My Restaurant's Guests are All Abnormal

Chapter 333: Chapter 193: The Collision of Ingredients

"Another failure!" Chen Ze was about to vomit; he felt his buns could have killed Betty, yet he hadn’t made a successful one.

It must be said that reviving a lost cuisine is truly difficult. One artisan after another buried their secrets in the ground, leaving later generations to imagine what those highly acclaimed delicacies must have tasted like.

Looking around his kitchen agitatedly, Chen Ze found some comfort in the neatly arranged knives and dinnerware.

"Forget it, let’s just make some homestyle dishes, it’s almost lunchtime anyway." Chen Ze stretched lazily, deciding to change his mood.

In the Huaxia culinary world, there’s a dish that’s a blessing for beginners, even simpler to make than scrambled eggs with tomatoes, and it tastes fairly good.

That would be scrambled eggs with chives, an incredibly simple dish to master. You just need to chop the chives, beat the eggs, then stir-fry the eggs and add the chives once the eggs are set to make a decent meal.

The simplicity of this dish is arguably in the top ten among all dishes. After all, scrambled eggs with tomatoes can taste underwhelming if the tomatoes are not well prepared.

Scrambled eggs with chives, however, do not have this issue, so in no time, Chen Ze made a rather good plate of it.

"A plate of scrambled eggs with chives, what else should I make? Lemon chicken, or perhaps..." Chen Ze pondered for a while and finally decided to stick with homestyle dishes for today’s lunch.

"Let’s see, I bought some cabbage and taro today... pickled vegetables... pork..." Chen Ze looked at the ingredients in the refrigerator, thought for a moment, and made up his mind about what to eat today.

Chen Ze washed the cabbage and set it aside, then started boiling water. He also processed the taro, cutting it into small pieces for later use.

Cabbage soup is a common homestyle soup, easy to make—just clean the cabbage and tear it into pieces before dropping it into the pot. freёweɓnovel.com

But such a soup usually tastes quite ordinary, not specifically delicious or unappealing but somewhere in between.

As for taro, its texture is quite sticky—some people love the smooth, clingy sensation, while others dislike it for the same reason.

Chen Ze belonged to the latter group, not particularly fond of taro’s texture, so he didn’t have much affection for it.

However, taro and cabbage together create a subtle "chemical" reaction. These two seemingly unrelated vegetables, when simmered together on low heat, give rise to a wonderful flavor.

The taro released its presence joyfully in the soup, sticking to the tender cabbage leaves, providing a harmonious texture, and the sliminess became less noticeable, enhancing the deliciousness of the cabbage.

This was the magic of cooking; Chen Ze always believed that—these subtle harmonies, the taste born out of the collision between ingredients, are the secrets to making food taste better.

Like peanuts chewed with dried tofu that have the flavor of ham; in Chen Ze’s heart, cabbage and taro are also an amazing pair for soup.

[You have made a rather good Taro Cabbage Soup, gaining 7.5 points in homestyle cooking experience.] fɾeeweɓnѳveɭ.com

The feedback matched Chen Ze’s expectations, and he was quite satisfied with it. After setting the soup aside, Chen Ze went on to prepare a meat dish.

He minced the pork, ensuring a proper mix of fat and lean, then heated the pot with oil and fried the minced meat until cooked. Next, he added the pickled vegetables, a tiny bit of white sugar, and a little salt to create a dish perfect with rice—fried pickled vegetables with pork.

"Betty, come in for lunch," Chen Ze said, looking at the pickled vegetables with pork that had also been rated well. He clapped his hands and called Betty in to start lunch.

"Boss, let me tell you, that customer just now was so unique." Betty scooped a mouthful of rice, followed by a spoonful of the fried pickled vegetables with pork.

"What happened?" Chen Ze asked curiously, as the customer didn’t seem to have anything special about them.

"He kept looking at me with a kind of... really disgusting gaze," Betty shivered. She had felt uncomfortable earlier because the man’s eyes were fixed on her stomach the whole time.

"I see... If he harasses you, you can tell me, and then kick him out," Chen Ze wasn’t concerned. He slowly took a sip of the soup, which really tasted great.

"Okay, boss." Betty too took a sip of soup like Chen Ze and her eyes lit up instantly.

The soup tasted really good. It had a somewhat sticky texture, and the cabbage was delicious. Betty immediately fell in love with the flavor.

"Hoo—finding you as a boss is the biggest stroke of luck in my life." Betty sighed contentedly.

"Stop kidding around. Remember to wash the dishes after eating as I need to continue researching the Tianjin pork buns," Chen Ze waved his hand, now with renewed motivation to work on the Tianjin pork buns.

After pondering for a while, Chen Ze thought it would be best to start with the origin of the Tianjin pork buns. After all, the predominant cuisine in Tianjin at that time was Huaiyang cuisine, known for its delicacy and finesse.

Moreover, the Tianjin buns from that era were very juicy. If someone new to eating buns wasn’t careful, one bite could splash the broth onto others, and if it trickled down the sleeve, it could scald the back.

So Chen Ze had a feeling that the Tianjin pork buns must also combine the style of Huaiyang cuisine while having a lot of broth that was piping hot, unlike soup dumplings.

"So how do I lock in the broth?" Chen Ze was somewhat troubled, thinking that to achieve the effect of the broth splashing on others with a bite, the bun naturally needed to contain a lot of it.

But it was difficult to retain so much broth without using the method of soup dumplings, leaving Chen Ze quite bewildered for the moment.

"Should I try using some vegetable to wrap the meat? But that won’t work either..." Chen Ze felt he would eventually go bald thinking about this, and then he could join the Balding Club.

"Eh? Or maybe I could use this technique..." Chen Ze slapped his forehead, thinking the idea might work and immediately started to gather the ingredients.

"If I turn the seaweed pork rib soup or the pork soup into a jelly, then wrap it with a non-permeable ingredient and put it inside the bun..." Chen Ze tried hard, and then he faced a second problem.

Using jelly was indeed a feasible solution, but even so, the resulting buns didn’t taste as sensational. Chen Ze felt that the problem lay in the material wrapping the jelly.