"Whoa, it's so cold in here!" Parc yelled out immediately as the group stepped into the Walk-In, and Koro and Rouge could only nod in wonder.
"Yeah, that's the point," Eisen said with a smile, before starting to explain how they should best use this whole thing. "It's a Refrigerator, or Fridge for short, and that in the back is a freezer. The front here is to keep stuff cool and prevent perishing of food for a while, and the freezer back there will freeze everything you put in there after a while. It works with an enchantment array as you can see on the walls here, and it's completely self-sufficient mana-wise, so you don't need to worry about that." Eisen explained to them as he began sorting the food at least a little bit, while still just really placing everything wherever there was space so that they could continue making the dessert before the beef-bone-broth was finished.
The group moved in front of the workstations again, and Eisen began to instruct everyone on what they needed to do next. "We're going to use the egg yolk and egg whites for each a different dessert. Parc, you help me with the egg whites please, so Rouge and Koro you work with the egg yolk." Eisen told them before they each got to work.
After Eisen combined some sugar, salt, and almond flour briefly mixing it, which Eisen was more than surprised to find in most basic ingredient shops, he and Parc began to beat the egg whites.
While they were doing so, Koro and Rouge mixed some sugar, salt, and cornstarch in a large pan and poured milk onto the mixture, starting to cook everything while continually stirring. Afterward Eisen and Parc finished beating the egg whites until soft peaks formed, the old man added some Vanilla into the bowls and they continued beating everything until it was incorporated, before splitting the beaten egg-whites up into a few different dishes, where he then added a few other things to add some flare to it, and which would turn this into the exact reason why he chose to make this dessert.
They were all-natural, food dyes that Eisen had Kiron and the others buy when they were out shopping. Eisen would have liked to make the dyes himself, but that would have taken some extra time, and he didn't necessarily have to make every single thing from scratch.
Either way, Eisen could make the desert he wanted to in a few different colors. Red, Blue, Purple, Yellow, and a few more, even. After Eisen added these dyes to the bowls, he and Parc quickly beat them into everything again until it barely just combined, before the both of them then added the almond flour mixture into the bowls and carefully folded it into the beaten egg whites.
Once the egg white mixture began forming ribbons after being folded, Eisen grabbed the bowls and formed small circles on the surface inside of his Flame of the Earth oven with them. Usually, he would have done this with a piping bag, but he could do the same thing right here, despite it taking him a bit longer to do. Now, the circles had to sit there for a while like that until they looked dry from the outside.
Seeing that the milk mixture for what Rouge and Koro were working on had thickened a bit and should be ready to go, he quickly took over just momentarily to combine this mixture with the egg yolks properly without causing the yolks to curdle, which would ruin the whole thing. And after everything was adequately incorporated in, he let the others take over again.
So, for a little while longer, Koro and Rouge continued slowly heating the yolk-milk mixture, while Eisen started working on the buttercream for what he and Parc were making. While Eisen began beating some butter until it was light and fluffy, he had Parc combine some milk and butter to make a heavy cream, before they mixed the heavy cream into the butter that had been combined with some sugar and vanilla.
Once everything was combined, they placed the buttercream into the new Walk-In. Afterward, Eisen turned up the heat in the Magical Oven and began baking the colorful little circles. At around the same time, Koro and Rouge took their large pans off the stove and began to let the mixture cool down.
Now, they had time just to wait a bit before they would later start working on everything for the main dish. Curious at what Eisen was making and what he had made the other three here make with him, Koro looked at the old man, who was trying to find a position to lean against something with his huge wings.
"So? What kind of thing is it that we actually just made now? I could tell that you were working on something like meringue and that what we made was something like a custard, right?" Koro asked, and Eisen nodded slowly, as expected of a Chef's apprentice.
"Yes, that's just right. What Parc and I made, the colored meringue and buttercream, were for sweets called 'Macarons.' They are a bit showy, but I thought it was an excellent way to lift morale, and especially excite some of the younger kids in the orphanage. And it was a good fit with what you made since the main ingredients were the egg whites leftover from the pudding you started creating." He explained to the three young men, all of which seemed to be quite interested in what Eisen was telling them.
"Pudding and Macarons? I heard of pudding before, but I didn't know about Macarons yet. I mean, the kids usually like anything sweet already, and with that much color, they're going to love these. The pudding seems interesting, too, though." Koro said, and Eisen nodded with a smile.
