Adrian gave a slow nod and looked over at his general.
"What about you, Claire?"
Claire stared out the carriage window and shrugged.
"Same here," she admitted bluntly. "Never successfully cooked anything in my entire life. Actually wait, that’s not really true since I did try roasting some meat over a campfire once. But I burned it to a crisp."
She gave a dry, awkward cough.
"This was back during my knight training at the Academy," Claire muttered. "We had a mandatory survival cooking class. They made us prep a dish for finals and I pretty much bombed the practical part."
Adrian shot her a confused look. "Wait, how the hell did you even pass then?"
Her cheeks flared bright pink as she refused to meet his gaze.
"The instructors gave us some raw wild boar meat," she said. "We were supposed to build a small fire and slowly roast it. But I looked at the others and just tried to copy them. One guy tossed the meat straight into the fire, so I did the exact same thing..."
Adrian blinked in surprise.
"The whole chunk turned into a burnt mess," Claire grumbled. "It basically looked like a massive piece of coal. The only reason the proctors even passed me was because the meat wasn’t poisonous. It was dry and bitter, but you wouldn’t die if you ate it. So they just handed me a passing grade. Luckily I pulled mine out before the other guy did since my gut feeling told me I was doing something horribly wrong. That is the only reason I passed because his was beyond recovery and he failed the year."
Adrian burst out laughing.
He couldn’t even pretend to hold it in.
Claire looked completely mortified by the whole thing. On the rare occasions she actually shared that story with other knights, they always tried to play nice. They would say things like "Oh, that is relatable" or "Cooking is tough."
Nobles on the other hand actually understood her, especially since she knew that most of them didn’t even know how to start a simple fire.
She definitely had not expected Adrian to just laugh right in her face.
It honestly felt humiliating.
She puffed out her cheeks.
"Fine," she finally muttered while staring daggers at him. "Just wait. I will somehow find a way to win this stupid competition."
Adrian just smiled.
"Alright fine," he chuckled. "Tell you what. I will help all three of you and we can see how it goes."
The girls nodded in agreement.
He propped his elbows up against the window frame.
"You guys should definitely start brainstorming your stuff now," Adrian told them with a smirk. "Better to figure out your dishes ahead of time instead of messing around tonight and screwing the whole thing up."
He leaned a bit closer to them.
"Because here is the baseline rule of the competition," he warned. "We are actually going to be eating whatever you guys cook. Nothing goes to waste, so you better think very carefully about what you want to make."
The smiles on the girls’ faces vanished.
For the very first time since leaving Draven’s territory, not just Claire and Serena, but even Aria looked terrified.
He looked at the three of them sitting around him. "So. What are your plans?"
Serena was the first to recover and she spoke up first. "I like bread."
Adrian shook his head at that.
"Don’t worry about making bread from scratch," he said. "I’ll just hand out the bread myself since trying to bake fresh stuff on the road is kinda pointless right now."
Claire chimed in right after.
"Well, we do have a carriage that brings a working kitchen with it," Claire noted. "We just don’t use it since you usually have most of the food ready for us to eat, so there is no real point. But a lot of noble families drag a kitchen carriage along whenever they go on long trips."
Adrian nodded.
"Either way," Adrian said. "Bread is off the table for you guys."
Claire’s eyes suddenly lit up.
It looked like she had just been struck by some brilliant idea.
"I am making rice," Claire declared confidently.
Adrian just looked at the knight and slowly raised a single eyebrow.
’She really just picked the easiest fucking thing on the menu.’ he thought. ’But let’s see if I can mess with her head a bit.’
He stared her down.
"I mean, sure," Adrian said casually. "But you know that basic rice is easy to make while getting it perfect is a total pain in the ass right? Do you even know how many minutes it takes to boil? Or what the exact water ratio is so it absorbs everything perfectly without a strainer?"
She opened her mouth to argue.
Then she hesitated and shut it just as fast.
"Well," Claire tried again. "I have seen the cooks do it back at my family’s territory. They usually just drain the water anyway. They dump a massive amount of water in the pot with the rice and just let it boil. Once the rice is soft they strain out the excess. I am going to use that exact same method."
Adrian just nodded.
He didn’t really approve of the lazy straining method, but he didn’t bother forcing her to do it his way either.
’Well.’ he thought. ’Back on Earth I was used to electric rice cookers which were stupidly easy to work with. I just poured the perfect ratio of water and the thing automatically cooked it for me. But these guys use wood fires out here, so I guess the margin of error is a little different.’
He just sighed internally.
’As long as she gets a half decent result and doesn’t burn the place down, it’s whatever.’
He looked at Serena before looking back at Claire.
"Okay," Adrian agreed. "You can make the rice."
He turned his head and glanced down at Aria sitting right beside him. He reached over to ruffle her hair a bit.
"What about you?" he asked her. "Got any plans for what you want to cook?"