Cooking Swordmaster [EN]: Chapter 255

Besides, the faces of the customers sitting in the restaurant looked strangely familiar.

Narrowing his eyes, he gazed at them, and a forgotten memory surfaced.

‘Huh? Those are the trainee knights who ate the food I made at the Stanis Knight Academy.’

The strange thing wasn’t just that. The chef kneading dough in front of the stove raised his voice and called out to Cainchel.

“Hey, newbie! Go to the ingredient storage right now and bring a sack of flour! Don’t just stand there when we have so many customers!”

‘That’s Chef Joffrey, isn’t it? And Chef Jaime is making risotto at the counter.’

Just in case, he lightly cut the tip of his finger with a kitchen knife. Then, with a tingling pain, bright red blood dripped down.

‘…But I can feel the pain.’

Anyone else would be thrown into confusion and scream.

However, Cainchel had already experienced something similar.

The encounter with Chef Jeok-un from the Ming Dynasty [a Chinese dynasty ruling from 1368 to 1644].

Jeok-un was kidnapped by pirates and brutally murdered in the kitchen. Possessed by his vengeful spirit, Cainchel was taught the art of making noodles for three years.

‘But the actual time that passed was 30 minutes. This must be a similar case.’

In the end, what Cainchel is seeing now is not reality. A fabricated illusion, a world made of fiction.

‘But even the heat of the kitchen on my skin feels vivid. And just like my training with Master Jeok-un, the skills I acquire here will remain. If so…….’

“Hey, newbie!”

“Newbie!”

“What are you doing, newbie!”

Voices calling out to Cainchel echoed from all directions.

Whatever it may be, he would pass the trial with as much as he could get his hands on.

Cainchel’s eyes gleamed as he tightened his grip on the kitchen knife.

And he shouted powerfully.

“Yes, I’m coming!”

* * *

Working in Gordon Lambton’s kitchen is very hard. Customers were constantly pouring in, and there were never enough hands.

Nevertheless, Gordon Lambton demanded perfection.

“Keep in mind! It’s not enough to simply serve delicious food to the customers! The best service will make the food shine and give the customers the best experience! Pay attention to every detail, even the water glass on the table. Got it!”

“Yes, Chef!”

“Then, table 22 gets bacon linguine pasta, cheese risotto, and onion soup! Oh, and hold the cheese on the risotto!”

At that, Bruno, who was taking the order, had a strange look on his face.

“…Are you saying to cook the cheese risotto without cheese?”

“It is a chef’s job to make even plain water taste as delicious as possible if that’s what the customer wants! What are you doing? Move it!”

“Yes, Chef…!”

Following Gordon Lambton’s instructions, a dozen chefs began to move as if they were one body.

Cainchel was given kitchen chores and ingredient preparation.

It was naturally what an apprentice should do, but the amount was unusual.

‘About three hundred servings. I could handle this much with onion swordsmanship… Ah, I can’t use cooking skills, can I?’

Moreover, the kitchen knife was made of ordinary iron, not mithril [a fictional metal known for its strength and lightness].

But Cainchel wouldn’t be intimidated by this much.

He had prepared more ingredients alone in the kitchen of the Stanis Knight Academy, hadn’t he?

You can’t use the skills you’ve honed over a lifetime inside the Tower of Trials.

Being bare-handed means that rather than the presence or absence of weapons.

‘But why is basic swordsmanship still there? Does that mean it’s already a part of me rather than a skill?’

Clang-!

Chef Joffrey slammed a greasy knife on the cutting board in front of Cainchel.

“Apprentice. Sorry, but can you sharpen this? It’s not cutting well at all. Huh? What’s with that look? Isn’t managing cooking tools also the apprentice’s job?”

Joffrey used to sharpen his own knives every morning and evening, no matter how busy he was.

It seemed that the administrator of the Tower of Trials hadn’t paid attention to such details.

‘I should tell Iris to pay attention to detail next time I see her.’

“I’ll do it right away, Chef Joffrey.”

“Ahem, ahem!”

Joffrey coughed awkwardly a few times and disappeared somewhere. Then Iris’s voice was heard.

― He forced you to do his work, how can you stand it? Doesn’t the examinee have any pride?

Cainchel chuckled and answered her question.

‘Because I can get twice the experience if I do other people’s work.’

― …Ahaha. The examinee has a very unique personality. Anyway, you passed the first gate without falling into the trap. If you had given in to the other person’s provocation and started a knife fight, you would have been kicked out of here right away. In the case of the previous examinee, when a fellow mercenary threw a knife stained with blood and told him to wipe it, he got angry and stabbed the other person in the neck with it.

‘Knife fight? Hey, Iris… This is a kitchen. No one would kill someone just because they passed on their work.’

― Ah.

The work is too sloppy. Iris seemed to be more clueless than he thought.

‘But I never thought there would be such a trap during the trial. I need to move more carefully.’

― Then. Good luck, examinee! If you are the examinee, you will surely pass the trial and find clues to move to a higher level!

Cainchel quickly sharpened the knife and made it sharp. When he handed it over, Joffrey coughed repeatedly and said.

“T, thank you.”

“Using a dull knife in the kitchen can be dangerous not only for yourself but also for the people next to you, right? That’s why you should always keep your knives sharp.”

“…How do you know that?”

“That’s what Chef Joffrey always says. Well, I have a lot of ingredients to prepare, so I’ll be going.”

