North White Chef (6)
The northern cooking contest I bankrolled out of my own pocket.
A.k.a. North White Chef.
The prize purse was nothing to sneeze at, so the chefs who'd been hauled in without much thought all flipped into deadly serious mode.
Moments like this make me think I really am cut out to be a commander.
Other people treat their official funds like personal pocket money. Me? I spend my personal pocket money as official funds.
And that pocket money ultimately comes from my title as Second Young Master of the Northern Grand Duke's House, you say?
If that bothers you, go get yourself reincarnated as the Second Young Master and try it.
"Young Master! It's finished!!"
Three hours into the northern cooking contest.
While a small army of cauldrons boiled furiously away, the first finisher appeared. Given that most of them already worked in kitchens, and that I'd thrown out plenty of example variations, results started rolling out faster than expected.
"Oh... wait. What the fuck is this supposed to be?"
"Yes, sir! Snow Goblin Head Gukbap! I used the head stock of the most commonly encountered goblin, so it's easy to source and easy to cook!"
Yeah. I should have seen this coming.
Even during unit security evaluations, the guy who finishes his answer sheet first and walks out always turns in absolute garbage.
"Hehe. I built it around the points Young Master mentioned — mass catering and easy raw-material supply. But, uh... what does 'what the fuck' mean?"
"Uh... it's sort of an Eastern exclamation of admiration."
I scrambled for a cover, unable to admit I'd just cursed in the man's face.
Still — even granting all that — was having goblin heads bobbing around in a cauldron really necessary?
I did use ox-head gukbap as an example, but at least that gets broken down so thoroughly you can't tell what it used to be.
This Snow Goblin Head Gukbap looked desperate to advertise exactly which ingredients had gone into it. I had made eye contact with a goblin not thirty seconds ago.
If you think of it like a spicy fish stew, it's not entirely incomprehensible...
I had no idea how strong a Northerner's stomach actually was, but there was a more important question, so I asked it.
"So these things — they can actually be eaten, right? I've heard goblin species have something called a bloodstone in their heads, and if you're not careful the demonic nature seeps into the marrow."
"Ah, no need to worry about that. I added herbs that neutralize the demonic nature."
"There are herbs like that?"
"Of course. This Raman herb is what you normally smear on bites from monsters with demonic nature!"
"...Is that edible?"
"Well, if eating it doesn't kill you, isn't it edible?"
Disqualified, you bastard.
I barely swallowed the curse that tried to climb out of my throat.
"....Next."
Of course, the next entries were no walk in the park either.
"I'm next! Ice Gnoll Tooth Soup! It's nice and crunchy, and if you just chew it thoroughly...."
"Next."
"Then I'll present Seven-Headed Viper Poison Sac Soup..."
What was this?
What were they trying to tell me?
I clearly held a contest to neutralize the dangerous parts of monsters and make them safely edible...
So why were these people filming an infinite challenge of "will this kill you or won't it"?
Watching them beam over a mess of stew that even my family's mangy yellow dog would have rejected with a "that's a bit much," my head started to throb.
Just boiling something does not make it soup.
I was freshly impressed by how these iron-guts Northerners honestly believed they could eat this stuff — but I was neither the Iron King nor the Undying Demon King. I couldn't eat this garbage, and I had zero desire to feed it to anyone else.
And yet — did the miracle of collective intelligence still exist?
At first the chefs produced things you couldn't tell were gukbap or poison. Once they realized the contest wasn't wrapping up in a day or two, and that it wasn't only first place that paid out, results started coming in one by one.
And then—
"Monster Offal Soup. It isn't limited to any one specific monster — it's made from the offal of creatures ranked lower-grade and below."
"Is this actually safe to eat?"
"Ordinarily, as Young Master said, eating it carelessly would leave you in a world of pain. But I neutralized it with herbs of the opposite nature."
"Opposite nature?"
"Yes. Northern monsters mostly survive the extreme cold and carry cold energy, but among plants there are ones that cultivate yang energy to stay alive. I stewed those in together for a long time. Originally both are wild-natured and hard to handle, but after hours of boiling both natures settle down and neutralize. It becomes reasonably edible."
Reasonably edible, he said.
"Meaning it can actually be eaten?"
"Haha. People from the continent would struggle with it. But we Northerners, tempered by this frozen hell, can digest it just fine."
It sounded like pure grit-talk at first, but it had a surprising amount of logic behind it. I'd heard that the raw chicken sashimi produced and eaten in Korea's Jeolla region regularly wrecked outsiders' stomachs, while the locals ate it every day without a problem.
"On top of that, the mana recovery will be higher than seolleongtang made from bones and marrow. These ingredients have stronger natures, after all."
"Good. Pass. Collect your achievement bonus."
"Ooooh! Thank you!!!"
At last, the first person to walk away with a pass necklace appeared.