"Yeah, pudding is something pretty tasty, and so are macarons so you can be excited for them. But the main dish is in these large pots over there. Right now I'm just making a beef broth, but then later we'll add some actual beef and some vegetables to it, as well as some stuff to make the broth a bit thicker and richer to make it a stew. It's meat-based, and since it didn't seem like you'd usually eat a lot of meat here, I thought this was a good chance to do so again. And overall, a stew is just a pretty filling dish already, so you can never go wrong with it to feed someone whose extremely hungry." Eisen said with a smile as he slowly stepped over to the large pots to take a look at the broth inside, and to his pleasant surprise, it was already at the state it would have been after about 20 hours of simmering in real life.
"Alright everyone, let's get started with this. For now, we'll do some prep-work. That means, washing and slicing or dicing the main ingredients." Eisen told them as he stepped back toward the walk-in to grab all the ingredients to make the stew for as many people as possible, after first turning on the oven with the Macaron Meringue
And after they grabbed everything they needed, and everyone got to work. The beef was diced, the carrots, onions, and celery sliced, the tomatoes puréd, and the herbs cleaned. Before they then continued, the broth was removed from the bones and vegetables in the broth mixture to get the pure stock.
After that was all done, the beef was first placed into a large mixing bowl and dredged in plain flour, salt, pepper and fennel seeds to it. After tossing the meat in seasoned flour it was placed into a pan with some pre-heated oil to brown the meat and give it color, as well as seal in the juices. This had to be done in a few small batches because of the large amount of meat needed for this dinner.
And then, in a large pot, Eisen poured some more oil and added the onions, carrots, celery, and some of the herbs. With the lid askew, this was then cooked for a few minutes while Eisen stirred occasionally. After that, the old man stirred in the tomato purée, and then added the beef stock from the different pots as well as the actual beef. Once Eisen mixed everything, he placed the lid on askew again and brought everything to a boil, and then reduced the heat to slowly simmer everything.
"And now we wait," Eisen said with a smile, before retaking a look at the dessert. The Macaron meringue still needed some time to bake, but it seemed like the vanilla pudding had adequately cooled down, to keep it from forming skin Eisen placed some wax paper on top of it, since he didn't have access to any plastic wrap right now and used it instead.
Now it seemed like everyone involved in the creation of this delightful desserts saw it as finished, and a notification popped up. But Eisen wasn't that interested in the what the pudding itself was, and he only checked to see what the rank and quality was, since the ones that mainly worked on this were Koro and Rouge, and the only thing Eisen did was mix the egg yolks into the custard. But this was still enough to cause one thing.
[Cooking, has reached Level 100 in Rank 1, upgrading to Rank 2]
[The process of Cooking will now happen even faster]
[Due to Ranking-up your Cooking Skill, you gained +1 AGI and +1 END]
With satisfaction, Eisen nodded his head and looked at the people around him, before leaning back against the wall. "Alright, now that everything is done, all we need to do is wait. After the Macaron Meringue finished baking, we need to add a layer of buttercream between two of the meringues, and then leave it somewhere airtight for a while. The stew will be done in a while as well, and then we can get ready to serve. Or rather, maybe we should prepare for serving right now. Is there some nice, open spot outside where everyone from the orphanage and shelter can fit? We can have some people bring food to the patients in the hospital since they can't leave their beds."
Quickly, the three young men nodded and smiled at Eisen, feeling incredibly cheerful at the moment. "Thank you for letting us help you. You said you are a craftsman, so you don't even specialize in cooking, right?" Rouge asked, hitting it right on the spot, and Eisen slowly nodded at them.
"That's right. I'm a pretty good chef, I would say, but I specialize in other things. Or rather, you could say I don't specialize in anything while specializing in everything." The old man chuckled, moving his hand through his rock-beard as he did before Parc tilted his head to the side in confusion.
"Why so, cryptic?" He asked before Eisen chuckled.
"I know, sorry about that. I do a little bit of everything. Tailoring, Blacksmithing, Enchanting, basically everything." Eisen explained, and the three young men looked at each other with wide eyes.
"Really? Like some kinda master of all crafts?" Koro asked, crossing his arms, before, instead of Eisen himself, Kiron tuned in.
"It is exactly so. Think of it as a discipline, and M'Lord may be more skilled at it than any master you can find." The Half-Dragon bragged quite clearly, and just when Eisen wanted to say it wasn't so, he held himself back. It felt weird to hear things like that, even though Eisen knew that this was quite obviously the case. Even in real life, he was sometimes talked about as if he was some living national treasure, and here in the game, he used to be a real legend that brought upon the evolution of crafts. So even if he wanted to say it wasn't so, he couldn't really do that without sounding like a prick, now could he?