How To Melt An Ice Cube 17 Contest 1

The announcer called out all the chefs names and where they were affiliated with. He started with the champion from last year and worked his way to the newcomers. Each chef was directed to grab ingredients off of the table for the contest, they were only allowed to grab items at the start before the contest began.

When he called out Han Bings manors name there was a slight uproar from the crowd as Han Bing has never competed in such a contest before. They were intrigued to see who would actually dare represent him. When a tiny girl walked out that had to be told what to do they all tried to not snicker in there hearts they knew that this was another plot set against Han Bing.

Han Bing watched as Mai walked out and tried hiding his shaking hands from view. He had been terrified that something bad had happened to her. When she turned around and he saw the dark shadows under her eyes and how tired she look he almost broke his gla.s.s from clenching it so hard. "At least she is safe" he thought to himself.

"Begin" the annoncer shouted out. All the chefs quickly arranged there work area to maximize their time period. They were only given a hour and a half to make a dish worth serving to the Emperor they couldn't let this chance slip them by. Similar to cooking shows that you would find on the food network when a compet.i.tion started.

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Mai took some water and added the pork bones into it with garlic and other seasoning. She went to pure the mixture into one of the bowls on the stove. "c.r.a.p, how do I heat up this stupid stove…." Mai thought as she stood there staring at the contraption in front of her.

Mai peaked at what all the other chefs were doing and saw one open the stove and with a click lit a fire. "Okay that didn't look too hard to do" Mai thought as she tried to emulate the actions. She bent down to open her stove and discovered that it had no wood in it. "Is this Emperor f.u.c.king with me?" Mai couldn't help but ask herself.

Mai went over chef besides her, using the largest puppy dog eyes she could muster asked "is there was anywhere to get wood for the stove?"

"It's close to where you got the ingredients… But you can't go back there because of the rues." The young chef said. Honestly if it had been a guy asking he wouldn't have told them anything but he thought Mai was really cute. He watch as her eyes started to dim and she stood there in a daze. "You can have some of mine, don't forget the fire starter" the young man finally said.

As if someone had breathed some light back into her Mai almost sprung to hug the young man however just settled the grat.i.tude she was feeling with a "thank you".

After the fire was lit in the oven Mai got back onto her task of cooking. She filled another one of the bowls on the stove with water to let it boil for later.

Taking a mixing bowl Mai was about to mix some eggs into it when she saw a gigantic crack throughout the bowl. If she had tried to mix anything in the bowl it would have broke on her. "Seriously" Mai thought to herself "When will this end!"

After looking thoroughly through all of the bowls she picked the one that looked to be in the best condition.

Mai took 4 of the eggs and cracked them into the bowl and beat them until they were smooth. Next taking some flour she mixed it into the mixture, unfortunately Mai wasn't that good at eye balling amounts as she was used to using measuring cups. The mixture came out to liquidy, so Mai added even more flour. She kept adding in small amounts of flour until it reached the proper dough form.

"At least the emperor couldn't have antic.i.p.ated this" Mai thought excitedly to herself. Mai actually has a advantage of not know what type of ingredients there was available or else she would have planned to make something specific. This way there was no way that the Emperor could have ruined what she was going to do.

At this point the venue was starting to fill with the smell of food cooking. As Mai breathed in her stomach growled. She had tried eating some of the vegetables earlier but they were all root vegetables and needed to be cooked to be somewhat edible.

Mai took the dough mixture that formed and kneaded it a couple of times to form a ball inside of the bowl. Next she dumped a large amount of flour onto the table and placed the dough on it. Mai looked around for a cylinder object to roll out the dough with. All she could find as a rather large jug for wine. Rubbing flour into the jug surface, Mai gentle rolled out the dough as thinly as possible, applying more flour to the jug when it was needed.

After finding a ladle, Mai dipped it into the pork broth and took a small sip. "Nowhere near as good as back on Earth" Mai thought to herself "still better than the first meat dish that I tried here though."

Taking a rather large knife Mai cut up the carrots as well as pepper into long strips and chopped the mushrooms. Mai added them into the broth as well as more garlic and salt.

Mai took the flattened dough and squeezed it between her finger to see how thick it was. "Not completely uniform but still it will have to do" Mai thought to herself. Taking the knife that she had used earlier Mai cut the thinly pressed dough into long strips all the way down and then into thirds going the opposite direction.

Taking the dough strips she put them into the boiling salted water to cook. Glancing around Mai looked at the chef who had given her the wood earlier to see what he was making. "Well that looks interesting" Mai thought