The Cooking Princess - Chapter 15

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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The Princess Who Cooks

Episode 15

Unlike vegetables, which have short life cycles and are relatively easy to crossbreed, animals are extremely difficult.

Since fertile land didn’t automatically improve meat quality and yield, Chloe felt momentarily frustrated.

‘Dry, crumbly meat with no flavor… only a strong gamey smell… tough and stiff texture that you can barely eat even when minced…’

Thinking about the meat in this world made her feel even more despondent. When making hamburger steak, she had to mince the meat to death to make it somewhat chewable. But she couldn’t make every meat dish with ground meat.

‘I want to eat stir-fried pork. Pork belly barbecue too!’

Delicious meat was fine dining just by grilling it, and she couldn’t give that up.

The people of this world were used to it, so they just ate that tough, tasteless meat as steak, but it was absolutely impossible for Chloe.

At least they were raising cattle and pigs as livestock here, even if they weren’t properly bred.

‘How on earth am I supposed to get fish?’

When she hurriedly looked into it, aquaculture wasn’t properly developed here, and the variety of fish caught was limited.

But she couldn’t just send people to the sea to catch every fish that got caught in nets throughout the year.

Of course, with the Garnet Family’s influence, it might be possible.

‘My 21st-century conscience is screaming that it hurts…’

Chloe slowly racked her brain to find a solution, but there wasn’t much progress.

‘Then let me set my first goal.’

Meat quality improvement wouldn’t happen quickly, and since there were animals being raised as livestock, she decided to make a somewhat long-term plan.

Then fish, especially saltwater fish.

Chloe recalled what the head chef of the Garnet Family had said before.

When she thought this far, Chloe’s goal was summarized into just one thing.

‘Flounder!’

Chloe had loved flounder sashimi very much in her previous life. Even after her possession, the food she wanted to eat most and constantly thought about was flounder.

‘I know it might be a bit irrational!’

It might be more rational to look for fish that were easier to catch than flounder, or to research meat that already had some potential for development.

Maybe no matter how much they searched the sea, there might not be any fish similar to flounder. Even if they found one, what came next would also be a problem.

No matter how much Chloe had created a refrigerator, it wasn’t easy to keep fish fresh and transport them after catching them.

So she should think more carefully about how to distribute if she found a species similar to flounder, and how to do aquaculture…

‘How can a person live only rationally?’

Chloe was firmly convinced that she needed flounder right now. Of course, the reason was that Chloe was a flounder fanatic.

Just thinking about the chewy texture of flounder sashimi made her mouth water. Chloe swallowed her saliva and carefully retraced her memories.

She loved flounder so much that she had even looked up flounder fishing videos.

Fortunately, Chloe’s excellent memory pulled up the contents of the videos she had watched back then.

‘With this level of memory, isn’t it almost a superpower?’

Thanks to that, the flounder farming process came vividly to mind in her memory.

Chloe hurriedly began searching for fish that looked similar to ‘flounder’ in this world.

And not long after, she unintentionally discovered something truly surprising.

***

Chloe had spent several days searching through all kinds of dictionaries and even seeking advice from scholars, but couldn’t find even a trace of flounder, so she grumbled.

“No way. How can there be no fish with eyes and face concentrated on one side?”

She swallowed the words “How delicious that is” at the tip of her throat.

Eshir, who had been listening to her grumbling, made an incredulous expression and asked back.

“Why should such a thing exist in the world?”

However, Chloe wasn’t angry at Eshir’s consistently rude attitude.

There was a reason she had brought up this topic in front of him.

“Really, if there’s no fish with a face concentrated on one side as just a regular fish…”

“…If there isn’t?”

“It could exist in the form of magical beasts or something.”

At those words, Eshir made an expression that said ‘I thought so’ and replied incredulously.

“You should apologize to the magical beasts right now.”

Eshir casually replied that magical beasts were cute in their own way, so there wouldn’t be anything like fish with faces concentrated on one side.

“Hey. Am I the employer? Stop talking back!”

When Chloe wheedled, Eshir grumbled but tilted his white head to one side and fell deep in thought. Eventually, he let out a deep sigh but gave a different answer anyway.

“I really don’t know about anything that bizarre no matter how much I think about it.”

Eshir knew a lot of strange and miscellaneous magical knowledge for his young age. He seemed more learned than other mages.

‘If he doesn’t know, then there’s really no one who knows.’

At least there was no one around Chloe who knew as much as that prickly Eshir, so she quietly became dejected.

‘Should I really hire a great archmage?’

But she couldn’t hire a tower master just to find one flounder. That would be a choice with terrible cost-effectiveness.

‘A tower master wouldn’t come for something like this anyway.’

The boy who glanced at Chloe’s darkened expression as she had these various thoughts added with a sigh.

“Well, something that bizarrely shaped… if it exists, it would be a monster. That’s all I can think of right now, so stop trying to find that weird fish.”

Eshir had definitely added that she should stop looking for that strange fish, but.

…Wait a minute.

Monster?

Suddenly, Chloe recalled what the head chef of the Garnet Family had said before.

‘Oh my, Princess. Only monsters live in the sea, don’t they? There are no edible fish living there, and even if there were, they would have been eaten by monsters long ago!’

“Why didn’t I think of that?”

Magical beasts were precious creatures that mages studied or raised as familiars, and were sometimes traded as pets for nobles at extremely high prices.

On the other hand, monsters, also called monsters in other words, were objects of fear that slaughtered humans and wild animals, and enemies that needed to be subjugated.

But Eshir, who unintentionally witnessed Chloe’s eyes starting to sparkle upon hearing about monsters, broke out in a cold sweat and asked back.

“Wait a minute. It’s not what I’m thinking, right?”

Even though she knew what Eshir meant by asking back, Chloe asked back innocently.

“What?”

In the absurd situation where a question was answered with a question, Eshir broke out in a cold sweat and spoke faster.

“I was just saying. Where in the world would there be a crazy… strange person who actually eats monsters. I meant you should stop looking, okay?”

Although she definitely heard inappropriate profanity from Eshir’s mouth, Chloe, who was in a good mood, decided to generously let it slide.

“Let’s go right now.”

Eshir asked back as if he wanted to avoid Chloe’s words.

“Right now… where to?”

“Where else would it be.”

But Chloe had no intention of indulging Eshir’s reality avoidance, so she mercilessly grabbed his collar and answered.

“We have to go catch monsters. To the northern part of the Garnet domain!”

The Garnet Family that Chloe would inherit was certainly fertile land, but its range was extremely wide.

In the harsh northern region of that vast area where no people lived, monsters frequently invaded, and it was Chloe’s father, Count Garnet, who was blocking them.

Chloe headed to the Count’s office with sparkling eyes to get permission to enter the northern part of the Garnet domain from her father.

Of course, while firmly gripping Eshir’s neck in case he tried to escape.

The mage with terrible physical strength, who had struggled several times to escape from Chloe’s grasp, finally sighed and pleaded with Chloe.

“Please spare my life…”

It wasn’t particularly her concern to know.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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