Adrian’s resolve basically melted in a fraction of a second.
He folded instantly.
He looked awkwardly between the other two women. "Well..." he started defensively.
Serena let out a long sigh before he could even think of a decent excuse.
"It’s fine if you help her," she told him quickly. "She is just a kid after all so I think that is pretty fair. And it is obviously way safer if you’re there watching her."
Adrian nodded immediately.
"Yeah," he agreed. "But I actually meant I was always going to help all three of you when it came to the cooking part anyway. You just have to tell me exactly what to do. But right now... you know what? I will just teach her how the whole curry thing works while I show you how to make a proper steak."
He gave a small nod.
He was totally just making up excuses to justify his blatant favoritism for his kid right now and he honestly didn’t give a shit. He patted Aria’s head and leaned down to kiss her cheek.
"You are just way too damn cute for me to say no to," Adrian muttered to her. "Which really isn’t fair."
He reached into his spatial ring.
He pulled out three blank sheets of paper along with a thin stick of charcoal and a flat wooden plank to use as a crude clipboard.
He slapped the first sheet of paper down and just started writing.
It took him a few minutes of messy scribbling to finally get the basic instructions down. He finished writing out two specific recipes and handed one to Serena. He gave the other one to Aria. Then he started writing the third one and handed it over to Claire a few seconds later.
Claire looked down at the paper and read through the single messy paragraph.
"Wait." Claire frowned as she looked back up at him. "You actually need to put salt in the rice water?"
Adrian nodded.
"Just a little bit," he instructed. "Not too much since that completely ruins it. But adding basic spices really helps the flavor out."
"But let’s skip the advanced stuff for now," he added. "If you want to make your rice actually taste good then just boil the water first before you add the raw rice."
He tapped the paper.
"Get it to a heavy rolling boil. Then you just toss some whole spices in and let them boil inside the pot so all that flavor spreads right into the water."
Claire actually paid close attention to him.
"And then you can just use a strainer to scoop the whole spices back out," Adrian continued. "After that you throw the raw rice in. Which is exactly why straining your rice after it finishes cooking is a terrible idea. It is always better to just calculate the exact amount of water you need for the amount of rice you have. That way you don’t pour all that flavored water down the drain."
Claire gave a slow nod.
She got up from her spot on the rug and practically snatched the charcoal stick right out of his hand. She immediately started scribbling the new instructions down onto her paper since he totally forgot to actually write any of that stuff out for her.
She handed the charcoal back once she was done taking her notes.
"How exactly are you going to judge who wins?" Claire asked.
Adrian could easily tell how weirdly competitive she was getting over a stupid cooking contest. He just smirked at her.
"That is a secret."
Adrian glanced up at the sky.
The sun hadn’t fully set yet but he could already see the moon. It was finally time to start the actual competition.
He looked around the small campsite they had set up.
Aria, Serena, and Claire were all incredibly busy working at their own stations. They spent the last few hours running practice trials for their dishes.
Aria was currently standing in front of three different small cast-iron pots. According to her she wanted to practice making three entirely different curry bases before committing to a final recipe. Adrian just nodded and let her experiment with it.
Claire was basically doing the exact same thing over at her spot.
She had three different pots of rice going. One was unseasoned and one was lightly salted. The third pot had whole spices thrown into the boiling water exactly like Adrian suggested.
The only one who didn’t overcomplicate her practice runs was Serena.
She just blindly followed Adrian’s recipe and cooked three different steaks back-to-back. Her first steak ended up raw in the middle. She got way too anxious about the sizzling hot oil and pulled the meat out of the pan before it even had a chance to cook.
Her second steak actually came out incredibly well though.
She followed Adrian’s timing perfectly. She counted the seconds in her head and the final result was honestly a near perfect medium rare. The meat was juicy and tender and everyone absolutely loved it.
But her third steak was a massive disaster.
Serena over salted the meat. The salt ended up seeping deep into the muscle fibers while it seared which basically turned it uneatable.
The inside was cooked just fine but the crust was so salty that it actually made Adrian gag.
He literally had to chop the thing into tiny pieces and boil it in a pot of water just to dilute the salt enough so they could actually eat it.
It was really that bad.
Adrian walked over to Aria’s station.
He looked down into her three simmering pots. The first pot was a very simple and traditional brown curry base native to this medieval world. It was basically just a spicy and tangy stew that commoners threw together at home.
Aria basically just tossed a cup of cheap red wine in there and let it simmer down with some raw cinnamon, ginger, and black pepper.
Then she threw in a handful of breadcrumbs to thicken the sauce up into a nice heavy gravy. She finished the whole thing off with a spoonful of honey and a squeeze of lime juice just to balance the flavors out.