Chapter 127: Sorry, Ancestors

Minced meat coated in carrot puree, stir-fried in a wok with diced bamboo shoots and diced shiitake mushrooms. The oil is rendered out, coating the bamboo shoots and mushrooms; from a distance, the glistening color looks quite beautiful.

No seasonings have been added, yet the aroma is very rich. The most primal fragrance of meat permeates the air, and one can faintly smell a hint of carrot sweetness.

As time passes, the filling in the wok is stir-fried to its optimal state—the color is just right, the fragrance is just right, the heat is just right; neither too fatty nor too dry, perfect enough to be photographed on the spot for a textbook.

All of the above is Qin Huai's imagination regarding the content of this teaching session, as well as what he dreamt about last night.

The actual teaching process is—

Qin Huai waves the spatula, feeling that the moment his hand gripped it, he might have been hit with a debuff.

This hand is not very obedient.

The filling in the wok is even less obedient.

The rendered oil is also not very obedient.

What is going on with you, minced meat, carrot puree, diced bamboo shoots, and diced shiitake mushrooms? Why do you have your own ideas? Why aren't you following the spatula's command to stir properly?

Especially you, carrot puree, why are you idling and breaking away from the main group? You should be hugging the minced meat!

Looking at the result, the filling is cooked.

But Qin Huai doesn't want "cooked."

He wants the perfect filling from his dream, the kind that almost radiates the golden light of the Golden Egg Fried Rice from *Cooking Master Boy*.

Unfortunately, intermediate-level heat control is destined not to produce Golden Egg Fried Rice.

Nor can it stir-fry a perfect filling.

Chen An and An Youyou both widen their eyes, failing to see the profound meaning and essence of Qin Huai's stir-frying.

Isn't this just... putting baozi filling in a wok and stir-frying it?

Chen An and An Youyou exchange a glance, feeling that perhaps their talent is insufficient.

Zheng Siyuan silently turns his head away from the wok, although he knows Qin Huai's level of heat control and also knows that this counts as Qin Huai's normal performance.

After all, when it comes to heat control, on a 10-point scale, making soup requires only 5 to 6 points, while stir-frying requires 8 to 9 or even 10 points.

Stir-frying is the simplest, most comprehensive, and most impossible-to-hide display of heat control, and Qin Huai is indeed displaying it very comprehensively.

A mediocre portion of baozi filling is stir-fried.

Qin Huai looks at Zheng Siyuan, seeking help.

Zheng Siyuan: Can't save it.

Qin Huai: Save it, there are people watching on the side.

Zheng Siyuan:...

Qin Huai: 99999

Zheng Siyuan speaks up: "Did you twist your hand while kneading dough this morning?"

Qin Huai: "... seems like a little."

"If your hand is twisted, it's not suitable for using a spatula. You can be responsible for kneading dough and practicing finger techniques later. This pot of filling... keep it for making baozi later. I've already understood the general approach and stir-frying method; let me demonstrate it for you again." Zheng Siyuan takes over the spatula.

An Youyou and Chen An exchange glances again, the confusion in their eyes deepening.

An Youyou: When did Assistant Xiao Qin hurt his hand?

Chen An: Why is it that if your hand is twisted, it's not suitable for using a spatula but you can knead dough? Isn't kneading dough more taxing on the hands?

The two don't understand, but both wisely choose not to ask and continue watching.

There are still plenty of prepared ingredients left; Zheng Siyuan takes a small half-pot of ingredients and pours them into the wok.

High heat, quick stir-fry, flipping the wok.

A beautiful wok flip.

Qin Huai is startled; good fellow, Zheng Siyuan can even flip the wok.

How come you professionally trained people learn everything? Aren't you a pastry chef?

"The filling for Five-Treasure Baozi actually doesn't need to be stir-fried specifically; you just need to select the right meat, with the fat and lean proportions being appropriate."

"Proper stir-frying won't affect the flavor of the baozi filling and can have a 'icing on the cake' effect. But if your heat control foundation is insufficient, stir-frying out a filling like the one Assistant Xiao Qin made because of his hand injury will instead have a 'drawing a snake and adding feet' effect; it's better to just braise it directly."

"The essence of stir-frying the filling is to control the oil. For dough-based fruit shapes, the dough will be harder, and adding baozi filling makes it very easy to accidentally have the oil seep out during the steaming process, ruining the shape of the entire pastry. Moreover, steaming baozi takes a long time, and steaming dough-based fruit shapes for too long will destroy the texture of the dough."

