Abnormal Gourmet Chronicle
Chapter 167 - 145: The Welcome Banquet

Chapter 167: Chapter 145: The Welcome Banquet

"Come, Qin Huai, welcome to Gusu, I toast to you on behalf of my master!"

"Mm-hmm." Qin Huai raised his juice perfunctorily.

"Qin Huai, I also toast to you on behalf of my master!"

"Mm-hmm-hmm." Qin Huai again raised his cup perfunctorily.

"To celebrate my dad cooking personally, let’s all have a drink together!"

Qin Huai ate while raising his cup.

It’s not that Qin Huai was impolite; it’s just that he had never seen such a scene before.

He felt very apologetic, but he really couldn’t control the hand holding the chopsticks and the mouth eating the food.

It’s so delicious!

How can there be such tasty dishes in this world!

The Eight Treasures Chicken is stuffed with eight different ingredients inside the chicken’s belly; the chicken meat on the outside is already delicious, yet the stuffing inside is even more exquisite. Glutinous rice, lily, bamboo shoots, coix seed, lotus seeds, quail eggs, and other ingredients fully absorbed the soup, resulting in an indescribable freshness and flavor.

The Three Course Duck is even more needless to say. With the prior explanation from Huang An Yao, Qin Huai ate the dish entirely by following the step-by-step guide on how to enjoy it. From the outside layer by layer sipping the soup, then from the inside layer by layer eating the meat, with each bite confirming whether a particular taste was captured — after identifying seven flavors, they blend into one. Out of admiration, Qin Huai even thought of apprenticing under Huang Shengli, abandoning pastry for savory dishes.

To the pastry snacks, I apologize, the Three Course Duck is truly delectable.

Braised Silver Carp Head, in one word, fresh!

The freshness of land, sea, and air combined!

Not to mention, this dish is free of fish bones. When Qin Huai heard Huang An Yao introducing Braised Silver Carp Head, he even went online to search for it. He found that many dishes of this Huaiyang cuisine style are de-boned to make it easier for rich people to eat — indeed, it seems the wealthy from ancient times really knew how to enjoy themselves.

As for the Sizzling Fried Eel...

Qin Huai can only say that the taste threshold of "Taste" is too high; such a delicious dish only appears in the 7th episode — how tasty were the dishes in the previous 6 episodes?

The sizzling oil poured over the eel shreds made two sizzling sounds before being brought directly to the table. The first chopstickful almost freshened Qin Huai’s tongue away.

The freshness of Sizzling Fried Eel is not like that of Braised Silver Carp Head or Three Course Duck, which maximizes the original flavors of the ingredients. Sizzling Fried Eel carries a strong seasoning flavor, visibly oily and saucy, tasting salty-fresh, with a noticeable sweetness that follows.

This salty-sweet dish is not directly sweet like Squirrel Mandarin Fish, making it more acceptable, but Qin Huai agrees with Huang An Yao that the sweetness is indeed the soul of this dish.

Without sugar or sweetness, it is just an ordinary braised eel.

With the sweetness, it becomes the sizzling sounding Sizzling Fried Eel.

The rest of the dishes need not be talked about much.

Biluo Shrimp is very light; the shrimp cooked in tea soup carries a faint tea fragrance, with a unique flavor that is very light. Both the tea flavor and shrimp flavor are incomparable to the stronger dishes on this table.

However, in a table full of vibrant peonies, a fresh lily is indeed necessary.

Squirrel Mandarin Fish, a very common renowned dish, Qin Huai has tried it. This fried, sweet, and boneless fish is Qin Luo’s favorite. Every time Qin Luo ate Squirrel Mandarin Fish, she could clean out the remaining sweet-sour sauce in the plate with a steamed bun.

Sweet-sour sauce with buns, Qin Huai can only say that Qin Luo, in a sense, is quite a formidable person.

When Qin Huai ate Squirrel Mandarin Fish, Zheng Siyuan also helped explain a bit, telling him that it tests the chef’s fire control and seasoning. Fire control determines the tenderness of the fish; Squirrel Mandarin Fish should be fried but not overly fried, with a crispy outside and tender inside. If the fish is over-cooked, the dish won’t succeed.

Seasoning naturally needs no further explanation; it determines the flavor of the sweet-sour sauce.

Huang Shengli’s fire control and seasoning are top-notch. If this dish were placed before Qin Luo, after eating Squirrel Mandarin Fish with the sweet-sour sauce, she could still eat three buns.

