Iris felt relieved as she wrote down each new recipe. She now had quite the collection of recipes on tablets thanks to the last few months. It was nice to know that her people would be able to enjoy a variety of dishes for years to come. Perhaps they would even elevate these recipes to new heights in the future. Even if that didn't happen in her own lifetime, it was still something to look forward to.
Iris was truly glad that they always set an entire day aside to practice the dishes before officially opening the restaurant. Even with this amount of time, everything was quite time-consuming and they tended to not get home until the sun was ready to set. They had got here a little after sunrise today and it was already a little bit before mid-day yet they were only now getting around to practicing the main dishes. Even after that, they'd still have to cover desserts and this week's special drink.
"Alright, let's take a break to eat and I'll explain what's up next."
Fern made sure to bring her a serving of everything and Basil brought her a cup of hot tea to enjoy with it. Iris nodded as she thanked them.
"Thank you. Is this the masala chai?"
Basil nodded before he explained.
"It wasn't too hard to make the tea blend. We have most of the spices for it. Black tea leaves, cloves, cinnamon, and peppercorns are common around here. There just isn't cardamon around here. I had a hard time getting the spices and tea to steep properly if I added the sugar and milk in during the boiling process, so I had to get the tea nice and dark before adding them in."
Iris nodded, that wasn't that surprising. She could even remember heating up a metal kettle until it whistled and then adding tea and honey to her cup at the same time only for the tea to not end up dark enough for her tastes. That had been before she transmigrated to this world and she had been using tea bags, not freshly dried tea leaves, so she hadn't been certain what to expect. She wasn't really sure how they could be boiled together all at once like she had read so long ago.
She took a moment to let her tea cool, enjoying her food as she did so. Then she took a tentative sip of her tea. The rich aromatic flavors made the tea quite fragrant and she couldn't help but moan in enjoyment at how perfect the balance of spicy, creamy, and sweet flavors was. Basil smiled, clearly pleased that she liked it. Feeling embarrassed by her habit of audibly showing her appreciation for good food, Iris cleared her throat before speaking.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
"Anyhow, let's go over the rest of the menu. I'm thinking tikka masala, butter chicken, and a version of vindaloo curry. All of these can be served with rice and we can likely premake the sauce, just cooking the meat to order before combining everything. That should make it easier to handle the larger menu this week.
The tikka masala will require roux, onions, garlic, ginger, umai leaves, tomatoes, chilis, salt, heavy cream, maple sugar, and water. I'm thinking we can use boar meat for it. The butter chicken will require roux, onions, garlic, ginger, umai leaves, tomatoes, salt, cinnamon, heavy cream, sugar, and water. Since chicken is similar to jungle fowl, we'll be using that. I know they both sound similar and they, sort of, are. It's just that tikka masala is spicier and more earthy while the butter chicken is sweeter and more creamy.
The vindaloo curry should be a more distinctly different option, though. The curry paste will require chilis, cloves, cinnamon, black pepper, ginger, garlic, maple sugar, vinegar, and water. The paste gets used to make the sauce, which also requires roux, extra garlic, extra onion, extra ginger, ground mustard, tomatoes, umai leaves, and auroch stock. I'm thinking we should use auroch for this dish, if the stock choice didn't make it obvious.
Honestly, it's a lot to keep track of due to all of the variety, but I think we can do it. Since a lot of it can be cooked ahead of time or, like the rice, cooked in larger batches the day of, it should be easy enough once we get the hang of it."
They took a break to work on the main entrees, which ended up taking up a good portion of the day, leaving only a short while before sunset to figure out dessert. Unfortunately, while most of the dishes needed substitutes, the desserts were twice as difficult to make with their original ingredients. Most required things like pistachios, cardamom, saffron, or other ingredients that they simply couldn't get their hands on. Still, Iris did her best to come up with some options for desserts that were within the spirit of representing Indian cuisine. They ended up going with a rose, cinnamon, and hazelnut cheesecake as well as a cinnamon hazelnut kheer. (rice pudding)
When it came to making substitutes for dishes, Iris often had to spend a significant amount of time carefully deliberating the matter. Some things were better off just leaving them out. Other things she could replace with something that had a similar flavor profile, color, or texture. For example, cardamom could be replaced with cinnamon since they both have a strong scent and work well in sweet dishes. Meanwhile, pistachios could be replaced with hazelnuts. However, saffron couldn't really be replaced since it wasn't like she had paprika or turmeric to emulate the flavor or color profile.
Really, Iris was just happy that she could share a variety of foods with the people in the beastworld. It would be especially nice if this encouraged them to experiment more. Maybe she would even one day end up trying a new dish herself. It would certainly be nice to have some more competition at the harvest festival cooking competition each year. She doubted she would participate as a contestant every year, but it might be nice to have more interesting dishes should she ever play the role of a judge. Either way, she could only hope to inspire others to the best of her abilities.