"I guess the reason this recipe calls for stir-frying the filling before braising it is, on one hand, to control the oil—stir-fried filling is more fragrant—and on the other, to reduce the steaming time."

"But wanting to precisely control the oil requires extremely high heat control from the chef. Basically, those who can reach this level are professional and excellent savory-dish chefs; it's very difficult for pastry chefs to reach such a height."

"For such a creative method, the pastry chef who created this recipe was indeed... very confident in their own heat control." After finishing, Zheng Siyuan glances at Qin Huai.

Qin Huai:...

An Youyou and Chen An nod as if they understand, indicating that making pastries is indeed broad and profound.

During the time Zheng Siyuan was speaking, the filling in the wok had already stir-fried out its fragrance.

"After stir-frying out the fragrance, you must turn from high heat to low heat; Assistant Xiao Qin clearly turned it too slowly just now," Zheng Siyuan says.

Soon, a pot of filling, inferior to Jiang Weiguo's but far superior to Qin Huai's product, is finished.

"Master Xiao Zheng, is this what it looks like when the oil is controlled well?" An Youyou asks curiously.

Zheng Siyuan shakes his head honestly: "I'm not sure; I haven't used this kind of filling to make dough-based fruit shapes before."

"It's a little dry," Qin Huai comments objectively. "The best state would look more moist, with the oil sheen on the surface; it looks oily, but in reality, it's just right."

"You've seen it?" Zheng Siyuan asks.

For such an outrageous dough-based fruit shape, not only do you have the recipe, but you've also seen the filling?

"I dreamt about it last night," Qin Huai says sincerely. "A very real dream, just like I had seen it in a past life."

Zheng Siyuan:?

Zheng Siyuan completed the stir-frying part as a substitute; Qin Huai feels he can still handle the braising part himself.

Braising filling isn't easy to mess up.

He braises it every morning, so he has experience.

Not to mention Qin Huai spent the whole night braising it in his dream yesterday.

Braising filling is a very boring process.

It doesn't have many techniques, nor does it need a wok flip to amaze the audience from time to time. Braising filling only requires controlling the heat, paying attention to stirring, being able to manage the time, and slightly focusing on the state of the filling in the wok to avoid messing up.

As for how well it can be braised, that depends on the chef's mastery of heat control.

An Youyou and Chen An are both observing and learning seriously; Qin Huai feels like slacking off and chatting.

"Siyuan, how come you can flip the wok?" Qin Huai puts his thought into action.

"Practiced it when I was a kid," Zheng Siyuan says.

"Wow," Qin Huai sighs in admiration of the professional capabilities of students from professional schools.

It's not that Qin Huai is bragging, but before high school, he didn't even know what flipping a wok was. His family didn't have such high-end techniques for stir-frying; the owner of the 10-yuan fast-food shop next door could flip a wok, but that belonged to the casual flipping for quick service, often failing to flip well and leaving the food undercooked.

After Qin Huai entered high school, he learned about flipping a wok because he read novels. The novels wrote about it in great detail, making flipping a wok sound very awesome. Big flips, small flips, suspended flips, shaking the wok, turning the wok, hand-held spatulas—and it had to be practiced from childhood, a "childhood skill," with a foundation; those who didn't know would think it was a martial arts manual.

When watching video tutorials, Qin Huai felt that when Jiang Weiguo stir-fried the filling, he probably flipped the wok, but he was less knowledgeable and couldn't tell what kind of flip it was.

"Your dad let you practice this when you were a kid?"

"It wasn't my dad who let me practice; it was Master Huang who taught me," Zheng Siyuan says, looking at the filling in the wok. "When I was a kid, I practiced basic skills in Master Huang's restaurant. I had to practice all the basic skills: knife work, heat control, kneading dough—I learned them all."

"My dad and Master Huang both felt that even if I were to practice pastry in the future, the basic skills of savory dishes couldn't be left behind. There's nothing wrong with practicing basic skills well and solidly. The way our family practices basic skills is very traditional; at the very beginning, it's just hanging sandbags to practice strength. Once the strength is practiced to the right level, then you practice other things."

An Youyou takes out her phone and starts searching for how much sandbags cost.

"I find you quite magical," Zheng Siyuan says, looking at Qin Huai. "Although you haven't practiced basic skills, you have everything you should have."

