Chapter Nineteen: Spaghetti

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Mizuhara Fuyumi—that was the name of the “examiner” for Feng Xue’s current training session, a member of the same graduating class as Kojirou Shinomiya and the owner of an Italian restaurant.

She always looked listless, perpetually half-squatting in her seat, staring with dead fish eyes.

By rights, with such a lack of expression and emotion, she should be more akin to Rei Ayanami, but in Feng Xue’s view, she resembled L a lot more…

As Feng Xue was silently ridiculing her, Mizuhara Fuyumi finally opened her mouth—

“I want to eat pasta.”

With that, she pointed at the box on the table and added, “Within four hours.”

“So… do we draw lots?” The students glanced at each other, but still went up one by one to draw.

“Group Thirteen? Tch, how ominous…” Feng Xue glanced at his slip, looked around, and soon spotted a girl holding the same number.

“Huh? It’s the little secretary!”

“Who are you calling little secretary? I have a name!” The girl’s cheeks puffed up with annoyance.

“Uh, you’re called… Mito… Mito Men’en? No, that’s an old guy… Mito Sayaka? That’s not right either, she’s the round-faced one. Mito Yumei? Never mind, following the unwritten rule that characters in the same series who aren’t family don’t share surnames, you definitely aren’t a Mito… What’s your surname? Ah, Shinhō! That’s it! From the family of herbalists (the Overlords), yes, that’s right, it’s you—Shinhō Hisako!” Feng Xue clapped his hands, only to find the girl’s expression even more displeased.

Feng Xue laughed awkwardly, and the two fell into an uncomfortable silence.

“There’s nothing here but condiments!” Suddenly, a student cried out in alarm. Several others who had started boiling water rushed over to check, and indeed, there was nothing else.

Everyone’s eyes shifted to the “examiner,” only to see Mizuhara Fuyumi glance out the window with those soul-dead eyes—“Isn’t all the food outside?”

The moment she spoke, most of the candidates dashed out at once. Only Yuuki and Ryouko, who happened to be in the same group, stayed behind, frowning in thought—the Polar Star Dorm people really were a cut above the rest!

“You noticed too?” Hisako’s expression was grave as she looked at Feng Xue.

“Yes, this is mountainous terrain. There can’t possibly be any wheat, and even if there were, harvesting it isn’t easy, let alone the fact that there’s no sign of a millstone or similar tools here.” Feng Xue cast another glance at Mizuhara Fuyumi, still squatting indifferently on her stool. “No wonder the other groups have a two-hour exam, but we’ve got four hours…”

“Do you have any ideas?” Feng Xue turned to look at the little secretary. He didn’t see any confusion on her face—in fact, aside from being meek before Erina Nakiri, this little secretary was usually as icy as a queen.

“Roughly. Just don’t drag me down.” She shot Feng Xue a cold look and stepped outside.

Feng Xue could only follow, his mind whirling with thoughts of pasta.

When most people think of Western cuisine, French food is what first comes to mind, but in reality, Italian cuisine is the true mother of all Western food. Its hallmark is the pursuit of pure, unadulterated flavors, bringing out the very best of each ingredient. In terms of doneness, most dishes are cooked to medium, with some even intentionally left rare.

Pasta, the signature of Italian cuisine, is known for its al dente texture—springy, chewy, and perfectly paired with a rich, thick sauce that’s both hearty and refreshing.

But in fact, pasta itself was spread from China around the eighth century. There’s even a rumor that both pizza and pasta were brought to Italy by Marco Polo, though both existed long before his time. Whether Marco Polo ever set foot in China remains a mystery.

Of course, all this was just what the schoolteachers had said. Feng Xue had only ever made pasta by following recipes—while the results tasted good, that was mostly thanks to the “gourmet cell” that enhanced his sense of flavor. After all, the pursuit of original taste in Italian cuisine matched that ability perfectly.

Still, when it came to creativity, Feng Xue couldn’t measure up to other chefs.

On the other hand, he had his own cheat. As someone who’d experienced every kind of culinary manga, his mind was bursting with bizarre ideas. Just thinking about noodles, he could summon a flood of odd information. For the current situation, the most suitable seemed to be the noodle challenge from the Guangzhou Special Chef Exam in “Cooking Master Boy”—noodle, but not noodle.

“Catfish noodles have that chewiness, but even if I could find catfish here, there’s no dried squid. Beef noodles? No way I’m butchering a cow just for shreds of meat. Rice noodles? Don’t make me laugh—there aren’t even terraced fields around, and finding rice would be harder than finding wheat!”

