Chapter 171 Stew, Pudding and Macaron (1/2)
”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.