CH 138

7-9 minutes 09.04.2023

Translated by Dawn

Edited by Dawn

“For new dishes.”

“Welcome back, Rolando-sama.”

“I’m back. Did you notice anything unusual?”

“No, nothing special. Here is the maintenance fee that we received from you.”

When I returned to the mansion, I was greeted by Sobas. I asked him about everything and he said nothing unusual had happened, so he handed me the rest of the ten large gold coins I had given him before I left the mansion.

I told him that I would leave them with Sobas in case something happened to me. He handed back the leather bag containing the large gold coins to me and I hurried to the workshop on the premises.

In this workshop, materials for goods to be delivered mainly to the GregTrading Company were mass-produced by artisan golems who could use alchemy. Since a system that could convert magic power in the air into a power source, which was not feasible before, had been implemented, alchemy could be used semi-permanently, and they would continue to mass-produce the indicated materials until physical intervention or I gave them instructions to do so.

“Okay, today I’ll make that thing. So, it’s been a while since Rolando’s cool section of making things!!”

It had been a while since I made something, so I was a little excited to say that, but I hope this would be tolerated. Then, before I began to explain what I was going to create this time, I would like to talk about the current state of my cooking.

Currently, I could do two types of cooking: “baking” and “boiling”. In my previous life on earth, there were four established methods of cooking. In addition to “baking” and “boiling,” there were “frying” and “steaming”.

Frying was the method of cooking mainly using high-temperature edible oil, and although it was possible to extract animal oil from the meat, vegetable oil was more suitable for deep-frying than animal oil.

Therefore, the “frying” method might be difficult to implement due to the lack of vegetable cooking oil.

What about the “steaming” method then? The reason for this was simply that there were no cooking utensils for steaming, and until now, people had been too preoccupied with other things that they did not have time to develop cooking utensils.

However, just now the new business that I had started was beginning to progress well, and I was able to find more time for myself. So I decided to start developing cooking utensils for the “steaming” cooking method at this time.

“Then, the easiest thing would be to make a seiro.”

Seiro was cookware made of woven bamboo or wood and used for steaming, and it was often used mainly in Chinese cooking. The juices that were overflowing from the inside of the dumplings were absolutely…delicious. Pardon me, I almost went off-topic.

So, this time, I tried to work on making the seiro, but the problem was that there was no bamboo, which was considered to be suitable for making seiro. Bamboo and plants that closely resemble it might exist in this world, but so far I had not found any.

Therefore, this time, I planned to make a seiro that could at least be used for steaming food with ordinary wood. First of all, I took out a piece of wood that I had put in the appropriate place from storage. By the way, this wood was also used as a material for wooden dolls.

“There’s a round shape and a square shape, which one is better I wonder…”

“Mrr?”

I brought out Proto, which had been neglected since the Skull Dragon incident, from storage for a long time, and it began to wander around as it pleased. Just as it was getting tired of wandering around, it came to me and asked me back the question I had just asked it, and it brought its hand to its chin and tilted its head in a small gesture. Yeah, you just stay like that.

Speaking of Proto, I just remembered that the RoboRanger I used for the Skull Dragon was currently on cooldown and becoming storage waste. However, since no time had passed in the storage, the time had stopped as it was right after the fight with the Skull Dragon. I might have to pull it out and make some adjustments.

Once again, a new task was added to my “to-do” list, and as if to escape from reality, I started to make a seiro. For now, I decided to try my hand at making a simple rectangular seiro, and when I get used to it, I’d like to try making a round one. …Was it just me, or does it seem like this cookware is starting to be made for sale?

Leaving such details behind somewhere beyond the galaxies of the universe, I started to make the outer frame of the seiro. The shape itself was a square, so it should be basically easy as long as I took care of the part to fit it without gaps like a puzzle.

First of all, the part to fit the outer frame and its counterpart, the projection-shaped part, were processed to form a square framework. For the bottom part, a few centimeter-wide board clamps were made during processing to allow for the laying of a small square (bamboo screen) made of a dozen or so thin wooden boards tied together with string, and the bamboo-looking thing was placed in the clamps.

The rest of the work was done while taking care not to leak any air even if several sets of the same thing were made and other things were stacked on top of it, and finally, the lid part was made.

“It’s done, but can it really function as a seiro?”

Since I only made it based on the image of a seiro in my memory of my previous life, I did not know if this seiro was really functioning well as a cooking utensil. If this was the case, there was only one way to confirm it.

As soon as I decided to do so, I immediately took action and headed for the kitchen immediately. On the way, I passed several servants, including Stella, a regular maid who was a spy for the king, and Manya, an apprentice maid.

When they saw me, they gave me a quick bow. Come to think of it, I didn’t tell these people that I already know about them… I had told the King about the spy infiltration, but I had not mentioned it to the two people who were actually infiltrated. Perhaps because I had been busy with many things lately, I had completely forgotten about it.

“Wait a minute.”

“What is the matter?”

“I want to ask you to convey a message to the king. I would like to officially hire you and Manya as servants in this house, and I would like to know how much I can expect to pay you two”

“I do not understand what you mean.”

“Then let me rephrase it. I have decided to officially hire you and Manya, who are the king’s spies, as servants skilled in espionage. But you are the king’s undercover agents, no? Then I think I need the king’s permission to recruit you, right?”

“……”

Stella fell silent at my questioning. She probably thought I was unaware of her presence, but even if she could fool me with her appearance and behavior as a normal person, she could not fool me with my super-analysis skills.

“Well, if you don’t want it, I won’t force you to do it, but just tell the King about it. Then, I’m paying you, so don’t skip work, okay?”

With that said, I went toward the kitchen again.