The Gourmet Innkeeper: Cooking Monsters in a Fantasy World-Chapter 310: More Missions
The next day, the guildmembers finally decided to leave and handle the branches’ needs on their side. He also received news that the poisoned elders had made contact with alchemists to fix their poison as well, though naturally this was a message passed to him in secret (by the elders with him), just in case.
With most of the high-maintenance customers gone, Finn resumed his usual habits, including gathering toughened cores via cooking. He cooked and cooked, some repeat, some not, but mostly the former for now.
Sadly, with his ongoing and stressful mission to upgrade to the fortified level soon, his creativity suffered a bit.
Unexpectedly, at some point, he received a mission.
[New Mission! Create Three (3) completely Farm-to-table Dishes]
[Information: Craft a few farm-to-table dishes using ingredients exclusively grown and processed within the inn.
Reward: 10 Extra Garden Slots]
His eyebrows rose.
Wow. A challenge that he actually liked! Plus, those rewards! Goodness knows he wanted more gardens!
He looked out and studied what could have been the trigger. He headed out of the garden and saw the staff. After a few questions, he figured that the mission was triggered the moment they started planting crops in the inn and used the plant growth potion—one of the potions Athie made, by the way.
Meanwhile, Lily ’helped’ by cheering on the plant sprite...
He was already planting wheat and stuff, and it seemed to be growing well. When it turned to something like bread, and he could make a few types, then he reckoned he’d gain good progress for the mission.
And since it was farm-to-table, for meat, he could not use the usual. He looked at the chickens, locally known as the Chens.
Milo had brought in a few more chickens and a rooster this time, though the rooster would only be given a chance with the ladies once every month or so. He did not like to eat fertilized eggs!
He considered eating the new chicken so there were fewer feelings, but decided to take one of the older ones instead. It so happened that one had been injured during an in-house fight before.
As for why he chose to do this, it was because the new chicken hadn’t taken in much essence in its muscles yet. Unlike the chickens that had been here for weeks, the new ones had less chances to create superior essence food.
That said, the domestic meat source still had much lower chances of contributing to essence food compared to beast meat (absorption was just different), so he had to make adjustments with the other ingredients.
After choosing the meat source, he then chose the crops that had grown in the gardens, which weren’t difficult to detect because they were especially high quality, indicated in their desrcriptions they had a chance to passively increase chances of essence food just by being used.
To make up for the ’weak’ essence in the chicken, he decided to use a lot of high-energy crops and the like for the meal. He had started planting everything, too, even the mushrooms, so he could really do this mission well.
For the other two meals, he decided to go full vegetarian.
[Stonebulb and Veilroot Hearth Bake (C]
It was made by roasting stonebulb, macrot, and veilroot with basilume and purplesteps until lightly caramelized. He then added thin slices of duskmire truffles near the end to release a deep and earthy umami taste.
Each bite provided a nutty, aromatic, and earthy taste from the roasted roots.
For desert, he went with the new [Sunberry-Plean Hearth Tart Viya Syrup (C)], which used the sunberry, plean fruit, and some Via sweetener (which worked a lot like earth’s stevia leaves).
He mashed the roasted stonebulb to form a soft, pliable, tart base. He added the chopped sunberry and plean fruit and folded with via, basilume, and purplesteps. He layered the fruit mixture on the stonebulb base, wrapped in broad leaves, and baked directly on heated stones until caramelized.
Then it was drizzled with light Via syrup. It gave out a sweet, fruity, earthy undertone with subtle herbal notes.
Soon, the chicken finished.
The chicken was rubbed with crushed basilume and silverscent (which was the lavender-like flower he found back then), then slow-roasted. Pieces of stonebulb were then boiled and mashed with veilroot and purplesteps. A faint darkroot infusion (the chicory and coffee alternative) was stirred into deepen the mash.
The flavor was aromatic and savory, with lightly floral and earthy depth. The silverscent visually elevated the dish and then gave it delicate, fragrant aroma.
The dish layered multiple root vegetables he got from the garden (stonebulnb, veilroot, and macrot), giving depth of flavor that felt a bit more luxurious than usual.
[Silverscent Chicken with Stonebulb Mash (B)]
[Congratulations! You have created your first B-rank Dish]
[Reward: +10 STR, +10 AGI]
Hmm, so good.
He was in the zone the whole time, not sensing the audience he accumulated.
Syl and the family appeared next to him, and some other friends peeking behind. It seemed like the aroma had already spread out all over the public areas of the inn (it wouldn’t go in the rooms due to the insulation effects).
While they ate, he heard some interesting news. For example, over the past two days, two people had upgraded from awakened to toughened level!
Who? Ren and Zachary!
Aaron could only cry and work even harder!
Finn laughed and looked at the mission progress.
[Active Mission: Mass Upgrades]
[Information: Let the Inn witness 100 Rank Ups
Progress: 60%
Rewards: 50,000 Hearth Points]
Good, good! While the hearth points weren’t something he cared for as much, the more he had, the better, especially now that his barrier would repair automatically. 𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶
Speaking of which, now that so many have been upgrading, he went to look at his own upgrade mission again. Whenever he saw that damned countdown, he felt really stressed.
He cracked his knuckles and stretched. He had been absorbing dozens of toughened-level cores over the past couple of days. He needed to solidify these soon!
