Chapter 200 Case File 3: The Mysterious Dinner Party at Rose Villa (4)
To be fair, Winston and Vivian weren't impoverished nobles like Andrei, who ran away from home with nothing but a viscount title. While Vivian hadn't yet inherited her father's title, she received a generous monthly stipend from the Marquis of Leicester. While this wasn't considered financial freedom by the aristocracy, it was more than enough to cover her daily (and extravagant) expenses.
Winston had inherited all of Count Mordor's wealth and power. However, he had to support a group of Shadow Army spies. The King's treasury was empty, and for the past year or two, Winston had to pay for the spies' salaries and supplies.
Winston had a lot of IOUs written by His Majesty the King, but the real money needed for food and fodder still had to come out of his own pocket, not to mention the constant natural disasters in recent years. He also spent a lot of money to support the poor people in and around the territory. Even a rich man did not have much surplus food.
In this way, compared with Madame Butterfly, who is rich and powerful, can easily get a bunch of expensive South Asian ingredients and hold a series of luxurious balls, and has some unknown force backing her, they are indeed a bit...poor.
They wanted to get the answer before Madame Butterfly, but they would be seen as competitors by the guests, so it would be much more difficult for them to take action.
"Perhaps you could try using Madame Butterfly's name..." Winston looked at André. "You're now employed by Madame Butterfly, so you could use this identity to gain some influence. Ask around while you're delivering lunch."
"If bribery doesn't work, maybe we can try intimidation." Vivian chewed on the peanuts fried by Jiangyou and pointed at the guest list. "Baron Chandler has a nut allergy, and there are a lot of peanuts here."
Andrei shuddered subconsciously - Vivian was indeed so terrifying.
While they were discussing the plan, Jiangyou started preparing lunch.
At noon, Jiangyou serves a set lunch menu, each of which includes a main course, a plate of blanched vegetables, a small bowl of caramel egg and milk pudding, and a drink. For the main course, she has added soy sauce chicken rice, roast duck rice, and tender roast beef rib rice to the breakfast dishes.
The rice prepared by Yadra was clearly high-end imported from Southeast Asia, with a rich, fragrant aroma. Its quality was much better than Holly's—and I'm afraid it would be much more expensive. However, when cooking here, Jiangyou didn't have to worry about cost.
She first puts the rice into a large pot and cooks it until half cooked, then drains the water and puts it into a steamer and continues to steam it until cooked through. This way, the rice is large in quantity, with distinct grains, dry and not greasy, and tastes good while ensuring supply, which is very easy to make.
The name of this caramel egg and milk pudding all three ingredients are included, and the recipe simply requires whisking eggs, milk, and sugar. The perfect amount of sugar will mask the fishy flavor of eggs and milk, which is unique to this era. The only remaining trick is to filter the mixture through a fine sieve to remove bubbles and impurities, which will make the finished pudding more tender and smooth.
The stirred egg liquid is poured into small ceramic cups. After being allowed to stand for a while to eliminate the remaining bubbles, it can be put into the bread oven for baking.
After baking batches of milk puddings, Jiangyou sprinkled white sugar evenly on the surface of the pudding, then used fire magic to bake it into a caramel shell, and cooled it with ice magic. The delicious and simple dessert was ready.
Soy sauce chicken is also very simple to make. Simply boil soy sauce, wine, sugar, ginger, scallions, and water in a large iron pot. Then add the plucked, cleaned, and drained chicken and cook until it is browned. However, there are still some tricks to the cooking method.
Jiangyou controlled the energy flowing into the magic stove, lowering the flame to medium-low. Then, with a ladle, he continuously scooped up the bubbling, dark brown sauce from the pot and poured it over the pink-white chicken. After ten minutes of continuous pouring, the chicken skin was dyed a beautiful brown. Now it was time to flip it over and continue pouring the sauce over the uncolored areas.
After another ten minutes, you can cover the pot and simmer the chicken for five minutes, turn it over, simmer for another five minutes, and serve!
The cooked soy sauce chicken is placed on the chopping board to cool before being cut, and the next chicken can be put into the pot; a batch of freshly marinated roast duck and beef ribs are also put into the oven to be baked... The agile lich flashes around in the kitchen, and dishes are baked one after another.
Then, the sounds of "ding ding ding ding" rang out one after another. They were the guests' orders.
Winston and Andre both chose the soy sauce chicken rice, something they had never tried before, while Vivian preferred the roast duck rice with plum sauce. Of course, the cool, crispy caramel egg and milk pudding was a crowd favorite; Vivian even devoured three bowls in one sitting.
At noon, most of the guests chose the novel and rare rice, while Mrs. Durand de Canberra, who was very picky about everything, ordered a submarine beef rib sandwich set.
The only meals that needed to be prepared separately were those for Baron and Lady Chandler, as the Baron had a severe nut allergy and had to switch cooking oil from peanut oil to butter, while his wife was a vegetarian.
Of course, "vegetarian" is just the most general term, and everyone has a different definition of vegetarianism: some people strictly adhere to a vegetarian diet and do not eat any meat, poultry, eggs, fish, or dairy products, and only supplement the nutrients needed by the body through soy protein; while some people accept eggs and milk; some people think that fish can be eaten... In short, not eating red meat from beef, mutton, or pork is probably the only thing they have in common.
Jiang You had specifically asked the housekeeper to confirm that Baroness Eleanor van Chand could be considered a non-strict pescatarian, meaning she abstained from eating red meat and poultry, but could eat eggs, milk, fish, shrimp and other river and seafood.
This lax vegetarian diet has also become a trend among the aristocracy in recent years. These vegetarian aristocrats believe that killing animals with hooves and claws is cruel, but they have no taboos on eating eggs that may not hatch life, milk that can be obtained without killing, and fish and shrimp that have neither hooves nor claws.
Jiang You: “…” I always feel like something is weird!
This may be a way for hypocritical nobles to comfort themselves and atone for their sins, or it may be simply because the soy product technology of this era was not well developed. If you don’t eat these eggs, milk and seafood, you probably won’t be able to take in enough protein needed by the human body... In short, Baroness Chandler can eat vegetable salads, fish, eggs and dairy products, and what she orders in the morning is a bowl of hand-rolled noodles with scrambled eggs and tomatoes.
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