First personal stream. Spicy sauce, steamed? tofu and a kind heart

Laying the drone camera on the counter, I put the freshly harvested clams into the clam powder machine and took out the needed amount of plates from the drawers. Today's mini stream theme was to make some Red wood clams together with caterpillar noodles and steamed tofu.

Since I could not show how the noodles were made on stream, I had already prepared them and would take them out later. Sazzy had gone clam harvesting alone today, since when I told her the plan she just ran off while leaving a [I will go harvest the clams alone since you have so much to do!]

Then when she returned, her face as emotionless as a rock and as if she had attained enlightenment, she deposited the clams into the basin on the counter and left to sprawl on the couch swiping through her personal terminal. From time to time, I peaked at her screen, and all I could see was a lot of numbers and graphs again.

Refocusing my attention on work, I opened my Jolt page to set the parameters for the stream, then opened the waiting room for it. Immediately, thousands of viewers streamed in, noisily chatting about what happened the previous stream, as well as from which news article they came from. There were occasionally names with gold lining that would show up in the viewers currently watching tab. These gold lined names were verified livestreamers, according to what Sazzy had told me before. They had signed a contract with Jolt.kek. Some names had badges of different colors right next to their names. These badges signified how big these streamers were.

Plating all the ingredients, I made myself look more presentable before I turned on the drone camera and started the stream.

"Hello and welcome to the Foodie exploration channel! I am Chef, and today we will be making two dishes! Red wood clams together with caterpillar noodles, as well as fried tofu! The caterpillar noodles have already been prepared, so we only need to make Red wood clams as well as tofu."

While repeating the steps from the last stream, I slowed down a little to explain the reasoning behind each of the steps.

"Soaking the clams in Red wood is to allow the mild poison as well as flavoring in the Red wood to be absorbed by the clams, while simultaneously washing away the dirt and sand that are already inside the clams. "

"Caterpillar noodles are another type of noodles that is commonly used in Venenum cuisine. Although less culturally significant than Vine noodles, they are comparatively safer to make and are used as Vine noodle substitute for children learning how to cook. Its name comes from the fact that it resembles caterpillars with its mix of three colors."

"The new hybridized dish I call tofu uses an ingredient not present in Venenum culture, Jasmine milk. Originally, I thought that the sweetness of Jasmine milk combined with the rain powder would produce a never before seen combination. However, these two cannot mix together naturally due to the fact they repel each other. However, once I added some green berries into the mix, the reaction between the rain powder and the green berries neutralized each other and made the mixture edible."

"Stirring and adding water is to make sure that the poisons are 'spread out' or diffuse throughout the entire mixture. Jasmine milk is also repellent to the green berries, and green berries also repel the rain powder when it is in Jasmine milk, and so this creates an interesting mixture in which all the forces cancel each other out and creates a homogenous solution. Once the water fills in all the 'spaces' between the mixture, we will leave it to slowly react with each other to form a soft half-solid that is tofu."

"Now in the process of making tofu, we can also steam it. Instead of putting the mixture to sit at room temperature, if we place the mixture in a steamer, the tofu will become harder and have a sort of tougher texture. We can then call this product steamed tofu!"

Well truth be told, this steamed tofu actually resembles the Tau Kwa of my previous world more than actual steamed tofu. I was surprised that steaming the mixture would give me Tau Kwa instead of actual steamed tofu, since frying the tofu seemed to just give me regular fried tofu.

Setting the tofu mixture into the steamer for 1 hour, I took out some Red wood and clam powder. Since when making Red wood clams a spicy taste is present, it made me wonder if I could recreate a substitute for chili sauce in this world? And by experimenting for a while, I finally found out what caused the clams to absorb that spicy flavor.

Originally when I asked Margret why there was a spicy middle note in the clams, she had said that it came from the Red wood reacting with the clam. However, which part of the clam it reacted with, Margret didn't know. So I separated the clams and soaked each part with Red wood for 30 minutes. Then after tasting all the parts, I had my answer!

