Chapter 9

As soon as we arrived at the mansion I immediately went to the kitchen, which surprises the cook and staff inside.

"Young Master, what brought you here? Dinner is still being prepared." Ask by the head cook of the house, Gaspar in a surprised tone as he looked at me with astonishment in his eyes.

I usually don't enter this place except if I requested something.

"I want to try something new today so Gaspar come and help me with this." I said as I gave him the giant tomato.

"A water sack? This is a rare fruit but, Young Master, what are you going to do with this?" Ask by Gaspar while giving me a puzzled look.

"I want to make something different for dinner today and I call it pizza. And this water sack I would like to rename it as tomato, and it will be the main ingredient for this night's dinner." I said as I proudly presented the big tomato in my hand.

"To-Tomato? But Master Lucas I can't think of a dish that uses this fruit as the main ingredient. You might not be familiar with this, since it's a rare fruit, but it mostly contains water and seeds, and it's not even delicious at all. It will either leave a sour or no flavor in your mouth once you eat it." Gaspar said quickly while giving me a strange look.

"Don't worry, I know what I'm doing. Trust me these tomatoes are the perfect ingredients for tonight's dish. But before all of that, we must prepare the other ingredients first. So Gaspar hurry up and prepares some eggs, flour, salt, butter, and cheese while I boil down this tomato in the pot."

I'm supposed to cook the sauce on my own but all of them went pale when they saw me grab a pot and immediately stop me from cooking saying that I'm not allowed to cook, and my father might scold them for it.

So I had no other choice and I decided to just give them the instructions while they did all the work.

"Young Master, this is Jane and Ben. They will be the ones to assist you with making your pizza sauce while I prepare the usual meal." Gaspar said as he immediately pushed them to my side.

Jane and Ben are siblings and they have been serving the family for 5 years now, both of them are in their early 20s.

"Young Master, Rest assured that we will do our best to follow all your instructions for preparing this pizza tonight." Eagerly said by Ben.

"Yes, that's right. But this is the first time that I heard about food called pizza. So please forgive us if we don't reach your expectation for tonight," Jane said anxiously.

"Thank you, I know that this is something new for both of you so you don't have to be anxious if we fail in making it, but I do assure you that this is one of the best foods you can have and it might become everyone's favorite." I proudly said as they looked at me with faces full of uncertainty.

"By the way, Gaspar since you've been preparing some bread, can you help me have a separate dough of bread for pizza. I need it to be flattened and make sure it's thin alright." Because I'm aiming to have this thin crust pizza as it's my favorite.

"You just need to prepare it using the same recipe as our usual bread but I need you to shape it into a flat disk." I requested to him.

"You want it to be made into a thin flat disk. Sir, are you sure about this? If we baked them in the oven they would be crispy and full of air. Do you really want that kind of bread?" Gaspar said with a disturb faced.

It feels like he is Judging my decision as if I had sullied the sacred ritual of baking bread.

"Yes, but we're not going to bake it immediately. We need to wait for the sauce to be cooked before putting a lot of grated cheese on top of it. The good thing about pizza is that we can use anything as our topping." I said confidently.

Gaspar looked at me for a second before saying in a worried voice "Young Master, That water sack, I mean the tomato you just brought for the main ingredients tonight is really sour and doesn't go with the bread as a soup base." Gaspar said as he carefully explained everything. I think he misunderstood me and thought that I will be making this tomato as a soup.

"No, you just have to trust me with this and we're not making a soup out of this fruit. We need to spread it evenly on the top of the dough before baking it and I'll give you a taste of it once we're done with it." I said as I assured him once again before leaving him standing there lost in his thoughts.

It took us a while before getting the desired shape and texture of the dough, but after a few trials, we managed to make it in time.

"The shape of this dough is really strange and it's too thin. I don't think this would work, Master Lucas." Gaspar said still unconvinced.

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I didn't pay him any attention as I was already looking forward to having my first modern meal.

"Where's the tomato sauce? Get me some scoop and spread it evenly." I said to Jane as she picked up a ladle and gently poured the sauce into the dough.

"Now Ben put some bacon bits on top of it and cover it with plenty of cheese," I said eagerly while looking at the first prototype of pizza in this world.

As we got everything ready, I immediately instructed Gaspar to bake the pizza for several minutes and check it once in a while to see if it was already cooked.

While all of us were waiting for the outcome of the first pizza, I also started to do my own set.

They tried to stop me once again but I strongly insisted on doing it so I told them that this was specially prepared for my father.

When I finished my set of pizza, a sudden burst of aroma began to spread in the room which immediately got all their attention.

"Wow, it smells amazing."

"I can't believe that this fragrance came from that bread. It smells so different."

"I can't wait to have a taste of it."

"It must be delicious."

"I think it's already cooked now. Let us take a look," I said to Gaspar as I order him to opened the oven.

