Abnormal Gourmet Chronicle
Chapter 230 - 166 Gong Liang’s Emotion

Chapter 230: Chapter 166 Gong Liang’s Emotion

After yesterday’s big mishap, Qin Huai went back to seriously review everything.

He felt that the main problem was still unfamiliarity.

He wasn’t familiar with the ingredients, nor with Crab Dumplings, and he wasn’t even very familiar with this overly simple seasoning.

He tried to season the Crab Dumplings based on his past experience of making snacks, combining the process and steps demonstrated by Zheng Da, and ended up with an inedible shu mai by combining the worst of both approaches.

Qin Huai reflected all night and decided to adopt the method of forgetting, to forget his past experiences and to redo it completely as a beginner according to Zheng Da’s way.

This idea was great.

But alas, the ideal is plentiful, and reality is skeletal.

Impossible, absolutely impossible.

After a round of exuberant seasoning, Qin Huai experienced a mishap similar to yesterday’s.

The good news is there were only 9 small mistakes and 6 large mistakes this time.

The bad news is some of the mistakes were different.

And having one less small mistake didn’t really make a substantial difference in flavor.

It’s already hard to have room for further decline, Qin Huai’s basic panel is laid out here, and even if he had another mishap, he couldn’t possibly drop to the level of Chen Huihong’s cooking skills.

Another mishap by Qin Huai was delivered to every tasting panel member at Huang Ji Restaurant.

Most of the time, food tasting is not a pleasant job.

If a dish needs tasting, it means that the dish is not a complete product and has issues that need improvement. The process of refinement requires a lot of trial and error and is a long process. A professional taster needs to taste every dish carefully, raise issues, and suggest improvement ideas. It’s not just about eating, it’s about eating seriously and meticulously.

Gong Liang took just one bite and realized that food tasting is not an easy job.

The risk is too high.

Gong Liang had tried food tasting before, and his memories of it were relatively good.

He vaguely recalled that when he was a young student, the neighbor, Master Jing, would sometimes try making new dishes at home.

To be precise, they weren’t really new dishes. Master Jing had excellent skills, and some foreign guests would only recognize Master Jing’s cooking. During receptions, they would specifically request dishes cooked by him. Everyone has different tastes and specific dishes they’d like, so at these times, Master Jing would try making them at home.

As a neighbor, at that time around ten years old in high school, Gong Liang had the luck to grab a few bites; eating those bites left a pleasant feeling for days and memories for years.

Back then, Gong Liang thought that when he became as rich as those foreign guests in the future, he would also specifically request Master Jing to cook for him. No, not specifically request, but have him cook every day as long as Master Jing was willing to cook, he was willing to eat!

Now, the beautiful filter on food tasting in Gong Liang’s mind was shattered by the Crab Dumplings in front of him.

He couldn’t believe this was a snack made by Qin Huai.

Although he had already tasted the Gastrodia stewed pigeon cooked by Qin Huai a couple of days ago and knew his beloved Master Qin wasn’t omnipotent, Gastrodia stewed pigeon is a stew, whereas Crab Dumplings are a snack!

But these are snacks!

Gong Liang is a complete newbie to culinary arts, even more so than Huang An Yao who is rich in theoretical knowledge but almost zero in practice. So even though he knew Crab Dumplings were quite difficult, unless Zheng Da was willing to make them, he couldn’t expect to easily find a substitute for Master Jing’s Crab Dumplings somewhere else. But he didn’t have a concrete understanding either.

In Gong Liang’s mind, Crab Dumplings were indeed challenging, but Qin Huai’s snack-making skills were also great. Plus, Qin Huai’s Fermented Rice with Steamed Buns was almost on par with Zheng Da’s, especially the first batch of Fermented Rice with Steamed Buns every day, where Gong Liang even felt a hint of the nostalgia of rushing to snatch steamed buns after work at the state-owned restaurant.

Therefore, in Gong Liang’s perception, Qin Huai’s skills were almost on par with Zheng Da’s.

At most just a little behind, after all, Zheng Da always shouted about taking Qin Huai as his closed-door disciple.

Although Zheng Da was a bit lazy and not really willing to make snacks in the kitchen, he was still reliable and wouldn’t do something like taking on an apprentice who was at his level as a young snack chef.

But the Crab Dumplings in front of him shattered the 18 layers of filters Gong Liang had placed on Qin Huai.

Even the omnipotent Master Qin in snacks had a Waterloo moment.

Gong Liang took a breath, almost on the verge of tears.

The feeling of an idol falling apart.

Gong Liang looked at the other testers from Huang’s Kitchen and found that everyone’s reactions were very calm.

But everyone calmly finished eating the Crab Dumplings and gathered to discuss the differences between today’s and yesterday’s Crab Dumplings made by Qin Huai. They debated whether there was a problem with the proportion of seasonings or the combination of shrimp and crab meat.

Some even optimistically said there had been significant improvement: the most obvious problem from yesterday was gone.

Gong Liang was stunned.

He thought for a moment, then stood up from his small stool, grabbed the most vehemently discussing Dong Shi, and pulled him into a corner outside to ask:

"Is it normal for Master Qin’s Crab Dumplings to turn out like this?"

"It’s normal." Dong Shi said, seeing Gong Liang’s more confused expression, he explained, "They tasted worse yesterday."

Gong Liang: ?

"Mr. Gong, don’t be anxious. We all know you wanted to eat Crab Dumplings, which is why Qin Huai learned to make them, but Qin Huai had never made crab meat or crab yolk snacks before. He’s not even used to making snacks with fresh shrimp filling."

"Let me put it this way, you know Qin Huai is from Guangdong Province, right? Right now he’s like a chef specializing in Cantonese cuisine who’s really good at Shandong cuisine. Let me think if I can make this analogy... yes, correct, he excels in imperial snacks."