CH 519.1

Recipe presentation!

“As expected of you, Cristea-sama. To think you would have completed the recipe right on the heels of yesterday!”

The Head Chef looked at me with adoring eyes, and I hurriedly corrected him.

“No, um, don’t get it wrong, okay? I just brought you a recipe that I thought you could use from the recipes that I have not registered with the Merchant’s Guilds yet.”

“O, oh my! By not registered, do you perhaps mean… Duke of Ellisfeed’s treasured recipe!?”

Seeing the excited chef leaning forward, Kurogane and Mashiro stepped forward to guard me.

Head Chef, will you calm down?

Otherwise, Mashiro will “Rectify” you before I can introduce the recipe to you, you know?

“Ahem, It’s not a treasured recipe. It’s simply a recipe that is not suitable for ordinary households.”

The meat of a Bighorn bull is a part of its carcass that is not originally in demand by the nobility, and it takes a lot of time and effort to prepare.

“Is that so… no, but it’s certainly an unpublished recipe and no less! So, what kind of dish is it!?”

The Head Chef looked expectantly through the gap between the Kurogane and Mashiro wall.

How can all these people with the title “Head Chef” be so giddy…!

“C, can you sample this for me first?”

Saying that, I took out a beef bowl from my Inventory, the one that we were all familiar with.

“Ohh!? Th, this is!?”

I held out both chopsticks and a spoon, but the Head Chef picked up the chopsticks without hesitation and began to inspect the dish.

“Hmm… so it’s cooked meat on top of rice. However, just what kind of meat is this…?”

There is a dairy farm that farms a variety of beef-like meat from a type of cattle called Milkmoon, which are more gentle than Bighorn bulls, so there are beef-like products on the market, but Milkmoon meat is not this lean, so the Head Chef seemed unable to come up with an answer.

“That is Bighorn bull’s chuck meat.”

“Ehh!? Bighorn bull!? Isn’t that a high-class ingredient?”

“The reason why it’s so expensive is because it’s very lean and there are only a few parts that can be eaten. However, this is made from tenderized meat from a part that was said to be too tough and inedible.”

“Indeed, I heard that Bighorn bull’s chuck meat is hard and inedible… But how did it become so tender!?”

The Head Chef was surprised, but his chopsticks didn’t seem to stop, and he finished his beef bowl in no time, even though he wasn’t gorging himself.

“Yes. It is a part that would normally be thrown away… and it takes a lot of time and effort to prepare, but I thought you could offer it at a reasonable price if you got creative.”

I gave him a brief explanation of how to prepare the beef chuck steak of the Bighorn bull, and told him that if he wanted to use it, I would write down the details of the recipe and give it to him.

“I see… I will leave the prep work to the apprentices…”

I took another dish out of my Inventory to make a further suggestion to the chef, who seemed to be mulling over the arrangements.

“Head Chef, how about making something like this with other parts of the Bighorn bull?”

“This is… a steak? No, it’s too chunky for it to be a steak.”

“You cut it up into thinner slices like this.”

I sliced the chunk of meat into thin slices and arranged them on another plate.

“Cristea-sama, isn’t this meat still uncooked!? You must cook it properly!”

The Head Chef looked inside the meat and was startled. Well, I understand how he feels.

“No. It’s red inside, so it may look raw, but it’s cooked properly.”

Yes, what I served next was roast beef.

In a world where raw food is frowned upon, it is a hurdle to serve meat with this appearance, so it is one of the items on the menu that I declined to register with the Guild.

It is already a common dish in the Ellisfeed household, though.

“This is roast beef. This time, I used a sauce made of grated garlic and soy sauce, but it would be interesting to try different sauces, such as one made of red wine!”

When I placed the plate in front of the Head Chef, he was scared for a moment, but then gulped down, and picked a piece of meat with his chopsticks.