Chapter 210: Four-Joy Tangyuan

When Qin Huai and Ouyang returned home, it was not yet 6 o'clock.

Qin Huai planned to first try the Four-Joy Tangyuan, which he knew was simpler just by hearing the name.

Tangyuan, Qin Huai knew how to make.

He not only knew how to make Glutinous Rice Balls, but also Yuanxiao. Glutinous Rice Balls was a snack that the Qin family must eat on the 15th day of the first lunar month. No matter how much or how little they ate, they must eat a bowl of Glutinous Rice Balls when eating dinner, usually sesame filling.

Later, there was a period when fruit Tangyuan was very popular in Qu County, and Qin Huai also tried making it a few times. Perhaps because the recipe wasn't right, the taste wasn't very ideal, and after the Qin family followed the trend and ate it a few times, they returned to the embrace of sesame filling Tangyuan.

As for Yuanxiao, it was when Qin Luo was watching TV and discovered that Southern and Northern Glutinous Rice Balls were actually different; the Southern ones were called Glutinous Rice Balls, and the Northern ones were called Yuanxiao. Glutinous Rice Balls were wrapped, Yuanxiao were rolled, and Yuanxiao were larger. Qin Luo immediately didn't even want to eat the snacks in the palace drama, just wanted to eat Yuanxiao.

Qin Huai tried making Yuanxiao a few times according to the recipe in *The Complete Book of Snacks*, and Qin Luo discovered that there wasn't much difference from Glutinous Rice Balls, and the skin of Yuanxiao wasn't as smooth and sticky as Glutinous Rice Balls. The most critical thing was that Yuanxiao were all sweet, unlike Glutinous Rice Balls which also had meat fillings, so after eating it a few times, she put Yuanxiao into the cold palace.

Over the years, the snacks put into the cold palace by Qin Luo were much more than the concubines put into the cold palace by the emperor in TV dramas.

In Qin Huai's view, making Tangyuan was very simple.

This snack basically had no difficulty; even if Four-Joy Tangyuan was a complex version of Tangyuan, needing to make 4 types of fillings and wrap 4 types of shapes, the difficulty of its seasoning and finger techniques wasn't high.

Although the game system often complained that Qin Huai didn't style his snacks at all, many snacks indeed had no need for styling.

Four-Joy Tangyuan had 4 shapes, also to distinguish Tangyuan with different fillings, so as not to mix them up when boiling.

Qin Huai started studying the recipe as soon as he got home.

The recipe was very simple; Qin Huai roughly browsed it, remembered it in his heart, and started making the skin for the Tangyuan.

To make Four-Joy Tangyuan, the skin was the most troublesome.

It required special water-ground flour, also known as Tangyuan flour, which was actually glutinous rice flour. If you wanted to make water-ground flour by hand, the steps were very complicated: you had to soak the glutinous rice overnight, grind it into a slurry with water, put it in a cloth bag and hang it up for a night, drain the water in the slurry, and then break the remaining wet glutinous rice powder in the cloth bag and air-dry it; that was the water-ground flour suitable for making Tangyuan.

This was the old way of doing things in the past.

Now it was different; technology had advanced, and you could buy water-ground flour directly in the supermarket, with whatever quality and grade you wanted.

Qin Huai found the unopened water-ground flour from the cabinet; there were six bags of different brands. He picked out a bag that looked the best based on the packaging and ingredient list, poured out a small bowl, and stirred it into a dough with cold water.

When Qin Huai first moved in, the cabinets in the kitchen of this room were all empty, and there wasn't even rice in the house.

By the time Qin Huai brought ingredients home from Huang Ji for the first time to practice crab roe shumai, there were more ingredients in the house.

All kinds of ingredients needed for pastry were available: all kinds of sugar, all kinds of flour, all kinds of yeast… even the cleaning lady bought 6 rolling pins.

Qin Huai felt that it was just that the house was too small and conditions didn't allow it, otherwise Gong Liang would definitely have let the cleaning lady order a super-large steamer of the same style as Huang Ji and stuff it into the kitchen.

Qin Huai slowly pressed the dough into a thin pancake shape and put it into boiling water to cook until done.

Ouyang stood outside the kitchen watching, and seeing Qin Huai put the dough directly into the pot, he was startled, thinking that he had offended Qin Huai in the past two days, and Qin Huai was determined to take revenge on him by boiling a pot of dough to fill his stomach.

