Free Web NovelChapter 546: Chapter 458: Openly Giving Special Lessons, Cold Tossed Lettuce Stems
Fortunately, making chive pastries isn’t complicated, it’s actually quite simple.
The applicants are all chefs with at least a year of work experience. After practicing for half an hour, they finally started doing it right, rolling out the dough to standard at a normal pace.
Seeing that this side was more or less settled, Lin Chen took Raphael to the back kitchen, leaving the dining cart to Zhao Shun, Old Chen, and Lucas.
With these two handling the cooking and Lucas managing translation and logistics while maintaining order, he wasn’t worried about anything.
If anyone manages to mess up such a simple task, they can just roll out of here themselves, no need to waste his time with an interview.
As Lin Chen nonchalantly acted as a hands-off manager, Raphael not only had no objections but was actually starting to look forward to it.
Wasn’t his lack of involvement in breakfast preparation a sign they were about to start a little private class together?
That would be fantastic!
Things were indeed as he had predicted. After Lin Chen pushed a small cart into the cold storage, he began loading it with a variety of veggies, many of which Raphael hadn’t seen before.
"Yesterday morning, we made dumplings with bamboo shoots filling. Bamboo shoots are the young version of bamboo, the same ones pandas eat, just different varieties."
"And this, lettuce, its leaves are sometimes used in Western cuisine, known in English as ’lettuce,’ but we in Great Xia also eat its stem, called ’lettuce stem’ in English."
Seeing the whole lettuce with leaves, Raphael smiled. He was quite familiar with it; the leaves had a distinct, fresh aroma, good for salads or side dishes.
The stem, on the other hand, he didn’t know how to handle back then, nor if it was edible, so he boiled it with broccoli stems into vegetable broth, which tasted a bit odd, and he hadn’t used it much since.
Hearing that the Great Xia people were skilled at cooking this, he was thrilled and eager to learn how to make it taste better.
Besides, lettuce was something Lin Chen hadn’t demonstrated at John’s farm before, making it a rare find.
"Come on, skip the introduction and start directly, explaining as we go to save time!"
Raphael anxiously glanced at the door now and then, worried that Marchello and Nagishiro Sho might show up any minute.
"Chef, you’re not waiting for those two, are you?"
Lin Chen smiled and took out his phone, showing it to him. "Don’t worry, I just saw a message they sent."
Raphael curiously leaned over to quickly read the text, his expression growing more peculiar.
"The Olympic team members are dining at their restaurants?"
"God’s Kiss is understandable, at least in Paris, but isn’t Nagishiro Sho’s restaurant in Amiens? Do they really need to go there specifically?"
"I have no idea. Maybe it’s their Sakura team athletes, probably used to eating at their family restaurant back home, playing it safe."
"Plus, Amiens isn’t far from Paris. There’s still time before the opening ceremony, so they might as well rest up and adjust to the time zone."
With the news that his two competitors weren’t around, Raphael suddenly found no joy.
Why hasn’t the restaurant he’s managing received any dining reservations from the athletes? What’s lacking??
Could it be because of that incident that broke out a few days ago?
Anderson, that damned brat!!
After swearing a few times in his heart, he sighed, "Never mind them, let’s get started."
"By the way, what are you guys making for lunch today? Don’t you need to prepare beforehand?"
"No need," Lin Chen shook his head, pointing at the bottom shelf where containers resembling stews sat.
"We prepared yesterday, braised beef brisket, and also Sichuan-style pickles made with cabbage, somewhat similar to German sauerkraut."
"Today’s lunch is Sichuan-style handmade beef noodles. We just need to make the noodles later as all other ingredients are ready, and the pickles have been marinated for two to three days, with the perfect acidity."
"Sichuan pickles?"
Raphael recalled that numbing and spicy taste, his lips seemed to tremble at the thought.
He couldn’t quite imagine what German sauerkraut mixed with that spicy flavor would be like.
"Want to try?"
Of course, Lin Chen understood what he was thinking, casually lifting the lid of a nearby blue plastic bucket, taking out a few pieces of light yellow pickles, and placing them in Raphael’s palm.
Raphael frowned in curiosity. From the appearance and color alone, they seemed no different from German sauerkraut.
However, German sauerkraut involves shredding cabbage for fermentation, while this pickle was cut into fingertip-sized pieces.
As he popped one into his mouth to taste, his expression grew even more puzzled.
It lacked the expected numbing sensation and strong flavors, just the usual mild sourness of pickles, with a hint of spiciness.
But this heat wasn’t like chili powder or fresh chilies; instead, it was a refreshing sour and spicy taste, more like pickled peppers.
"Did you add chili water to this?"