It was the clam powder reacting with the Red wood that gave the clams such a spicy taste. And so when we soak the clams with Red wood for 30 minutes, the reaction will spread to the Red wood water and be absorbed by the clam.

Now knowing this, I added 1 teaspoon of clam powder with 2 teaspoons of water soaked with Red Wood. Then I mixed them until it formed a smooth mixture.

"Steamed tofu tastes delicious when mixed with something spicy. So I put in something I call spicy sauce. By mixing Red wood water and clam powder, we can recreate the spicy part of Red wood clams. The amount of Red wood water is up to you, since less water gives us a more paste-like consistency and more water will give a more watery version."

Once done making the spicy sauce, I took out the clams and proceeded to grill them. Then, once again taking advantage of the free time while grilling, I pulled up my personal terminal to check the comments.

WoofWoofGimmeFood : Back for the Red wood clams! Tasted them last stream and now I can't get the taste out of my mouth! The sweetness! The spiciness! The saltiness! If only I had enough time to travel!

GiveThisDogSomeFood : Move back everyone I came first! I'm calling dibs on the spicy sauce with the steamed tofu! Those who can't take spicy! Don't worry! Just give it to me!

ThinkOfMyStomach : Tofu! Tofu! Tofu! Whoever wants to try the tofu, line up here! I totally will not steal all your tofu for myself!

AllOfYouStayBack : Everyone move! It's too crowded near the noodles! Oi someone stepped on my feet! Was it you!? If you give me your noodles and clams then I'll forgive you!

Chuckling while all the comments were getting fired up on food, the sound of thunder suddenly appeared together with a big name and a message.

'NeverTooPoorToEat sends a volt : Chef! If I pay, can I receive a lunch box with the food!'

For a short while, the chat seemed to pause. Then, as if riled up, more people started sending volts.

'AllOfYouStayBack sends 5 volts : Don't even think about getting my portion!'

'GiveThisDogSomeFood sends 5 volts : Don't overstep your boundaries! Those clams and that sauce together with the tofu is mine! This livestream is all spicy food, and as the self proclaimed number one spicy food lover all of you will have to go after me!'

'NeverTooPoorToEat sends 5 volts : You said yourself you are self proclaimed! We shouldn't have to go after you! '

Moving to settings to turn down the sound of the thunder, I glanced over at Sazzy to see what she has to say about sending food to other people. And as expected, with a very sour face, she was holding her hands above her head in a giant cross and shaking her head furiously. The sight made me chuckle just a bit.

Soon, a message came up on my personal terminal.

[Don't send them any food! But, since they already spent money for the volts, then maybe tell them the person who tops the volts leaderboard in each stream can request the next dish to be cooked, or something. We can tell them that you will come up with rewards for those who send volts later. We can't just give them nothing if they spent money after all.]

Nodding to the message, I relayed her words to the viewers.

NeverTooPoorToEat : Chef has a boss? Since you keep staring off stream and at your personal terminal, you must be consulting your boss right? Boss! Boss! Please let Chef send us food! You can't just keep her all to yourself, it's not fair!

Following NeverTooPoorToEat's cry, the chat was filled with the word Boss, until Sazzy was forced to come out as the moderator to smash everyone's dreams.

[No]

With one word, hundreds of crying faces were spammed in the chat. In this lively atmosphere, I took out the steamed tofu, let the viewers try them as I responded lightheartedly to their interactions, and then ended the stream on a high note.

Closing the stream, I was wondering why even though the articles called me Chef of Poison, the stream was oddly peaceful. Searching around the settings, I spotted the time out and ban list of my stream. Numbering over a thousand, the ban list was incredibly long. But beating that list by a large margin, the time out list was a whopping 2 million. Majority of them were timed out for 2 hours, which was longer than my whole stream. And above that list, where it stated the keyword that would automatically put anyone in timeout and unable to type in chat, was one word that made me smile.

Time out keywords : Poison