The second pot looked pretty much identical to the first brown gravy but with one minor difference.
It used the exact same spice profile but she threw a handful of finely diced tomatoes into the pot. The natural acidity from the tomatoes basically meant she didn’t need to use any lime juice at the end to balance things out.
The last pot was something people usually never cooked in this world aside from Adrian.
It was a modern Earth recipe he rarely had the time to make but Aria absolutely loved the stuff whenever he did. It was basically a butter chicken gravy. Though this time she decided to make it without the actual chicken for some reason and he honestly didn’t even question her.
This one was a bit more complicated.
She dropped a block of butter into the hot pot and added a bunch of crushed tomatoes. Then she dumped in a highly specific spice mix that Adrian pre-made for her just so she didn’t have to spend a shit ton of time mixing everything at the perfect ratios herself.
She tossed the masala mix right into the buttery tomato paste and stirred it over the heat until the color darkened and a crazy rich fragrance hit the air.
Then she poured in a cup of rich beef broth while scraping all the dark and caramelized brown bits off the bottom of the iron pot. As the gravy slowly thickened and reduced she added a thick cashew paste she made by soaking the nuts and grinding them all down.
That thickened the stew up perfectly.
At the very end she dropped one last knob of cold butter into the pot just to make it incredibly rich and give the gravy a nice glossy shine.
Adrian leaned over the three pots.
He grabbed a clean wooden spoon and began tasting all three of her practice bases. Every single one of them tasted pretty damn amazing.
It genuinely surprised him.
Serena somehow managed to mess up a basic steak but Aria was flawlessly making complicated curry bases on her very first try. The only real difference was that cooking a good steak required a lot of intuition when it came to heat control and pan temperature. Meanwhile making a curry was mostly just about following the exact measurements of the ingredients.
In a way it meant both dishes were a pain in the ass to make for entirely different reasons.
Adrian gave a slow approving nod.
Aria saw him nod and immediately beamed with a massive proud smile on her face.
Adrian just patted her head again before walking over to Claire’s station. He stepped up to her three covered pots. Before he could even reach down to lift a lid Claire spoke up.
"The rice is already cooked," Claire told him. "There is a little bit of browning at the bottom of all three pots since I think the fire was a bit too hot. But the rice sitting on top seems to be cooked pretty well."
Adrian nodded.
He grabbed a thick rag and wrapped it around the hot iron handle of the first lid before pulling it off. He pulled all three lids off the pots and leaned over to smell them. One of them smelled strongly of warm spices which was a very good sign. The other two just smelled like plain white rice.
Adrian grabbed a clean spoon.
He scooped up a small bite from the first pot and tossed it right into his mouth.
It was incredibly mushy.
’This thing is way overcooked.’ he thought to himself.
He tried the second pot and it was somehow even worse. It had way too much water to the point where it honestly looked more like a super thick rice porridge.
He took a bite from the third pot.
Luckily enough the grains were perfectly separate and fluffy. It was cooked perfectly unlike the other two.
Adrian turned around and looked at the knight.
"These first two are completely overcooked and mushy," he told her bluntly.
"Well," Claire said defensively. "You specifically told me to find the right ratio. So I purposely just used different quantities of water in all three pots to see what would happen."
Adrian nodded at that.
"I will teach you a secret trick later on how to measure the perfect amount of water to put in rice without using any measuring cups," he told her. "But you did pretty damn well on the third pot. Just use that exact same ratio of water for the actual competition and you should be good to go."
He stepped back into the center of the camp.
"So shall we start the actual competition now?" Adrian asked as he looked between the three of them.
Aria nodded eagerly.
Serena nodded too even though she looked visibly nervous while gripping the handle of her frying pan super tight.
Adrian just snapped his fingers.
Three undead skeletons instantly popped out of thin air right beside him. The girls stared and Claire even drew her sword in a panic. But seeing Adrian just look at the skeletons with a totally calm look on his face she quickly calmed herself down too.
Adrian just gave them a quick mental command.
The three skeletons immediately walked over to the edge of the camp and started digging three small fire pits into the dirt with their bony hands. They gathered up a bunch of dry branches from the nearby trees and tossed the wood right into the shallow pits.
Adrian looked over at Aria.
She didn’t even need to be told. She just raised her small hand and casually tossed a glowing fireball directly into the center of the three bundles of dry wood.
The branches instantly caught fire.
The skeletons quickly arranged three heavy flat stones around each fire pit so the iron pots and pans could sit over the flames properly.
"Well," Adrian announced while crossing his arms. "It is officially time to start."
The three women nodded.
They knew the practice period was totally over. It was time to show him who the better cook was. Or at the very least who learned his recipes the fastest.
The first one to move was Claire.
"I need a brand new pot," Claire demanded while looking right at him.