God of Systems: Maker of Heroes and Villains

[A/N: If you're not interested in cooking/culinary stuff, feel free to skip this chapter.]

The next day, Keith joined the others on the beach. This time too, he set up a stall, but it was pretty small compared to the first time. Just one box filled with ice, salt and fish. Though, on the side, there was a large clay pot that he had managed to get on his first day of trading.

He also brought a fourth fish with him and used it to trade for various ingredients that he wanted so he could create the perfect dish. There were two wide wooden logs placed side by side, one of which Keith used as a stool and he placed a medium sized copper pot on the other.

'This is going to be physically straining.' he thought as he tossed in some Yakka flour that he and his team made before adding some water into it. He then mixed it into a thick slurry, using his hands to break up the clumps of yakka flour that was floating on the top.

Once the mixture was without any clumps, he poured it into the clay pot which was placed on top of three similar sized big stones. It was a time consuming process and by the time he was done, almost two hours had passed.

He then rented a large pot that was slightly smaller than the one he had, and made fireplace for it too. Once the setup was complete, he made a fire and got the pots heating up. He tossed in some sugar into the yakka slurry to give it some kind of taste, but made sure that he didn't add too much as he wanted the sweetness to be subtle.

"Now, there's no need for me to keep stirring this thing until most of the water is absorbed and evaporated." he muttered as he grabbed a smooth granite stone and planned to use it as a cutting board.

He then grabbed the copper pot and dug into the multiple sacks that were filled with the things he had used the fourth fish to trade for. He tossed in a lot of tomatoes, onions, chillies, bell peppers, ginger, garlic and multiple other things.

His plan was simple, to make a dish inspired by the beloved food of various African countries which was commonly known as Fufu. And most of the time, fufu was eaten with some kind of thick stew which was what he planned on making while the slurry cooked.

He chopped up most of the ingredients, but paused when he got to the onions. He took out a small pocket watch from his pocket, which he borrowed from Clara and checked the time.

'10:13... yeah, I don't have enough time and I'm also feeling lazy so let's take the easy way out of this.' he thought and began to peel the onions.

Originally, he planned on cutting the onions into extremely small pieces, almost 1 to 2 millimetre cubes as it would give a great texture to the stew, but now that he was stressed for time, he cut them up into large chunks instead and planned on grinding them later with a stone.

Once every ingredient that needed to be chopped was chopped, Keith tossed most them into the second pot and added in some water for them to boil. On the side, he grabbed a large but smooth wooden stick and used it to stir the Yakka slurry that had begun to thicken up.

After making sure that there was nothing sticking to the bottom of the pot, he took out a fish from the ice box and filleted it. Once decent sized chunks were cut, he placed them on the side as they were still very cold and slightly frozen.

Minutes quickly passed and during the time, Keith crushed and grinded most of the ingredients that had been boiled. Once the preparations were done, he went on to the final stage, pouring the flavourful water into the copper pot.

He tossed in some oil, ginger, garlic and a few other spices to cook them slightly before pouring in the paste that he had made a while ago. As it boiled, he added in the fish chunks along with some yakka flour to make the stew slightly thick.

The flavourful water also went in and Keith poured in more water until the pot was 90% full.

"Now I only need to wait for this stew to cook but damn... this fufu is going to be hard work..." he said out loud before sighing. The main pot which was filled to the brim with yakka slurry had now gone down to 70% of it's original volume.

It grabbed the stick and pushed it in, easily feeling the resistance as the mixture had now turned thick and dense. He could feel some of it stuck to the bottom of the pan, so he did his best to scrape it used all of his strength to move the stick, mixing up the fufu more.

A few minutes of hard work later, he pulled the stick out and dipped his hands in a bowl of clean water before he started to scrape off the fufu from the stick. He dipped his hands into the bowl multiple times to make sure that the fufu didn't stick to his palms or burn him.

Once he got most of it out, he poured some water over the fire and doused it. One the side, the stew was still cooking and after checking the time, he could tell that by the time the stew cooked completely, the break time would start.

Which was exactly what happened. A long line formed in front of his stall as Amelia, Clara and everyone else in his team had spread the word about today's stall. This was because Keith had noticed a trend in the market and that was ready made food.

People only got 2 hours of time to take a break and everyone valued it a lot. Cooking itself took up a huge chunk of their break time and due to this, the stalls that sold jerky, fruits, berries and any kind of ready to eat foods, were always in high demand.

Keith looked at the long line and grinned, "Now this is what I call a business."