybe in order to unlock that Job for yourself, you actually need to be the one to harvest it with your own hands?

Well, it is a shame that Miria doesn’t have that Job, but it’s not like she’s missing a lot because of it. I mean, a Job like a Farmer surely wouldn’t be giving you any good Skills or powerful passive benefits, right? So aside from gaining EXP for it, having her equip such a Job would probably not benefit our Party all that much.

「Sherry, please go to the kitchen with Roxanne and prepare soup. I’ll be handling the preparation of the other dish, so you don’t have to worry about it.」

「Of course, master.」

Sherry left the bath with Roxanne, while Miria and I remained in it for a little while longer, because there was still something that I had to do with her now that we had the chance to be alone with just the two of us.

After that, I asked Miria to help me with the preparation of the food. I told Sherry and Roxanne that I will take care of the second dish, but I never said that I was going to do that all by myself.

The preparation of the dish that I want to make today might be different from how I used to make it back in Japan, but ultimately it shouldn’t matter all that much.

Upon my request, Miria proceeded to cut the fish into equal slices, and then she cut off the shrimps heads and removed their tales and shells from their bodies. All right, thank God that the method of preparing shrimps is the same here as it was on earth. That is going to make the process of cooking them, both right now and in the future, that much easier, and it doesn’t matter if the shrimps are alive or dead. As long as I’ll be able to prepare delicious dishes out of them, then I’m not going to be holding anything back.

「Please tell me if there is anything specific that you would like to eat. Are all of you okay with shrimps being the main dish today? Roxanne, what would you like to eat?」

While making the preparations for dinner, I asked Roxanne about her food preferences for today.

I placed the pan on the earthenware stove that’s like a charcoal stove and I poured olive oil onto it and heated it up for long enough for it to get warmed up, and then I placed all the other ingredients on the table.

For today’s dish, I have prepared fish, shrimp, sausage, ham as well as various vegetables. As a next step, I mixed Slime Starch and Shell Powder together and then mixed it in with flour, after which I lightly melted it in water and then thickened the mixture up by adding eggs whites and yolks.

With that out of the way, all that I need to do now is to bathe the ingredients in the mixture so that I could then deep-fry all of them. And the first things that are going to be deep fried by me are going to be these shrimps right here!

「If Master is going to be eating shrimps, then that is also what I would like to eat.」

「I would like some of the ham in that case.」

「Fish for me, desu!」

Now that the girls have placed their orders, I added some additional shrimps and their coating, sliced the ham into thick slices and thrown them onto the pan in order to deep-fry them together with the fish until it all started sizzling and the bubbles began to form on the surface of the oil.

You might have figured this out already, but essentially what I made here was tempura. When all of the ingredients have been deep-fried in it enough, I took them all out, sprinkled them with some vinegar and lemon juice, making it all ready to finally be consumed.

「Well, how is it? Is it good?」

「The food that master makes is always the best!」

「It’s delicious!」

「Amazing, desu!」

The girls praise my cooking as always, but I noticed that out of the four of us, I was the only one to eat my share of the food by using chopsticks.

After that, I continued the process of deep-frying.

This shrimp tempura can be said to be the same with the tempura from my world, down to its crispy texture with chewy insides.

「Would you like to try some of the leafy vegetables next?」

「Yes, gladly.」

「I think I’m going to try the mushrooms next.」

「More fish for me, desu!」

I used a mushrooms which seems to be the same as my world’s shiitake mushrooms, but as for whether or not they’re going to taste the same, I unfortunately have no idea about that. I also never tried to deep-fry mushrooms before, but I think that everything should be just fine as long as I stick to doing everything exactly the way that I have been doing it until now.

It is the same with the leafy vegetables, but if the deep-fried mushrooms are going to turn out okay, then I don’t think I’m going to have anything to worry about when it comes to the other vegetables as well.

All of the things that I have prepared to this point have turned out wonderfully crispy, so I have to admit that for my first attempt at making a tempura in this world, it went pretty good. As did the deep-frying of everything that I have tried out today.

If gluten had formed in the tempura, the food wouldn’t be this crispy and crunchy, becoming unpleasantly sticky instead.

Good thing I used the Slime Starch to reduce the amount of gluten in it. Furthermore, Shell Powder that was the equivalent of this world’s baking soda was also used, and I think that it had just as big of an impact on the final result as the Slime Starch. So if you want to make sure that your tempura is going to turn out as good as mine, make sure to follow my footsteps and do exactly what I did and you shall not know failure.

「How about trying out the sausages next?」

「Oh yes, definitely. If master recommends them, then I am more than glad to try them.」

「I’ll have some more shrimp.」

「Fish, fish desu!」

「You guys should also eat the fish before it completely runs out.」

「Yes, we are definitely going to do that. Thank you, master.」

「Then I would like one fish as well.」

「Fish, desu!」

Before Miria could finish all the fish by herself, I took one and tasted the deep-fried fish, which also tasted amazing, even better than the vegetables.

And that essentially is how I managed to obtain the art of deep-frying things for our culinary usage.