Reborn in Japan as a Chef God
Chapter 379 - 378: Attributes of Ingredients (Part 1)

Chapter 379: Chapter 378: Attributes of Ingredients (Part 1)

Thud! Thud! Thud!

The frog continued to kneel on the porcelain, bowing incessantly.

"Eat, I want to eat!"

In those tear-filled eyes was a clear expression of hunger, "I’m so hungry! I want to be satisfied!"

"If I don’t eat something soon, I’m going to die!"

The creature wailed.

"Die?"

Xia Yu was curious, "You all can starve to death if you don’t eat?"

"Yes, we will die!!"

"Then what do you want to eat?" Xia Yu smiled, "Also, since you’re my guest, you have to pay. Simply put, I don’t work for free. You need to give money."

"Money?" The frog on the porcelain was once again confused.

"Fine, bartering works too..."

"Wait! Lord Xia Yu!"

The frog scuttled up, dove into the porcelain, and came out holding a plump fish with beautiful patterns all over its body.

"This is..."

Xia Yu was slightly surprised.

This plump fish was a pufferfish.

But it was July, summertime, not the season for pufferfish. Where did this spirit find one?

Clearly, the pufferfish was already dead.

But unlike other fish that need to be fresh, pufferfish can be eaten when dead; it’s still a top-quality ingredient.

"One pufferfish for a meal, that’s enough!"

He pulled the door open, letting the creature inside.

After locking the door, Xia Yu walked to the kitchen counter and casually asked, "What do you want to eat?"

As soon as he finished speaking, thud, thud, thud, the sound of footsteps, a pot of freshly cooked ’sukiyaki’ was seized by the frog, who took it to the porcelain and, unfazed by the heat, started gobbling it down with its hands.

In Xia Yu’s stunned gaze, within two or three minutes, the frog had devoured all the food in the pot.

But then it started crying again.

"No, no!" the frog spirit wailed, "This isn’t the right food!"

"This is meant for humans, not for you!"

Xia Yu was speechless.

A spirit’s hunger was completely different from human hunger.

Human hunger had different levels; the basic desire was to fill the stomach, the higher was to enjoy the food, like appreciating a beautiful scene.

To Xia Yu, spirits had no desire to fill their bellies, just an intense craving for the culinary spirit!

So.

Xia Yu went to prepare another pot of ’sukiyaki.’

The ingredients, from beef, mushrooms, tofu to chrysanthemum greens, cabbage, and burdock, were all ordinary, with no fantasy ingredients.

After practicing for over a month, Xia Yu’s familiarity with Main General Liangzi’s ’sukiyaki’ recipe had reached almost the highest level. When lucky, he could even make a shining dish, blending ’cream matsutake’ and ’beef pig bird meat’ in one pot.

There was no need to cut corners this time.

After all, it wasn’t the ’Fierce Ice Fresh Carving Mountain’ recipe. Very popular, Xia Yu used half an hour to prepare a brand new pot of sukiyaki and brought it to the frog spirit.

"This is different, different!"

Taking a bite, the frog spirit froze like a statue on the porcelain, then wiped its tears after a while and continued eating.

Not long after.

Xia Yu sent the creature that came to visit away.

As they parted, the frog spirit was no longer dispirited like at the start and did a 360-degree flip on the porcelain to properly bid farewell to Xia Yu, "Thank you, Lord Xia Yu!"

Beep.

Xia Yu closed the door, unexpectedly receiving a system notice:

"Fame Points +1000."

He was stunned, not expecting to gain fame points from a spirit. Xia Yu planned to return to Tokyo, and after a culinary duel with Yuchuan Ayaka, he’d use his accumulated fame points to cultivate the ’Rainbow Tree’ in one go!

Before that, he naturally had to find every possible way to accumulate as many fame points as possible.

A base of one hundred thousand, with no upper limit!

He put spirits aside for the moment. Xia Yu went to retrieve the pufferfish left by the frog, put it in water, and washed off the fine sand and dust on the fish’s surface.

"Is this a farmed pufferfish, or a wild one?" Xia Yu then placed the pufferfish on the cutting board.

In Neon, pufferfish was a gourmet delicacy on par with Kobe beef.

But pufferfish was a top ingredient, as well as a top poison.

Liver, eyes, blood, and so on all contained deadly toxins without antidotes. Eating a needle-tip-sized dose would always prove fatal.

Farmed pufferfish, strictly controlling the salt amount, had very weak toxins and could be completely detoxified after chef processing. Even the liver could be eaten raw.

But wild pufferfish were different.

"Dialysis Eye!"

Xia Yu didn’t easily activate the super vision, opting instead for a lower-tier visual talent.

"Not long dead, death occurred within the past hour."

"A large amount of toxins accumulate in the blood, guts, eye position, it seems to be a wild pufferfish."

Xia Yu was no stranger to pufferfish as an ingredient.

When communicating with the Chef God Space, out of boredom, he occasionally had the system provide pufferfish ingredients for practice and used the system to check the toxin content in the fish meat.

If processing failed, the toxin content exceeded standard levels, meaning a complete failure.

"Perfect for practice!"

This seemed to be his first time wielding a knife in the real world, and Xia Yu was interested. Just as he grabbed a small knife to remove the pufferfish’s eyes, the pufferfish on the cutting board suddenly moved.

Not dead yet?

Xia Yu put down the knife and reactivated the "Dialysis Eye."

"Still alive?" He slightly frowned. Wild pufferfish had to be kept in saline water, and not just any salt; it had to be sea salt and coarse salt. Xia Yu found it troublesome, so he decided to just kill it.

Thud thud!

At this moment, Yuchuan Meisha called from outside the door, "Open up, Yu!"

He had no choice but to put down the knife.

Yuchuan Meisha strode in angrily, "Yu, did you just privately cook for those things?"

"Yes."

"Yuchuan Temple forbids them from interacting with chefs!" Yuchuan Meisha said seriously, "It’s a form of protection. If, I say if, you fail to satisfy them and provoke their anger, you will..."

"In any case, they’re very dangerous!"

Yuchuan Meisha was genuinely upset, "Next time, if they sneakily come find you, you call out loudly for help!"

"I feel like they’re easily satisfied..." Xia Yu scratched his face, baffled.

"That’s not the case!" Yuchuan Meisha said, "Just like humans, their tasting abilities are graded. The lowest-grade spirits only know how to eat, but every chef with culinary heart has the ability to satisfy them."

Speaking, Yuchuan Meisha’s gaze shifted to the pufferfish on the cutting board, then paused.

"This pufferfish..."

She quickly approached and stared intently at the pufferfish, only speaking softly after a while, "Is this the ingredient they gave you?"

"What about it?"

Xia Yu raised an eyebrow.

He had evaluated it with the "Dialysis Eye," and the whole fish had a blue quality, which was pretty good. But seeing Yuchuan Meisha’s hesitant, struggling-to-speak expression, Xia Yu keenly realized that the ingredient brought by the spirit wasn’t so simple.