Free Web NovelChapter 1083: Chapter 443: A Woman’s Mysterious Competitive Spirit! Fried Liver—Lu Cuisine Exam Dish!
"How about I make another dish? We’re not Popeye; eating only spinach feels a bit bland."
Lin Xu cleaned out his bowl of rice and said with a smile:
"We can’t always have you doing the work. Let me try. I’ll use this fresh pork liver to make Fried Liver, to check my Shandong cuisine skills."
Fried Liver has always been a dish in Shandong cuisine that tests a chef’s basic skills.
Because this dish involves knife skills, heat control, seasoning, marinating, coloring, and other cooking factors, it’s easy to overcook the liver if you’re not careful.
And unlike stir-frying, this dish also requires a sauce, so while stir-frying quickly, you also need to consider the sauce aspect, which is quite challenging.
Dai Jianli immediately took out his phone and said:
"If you’re going to make something else, we can just sit down and have a drink, but since it’s Fried Liver, wait, I’ll call your brother over."
It’s fine to joke around usually, but when making a dish to test culinary skills, naturally, some experts should be called over.
Everyone can help Lin Xu with advice and see if there are any gaps in his cooking technique.
The call connected, and Xie Baomin asked irritably:
"What is it? Xiao Jia and I finally got a spot at the Yibin Guest House, planning to explore Yibin cuisine."
"Old Xie, Lin is planning to make Fried Liver."
Before he finished, Xie Baomin said:
"Wait, I’ll drive over right away... Xiao Jia, no exploring today, let’s explore something else instead."
As soon as he heard that his junior was making Fried Liver, Old Xie immediately gave up filming the restaurant exploration video.
Next, Dai Jianli called Guo Weidong, Qiu Zhenhua, Song Dahai, and others, and they all headed to Lin Ji’s Food without any arrangements. Guo Weidong and Song Dahai didn’t even change out of their chef’s uniforms.
Once everyone arrived, Lin Xu, seeing so many head chefs gathering in the kitchen, said:
"Let’s just go to the small kitchen; it won’t disrupt the main kitchen’s work."
Xie Baomin promptly shouted to Xiao Jia, who was about to follow the food cart outside for dinner:
"Come on, don’t eat. Continue shooting the exploration video today, but film something different, film my junior cooking. This is a dish that tests heat control and experience, and the longer you’ve worked in the culinary circle, the more you understand the difficulty of this dish."
Although Fried Liver seems unremarkable, with ingredients only including pork liver, rehydrated bamboo shoots, black fungus, and garlic sprouts, and the seasonings only being scallion, ginger, and garlic, each step from cutting tests the chef’s skill.
In the small kitchen, once all the ingredients were ready, Lin Xu began cooking.
He sliced the rehydrated bamboo shoots, which are the Yulan slices used for the stock, a type of dried bamboo shoot.
After slicing the bamboo shoots and setting them aside, he tore the rehydrated black fungus into pieces so that they wouldn’t clump together.
Using only the tender leaves beneath the garlic sprout stems, he cut them into inch-long sections and set them aside.
When he started cutting the scallions, all the head chefs, who had been chatting quietly, fell silent.
Although scallion, ginger, and garlic are small ingredients, their cutting methods are quite particular.
In Chinese cooking, there’s a saying, "threads with threads, slices with slices," meaning the main ingredients’ shape dictates that all accompaniments and auxiliary materials should be consistent, so when the dish is served, before even tasting, it already brings a pleasing feeling.
If mismatched, aside from the taste, the visual aspect itself would lose points.
Lin Xu held a section of scallion white, sliced it open, and carefully extracted the core.
He flattened the scallion white, used the knife’s tip to cut it into strips about seven millimeters long, then sliced it into diamond shapes.
Once cut and shaken apart, they became scallion pieces the size of soybeans; this kind of scallion is often paired with soybean paste, hence called "soybean scallion."
It means scallion pieces the size of soybean paste.
After cutting the scallion white, Lin Xu also cut the scallion core into similar scallion grains but did not mix them because they were meant for different parts of the cooking process, the core for cooking blasts, and the white for the dish’s sauce. frёeweɓηovel.coɱ
After that, Lin Xu cut the ginger and garlic to the same size, with half the scallion, ginger with the scallion white, and half with the scallion core.
With the small ingredients prepared, he did not immediately cut the pork liver but started boiling water.
He added a little cooking oil and salt to the pot, brought it to a boil on high heat, and blanched the pre-cut Yulan slices and black fungus.
After blanching, he fished them out and cooled them in cold water.
Only then did Lin Xu lay the pork liver on the cutting board and start adjusting the cuts.
Guo Weidong and the others watched with smiles; from the preparatory work, these steps were very proper, indicating that Master Lin has honed his skills over time.
This dish is named Fried Liver Tips, not Fried Pork Liver, so the choice of ingredients matters.
Only the lower part of the pork liver without membranes is used, specifically the tip part, which can yield about a plate from one liver.
In trimming, one must avoid the membranes and blood vessels and also avoid the bitter liver near the gallbladder, ultimately cutting away long strips of liver tips.
In many people’s minds, the dishes known for testing knife skills are usually Wensi Tofu, Pingqiao Tofu, Meatballs, or Maize Whip Knife, and Sedge Flower Knife.
But in fact, slicing pork liver equally tests a chef’s knife skills.
Because raw pork liver is soft, like a blob of slime, and any slight change in hand force while cutting will change the shape, thickness, and other aspects of the pork liver.
This change can essentially turn the dish into a disaster.
Lin Xu placed the liver with the smooth side down, kept it close to the cutting board, and sliced along the previous cuts very lightly and smoothly.