Qin Huai thinks for a moment: "Maybe it's because when I was a kid, there were many ways to practice strength better than hanging sandbags."

"When I was a kid, there was a large vegetable field behind the Fuli Academy. Director Qin and the other two aunts couldn't finish planting it, so any child in the academy who was mentally normal and physically sound and could farm had to help."

"After all, we relied on that vegetable field for our daily meals, and if we planted too much, we could sell it outside; once sold, we could improve our meals and eat snacks."

"Unfortunately, there weren't many children in our academy who were mentally normal and physically sound, especially by the year I was adopted; there were only two boys who were mentally normal, physically sound, suitable for farming, and not yet adopted. The other one was 2 years old and had just arrived a month ago." "To tell you the truth, although I don't have any specialties in painting or music, I'm quite good at farming."

"Especially growing leafy vegetables; I've been growing them since I was small!"

"My grandma even praised me as a good child suitable for farming. My family still has over ten acres of land in the countryside; if I can't make it in the city one day, I can still go back to farm."

An Youyou starts to regret that she grew up in a town and didn't have any opportunity to farm, so she didn't practice basic skills.

Chen An:...

Don't know why, but I always feel that this newly transferred colleague seems to be thinking about some strange things.

The filling in the wok has already started to boil slightly; Qin Huai continues to stir, with no intention of turning off the heat.

"Almost there, right?" Zheng Siyuan reminds him.

"Wait another half minute; we have to wait until the boiling bubbles are dense enough," Qin Huai says.

Half a minute later, he turns off the heat.

The dough on the cutting board has already been proofed, just waiting for Qin Huai and Zheng Siyuan to pinch it into small balls and mold them into the shape of apples.

At this point, the teaching work has ended; next is the high-difficulty process of making dough-based fruit shapes.

Chen An tactfully walks away and stops watching. It's not yet time to get off work, and theoretically, he should do some more work. But today's work efficiency was too high, and the work was finished ahead of schedule. Chen An thinks for a moment and decides that if there's no work, he must create work; he goes to the culinary station to help the savory-dish helpers chop vegetables.

Savory-dish helper:?

I've long heard that your breakfast team is very competitive; now that you haven't competed enough at breakfast, you've run over to compete with us in stir-frying?

Because An Youyou was curious, she took a closer look and found that Chen An had actually opened up a new track for work, so she hurriedly followed and went to help chop vegetables too.

Qin Huai and Zheng Siyuan both start kneading dough skillfully.

Soon, dough balls shaped like apples, filled with meat filling, appear on the cutting board.

Zheng Siyuan's hands are shaking while mixing the beet juice. Although he often lamented in his heart that he had made a decision that let down his ancestors, no decision had ever been more disrespectful to his ancestors than personally making these damn meat-filled apple dough-fruit shapes today.

Not only disrespectful to the ancestors, but also disrespectful to the dough-fruit shapes.

Zheng Siyuan tremblingly colors the apples. Because his ideological work wasn't done well, he was somewhat absent-minded while coloring, and the first apple was painted ugly.

Zheng Siyuan starts to reflect, feeling that he cannot be like this. As long as you start making pastries, you must respect the pastries, respect the recipe, be brave in trying, and be brave in innovating; that is what an excellent pastry master should do.

This kind of passive-aggressive behavior is simply a desecration of the pastries.

Zheng Siyuan pulls himself together and starts coloring seriously.

After a while, a beautiful apple is born in Zheng Siyuan's hands. Zheng Siyuan examines the apple with satisfaction, puts it down, and turns his head to look at Qin Huai.

"Hiss—"

Zheng Siyuan gasps.

What an ugly apple.

He hasn't seen an apple with colors in patches here and there, looking like it was colored by a three-year-old, for many years.

How has Qin Huai's level regressed to this point?

No, this isn't level; how has his aesthetic sense become so outrageous?

Could it be that because he didn't color the first apple well, Qin Huai was led astray by him?

Zheng Siyuan glances at the first apple he colored and feels that it didn't deserve such a fate!

Zheng Siyuan stretches his neck again to look at the apple Qin Huai is coloring and lets out a long sigh of relief.

Fortunately, this apple is a normal performance.

It seems Qin Huai was just distracted when coloring the first apple, just like him. Sigh, he really set a bad example.

Zheng Siyuan secretly swears in his heart that in the future, when making pastries, he must be focused, go all out, never be distracted, and never be passive-aggressive.

