It's a Gender-Reversed World, But I Don't Go Out Anyway - Chapter 43

Chapter 43: Cooking

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“Hello everyone, nice to see you all.”

[What’s with the video quality?!]

[This bastard finally bought a cam to show his face? Haha, you sneaky guy, trying to squeeze all our money out?]

[Just charged 100,000 won haha]

[I can see Daeju’s hands]

[He’s even streaming earlier than usual]

While viewers usually spouted nonsense and reacted to random things, they were incredibly sharp when it came to noticing details.

Yeah, after thinking about it for a while, and seeing the good response on YouTube, I decided to do camera streams, though without showing my face. It’s good for content creation, and I wasn’t particularly uncomfortable with camera streams as long as my face wasn’t shown.

Today’s content is…

“Today we’re doing a cooking stream.”

[??? What’s the occasion?]

[I bet after getting wrecked in that last cooking stream, he thought ‘I could cook better than that’ and started streaming haha]

[that = Kimchi Risotto, the blackened omurice]

[But I think Daeju will actually cook better]

[Yeah, usually tough guys are good at cooking and laundry haha. Such a feisty one haha, so domestic]

[???]

“Honestly, I haven’t been living very healthily lately.”

Delivery food, lack of exercise, vitamin deficiency… though I was barely hanging on with supplements. Exercise was really, really bothersome, so I thought I’d at least try to eat healthier. Oh, of course, after filming this content, I’ll probably go back to ordering delivery food because it’s troublesome.

Well, if it turns out to be tasty and doesn’t take too long, I might cook more in the future.

Home-cooked meals should be better than delivery food, and I’ve heard that greasy food is bad for the skin.

Though what I’m cooking today is pretty greasy too.

But for now, what’s important is trying to cook at all.

“So I’m doing a cooking stream, and while I’m at it, I got a camera to prepare for the future.”

[Prepare for the future? Looking forward to it.]

[Nothing good ever comes from expecting things from Daeju lol]

[So what are you cooking?]

[What counts as healthy food? I don’t eat healthy either]

[Salad?]

[Why is salad considered cooking when it’s all raw?]

I started taking out the ingredients I’d hurriedly prepared, and people began guessing what I was going to cook. First came onions and garlic. And carrots, which I like but unexpectedly turns out to be quite divisive.

[Is it Korean food?]

[Looking at the amount of onion and garlic, there’s a high possibility.]

[Haha Koreans use that much even in Western dishes, you rookies]

[True, can’t tell from just this]

Next, I took out peppers and a bag labeled “seafood mix.” Though it said seafood mix, it mostly consisted of just three things: squid, mussels, and shrimp. Honestly, it didn’t look very appetizing, but this dish would be a bit lacking without seafood, and I was too scared to handle fresh seafood.

With the appearance of seafood, the number of possible dishes drastically decreased.

[Ah, I think I know what it is]

[Isn’t this just ingredients to make ramen taste better? haha]

[For real, just need one Shin Ramen and it’s done haha]

[No, but there are still lots of dishes you can make with these]

[Like what?]

[I honestly can’t guess from the ingredients since I only eat food, not cook it haha]

[??]

“With today’s ingredients, I’m making Jjamppong!”

[?]

[Is that… healthy?]

[Well, it’s healthy compared to someone who only eats pizza and chicken… though maybe not so much for our Daeju who eats proper home-cooked meals]

[Are there still ungrateful daughters out there eating home-cooked meals while eyeing their parents’ money? hehe]

[You bastard!]

“Ah, everyone, the jjamppong you order and the jjamppong you make yourself are different.”

The YouTuber whose recipe I referenced made it clear. If you’re expecting the taste from Chinese restaurants, you’ll be disappointed, but if you think of it as a noodle dish you can make at home, you’ll be satisfied. Even that YouTuber said to think of it as a different dish, even if it’s similar to jjamppong in taste and ingredients.

They also added that it’s a healthier recipe than regular jjamppong.

Of course, if you follow the recipe exactly… me? I couldn’t follow it exactly. I left out ingredients I personally dislike and added more of the ones I like.

The noodles were a prime example.

[??? Why are you taking out ramen?]

[Haha I told you these were just ingredients to make ramen taste better haha]

[As expected. Just a ramen addict]

[If you’re going to do this, just buy jjamppong ramen, it’s pretty good these days]

“No, that’s not it. The recipe called for handmade noodles or Chinese noodles, but they said delivery would take too long, so I just used ramen.”

After the noodles, I took out chili oil and red pepper powder, and Chinese cabbage, which they said were essential for jjamppong.

[Looks really healthy.]

[Perfect for drinking snacks]

[But looking at the ingredients, it seems hard to mess up??]

[Then was omurice made with ingredients that were easy to mess up?]