"Yes," Lin Chen picked up a chili pepper, "and this, it’s one of the most popular flavors in Great Xia cuisine."
Thinking of the sour and spicy taste of the pickled peppers combined with the pickles he was chewing, Raphael, who hadn’t eaten much breakfast, suddenly felt his mouth watering uncontrollably.
He bravely took the pickled pepper and bit off a small piece, but before he had time to savor it, he gasped.
"Hiss..."
His tongue was burning, caught off guard by the intense sour and spicy flavor.
This pickled pepper tasted completely different from Western pickled peppers, with much higher heat and stronger acidity, like waves crashing more and more fiercely on the surface of his tongue.
In just a moment, Raphael’s face turned bright red, constantly hissing and stamping his feet frantically with the pickled pepper in hand, looking quite flustered.
"Spicy!"
"So spicy!"
"I need a glass of ice-cold milk!!"
Lin Chen didn’t expect Raphael, the chef, to be so sensitive to spice. Just a bite of the pepper tip made him feel as if he was on fire, so Lin Chen quickly poured him a glass of ice-cold milk.
"Gulugulu..."
"Gulugulu..."
"Gulugulu..."
"Ha ah!"
After downing a bottle of ice-cold milk in one go, Raphael still felt a burning pain on the surface of his tongue, but it was much better compared to before.
"Throw it away, the pickled pepper is mainly used to season food, basically no one eats it directly, unless it’s chopped and used for stir-frying or stewing soups and such."
"Stew a soup?!"
Raphael exclaimed in disbelief, "With such spicy pickled peppers, stew a soup??"
"Yeah, have you heard of sour and spicy soup? It’s similar to that flavor."
"Oh~~ right, right, that’s how it is."
Sour and spicy soup has a comparable status internationally to dumplings, as one of the favorite Great Xia soups for many foreign diners, no exception.
"Is it the kind of soup you drink directly?"
"No, it also includes pickled cabbage and fish, and fish soup stewed together. Some places even add Sichuan pepper and chili peppers. You can eat meat and vegetables, drink the soup, and soak rice. It’s a dish suitable for sharing with many people."
"Can it be made tonight?"
"Tomorrow, tomorrow at noon we’ve already planned to make this dish, and in the future, we’ll make more authentic Great Xia Cuisine, which is also one of the reasons for recruiting helping hands."
While speaking, Lin Chen was already wheeling the cart out of the cold storage.
With the two chefs not around, he could openly provide Raphael with a little special treatment, as a gesture of gratitude for his kindness.
"Let’s start with the vegetable you’re most familiar with, the asparagus."
"There are many ways to prepare asparagus: cold salad, stir-fried, hot pot, spicy hot pot, etc., each method brings out different texture."
"The simplest and most common is the cold salad and stir-fried. Let’s make a cold salad for you to try first."
"I don’t need to explain much, right? Different regions have different methods. I’ll just simply demonstrate two to show you the taste."
"One involves blanching, and the other doesn’t but requires pickling."
Lin Chen spoke quickly, since there were many ingredients to demonstrate, time was limited, and speed was necessary.
For Raphael, the chef, many details didn’t need to be explained thoroughly — just touching on the essential points with a quick comment.
"There’s a trick when blanching: to maintain the green color of the vegetables, or even make them more vibrant, you need to add a bit of baking soda to the water."
"It stabilizes chlorophyll and prevents excessive color change; I won’t explain the specific principle here."
Raphael nodded, furiously jotting down key points in his notebook with his pen.
In Western cooking, blanching is a step used, usually just to cook the vegetables lightly, like with broccoli — blanch for a minute or two and then chill in ice water, perfect for salads, both green and crisp.
But the trick of adding baking soda to the water was completely new to him.
Soon, two plates of fine, noodle-like cold asparagus salad were ready.
Visually, the two plates of asparagus salad looked similar, both bright green and shiny, using the same sauce, with the only difference being the treatment of the asparagus beforehand.
The batch not blanched was pickled with white sugar for a while, then drained of excess moisture and rinsed clean.
Raphael originally thought they would use sea salt, but was surprised to find they used white sugar, triggering his imagination.
If using salt for pickling, timing is crucial; otherwise, the ingredients will become excessively salty.
But pickling with white sugar won’t have this concern, and adds a natural sweetness to the vegetables, which combined with the sour and salty flavors of the sauce, elevates the overall taste.
Earlier when learning about Great Xia culinary culture, he noted that adding some white sugar can enhance the umami, without altering the dish’s inherent flavor.
Thinking of this, he eagerly grasped his fork, wanting to taste the flavor differences between the two plates of cold asparagus salad.
