The Cooking Princess - Chapter 68

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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 68

At the mention of “large shells,” they seemed to have caught crabs and even shrimp just in case.

Chloe couldn’t hide her joy and first asked Eshir to check if these had any poison.

Eshir glanced over the ingredients with dull eyes, then spoke with an unimpressed expression.

“Well, there’s no particular poison. They seem to be just animals… though they look quite bizarre.”

He looked disgusted, as if he could clearly see why these things were also classified as monsters.

Of course, Eshir’s disgust wasn’t something Chloe needed to worry about.

And those who caught the sea monsters hadn’t sent only monsters.

“There’s a letter?”

The contents of the letter were surprising.

What they had discovered wasn’t just crabs, shrimp, oysters, clams… and such.

[We also discovered a sea monster that is very large in size, has eight legs, swims freely through the sea, and spits black liquid, but it was too powerful for us to catch. Its squishy legs are so bizarre…]

There were no “large shells” that Chloe had mentioned, but it was a report about a monster that seemed to require caution.

‘From the description of its appearance, it sounds like an octopus or squid.’

Seeing that it was a real monster, it seemed that things were often classified as monsters because of their strange appearance, so Chloe guessed that they must have been quite shocked by the bizarre appearance of octopi or squid.

Even in her previous life, the West had a particular aversion to cephalopods, even having sea monster tales like the Kraken, so to the people here, it might be no different from a real monster.

‘I’ll have to go see this myself when I have time later.’

Setting aside the octopus for now, the most important thing right now was the abundant ingredients before her eyes.

‘With this much, I can definitely make seafood pasta!’

Chloe’s eyes sparkled as she rolled up her sleeves and began making seafood pasta herself.

First, she prepared the fresh scallops, shrimp, and oysters that had just been caught.

She sliced half the garlic and minced the rest.

After completely removing moisture from the seafood, she cut it into appropriate sizes.

Then she made dough with egg yolks, flour, oil, and salt, rolled it thin, and cut it with a knife to make pasta noodles.

After that, she mixed water and salt appropriately, added a little oil so the noodles wouldn’t stick, brought it to a boil, then cooked the noodles just briefly so they wouldn’t get mushy and quickly removed them.

She put a small amount of garlic in an oiled pan and stir-fried it a bit, then added shrimp, oysters, and scallops evenly and continued stir-frying. In between, she tasted and added salt and white wine.

Then she added the lightly blanched noodles, mixed them, and stir-fried once more before tasting!

‘Complete!’

That evening, seafood pasta made personally by Chloe was served at the Garnet Manor’s dining table.

Though it had an unfamiliar smell and appearance, the Count and Duchess now completely trusted the “never-before-seen dishes” that Chloe made.

“What did you make today, our daughter?”

The Duchess asked kindly.

“It’s seafood pasta.”

“Seafood pasta?”

The Count and Duchess had become familiar with pasta since Chloe had made it for them several times. But seafood was something they were seeing for the first time.

Especially the shrimp, which still had their heads and shells for flavor, seemed quite grotesque to the Duchess’s eyes.

“Th… these bugs? Monsters? What are these…?”

“Bugs, Mother!”

Chloe couldn’t help but laugh at the absurdity.

Even in her previous life, she remembered someone saying that shrimp and cockroaches had similar structural components. Regardless, Chloe would eat shrimp whole, head and all, saying that as long as it tasted good, that was enough.

If such talk came up even in her previous life where shrimp were commonly eaten, she thought that to people here who weren’t familiar with them, shrimp might really look like bugs or insects.

“Please try it once. I’ll peel the shells to make it easier for you to eat.”

Chloe personally peeled the heads and shells off the shrimp on her parents’ pasta and put them back on their plates. The Duchess seemed to turn even paler after watching this process.

“You trust me, right? It’s really delicious, so please trust me once more and close your eyes and try it!”

Chloe’s voice was full of confidence, knowing how delicious shrimp were. At her words, the Count and Duchess gathered courage and put the shrimp and pasta in their mouths.

“!”

“It’s delicious. Yes, it’s delicious indeed. This father naturally trusted our daughter. I knew it would definitely be delicious. Mm, of course.”

The Duchess began devouring the pasta fiercely without a word, as if she might bury her nose in the plate, while the Count chewed the shrimp endlessly as if he didn’t want to swallow it, muttering.

“Please try the other things too.”

Chloe also recommended the clams and oysters in the pasta. Since they could taste somewhat fishy, she had used white wine and lemon juice to eliminate the gamey smell as much as possible.

Chloe’s efforts weren’t in vain, as the Count and Duchess scraped up and ate all the seafood in the pasta.

“Are these really the monsters caught in the North?”

“They’re not exactly monsters. People misunderstood because of how they look, but they’re just sea creatures.”

Since Chloe had caught so many flatfish, tuna, and other fish from the North and cooked them in various ways, and the Count and Duchess also knew well that those things they thought were “sea monsters” were actually delicious ingredients, they could properly understand Chloe’s words this time too.

“Like the things you call ‘fish,’ and these ‘seafood’ too, there are so many delicious things we didn’t know about because of our prejudices.”

The Count looked at Chloe with proud eyes as he spoke.

“How did you think to catch monsters from the sea and use them as ingredients? If you weren’t my daughter, you might have been arrested for blasphemy.”

“Honey, why would you say such a thing!”

“No, I meant how fortunate it is that didn’t happen…”

In fact, for Chloe too, it was truly fortunate that she was the Count’s daughter.

If she had been reincarnated as a minor noble’s daughter, or even as a commoner.

If she had the memories and tastes of her previous life in that state, it would have been more terrible.

‘It was possible to do such things because I’m a Duchess.’

Hiring mages, roaming the North to catch monsters, deploying people and money to collect unknown ingredients.

And the advantage of being a Duchess would be felt more desperately in the next stage.

“I want to distribute this seafood nationwide.”

That was the propagation of unfamiliar ingredients.

“Mother, Father, you must have noticed, but these things look a bit strange, right? But they taste really good.”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“So if we tell people to eat this right away, they’ll refuse, so I want to spread it naturally.”

“Do you have some method, Chloe?”

The ingredients that Chloe had discovered and spread so far were diverse.

But most were mainly vegetables, fruits, and spices.

Fish like flatfish, tuna, and salmon had succeeded in farming and were being distributed, but they were mainly consumed in the North where there was no other food, and hadn’t spread nationwide.

This was probably due to the strong prejudice against sea monsters.

Now that seafood had been discovered, and Chloe’s reputation had risen due to various incidents, this was the perfect timing.

Chloe’s method was to use the servants of the Garnet Estate.

As Chloe became famous, the servants of the Garnet Estate were constantly bothered by people around them asking if they had learned even one recipe.

Chloe never prevented the transmission of recipes and actually encouraged it.

She even gave full support when several kitchen servants and maids quit their jobs saying they wanted to open restaurants. They were people who had worked long in the Garnet Estate’s kitchen and helped Chloe a lot, so they knew many techniques.

Other servants sometimes complained that the retirees were stealing recipes.

But Chloe not only organized and taught ingredients and recipes that weren’t well known to people, but even gave them financial support to help with opening their shops.

Even when other servants saw this and came forward saying they also wanted to open restaurants, Chloe didn’t find them presumptuous but gave recipes and financial support to all of them.

Everyone wondered why Chloe made such choices, but Chloe’s purpose was simple.

‘I need to spread my recipes throughout the entire Empire.’

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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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