The moment that first passer emerged, the others lit up with competitive fire. Even the ones who'd been drinking the bitter cup of failure and wondering if any of this made sense, once they saw it was possible, started throwing every scrap of knowledge they had into the pot.
"Young Master! Does it absolutely have to be soup?!"
"Not necessarily."
"Then how about this! Goblin tendons steamed low and slow for a long time — you can extract the broth separately, and just the meat itself is perfectly decent!"
This is... suji, isn't it?
Along the way, dishes with real color to them started appearing. Not just soups, but boiled-meat style preparations as well — and the quality was genuinely impressive.
"Why has food like this only been developed now?"
"Hehe. Isn't it thanks to the agungi and the cauldrons Young Master developed?"
"What?"
"With the pots we used to have, we could manage boiling and simmering, but steaming like this was impossible. They went deep but never wide. These, though — perfect for this kind of cooking. More than anything, without the agungi facilities Young Master supplied, this near-luxurious method would have been out of the question."
Hearing that, it made perfect sense. Cooking is inevitably shaped by the tools you have to cook with.
That's how cup ramen was born, too.
When you invent a meal in an environment with nothing, you end up with instant noodles packed full of environmental hormones.
"Good. This passes too."
As the passers piled up one by one, the chefs gradually figured out what I actually wanted.
Not a meal offered up to a handful of nobles like me — food that as many people as possible can somehow eat with a slightly better taste. That's what earns the pass necklace.
Menus built from parts that even iron-guts Northerners would look at and go "that's a bit much" — on top of the parts already considered edible — started appearing one after another.
And there was an unexpected side effect: ingredients that had never been used simply because no one knew about them began to surface.
"Hmm? What's that?"
"Ah, this is a type of seaweed you can harvest from the northern seas. It's called sea weed — the texture's a bit off, but it's good for the body."
"Huh? You're going to use that slimy stuff as an ingredient? That was edible?"
"You didn't know? Despite how it looks, it's pretty decent. Normally you dry it well for storage, then cut it small whenever you need it. Keeps beautifully."
The standout example was a cold-water seaweed — the kind Koreans would call miyeok.
One interesting detail:
"Huh. You can eat that harmful organism?"
"Harmful organism? That s... sea weed is a harmful organism?"
"Ugh, don't even get me started, Young Master. That thing multiplies like crazy, has no natural predators, and just balloons. Plus it's pitch black... when you see it washing in with a wave, any desire to eat vanishes on the spot."
The seaweed we knew as familiar miyeok was, here, branded a devil plant avoided more carefully than most monsters.
Somehow I feel like if I looked, there'd be plenty more plants like this...
Watching the chefs trade information, I decided gathering them all in one place and listening had been the right call.
Anyway — miyeok.
Somehow I feel like I could make something more useful out of that...
Looking at the seaweed left an itch in the back of my mind, like I'd forgotten something important. I just couldn't pin down what it was.
With that half-formed feeling, the contest rolled on, and every chef walked away with prize money at least once. Since I also accepted joint entries, even people who'd started out cold and distant started clustering in threes and fives to trade ideas and chase bigger payouts.
And after that pattern repeated for several days—
"Ugh. The smell."
"Oh boy. We took our eyes off it for a second and the place is a complete wreck."
"What can you do? We carved up that many monster carcasses."
The kitchen had become an absolute disaster zone of monster byproducts.
Edible cuts had been moved to the warehouse, and even parts once written off as inedible had been butchered as research progressed — but bones, scales, hides, and everything else deemed completely unusable remained scattered everywhere.
Worse than any of that:
"Ugh. This fat is really something else."
The thick, clinging waste oil and fat from the monsters had become a disposal nightmare.
"Slimy and sticky on top of it. Horrible every way you look at it."
"You got any lye left? Let me use some."
"Why, you don't have any?"
"Used it all last time. Gotta make more."
Even the chefs were thoroughly sick of the fat. The kitchen had running water and could be cleaned reasonably fast, and it was still this bad. The thought of people out on the Great Wall trying to butcher and eat monsters the way we had, only to face an even more horrific mess...
...Wait. Fat? Animal fat? And on top of that — lye?
In that instant, the misaligned puzzle pieces in my head clicked into place.
And I thought: why am I only remembering this now?
"Everyone. What do you do with the leftover fat?"
"Huh? These things?"
"Usually we burn them for fuel, or the leatherworkers come pick them up saying they need them."
"Otherwise we mostly just throw them out."
As expected.
"Could you gather those separately and bring them to me?"
"What are you going to do with these lumps of grease..."
"Yes. And while you're at it — dry that miyeok, I mean the sea weed, thoroughly and collect it as well."
Thinking about it now, I couldn't believe I'd forgotten this.
Something that outranks supply when it comes to keeping combat power intact.
Something commanders make soldiers do even if it kills them.
"With these," I said, "I'm going to make soap."
In the military, hygiene always comes first.