In the Dark

By the time we headed back to the kitchen, Ken had calmed down from his outburst. Shaking his head to clear his mind, he slammed the basket of ingredients down on the kitchen counter with a tad too much determination, making a loud thud sound. Everyone, including him, flinched.

"Sorry."

He mumbled as he took several more breaths to gather himself.

Letting him collect himself, I moved over to the sink to wash my hands as well as the outer surface of the dusty bottle.

In the dark storage basement, I couldn't clearly see it. But now in the light, the transparent jar's normal appearance hid its maliciousness.

Looking exactly like a normal jar of ingredients soaked in some sort of preservative, its ingredient, a harmless looking fruit that I had never seen before, was floating in the middle of a transparent preservative liquid.

[That fruit used to be found on the Vastum planet. 'Used to' because the planet has undergone a massive industrial revolution that has made it the number one manufacturing planet. But it has also caused mass extinction of its fauna and flora, and those that remain are covered with ash as well as filled with unsafe to eat chemicals and heavy minerals.]

I moved over to somewhere where there was a chair for Sazzy to climb up and look at the jar together with me.

[Looking at this jar, it seems that the preservative has been laced with poison. Or rather, the preservative is the poison. It also appears to be quite photosensitive. The poison seems to be decreasing the longer you are holding it out in the light.]

Looking closely at the jar, Sazzy took out her personal terminal, put it as a white screen, and allowed us to look at the color changes occurring to the jar. Against the white background, we could faintly see a slight yellow tinge to the preservative.

[In about half an hour, the preservative should be safe to eat.]

Before she closed her personal terminal, she took a picture of the jar against the white background to observe it later.

Then I exited the kitchen and headed to the attic, where I placed the jar beside the window in a spot filled with light.

Leaving it there, we headed back to the kitchen. Inside the kitchen, Ken was busy arranging all the ingredients in a row. The moment he saw us come in, he gestured for us to come over.

He introduced us to around seven different types of ingredients. While introducing us to them, he opened up the jars that the ingredients were stored in to let us smell and taste them.

They ranged from sweet to sour to bitter, but there were only two ingredients that I found to be particularly promising for the dish I had in mind. The third ingredient, which was a sweet red bean looking sea creature that was normally found slightly deeper into the ocean clinging onto rocks, as well as the fifth ingredient, another red object, but this was a kind of red tinted kelp.

Tasting both ingredients, they both tasted slightly spicy. Which was what I was aiming for.

Asking for a large Jar, I placed the two ingredients inside. Then, I poured some water in there for them to soak. While they were soaking, I was planning on ordering some of the blue bok choy that I had found in our house when I first arrived into this world. When we put the bok choy into the red mixture, maybe we would be able to create kimchi.

Looking at the way ingredients were stored into jars, and slightly missing the red wood clams, I aimed to create a substitute to kimchi in this world.

In my previous world, kimchi was made through the fermentation of cabbage with salt and seasonings. The various different types of seasonings allowed kimchi to have its deep and spicy flavor.

Usually, kimchi has to be fermented for 2 weeks in order for it to be at its best flavor. However, since we were short of time, I was going to shorten that time to 1 day in order to test whether this kimchi substitute was edible, as well as whether it tasted good.

Going off my previous experience with the tofu and the 'steamed tofu', the probability that the cooking process was the same or similar was probably not high. However, even if what was created was not kimchi, it would be a good beginning to trying to understand how fermented food works in this world.

Even back in Mors, the Venenum never fermented their food. It was why their underground chiller was incredibly small. It never really held anything for long periods of time.

Together with Ken, we made around five jars with slight changes. The first jar had only the mixture of the red beans with red kelp with its water. The second jar had the same ingredients as the first jar but more red beans and kelp were added. The third jar was the same as the second jar just with some blue bok choy added into it. The fourth jar was the second jar with sun dust added into it. The fifth jar was a mixture of all of the ingredients.

Tomorrow once we tested out the ingredients, I was planning on trying to test out the concentration of said ingredients further to see if I could get that signature flavor, or even any flavor that was edible and tasty. We set aside these five small jars, plus the large ones with the red bean and red kelp mixture, into a corner where they would not hinder anyone's movements.

Done with our first round of experiments, I gestured to Ken to start the preparation stage for our livestream.

First, on our personal terminals, we wrote down what we thought was the most time efficient way of making these dishes. For the first dish, we both agreed that the starry sky soup took too long and must therefore be cooked first. Then, in between waiting times, we could prepare the other dishes. Specifically, we could de-parasite the fish required for fried passion. After that, we would roughly be left with 20 minutes to spare. This was where we had differing opinions.

"I think that we should fry some fried eggs here to make some time to talk and interact with the viewers. Then we can do the fried fairy wings as well as the fried passion while waiting for the starry sky soup. This would make the most of the frying time as well as the talking time."

"I think we should pair the fried eggs and the fried passion together, so we can mention the fact that they came from the same creator. So we should cook the fried fairy wings first, then cook the fried passion and the fried eggs on the second break."

Arguing for both our points, we were stuck. Taking some calming breaths, the both of us stared into each other's eyes. Neither of us wanted to back down.

After a while, we both broke eye contact and sighed.

"At this rate, we might never come to an agreement."

Ken nodded his head. We agreed to have this discussion again tomorrow. Maybe then there will be progress.

Closing our personal terminals, we both busied around to prepare the ingredients to cook the four dishes that we could now. Candice had apparently been incredibly wise to order lots of ingredients to her house before, so we had tons of practice ingredients on our hands for the next week or so. It was time for practice!