The Cooking Princess - Chapter 18

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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 18

Even though she had prepared herself for the possibility of not being able to find flounder even after coming all the way to the northernmost part of the domain, she had actually wanted to eat flounder so badly that she had come fully prepared.

A makeshift carpaccio sauce crudely made with onions, lemon juice, olive oil, and a few herbs.

To make it properly would require more spices, but she could achieve a similar taste with just the basic ingredients.

Chloe’s eyes sparkled as she first offered the Count flounder dipped in sauce.

“Try dipping it in this and eating it.”

The Count looked dubiously at the flounder flesh that Chloe had sliced off without hesitation with her knife, then reluctantly opened his mouth and ate it when Chloe dipped it thoroughly in sauce and brought it to his lips.

According to Chloe’s analogy, it was the tearful love of a father who would even eat cockroaches for her.

“…!”

Unlike the disgusting taste he had braced himself for based on the monster’s appearance, a refreshing aroma, savory flavor, and chewy texture filled his mouth.

Until now, he had thought fish dishes naturally had a fishy and earthy smell, but this was different.

It had a fresh and pleasant aroma along with a subtle ocean scent. Unlike dry grilled fish, it was chewy and bouncy the more he chewed.

The Count couldn’t hide his amazement at the surprising taste of this food he was trying for the first time.

“How is it, delicious right!”

Before even hearing the Count’s answer, Chloe boldly sliced off another piece of flounder flesh and this time offered it to Eshir. Of course, it was generously dipped in carpaccio sauce.

“Here, you try eating it like this too!”

“Your behavior is truly quite barbaric.”

Eshir made a sarcastic comment while watching Chloe’s action of stabbing flounder flesh onto the blade and offering it, but he didn’t refuse the flounder flesh she offered and ate it.

Then he frowned briefly before giving his opinion.

“It is delicious, but.”

“…But?”

He took another piece as if unsure, and this time chewed it without sauce, then finally nodded as if convinced and added:

“What’s the difference between this and just eating it for the sauce flavor? Let’s just eat the flesh plain. Personally, I think eating just the flesh is fine too.”

What Eshir added was, by Chloe’s standards, the statement of a true food connoisseur. Chloe’s eyes sparkled.

Now Chloe was determined to somehow persuade Eshir and take him on a gourmet journey.

‘Of course, I’ll pay him handsomely.’

Eshir, who had been dragged to this remote place out of nowhere and still gave feedback without hesitation even after having cockroaches shoved in his mouth, and who could perform all kinds of magic, had already been quite valuable personnel to Chloe.

He could even enjoy the taste of sashimi without sauce, so he even had similar tastes to Chloe!

‘Being able to enjoy the pure taste of sashimi rather than the sauce flavor is what makes a true food connoisseur. Yes, absolutely.’

Whether Chloe nodded to herself while thinking this and sparkled her eyes or not, Eshir calmly muttered after finishing the monster in his mouth.

“If this is the average taste of monsters….”

Eshir looked at the sea monsters captured and writhing at his feet for a moment in silence, then spoke again.

“This place really is a goldmine.”

He seemed to have realized something.

“Right!”

Chloe jumped with delight at Eshir’s realization.

“Now we’ll breed these and sell them to people. We’ll transform them into completely delicious and precious ingredients!”

Not just catching monsters, but even farming them. It was an absurd and ridiculous story by anyone’s standards.

“You want to breed monsters instead of exterminating them? Let me at least hear how you plan to do it.”

“Hmm.”

But Eshir, who had already tasted the flounder, and even the Count, didn’t object to Chloe’s words and listened for now.

The Count had also never experienced such fine dining, and he thought that if the level of taste Chloe pursued was this high, she wouldn’t care whether it was monsters or whatever. It was an amazingly excellent taste that could never be found in existing fish.

“Look, these fish-shaped monsters seem to breed in quite cold weather. Right?”

She couldn’t know whether this characteristic was real or not.

These fish were very similar to what she had eaten in 21st century Korea, but they seemed relatively larger!

“That would be so.”

“Then first, we create an environment similar to this place in the central or southern parts of the domain and move these monsters there to raise them.”

“…Why bother?”

Just hearing about it seemed to complicate things, so Eshir frowned. The Garnet Family’s domain was in the northern part of the empire, so it was basically cold, but the domain was so vast that there were many places with different climates within it.

Among them, the central and southern parts were warm and good for people to live in, but just thinking about adjusting the sea there to be similar in temperature to the northern part here made him dizzy already. Even with magic, there were things that could be done and things that were difficult.

As if guessing Eshir’s feelings, Chloe immediately continued speaking.

“Second, since these guys are native to this land anyway, we’ll develop these fish as specialty products of the northern region!”

Chloe planned to transform the sea monsters into fish and make them specialty products of the far north.

Then people living in the far north would engage in fishing, catching these fish and sending them to the central and southern regions, and if fishing went well, people would come to the far north where almost no one lives now, and then the northern region, which is like abandoned land because of monsters, would also become lively.

The Count immediately grasped what kind of blueprint his daughter was drawing.

To think that the future heir who would inherit the domain was having such deep and broad thoughts from such a young age.

As a count, he could only feel proud and pleased with his daughter’s growth.

Of course, in Chloe’s mind, there was only the thought that if she developed the northern region where delicious fish could be caught, she would be able to procure more fish.

Anyway, the Count was also cooperative, and Eshir seemed to be somewhat convinced while listening to Chloe’s explanation.

“We’ll hire more mages and deploy more knights to the north to have them catch monsters, and instead of killing them, we’ll have them observe and understand their ecology.”

“Oh….”

So the hired knights and mages would get paid to just chase after monsters’ tails?

It seemed like it would look a bit ridiculous, but Eshir didn’t think Chloe’s judgment was wrong.

‘Well, with a personality that pours magic onto potatoes until they taste right, what couldn’t she do.’

“But is there really a need to go as far as understanding their ecology? Monsters, especially sea monsters, originally breed at a rate that’s on a different level from ordinary animals.”

The Count offered a word of advice. He meant that there was no need to spend personnel and time understanding their ecology, and they could just focus on hunting instead.

“Isn’t that because they had no natural predators until now?”

“Natural predators?”

“Yes. Until now, sea monsters didn’t come to where people live and cause damage, so we didn’t bother to actively subjugate them.”

“That’s right.”

“But if we develop sea monsters as ingredients according to my plan, the number of individuals we naturally catch will increase, and what if they go extinct from random hunting?”

The Count was once again amazed by Chloe’s broad perspective, but Chloe was likewise only filled with the obsession of wanting to eat fish for a long, long time.

“Land monsters that people subjugate also have tremendous reproductive ability, but your words make sense too. With this kind of taste, people might wipe them out completely even knowing they’re monsters.”

With the Count’s agreement, Chloe was able to break ground on the first step of fish farming.

Of course, that was something to proceed with slowly.

Rather, the task before Chloe’s eyes was:

“…How do we carry this back?”

What needed to be brought back to the Garnet Estate for cooking research….

“Oh my.”

The enormous….

“My tuna….”

“…That’s too big.”

It was a very enormous tuna.

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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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