From the moment he picked up the chopsticks, only one thought filled Qin Huai’s mind:

There’s too much to eat, just can’t eat it all, why do I have only one mouth, can’t eat two dishes at once?

Qin Huai didn’t dare imagine, if he could eat such delicious food every day, how cheerful he would be.

He even somewhat understands why Huang An Yao neither wants to manage a restaurant nor learn cooking but simply wants to be a food critic traveling across the world.

Heavens, if his dad had such skills, he too would become a food critic, he and Luoluo would both become food critics together!

At this moment, Qin Huai felt that he and Qin Luo must be siblings from another life.

Oh, poor Luoluo, not only can’t eat such delicious food, but also has to eat dad’s buns every morning.

Qin Huai silently lit a candle for Qin Luo in his heart.

On the entire table, Qin Huai was eating the most happily, as he truly hadn’t experienced the world.

Seated at the table were Qin Huai, Huang Shengli, Zheng Siyuan, Huang An Yao, and Huang Shengli’s nine apprentices. Among these people, except for Qin Huai, almost everyone had experienced the joyous times of eating Huang Shengli’s cooking daily.

Huang Shengli believed in encouragement-style education. When he was learning to cook, his master’s way of encouragement was to give him half a bun at the end of the day’s cooking class, and during festivals, he would buy good ingredients out of his pocket to prepare a feast.

Huang Shengli naturally followed this example, rewarding his son, apprentices, and fellow apprentices by cooking dishes. Due to changing times, the buns were once rewards back in the day; now, his rewards are dishes at the level of Biluo Shrimp, and during festivals, gatherings are set with the table’s lavish feast as a configuration.

Currently, Huang Shengli’s health is not good, and he cooks less, so everyone eats less, but it doesn’t mean they haven’t eaten before.

Only Qin Huai truly hasn’t tasted it before.

Surrounded by people long accustomed to gourmet food, he seemed exceptionally inexperienced.

However, Qin Huai didn’t care. Whatever, let’s just eat first.

Can’t let anything else suffer, but not the mouth.

Huang Shengli watched Qin Huai continue eating with a look of not getting enough, amused: "Xiao Qin’s manner doesn’t quite match his craftsmanship."

Zheng Siyuan thought of Qin Congwen and Zhao Rong’s skills, felt it was understandable, and said, "Qin Huai’s family situation... is somewhat special."

"Though he’s skilled at making snacks, his stir-frying really isn’t great. His parents’ cooking skills are only slightly better than his. He’s seen a lot in terms of snacks, but when it comes to dishes..."

"It’s just like this."

Huang An Yao was a bit curious: "Can Qin Huai make a lot of snacks?"

Zheng Siyuan nodded affirmatively, noticing Huang Jia and the others were also curious and looking his way, he slightly raised his voice, "Southern School, Northern Style, across the country he can do them all, but mainly focuses on imperial snacks because Luoluo likes watching palace dramas."

Everyone: ?

"However, recently he’s been making more Suzhou style snacks because Dr. Qu really loves rice cake-type snacks."

Everyone: ??

"Of course, what he can make specifically mainly depends on what’s in the Snack Encyclopedia. I’ve seen his Snack Encyclopedia, it has all kinds of snacks; oh, right, he can make Green Bean Cakes of Beijing style, Guangzhou style, and Yunnan style, with the Beijing style being his specialty because Luoluo loves Beijing style the most."

Everyone: ???

Zheng Siyuan finished introducing.

Since Qin Huai has seen all aspects of the world, it’s time to let the world see Qin Huai.

Qin Huai happily scooped himself a large spoonful of Crab Meat Meatballs, noticing that everyone at the table was already starting to look puzzled, he thought he too should make a statement.

"I remember the employee meal times at Huang Ji Restaurant are after 1 p.m. and 8 p.m., right? I’m into snacks, and my working hours are different from everyone else’s, so I can be responsible for snacks and the main course for the employee meals."

"If anyone has something they particularly want to eat, just let me know; if I can make it, I’ll do it. If not, I can check the Snack Encyclopedia; I brought it along this time. But I can’t guarantee newly learned recipes will taste good; they might need some practice."

"If no one has anything special in mind, I’ll make it as I see fit. If I make six items a day... let me calculate, although there are many things I rarely make but can still be considered as something I can do, I should be able to make non-repeating items for... 3 weeks."

Everyone: ????

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