Capítulo 8: Steaks and Eggs
Constructive criticism is greatly appreciated, so, if you spot a mistake or something that could be a plot hole, please do make a paragraph comment about it; I check them all and they're really appreciated.
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With both the affinity and compatibility tests over, the time had come for first part of the final test, the cooking. The cultivators had each been sent to small "cooking stations", consisting of: a small fireplace, a big block of wood to use as a table, some firewood, a bit of thatch, a flint and steel, a fire poker, a simple pan, a spatula, and finally some hidden ingredients. As Claire took a look around, she could see the number of cultivators had dwindled by over half, leaving only around a hundred cultivators left.
A middle-aged man walked up to stand in front of all the cultivators, he clapped his hands together loudly to gather the attention on him. "We will now start the next test. In this test you will be cooking a fried chicken egg and a steak, you'll be given 3 eggs and two cuts of steak, but you only need to prepare one of each. You have each been given two plates, one for each dish; once you've finished a dish, call me over. If you lose all your ingredients, then you've failed this part of the test and will have to leave this area, but you can maybe make up for it in the next part."
The cultivators continued looking towards him, waiting for him to continue; so, he clapped his hands once more, before shouting a single sentence. "What are you waiting for? Begin cooking!" With that said, most of the cultivators started looking at the ingredients, with a few starting to light a fire. Claire was one of those who started with lighting the fire, as she could look at the ingredients while the fire spread across the wood.
She started with laying a somewhat square layer of wood in the fireplace, before moving up one level to do the same, just from another direction; She continued this until she had used around two thirds of the firewood. Then she took the thatch and laid it in a pile on one of the fireplace's stones, next she used the flint and steel to start a fire in the thatch, which she carefully blew on to get a good fire going in the thatch, before finally laying it on top of the wood tower. She waited to confirm that the fire started to grip the wood, before moving her attention to the ingredients.
Claire removed the lid from the ingredients and found a stack of two plates with three eggs and two cuts of steak on top, mostly like the examinator had said, the only difference being the butter besides the other two ingredients. The steak looked like a regular steak, but the eggs were quite a bit bigger, probably 1.5 times the size of a regular chicken egg on earth. 'even though it's bigger, hopefully, it will still function like an egg from earth.' She looked back to the fire, which, after a few minutes had started to burn steadily.
'I think I'll start with a sunny side up egg to experiment with; if that works as I want, then I might make some scrambled eggs to go with it.' She grabbed the pan and placed it on top of the tower, to let it heat up a little. While the pan was doing its thing, she took a little butter and an egg; the butter was placed on the pan as soon as the pan was a little warm. Once the butter had barely melted, she cracked the egg and carefully poured out its content, making this the largest fried egg she has made, as it had a little over three times the volume of a regular earth egg.
With the egg out on the pan, she lifted the pan above the "stove" surface of the tower, to give her a better control of the heat. She made sure the heat of the pan never became too high, as that would over cook the underside of the egg, while the top side remained uncooked. When the egg white had nearly stiffened fully on the top, she moved it over to the free plate, before covering said plate with the lid that hid the ingredients.
The time had now come for the scrambled eggs, but as she lacked a bowl to mix the eggs in in advance, she had to settle for the pan; therefore, instead of placing the pan back into the fire, she put it down on the wooden block so it could lose some heat. After she had placed the pan on the wood, she added some butter to allow it to be molten from the start. The pan had soon cooled adequately for her to proceed to the next step, and the butter had also melted. She then added the two eggs and started mixing them up, only stopping once they had a pretty good and consistent color.
She moved the pan back to the fire and let it rest on the "stove". After waiting for a bit of time, the pan had started giving off some heat, and some of the egg touching the pan should've started to set. So, Claire began to gently scrape across the pan, which allowed for the runny egg to take the place of the set egg; the gentle movements made sure that the set eggs didn't break into small pieces, but instead gathered into fluffy clumps of egg.
This process was continued until the runny egg stopped replacing the egg she pushed away, then she did a few more scrapes, before moving it all over to the plate with the fried egg; moving the eggs over at this time, would allow for them to finish their cooking on the plate using the residual heat in them. She placed the lit back over the dish and called over the examinator, who came over after finishing another cultivator's dish.
When he came over, he took a quick look at the wooden block. "I believe that you'll serve me some eggs first, is that correct?" Claire removed the lid and lifted the plate up to him. "That is correct, one sunny side up fried egg and some scrambled eggs." He brought out a fork and took the plate from Claire. He brought the fork down to the fried egg and cut off a piece to eat; next he popped the yolk, so it flowed over the egg white to give some extra taste. After he had taken a few more bites, he moved on to the scrambled eggs.
"Good job, I'll be looking forward to your steaks." With that said, the examinator left to examinate the next person. *Phew*, 'Good thing that he liked it, now I just need to take care of the steak; I think medium rare will be good.' She placed the pan back unto the "stove", then she spread the two steaks out on their plate. 'A little over two minutes on each side should do it, and that streak of fat will probably need 15-20 seconds on the side, even though that might be a little hard with only a spatula.
She took a good bit of the remaining butter and put that on the pan, and once it had melted, the first steak went on; the second steak came half a minute later, and a really nice sizzle could be heard from the first steak, and soon the second joined in the sizzling. After a little over two minutes had passed, she got the spatula under the first steak and lifted it to around an 80° angle, with the big line of fat facing the pan. Unluckily, she turned the spatula a little too much, so the steak fell over on its other side, therefore putting a forceful restart to the balancing act.
She managed to get it balanced the second time around, resulting in even more sizzling from molten fat. When the 15 seconds had passed, she flipped it back down on its uncooked side, revealing a nice, glistering, golden-brown surface. Next, she just repeated the process with the other steak, this time doing it first try. Once another minute had passed, Claire put her thumb and middle finger together and felt the firmness just beneath the thumb, before pressing carefully on the first stoke. 'Nope, not yet, a bit more time is needed.'
She continued feeling the steak every ten seconds, before taking it off the pan after the fifth press. Then she moved on to the second steak, which was done around 30 seconds later. For that really good finish, she had stacked the steaks slightly, and finally poured the juices from the steaks back over them. She put the lid over them and let them sit for a minute or two, to really soak up those juices. Then she called over the examinator once more, which took an additional minute as he had to finish somewhere else first.
The examinator walked over to Claire's "station" once more. This time she had picked up the plate from the start. "Here you go." She said and handed over the plate once he had arrived at her "station". "Ohh, this looks quite good." He received the plate with a look of pleasant surprise and squatted down, so he could use the wooden block to support the plate as he cut the steak.
With a knife in one hand and a fork in the other, he began cutting into the steak. When the steak was cut open, some of the juices spilled onto the plate, and a delicious smell was released. The meat had a nice rosy-pink color inside, along with a beautiful golden-brown surface. As the examinator bit into meat, a great taste filled his mouth, and he began nodding in approval immediately. "This is really good, if it had had some seasoning, then you might have been able to convince me that this was soul beast meat."
He got up after eating a few more bites, but not before leaving a clean set of cutlery on the plate. He looked at Claire with a smile. "Great job, you'll probably pass no matter your result in the combat part, and as a special service for a really great dish, you will be allowed to eat the rest of it." With that being said, he walked away from Claire's station. Claire decided to take a seat and finish the still whole steak, after which she just sat around and enjoyed watching the burning tower of wood.
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