Abnormal Gourmet Chronicle
Chapter 146 - 125: Sorry, Ancestor_2

Chapter 146: Chapter 125: Sorry, Ancestor_2

Zheng Siyuan:?

Zheng Siyuan took over the frying part, while Qin Huai thought he could handle the boiling part.

It’s not easy to mess up boiling the filling.

Every morning he boils, so he has experience.

Not to mention, Qin Huai spent the whole last night boiling in his dreams.

Boiling the filling is a very boring process.

It doesn’t require much skill, nor does it need impressive spoon flipping to surprise the audience. Boiling the filling just requires good fire control, stirring now and then, keeping track of the time, and paying a little attention to the status of the filling in the pot to avoid a mess.

As for how well it can be cooked, that depends on the chef’s mastery of fire control.

An Youyou and Chen An were both observing and learning intently, while Qin Huai felt a bit like slacking off to chat.

"Si Yuan, how did you learn to flip the spoon?" Qin Huai put his thoughts into action.

"Practiced when I was a kid." Zheng Siyuan replied.

"Wow." Qin Huai expressed admiration for the professional skills of the formally trained students.

Not to brag, but Qin Huai didn’t even know about spoon flipping before high school. His family didn’t use such advanced techniques in cooking; the owner of the 10-yuan fast food restaurant next door did spoon flipping, but that was just quick flipping for fast dishes, often leaving them undercooked.

Qin Huai first learned about spoon flipping in high school from a novel, where it was described in detail, making it sound impressive. There were big spoon flips, small spoon flips, hanging spoon flips, shaking spoon flips, spinning spoon flips, hand spoon, and it took early training, childhood, a foundation, like some martial arts secret.

When watching video tutorials, Qin Huai guessed that Jiang Weiming probably flipped the spoon when frying the filling, but he was inexperienced and couldn’t tell what kind of flip it was.

"Did your dad make you practice this when you were little?"

"It wasn’t my dad, it was Uncle Huang who taught me." Zheng Siyuan watched the pot of filling, "I practiced the basic skills at Uncle Huang’s restaurant when I was a kid. You had to practice all the basic skills, knife skills, fire control, dough kneading, learn them all."

"My dad and Uncle Huang both believed that even if I was to practice pastry in the future, I shouldn’t neglect the basic skills of meat cooking. Practicing the basics solid and thoroughly can never go wrong. Our family’s way of practicing basics is very traditional. It starts with ordinary sandbag lifting to build strength, once that’s in place, then practice other things."

An Youyou took out her phone to start searching how much sandbags cost.

"I find you quite remarkable." Zheng Siyuan looked at Qin Huai, "Although you haven’t practiced the basics, you seem to have everything you need."

Qin Huai thought for a moment: "Maybe it’s because when I was a kid, I had many ways to build strength better than lifting sandbags."

"When I was a child, there was a large vegetable field behind the orphanage. Director Qin and the other two aunts couldn’t manage it all, so all the kids in the orphanage who were of normal intelligence and physically fit had to help out."

"After all, our vegetable meals depended on that field, and if we grew more, we could sell it and improve our food with snacks."

"Unfortunately, there weren’t many kids in the orphanage who were of normal intelligence and physically fit, especially the year I got adopted. There were only two boys who were of normal intelligence, physically fit, suitable for farming, and yet to be adopted. The other one was 2 years old and had just arrived for a month."

"To be honest, even though I have no talents in painting or music, I’m quite good at farming."

"Especially growing leafy greens, I’ve been growing them since I was little!"

"My grandma always praised me as a kid suited for farming. My family has over ten acres of land in the countryside, if city life doesn’t work out, I can still go back and farm."

An Youyou regretted growing up in town, having no opportunities to farm and not practicing the basic skills.

Chen An:...

For some reason, it always felt like this new colleague seems to be thinking about some weird things.

The filling in the pot started to simmer slightly, and Qin Huai continued to stir without any intention of turning off the heat.

"Should be about done." Zheng Siyuan reminded.

"It needs another half-minute, wait till the bubbling is dense enough." Qin Huai said.

After half a minute, he turned off the heat.

The dough on the board was already well-rested, waiting for Qin Huai and Zheng Siyuan to pull it into small pieces and shape them into apples.

With this, the teaching session ended; next came the complex process of making dumplings.

Chen An sensibly walked away quietly, knowing it wasn’t yet off-duty time. Ideally, he should find something to do. But the work efficiency today was so high that he finished early. Chen An thought about it and decided to create work if there isn’t any, helping the meat cooking assistants cut vegetables at the kitchen station.

Meat kitchen assistant:?

I’ve heard your breakfast shift is intense, now that breakfast isn’t intense enough, you run over to intensify our cooking?

Out of curiosity, An Youyou watched more closely and, upon discovering Chen An had opened a new work path, quickly joined to help cut vegetables.

Qin Huai and Zheng Siyuan both began skillfully shaping the dough.

Soon, dough balls wrapped with meat filling and shaped like apples appeared on the board.

Zheng Siyuan’s hands trembled while mixing beet juice, even though he often lamented in his heart about making a decision disrespectful to his ancestors, no decision was more disrespectful than making this damn meat-filled apple dough ball today.

It wasn’t just disrespectful to his ancestors, but to the dumpling as well.

Zheng Siyuan, with trembling hands, colored the apple. Because his mind wasn’t in the right place, the first apple turned out ugly.

Zheng Siyuan began to reflect, thinking he couldn’t continue like this. Once you start making snacks, you need to respect them, respect the recipe, and be willing to try and innovate. That’s what a good pastry chef should do.