As Feng Xue wandered the mountains, he picked fresh vegetables along the way. At least Mizuhara Fuyumi wasn’t entirely merciless—she’d provided condiments. Without fresh herbs, cooking would be a nightmare.

…

Half an hour later, Feng Xue returned to the kitchen with a basket of vegetables, only to find the little secretary staring at a skimmer, a bundle of trimmed bracken set beside her.

“Hmm? Planning to make bracken starch noodles? As expected from a family of herbalists. Still… bracken is carcinogenic, you know!” Feng Xue took out some potatoes and began peeling them.

“Hah? Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of the agent released last year that neutralizes ptaquiloside in bracken?” Hisako shot him a look as if he were a country bumpkin. Feng Xue sighed inwardly—he’d forgotten that this world revolved around cooking, and anything related to food was exhaustively researched. Inventing an anti-carcinogen was perfectly normal here.

“So why the long face? Making bracken starch noodles isn’t exactly quick!” Feng Xue grated the potatoes while watching her.

“I can’t help it! I’ve got the right size skimmer, but I can’t make perfect noodles!” Hisako clutched her head in frustration. Feng Xue looked into the pot and saw dark vermicelli strands of uneven thickness. For regular vermicelli, this would suffice, but for the exam, which called for “noodles,” it was inadequate. The starch paste’s consistency hadn’t been mastered—a matter of experience, really. Perfect bracken starch noodles took dozens, if not hundreds, of attempts; textbooks alone weren’t enough.

“What about a pasta maker?” Feng Xue looked around. Of course, Mizuhara Fuyumi hadn’t provided one—she was too mischievous for that!

“Never mind. I’ll handle the raw materials. In exchange, you’ll take care of the cooking.” Feng Xue took over her task and handed her the basket of vegetables. He’d originally planned to make cold potato noodles, but since she already had bracken starch prepared, he didn’t need to bother.

Instead of making cold jelly, Feng Xue added a little water to the starch and began kneading.

Unlike flour, starch requires heat to develop its viscosity, but otherwise, the process is similar.

…

It might seem, then, that scalding the dough would suffice for noodles, so why had the little secretary gone with vermicelli instead?

The answer lay in timing.

After kneading, noodle dough needs to rest to achieve optimal flavor upon cooking, but that takes time, and this exam had a fixed time limit—not enough for experiments.

Also, without a pasta machine, making perfect cylindrical spaghetti was nearly impossible. Cutting by hand would yield flat or wide noodles, which risked being marked as failures (even though wide noodles do exist in Italy, they’re classified differently).

But for Feng Xue, these problems were trivial—because he had Ripple Hamon!

With the “gourmet cell” enhancing his senses, Feng Xue could use Ripple to tune into the precise state of every bit of starch, kneading the perfect dough, and then—

He dusted the board with dry starch and began pulling noodles.

That’s right—he went with hand-pulled noodles. He might not manage twenty folds or a perfect skein in one go, but making even, springy noodles was no problem.

“Hey! How are you going to pull noodles without alkaline water?” The little secretary, in the midst of preparing pasta sauce, immediately protested. She’d thought this guy was reliable, but he didn’t even know the basics of noodle-making! If hand-pulled noodles were possible, wouldn’t she have tried it herself? Or did he think she couldn’t do it?

“Relax!” Feng Xue’s hands trembled—not with nerves, but with the Ripple running through the gluten.

As a technique based on vibrations, Ripple Hamon worked on anything that could transmit them. Combined with his gourmet senses, he could even alter the structure of ingredients to a certain extent. If he weren’t worried about being too conspicuous, he could have used an AT Field to compress the dough into a single noodle.

But that was his limit—he could only adjust the ingredient’s structure within the bounds of textbook theory. If the textbook said a certain gluten structure produced a certain texture, he could replicate it, but nothing more. He was far from the level of affecting the dough with internal energy to create textures it didn’t inherently possess, as in “Shaolin Soccer.”

He even considered that next time, he should visit the “God of Cookery” universe and learn how to process ingredients with internal energy.

But what was still an immature skill for Feng Xue was astonishing to Hisako. As he shook and stretched the dough, the noodles collided and elongated with every slap on the board, making her heart tremble each time!

Bang!

When she snapped out of it, Feng Xue already had a handful of perfectly even, dark noodles.

“Whew, that wore me out. I’ll let the noodles rest. The rest is up to you, all right?” With that, Feng Xue sat down like a shopkeeper washing his hands of responsibility, and promptly drifted off into a daze…