Arcane Chef - Slice of Life x Adventure LitRPG

Trying not to let the book issue bother me, I pushed on with the meal. I really needed to be careful with my mana at this stage, seeing that I was only at 45/690. I was in luck, however, that the only thing I really needed to pull from my inventory was the meat.

Crisplet got to work and started to cut the two different cuts of buvul, a fatty piece and a lean piece, with instructions to chop it as fine as possible. I also passed a couple of carrots, an onion, and some virfolium, not for its buff properties, but due to its peppery taste.

While Crisplet chopped that, I got to work making the pastry, which seemed super simple. It was just grain flour, salt, oil or fat, and water. Heading to the pantry in the kitchen that Archie had stocked, I found the flour and salt. I pulled out some buvul fat I had and took it to a pan to render it out.

Once I had the pastry mixed and the fat worked into it, Crisplet made a cover for the bowl, and I let it rest, coming over to inspect the cutting. He was doing a great job with the meat, but when I went to cut an onion to help, the look I got from Auguste heavily implied I should leave it to Crisplet.

So I started on the sauce. I needed to pull out two items: white wine and the mana truffle. Archie had collected some regular mushrooms as part of collecting supplies, which I was incredibly thankful for, because I believe I only had death caps on me and I didn’t have the mana to purify them. Well, more to the point, I don’t remember if I purified them before I put them into my inventory or not, and I didn’t think taking the chance of poisoning the royal chefs was ideal.

I first chopped the mushrooms into a fine dice, and I know I could have waited for Crisplet to get to them, but right now Crisplet was working on the meat mixture. I would, however, need to steal some of his onion when he was done.

I started to cook off the mushrooms as I needed to remove most of the water content, salting them once they were in the pan to start the process of drawing it out. I saw Crisplet had started the onions, so I took half of one.

Soon I had the mushrooms and onions cooked off. I added some garlic grass as well. At the end, I would need to add the cream, reduce it down, before shaving in a small amount of mana truffle.

Crisplet had finished chopping everything on his side, so I mixed it all together in a bowl. Finally, I pulled out the rested pastry. Pushing it out a little, I cut it into four before grabbing a rolling pin to roll it flat.

Using a cup, I cut a thin circle out, and all the recipe said to do now was place a small ball of meat mixture in the middle, wrap it with the pastry in the shape of a crescent moon by using an egg wash mixture and pinching the ends. It seemed simple enough.

It wasn’t.

Out of the twelve I tried to seal, only a single one looked like the picture.

The others either didn’t work at all and were not sealed properly, or they just looked completely wrong. I didn’t let it bother me though. I would be covering it with sauce. The recipe mentioned I could prepare this one of three ways. I could fry it in buvul lard, which would give it a flaky and crisp outside. I could steam it, which would cause the dough to firm up. Finally, I could gently boil them, but this was really only suggested if I planned on using them in a soup.

I didn’t want to risk pulling out buvul fat to fry it with my mana as low as it was, so I chose to steam them. This was easy enough: place a small amount of water in a pot, bring it to the boil, and then place a basket on top with the meat pockets, as I was calling them now.

I then took the mushroom and onion mixture, putting it back onto the heat where I added the white wine and started to reduce it.

I decided not to use Crisplet for this.

Well, okay, I tried to, but the look I was getting from Crisplet made it very clear I needed to check the meat pockets, even if he didn’t directly throw sparks or a piece of coal at me.

I couldn’t store them and pull them back out again without running out of mana, so I instead left them to the side, adding cream to the mushroom mixture, along with some salt and pepper, finally shaving off some mana truffle and adding it in as well.

Auguste came up alongside me. “Is there any reason you’re not placing that in your inventory while you prepare the sauce?”

I felt embarrassed. I could even feel my cheeks heating up. “I am about to run out of mana, so I’ve been needing to conserve a lot compared to normal.”

“Is that normal?” he asked, concerned.

“No, not normal. I am repairing my mana channels at the moment, so it’s lower than normal,” I explained.

“You should have mentioned that before I set the task. Do you need me to store it?” he asked.

I just shook my head, but was interrupted by Julia coming back into the room, holding what looked to be an exact copy of the book I had, even down to the wear on the outside.

“Chef, it’s there, and it’s complete,” she said, sounding out of breath.

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Auguste just stared at her for a moment. “Why is it here?”

“I thought you’d like to see. That copy contains up until the latest entry,” she said.

Auguste didn’t seem to have heard her. “Julia, that book can’t leave the kitchen.”

Her cheeks turned red instantly as she clutched it tightly to her chest.

Auguste just let out a sigh, turning to me. “I apologise, Lord Ashmoon. I should never have accused you or connections to you of theft. That was inappropriate of me.”

He bowed deeply, not looking up. I didn’t know what to do or say, looking at the others, but they had followed him as well and bowed as well.

“Uh, it’s okay. Like I said, I got it at a bookshop in Farnox,” I said.