There we see laid a piece of bloated bread.

What happen to it?

I thought of as Gaspar removed the bloated bread from the oven and set it on a plate.

"Wow, look at it, it became bigger." I heard them say but I think this is an insult rather a compliment.

"But a lot of toppings fall off and look the top layer of bread it's burnt." Yeah definitely an insult.

"I think it looks okay. This must be the pizza that Master Lucas is talking about." Said by someone who is trying to save me some face.

"Yeah, somehow it looks close to the original concept I had in mind." I clearly lied and I said that with a forced smile on my face.

What can I do? I'm so confident about my skills that I expected everything to be perfect but somehow it seems like I have forgotten something important in making a pizza.

The pizza looks weird as the topmost layer has risen and now looks like a small hill, but overall we managed to recreate it with a close resemblance to pizza or should I call it a pie instead?

But except for its weird shape, the pizza still looks amazing since it has a lot of melted cheese with cooked onions and bacon on top of it.

The sauce also helps in making it more appetizing to the eyes.

"Let's name this pizza as bacon with cheese-flavored pizza and Gaspar lend me a knife. I need to slice it into pieces."

After slicing the pizza, I immediately took one of the pieces into my mouth and it didn't taste as good as I expected, but I'll make do with it for now.

The cheese on top is perfect since it has a sweet-salty taste.

It completely complements the texture of the bread but it was ruined by a strong sour taste and I could barely taste the bacon.

I looked at the others to see their reaction and found out that all of them seemed to like it. Well, except for me.

Even though this is not the best pizza I had in my life, for people like them who got their first exposure to the concept of modern food from the earth, it's already enough to overwhelm their tongue with flavors.

Gaspar had some tears in his eyes while eating in the corner, while Ben and Jane were busy talking to each other, exclaiming and praising how delicious pizza is.

As I'm about to grab another piece the door suddenly opens as Michael and Sandra come in with an intoxicated looks on their faces.

"What is that smell?" Michael said while snipping his nose.

"Is this the food you prepared Young Master? It smells good." Sandra said as she praised me with a surprised look in her eyes.

"Here, have some, and tell me your opinion about it." I said while offering them the slices of pizza.

Michael quickly took a big bite and in just a few munches his eyes lit up as smiles filled his face.

This world is unfair, whether on earth or here.

I thought that I had the chance to prove something worthy in my life, but then this man only needed to smile and everyone else would become the side character.

If he appeared on earth I'm sure that every commercial on television would have his face.

As I averted my gaze away from this man, I met Sandra's gaze.

"Wait, why is your face turning red again? Do you perhaps have an allergy to the food?" I said while looking at her.

She tried to avoid my gaze as sweat formed on her face.

"No, I'm alright, it's just the heat coming off from the oven." She said with an awkward smile.

"Are you sure you might –"my words were cut off as Michael suddenly grabbed the pizza on my plate.

"Michael, what are you doing? That's mine." I said in protests.

"This is the first time I tasted something like this and I can't help myself from eating more." He said while looking at the pizza in his hands.

"Fine, you can have it. There's still a lot of it waiting to be cooked. You might as bring some of this to other knights." I said as I pointed at the bunch of pizza being cooked inside the oven.

"What's the name of this food?" asked by Sandra.

"I call it pizza. This is actually just a trial for this food. Since there are a lot of variants that we can make from it but were missing a lot of ingredients, we can only have a few options." I said while looking at the few remaining vegetables on the table.

"So this was called Pizza. Master Lucas, Is this expensive to make? Can I eat this every day?" Michael asked.

"It's not really expensive to make but we just lack the most important ingredient, which is this fruit. We must cultivate it first if we want to have this food every day."

"It would be great if I can use my plot of land to plant all of this fruit so that I can eat it anytime I want." Said by Michael as father also granted him a small plot of land for farming.

"I'm actually planning to serve it for today's dinner to see if father would allow me to cultivate it inside the city."

"Sir Hubert would definitely agree with that request of yours and no one can reject this food, but I'm not sure if he would allow you to plant it on a large scale since this fruit doesn't really have any value when it comes to merchants." Sandra said to me as she looked at the ingredients on the table.

"I already have a plan on how I can commercialize this fruit, and earn a ton of money from it. It's just that I need more time to implement them all." I said as I looked at an empty jar in the corner when a new idea suddenly pops into my mind.

As I took another bite of my pizza something amazing happened this time, the taste have changed completely making it the tastiest pizza I've ever had.

I don't know how it happens but I guess it's because the flavor has completely fused into it creating this masterpiece.

I guess I have just taken out this pizza in the oven earlier than it should be. Causing it to have an imperfect taste but now that time has passed by all the flavors have finally risen.

The only thing that bothers me is the imperfect look of this pizza which looks like a muffin pie.