Cainchel began to prepare the ingredients in earnest, recalling the teachings he had learned in the many kitchens he had been through.

Cut the onion, leaving the root intact, and slice it thinly with a knife.

Cut off a small portion of the tail of the salmon, then peel off the skin by turning the knife horizontally. After that, carefully remove the bones with tweezers.

Next, it was time to prepare the cod.

Then Gordon, who was directing the entire kitchen with the eyes of a hawk, approached with a gleam in his eyes.

“Hey, Cainchel. What are you doing now?”

“I’m filleting the cod.”

“…I clearly told you to just fillet the fish. But why are you doing something I didn’t even ask you to do?”

“I thought the other chefs looked busy, so I wanted to make it easier for them to cook, even if only a little.”

“If you fillet it in advance, the fish will dry out easily. So it becomes dry and tasteless. Did you know that when you did it?”

“Yes. I know. So I sprinkled a little flour on it to prevent that. After all, it’s a process that has to be done to cook fish and chips.”

Chef Bruno, who was grilling meat next to him, turned pale.

A newbie who had been there for a month had defied Gordon Lambton’s orders and was doing things his own way.

It was obvious what kind of scolding would come down. If he made a mistake, he could be kicked out of the kitchen.

Gordon Lambton examined the cod that Cainchel had filleted with his keen eyes.

It was a skill that was hard to believe a newbie had done.

“Hmm. Certainly, the only dish using cod today is fish and chips. And it’s good that you didn’t season the flour separately. That’s the chef’s job to cook. Anyway, from now on, only do what I tell you to do.”

“Yes, I understand.”

Gordon Lambton’s voice softened. Bruno widened his eyes with a shocked expression.

Could it be that the newbie had pleased Gordon!

“By the way, Cainchel. Which kitchen did you work in before?”

“A restaurant called Agape in Britannia [a historical term for Great Britain].”

“Agapera… Sounds good. It must have been a very nice restaurant.”

Cainchel chuckled inwardly.

‘That’s the restaurant you made, Gordon.’

“But compared to your decent knife skills, your flouring skills are not very good. Come with me for a moment.”

Gordon Lambton took Cainchel next to Joffrey, who was kneading pasta.

Pasta is one of the most popular dishes in Gordon’s restaurant. No matter how much pasta was made, it was never enough.

“First, I’ll show you how to knead pasta. Learn the details from Joffrey.”

Then the whole kitchen suddenly became noisy.

“What, it looks like Chef Gordon is trying to teach the newbie how to cook.”

“That picky Gordon Lambton is teaching a newbie?”

“Oh my god… The sun will rise in the west tomorrow.”

“Hey. The sun always rises in the east.”

Iris was also surprised.

― E, examinee. How on earth can you gain the favor of the master chef so quickly?

‘Strangely, Gordon Lambton likes me.’

― …….

‘I mean my cooking skills.’

Gordon, not caring at all about the other chefs talking, began to explain pasta kneading to Cainchel.

“No matter how much you like cooking, no one enjoys ‘kneading.’ It’s not easy to press and knead until the flour is evenly mixed and shiny. But freshly kneaded fresh noodles are more moist and chewy than dried noodles.”

“That means it’s worth the effort for delicious food.”

Gordon Lambton smiled contentedly at Cainchel’s answer.

“Yes. Pasta, in particular, is similar to crafts. Very creative. Not only taste and aroma, but also thickness, shape, size, and color can be varied as desired. What kind of pasta to make can be said to be the chef’s area to knead.”

‘W, wait a minute. T, this…….’

Cainchel felt a tremendous shock as if he had been hit in the back of the head with a large hammer.

It was the sound of the box that Cainchel had been trapped in collapsing.

Unlike most noodles, which are thin and long, pasta comes in a wide variety of shapes.

However, when using noodles, Cainchel only imagined what he had learned from Jeok-un.

That’s how great Jeok-un’s noodle-making skills were, and the taste of the noodles made that way was fantastic.

But it wasn’t. It is only a small part of the ability of noodles.

‘…That’s right, pasta is also a type of noodle. Why didn’t I think of that when I’ve made it so many times?’

Cainchel paid attention to Gordon’s hand movements as he kneaded the fresh pasta.

The only ingredients that go in are flour, egg yolk, olive oil, and salt.

Gordon Lambton said.

“The principle of pasta is not to use water. The flour is kneaded only with the moisture of the eggs. The taste of pasta depends on the taste of the noodles rather than the sauce. Well-made pasta tastes good even if you only eat the boiled noodles.”

It was all content that he had learned from Gordon a long time ago. Only then did Cainchel realize why the Tower of Trials was showing Gordon’s illusion.

The clue to move on to the next stage was already inside Cainchel.

He just hadn’t noticed it.

After kneading for about 20 minutes, the white dough gradually became sticky and began to turn yellowish.

Before he knew it, large beads of sweat were forming on Gordon Lambton’s forehead, and his breathing was very rough.

But he didn’t stop.

“Never let go. Gather the strength of your whole body at your fingertips and knead it. Now, you can do the rest yourself. Apprentice… No, Cainchel van Jistard.”

As if possessed by something, Cainchel went up to the counter where Gordon had been standing just before.

What was placed there was half-finished pasta dough.

‘If I complete this…….’

Surely the noodle-making skill will evolve to the next level.

Convinced of that, Cainchel placed his hand on the pasta dough where he could feel Gordon’s body temperature.