Qin Huai doesn't know that Zheng Siyuan has such rich inner activities. If he knew, he would definitely tell him: "Buddy, you're overthinking it; I just simply wanted to try Liu Tao's coloring style."

Human aesthetic appreciation for art should be diverse.

At 12:00 noon, the new apple dough-fruit shapes are put into the steamer.

Qin Huai and Zheng Siyuan don't leave the kitchen; each holds a plate of rice with toppings and sits by the steamer, shoveling food into their mouths.

Qin Huai wants to know the grade of the dough-fruit shapes as soon as possible.

Zheng Siyuan wants to taste what the dough-fruit shapes made from such an outrageous recipe taste like as soon as possible.

Two pastry chefs sit in the kitchen eating; Chen An and An Youyou follow suit, holding bowls and eating in the kitchen.

Because An Youyou got up too early, she is even a bit sleepy while eating, yawning while eating.

Qin Huai eats the tomato and egg rice with no taste, his mind entirely on the steamer, staring fixedly, and finally.

【Apple Dough-Fruit Shape C-Grade】

C-grade.

Qin Huai, who considers himself to have made no mistakes in the pastry aspect and whose kneading level should not be inferior to Jiang Weiguo's, only made a C-grade dough-fruit shape.

This means that the filling made by Jiang Weiguo pulled the C-grade pastry up by a whole major grade, pulling it up to B-grade.

The terror of a specialized combat god is truly this terrifying.

Qin Huai put down the plate, put on gloves, and lifted the steamer lid.

Oh, it's a little bit of a failure.

When stir-frying the filling, the oil wasn't controlled well. Qin Huai felt it had been fried dry, but he didn't know if it wasn't truly fried dry or if the dough and filling weren't a good match; two of the dough fruits were clearly leaking a little oil.

The oil hadn't actually leaked out, but the color of the dough fruits was affected; the red apple looked like it had been eaten by worms, with a small discolored spot.

Qin Huai used tongs to pick out the dough fruits. There were C-grade ones, C-minus-grade ones, and of course, there were the ones made by Zheng Siyuan that had no visible grade.

Qin Huai felt that what Zheng Siyuan made should be stronger than his own, perhaps reaching C+ grade. He picked out a dough fruit that didn't show a grade but looked good and had no flaws, and stuffed it to Zheng Siyuan.

Then he picked a C-grade one for himself.

After letting them cool for a while, the two took a bite at the same time, their expressions quite different.

Qin Huai knew that the taste of this dough fruit must be delicious; Luo Jun's mouth was so picky that if it weren't good, he would have scolded them long ago.

He just didn't expect it to be so... delicious.

This dough fruit was delicious in a very mysterious way; it was the kind of deliciousness where you could tell it tasted pretty good now, but theoretically, it should have tasted even better.

This filling was truly excellent.

It was clearly similar to the filling of a San Ding Bao, and it felt like the same production concept, but the carrot puree mixed into the meat filling, bamboo shoot cubes, and shiitake mushroom cubes actually had a truly wonderful texture.

The blend of the carrot's sweetness and the meat's flavor, paired with the slightly firm but chewy dough skin—this feeling...

Why isn't it a steamed bun?

What Luo Jun said was really not wrong; this filling should be used to make steamed buns.

Zheng Siyuan's side was a completely different reaction.

Zheng Siyuan first questioned, then was shocked, followed by appreciation, immediately began to savor it, soon became silent, then reflected, and finally had his worldview reshaped.

Just looking at his expression, one knew he had undergone an intense ideological struggle while eating the dough fruit.

The name of this struggle should be: I'm sorry, ancestors.

I know this is absurd, and I know that an apple dough fruit should taste like apples, and I know even better that this filling is clearly a steamed bun filling; I don't know why it was forcibly stuffed into a dough fruit.

But it is delicious.

It even feels like it should be more delicious, and it was my own culinary skill that constrained its deliciousness.

Damn it, how could a meat-filled dough fruit be delicious? This is neither scientific nor reasonable, and it's even more of an apology to my ancestors!

"How is it?" Qin Huai asked.

Zheng Siyuan was silent for a long time, then said:

"I'll go back tonight and study how to stir-fry the filling."

"I'm going to make steamed buns tomorrow morning."

"I admit it's very delicious."

"But I think it should be... steamed bun filling."

This chapter is a two-in-one.

(End of chapter)