[You have a point]

While everyone was evaluating my ingredients with uncertainty, I was the most uncertain at this moment.

The recipe called for fresh oysters, clams, shrimp, and green onions for the broth, but I had frozen seafood mix which was the opposite of fresh, and I didn’t even have anything similar to green onions. Come to think of it, green onions were in the recipe, why didn’t I buy them? For now, I had to proceed similarly somehow, so I filled a pot with water and added the mussels, cocktail shrimp, and squid from the seafood mix.

“First… I’ll make the broth”

[Aren’t you adding vegetables?]

[Won’t it just be fishy water without vegetables?]

[I eat at Chinese restaurants a lot so I know, Daeju’s doing well]

[A guy who only eats is judging cooking;; scary]

[I know because I eat a lot, I’ll admit you’re right if you can prove me wrong]

The recipe said to add green onions, but since I didn’t have any…

Green onions are spicy, so… I thought adding something else spicy would work.

“First, garlic and… pepper…”

[Is this right?]

[Uh… not sure]

[Damn, with so many people watching, is there no one who knows cooking?]

[I have a Korean cuisine certificate, but I’m busy looking at Daeju’s fingers, don’t bother me]

[Yeah, who cares about the cooking haha it’s not like we’re eating it haha]

When I added the garlic and pepper, the water immediately turned murky. Strange, the water in the recipe was still clear at this point, why is my broth so cloudy? Still, it had a decent seafood aroma wafting through the air. I never thought such a smell would come from my one-room apartment.

Honestly, this pot had never been used for anything other than ramen.

Sorry, pot owner…

“Next is vegetable prep.”

I pulled out a proper Chinese cleaver.

Actually, I bought this when I first started living alone. The square shape of the Chinese cleaver meant less worry about cutting my hands while chopping, and also I just didn’t have any knives at home and felt pathetic eating apples whole, but thanks to my lacking brain thinking I could peel fruit with a Chinese cleaver, it became a white elephant that I used less than five times after buying it.

Maybe because of that, the cleaver was as smooth as new, so clean you might even see your reflection if you weren’t careful.

[A Chinese cleaver… in a bachelor’s house?]

[Wow, if you prepared a Chinese cleaver just for jjamppong, that’s legendary;;]

[This thorough man… I wonder if he has con*doms prepared in his wallet too?]

ㄴ [Has been forcibly removed.]

[Oh haha haven’t seen a forced removal in a while haha]

[If you look carefully at the Chinese cleaver, you can see Daeju’s chin]

[Why’d you mention that haha I would’ve let my guard down if you hadn’t said anything]

“Hey now!”

I should hurry up and finish cutting and put the cleaver away, if only because I’m nervous.

The prep method was simple. Everything just needed to be julienned, and cabbage was already thin when pulled apart so I could just stack and cut it, and onions had a similar structure. The problem was that my julienne cuts were quite thick.

[That’s really thick, just like… Daeju’s…]

[Cabbage and onions will wilt anyway so it’s fine]

[Looks like they’re thick because you’re scared and keeping too much distance between your hand and the knife]

[Scared Daeju is cute hehe]

[Ugh]

I minced the garlic. In a large frying pan, I stir-fried the minced garlic in chili oil, and when the garlic turned brown, I added the julienned vegetables.

By the way, this frying pan was something I only used occasionally for grilling meat at home. It was something I regretted buying because it was unnecessarily large. Why did I buy such a large one? Just to grill enough meat to eat in one go. But now that it’s being used like this, you really never know how things will turn out.

When the vegetables wilted, I added the red pepper powder and the fishy-smelling broth.

“Oh… it’s jjamppong color!”

[You’ll get jjamppong color just by adding chili oil to water]

[Looks tasty?]

[I’ll bet my test scores it’s delicious]

[Why would you bet that]

[Because I completely failed…]

[ㅠㅠ]

Finally, when the jjamppong – or quasi-jjamppong – started boiling, I added the ramen noodles and even the solid seasoning packet because it felt wasteful not to.

Though I definitely didn’t add the powder seasoning. It felt like all my efforts would be overshadowed by ramen’s powder seasoning.

[Ah haha it’s just one ramen but suddenly looks so delicious]

[For real, I’m drooling;;]

[I drool just looking at Daeju’s hands]

[How do you manage to sexually harass for an entire hour while watching a cooking stream?]

Wait a minute.

“It’s been an hour?”

Looking at the clock, it really had been an hour.

I thought I was moving pretty quickly, but apparently not at all.

“If it takes this long, I might as well order…”

[Haha didn’t you say something about health?]

[Health]

[For real haha just order some healthy delivery food~]

[Besides, what you made doesn’t look particularly healthy]

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(End of Chapter)