I didn't have tomatoes, basil, or oregano… I wasn't even sure if anything similar existed in this world.
I also couldn't use cheese or cured meats, those were livestock-based products, remember.
I'd already consulted Luna: no one would spend more than one silver coin on a meal during a caravan journey.
If I used those kinds of ingredients, I'd have to charge at least five silver coins per meal. Which meant I wouldn't sell anything.
Just for reference: one gold coin was worth ten silver coins, so one silver coin was about a hundred dollars. Yes, meals on caravans were expensive.
So I decided to replace the cheese with an onion cream.
Yeah, I know, it had nothing to do with cheese, but no one here knew what pizza was anyway.
Instead of tomato sauce, I went with a kind of Horned Rabbit ragu. This world had a spice that resembled paprika, giving the dish a deep red tone.
So, in the end, the sauce kind of looked like tomato sauce, in appearance only, of course. The flavor was something completely different.
I assembled the pizzas by spreading the Horned Rabbit ragu first, then drizzling the onion cream on top, just enough to create a contrast between the red and white.
Finally, I added onion rings. Once baked, I'd top them off with fresh herbs.
Visually, it actually resembled a pizza. The onion cream browned nicely, looking a bit like melted cheese.
With the green herbs on top and a generous drizzle of something like olive oil, it kind of looked like a Margherita pizza.
In the end, my "pizza", if you could call it that, was basically made of flour, onions, and Horned Rabbit meat.
A very cheap meal.
I made them individually sized, so I wouldn't have to cut them up. The base wasn't very sturdy, and slicing it would make the toppings fall apart while serving.
The girls loved it.
It had nothing to do with real pizza, but I'd already called it that when I started making it, too late to change the name now.
The effect it had on Rose and Luna was especially unexpected.
Rose had definitely started looking at me differently after tasting my food. I caught her glancing at me several times when she thought I wasn't looking.
Luna, however, had a different reaction.
"How did you turn a bunch of cheap ingredients into something so tasty?"
Yep, what impressed the elf was the cost-efficiency of my "pizza".
"Didn't I say I knew how to cook?" I replied, in a tone much more arrogant than I'd like to admit, for some reason.
Turning simple ingredients into sophisticated food was the specialty of most fine dining restaurants I'd worked at.
They'd take the cheapest stuff, like an egg, invent some crazy technique, give it a pretentious name like "perfect egg," and customers would pay gold for it.
I'd passed the girls' test, but the real challenge was the general public.
We didn't need to set up camp, so our preparations finished much earlier than most other companies.
Buying that wagon was already proving to be a good investment, not just because we didn't have to pitch tents, but also because the other merchants were starting to see me as someone of noble origin.
Normally, a rookie merchant would be assigned a spot on the outskirts of the camp, but thanks to the confusion around my background, they'd already allowed me to set up closer to the center, a prestigious position.
To keep up appearances, outside the wagon where everyone could see us, all the work was done by Lilian and Tomas.
Eventually, the Pretty Lions helped out too, even though it wasn't really their job. I just gave instructions.
We set up a stand a little ahead of where the wagon was parked, and brought out the magic oven that would be used to bake the pizzas.
I had already prepped and stored all the pizzas in a magic ring. All Lilian and Tomas had to do was pop them in and out of the oven at the right time.
For some reason, Luna volunteered to handle sales. She was excited about it, less work for me, so I wasn't going to complain.
I wanted to charge two copper coins per pizza. Yep, the ingredients were so cheap that I'd still make a 100% profit at that price.
But Luna stopped me, according to her, no one would buy food that cheap. They'd get suspicious and think something shady had been done to it.
So we settled on five copper coins per pizza.
For reference: ten copper coins equaled one silver coin. So five coppers meant fifty dollars, still pricey for a pizza, but probably one of the most affordable meals in the caravan.
Lilian, Tomas, and Luna did all the work. I just watched.
We'd set up a sort of lounge between the stand and the wagon. Just a rug laid out on the ground with some cushions scattered around.
It was a traditional thing, all the merchants did something similar. They also used the space to display some of their goods.
I didn't bother.
What I was transporting was probably the same stuff everyone else had come to Astar to buy, so no one would be interested in trading with me anyway.
I just sprawled out on the rug, smoking my hookah and drinking tea like some kind of sultan.
Our stand was one of the first to finish setting up, so when the first batch of pizzas came out, most people were still inside their tents, setting up camp.
But the moment that oven opened, an explosion of aromas spread across the camp.
I knew the scent of onion and spices, combined with the lightly toasted pizza dough, would reach every corner.
That smell would be our calling card.
Once people came over and saw the affordable price, the sale would be as good as done. And we had the added bonus of beautiful women handling the service and security.
Our stand was guaranteed to be a hit.
And that was confirmed quickly, customers started arriving. Soon, there was a line waiting to be served.
Our pizza was, without a doubt, a success. Exactly what I needed.
Not just because I was going to make a lot of money, but because I'd received a system notification right after we left the city.
Sugar-Mommy Rank – Caravan Merchants
1 – Zahira Sharif – 7k Gold
2 – Nicasia Drako – 4k Gold
3 – Derya Valenci – 3k Gold
...
The Sugar-Mommy Rank had updated to show the sugar-mommy available in the caravan.
I hoped the success and opulence of my stand would help me make the connections I needed to reach them.