One piece ONE SHOTS

Day 5

Nami

~{You're point of view}~

It's was the annual cooking competition which is televised each year, it's always before Christmas and everyone loves to watch it and see everyone make their own food for the show.

Each year, everyone who joins the competition will be told what to recreate, but you're allowed to make you're own twist to it. The prize is obviously money, like any competition that's televised.

I was lucky enough to be able to join in this year as contestant and not someone who's watching the show. I'm so excited right now, I want to prove myself to everyone and show how good I am with cooking!

So here I am on stage with a pretty good amount of contestants this year, ready to be told what to recreate.

-"Hello and welcome everyone! Here are our new contestants this year, this year we we're able to get the double amount of contestants and here's the reason why! Our marvelous judges, wanted to have a twist to change things up! So they have decided to have everyone pared up by a partner by random and see how they'll cook!" My stomach dropped at the pit of mu stomach once I hear everything the announcer says. I'm going to be paired up with someone? Someone who I do not know? Oh god this'll go really bad.

-"And for the prize money we have decided to also double that amount so the two contestants that are paired up and win the prize will be able to split the money!" Right, the prize money. To be honest I don't really care about the prize money, but at least they took that into consideration.

-"As for the food creation's, you may pick anything you want to make, but I must be a desert and the desert must either be a cake, a pie, or some cookies that are different than you're usual store bought ones!" Well, that's going to be interesting with negotiation with some of the groups.

-"Now for the real fun to begin! The partners you're going to join up with is quite simple, you're all going to grab a piece of paper in this box here, the number on the paper will be who you're partnered up with. Once you obtain your paper wait to find your partner with the same number on the paper! Have fun!" Once the lady announces the rules for the partnership we're going to have to do, she then takes a white box and places it on a table and lets everyone to go and grab their paper.

Once I get my paper I look at the number to see whom I got. I got number "5"

I was able to find my partner pretty quickly as she was right after me. The interaction was pretty funny, as after I grabbed the piece of paper and read the number on it she comes right beside me and grab that white piece of paper with the big bold black number written on it, I was obviously able to see the number which was 5. 

I look at her and she looks at me, I show her my paper which had the exact same imprint on it. We giggle a bit at how silly this was.

-"Well it makes it easier for us instead of trying to find each other in that crowd." I say as I point to the massive crowd behind us.

-"Agreed. The name is Nami, what about you?" 

-"(Y/n). It's nice to meet you Nami."

-"Like wise. I really want to win this competition and I mean I really want to win it. So do you have any ideas that could make us score the winning prize?" Nami winks at the last part. Winning prize, huh? That's a pretty good question. 

-"Well if we're trying to get to the top, for a winning prize how about we bake 'cranberry pastry tarts'?"

-"What an odd choice. What made you choose cranberry pastry tarts?" Nami asks with curiosity.

-"Well they aren't something you see multiple people do, they aren't that difficult to do either and having a fruity taste and having a light desert like this one will enlarge our chances at winning this contest."

-"I like you're way of thinking. Alright, I like the idea, let's go with it!" Nami smiles brightly.

Just until we figured out our desert we find out that someone has the same number as ours, a man with short green hair. (I guess the staff messed up and made triplets of the same number? I hope he does get a partner though.) 

Luckily once he spoken with the staff they profusely apologized and called everyone who didn't have a partner to come over towards an area. Thankfully that there's only a few people left who doesn't have a partner yet.

Nami and I run towards a station we find to our liking and I go off to grab our ingredients as Nami preps the kitchen. After a few minutes I come rushing back to our station to start our cooking. 

Since we only have so much time, we both decide to do multitasking , meaning that I do one part of the desert and Nami does the other part so we can finish this quickly enough. I decided to do the cranberry sauce inside and Nami goes with the batter.

First off, before doing anything with the cranberries, I wash them under the sink. With that done I put the cranberries, water, orange juice, and sugar together in a medium saucepan on the stove until it starts to simmer and the liquids evaporates and the cranberries burst and thickened.

I put those cranberries inside a bowl and add some more cranberries, orange zest, vanilla extract and let it cool off.

While all that Nami was working her way with the batter and eventually finishes like a pro. I mean you truly have to see how well she did this!? 

Once the dough and cranberry sauce was complete, all we have to do now is assemble them together! 

We first roll out the dough and cut it into 12 pieces, we then brush egg wash all over pastry squares and we transfer the squares to the prepared muffin pan, pressing them down to fill each cup with a slice the brie into 12 pieces. We then add the cranberry sauce, about two spoon full in each squares and we then fold the edges of the squares towards the middle and sprinkle some sugar on top. Finally we put the pastries into the oven to bake for about 20 minutes.

Of course with our now free time we decide to chat a little bit more as before it was a bunch of silent baking and panic. She's a pretty nice person to be with, but seems to play at things a little dirty and she probably has an obsession with money.

After the 20 minutes of baking, we take out our pastry and set it onto the counter to cool off.

Again we still had a large amount of free time, so we wander around still talking to each other, but we look at other contestant's choices for baking, I mean the person who had the same number as us before whom had green hair, well he's drinking alcohol and baking something with it.

After a little while and our pastry's are definitely cooled off, we take a spoon and take it out of the pan and set them all onto a plate neatly. 

Boy we're we both proud of our work. 

Once we presented our work to the judges, they we're surprised by the work we've done and what we chose to even do. They enjoyed the tanginess and obviously how light of a desert it was. And we did end up at the top 5 and receive the reward! They even gave us a second little reward which was eating at a pristine restaurant where her one of her friends was also there.

Overall, a lot of fun.

-End-