Auguste looked up, his face red. “If you’d like to have me replaced in teaching you, I completely understand.”

Raising my hands, “No, no, please, you’re fine. I was told to be careful with it, but if it was just a copy, then it should be fine. Milo thought it was probably entirely a fake.”

Auguste nodded, his focus turning back to the meals behind us since we’d all stopped.

“Finish your meals. Torrel, start plating; you have five minutes. Trevor, get yours finished, then we’ll talk. The existence of the book poses a lot of questions, but your food is going to go cold if we discuss it right now, and your sauce might burn,” he said.

Which reminded me, my mushroom sauce was still on the heat!

I rushed over, removed it and used a spoon to softly stir it, noticing the sauce was just starting to stick to the bottom of the pan.

I couldn’t help but notice a slight orange glow going from Crisplet to the dumplings, but it appeared like he was trying to hide it, clearly heating them back up to the perfect temperature.

With a smile, I put them on the plate and coated them in the sauce, and finally finished it off with a small amount of finely chopped garlic grass.

I wish I could have infused it for Lily, who was looking at me right now, but I simply didn’t have the mana for it.

“Sorry, Lily, I don’t have any mana. I can’t infuse it,” I whispered.

I put the plate on the table before Auguste. Torrel was already waiting, where he appeared to have a baked fish that was golden brown, with delicate crispy skin and slices of lemon and herbs over it.

“That looks fantastic!” I commented, looking at his.

Looking back at my own, I realised I didn’t put any genuine effort into making it look good like he did. Sure, I added a little bit of garlic grass on top, but his looked colourful and juicy.

Mine had a creamy grey sauce with some green specks.

“Myself and Julia will try them both and decide the winner, but don’t worry. We will take training into account here, Trevor, so it will be fair.” Auguste said.

Julia looked down, still clutching the book in her arms, clearly not willing to put it down. Auguste seemed to notice her plight, taking the book from her and storing it away.

They both went to my meal first. I was really nervous about it. Cutting into it, it looked to be firm, with the meat inside appearing to be cooked perfectly, but due to the sauce I couldn’t actually tell if it was juicy or not as it should be.

I looked on anxiously as neither chef said nor gave anything away, just a simple nod before they moved on to try Torrel’s meal. Again, both taking bites, not saying anything, but I saw Torrel flinch slightly as Auguste pulled a scale out of his mouth.

“Right, Trevor, your dish, if you were to serve it in a restaurant, would need to be displayed better, but I think you know that. It’s served as it would be for a dinner with friends, but the flavours are all there. I know the recipe you were trying to do, and you’ve changed it, but the addition of more fat to the meat was a good one. It’s very juicy and surprisingly still hot. The seasoning is good, but the vegetables could use more chopping. Lastly, your sauce was a nice balance of creaminess and earthiness, with a faint hint of sweetness coming from the wine. Well done,” he said.

Julia nodded.

“Torrel, your flavours are strong. The fish has been lost under the herbs and lemon. If you wish to use this sort of flavouring on fish, I think it would do really well, but you’d want a stronger fish flavour to complement it. It’s cooked perfectly. The skin is excellent, except it wasn’t prepared properly and I got a scale,” Auguste said.

“With their lack of training in mind, I will award this one to Trevor and Crisplet. Although the execution could be improved, it was a good, hearty dish, and you made errors I would not have expected, Torrel,” he said, looking at his apprentice.

Torrel just hung his head, but I was eyeing off the fish. I really wanted to try it.

“Uh, Chef? Could I try his fish?” I asked hopefully.

I was waved along, so I didn’t wait, and getting a clean fork, I took a piece of the fish.

It should have won.

It was delicious. The meat was soft and flaky, the skin was perfectly crisp, and yes, you couldn’t taste the fish under the lemon and herbs. It didn’t matter. It was amazing.

“This is so good!” I said to Torrel.

“I would have given the win to you!” I said, taking another bite.

Emboldened by this, Torrel took a bite of my own dish, then another, and another, until Lily stood up and stared at him.

“You should probably save the rest for her,” I said with a laugh.

“This book now, Trevor. I don’t know how it exists. I don’t know how it’s an exact copy of our book. Were there other copies at the store?” Auguste asked.

I shrugged. “I don’t remember seeing any, but I wasn’t really paying attention, sorry.”

“You mentioned it’s in Farnox. Do you remember the name? Or where it was?” he asked.

I thought about it, and I didn’t remember a name at all, or what street it was on. I knew we went from the market to the store, and that’s it. I remember some carvings on the front, but for the life of me I can’t remember what they were.

“Uh, no, sorry. I can’t remember anything about the store. It was run by a man named Morlin. He was an adventurer once. I think he gave me his journal,” I said.

“Hmm, the name seems familiar, but I don’t know from where. May I see the journal?” he said, holding out his hand.

Pulling it out of my storage ring, I attempted to hand it to him, but I couldn’t let go, as if it were stuck to my hand.

“What’s going on?” I said, confused.