Ouyang began to reflect on what he had done in the past two days.

Could it be that he drank four cups of hand-beaten lemon tea yesterday and didn't bring one for Qin Huai, and Qin Huai was unhappy in his heart.

Or was it that the matter of him secretly eating a meal at Guanhe Tower the day before yesterday was exposed, and Qin Huai, as a chef at Huang Ji, decided to give him a little color to see.

Or was it that Qin Huai discovered that he had stolen three big bags of cheese sticks at home this morning?

Ouyang looked at the dough rolling in the boiling water and swallowed nervously.

This was glutinous rice flour dough; how full would it be to eat it hard.

Could he apply to dip it in white sugar later?

Was it too late to confess now?

"I didn't intend to go to Guanhe Tower to eat the day before yesterday; I just heard that the dishes there were also good." Ouyang said.

"The dishes at Guanhe Tower are not bad; Squirrel Mandarin Fish is the signature dish, and Water Shield Tofu Soup is also very famous." Qin Huai nodded.

Ouyang:?

Not this?

Ouyang continued to repent: "I didn't intend to eat all the cheese sticks in the refrigerator either; I mainly couldn't hold back. That thing doesn't fill the stomach at all; eating one after another, I couldn't stop. You know me, I've been destitute for the past two years and couldn't even bear to eat a cheese stick; sometimes it was only when Huihui stuffed one to me that I could eat it. Now that so many cheese sticks are in front of me, I truly couldn't resist their temptation."

Qin Huai stared at the pot and didn't look at Ouyang at all. Seeing that the dough had floated up, he hurriedly added cold water, turned to low heat, and boiled the dough through.

Qin Huai had suffered in this regard when he first made Tangyuan; the dough wasn't boiled through, and a whole pot of Tangyuan was ruined.

"You also like eating cheese sticks, you should have said so earlier. Wait a moment, write a note and stick it on the refrigerator, tell the cleaning lady what flavor you want to eat, and she will buy new ones every day."

"Don't just eat cheese sticks; eat some fruit too."

"Huh?" Ouyang was stunned.

While Ouyang was stunned, the dough in the pot was already cooked. Qin Huai fished out the dough and soaked it in cold water to cool, didn't drain the water, spread the dough on the cutting board to mix with flour, added cooked lard, and started kneading the dough like kneading dough.

At this step, Ouyang understood.

Oh, so it wasn't letting him eat boiled glutinous rice flour dough; Qin Huai was truly making snacks.

Ouyang then felt relieved and continued to watch strongly.

The steps of kneading the dough were very similar to kneading dough, both repeatedly kneading until the dough was smooth and didn't stick to hands.

After kneading the dough, Qin Huai started wrapping the Tangyuan.

The fillings were all brought from Huang Ji in the afternoon.

The 4 types of fillings for Four-Joy Tangyuan were actually very simple; to put it bluntly, they were two types of salty fillings and two types of sweet fillings. Vegetable-meat and pure meat were salty fillings, bean paste and sesame were sweet fillings.

Qin Huai also asked Huang Shengli in the afternoon and got an affirmative answer: the fillings for Four-Joy Tangyuan were the most ordinary fillings.

This snack was a home-style snack that every household in Longcheng would make. In the early years, there were small vendors selling it everywhere on the streets and at the school gates. Such a home-style and popular snack, the filling must be the most popular and ordinary.

Qin Huai didn't prepare many ingredients; he only made 16 Tangyuan in total, 4 in one portion, which was the amount for 4 portions.

Four-Joy Tangyuan were definitely large-sized Tangyuan, several times larger than ordinary small Tangyuan. In high-end and exquisite shops, they were sold in small bowls, one Tangyuan, whether it was the style or the price, it went up at once.

Qin Huai didn't have that many bowls at home, so he found four large bowls, prepared to let four Tangyuan squeeze into one bowl, and make do.

For Qin Huai, compared to wrapping, the difficulty of boiling Tangyuan was greater.

Friends whose mothers at home weren't good at cooking all knew that mothers who weren't good at cooking easily broke the Tangyuan when boiling them.

When putting the Tangyuan in, it was a pot of Tangyuan; when turning off the heat and lifting the pot lid, it was a pot of sesame glutinous rice skin soup.

Qin Huai was also a person who had practiced heat control for so long, so he definitely couldn't make the low-level mistake of breaking the Tangyuan. But wanting to boil the Tangyuan well, especially boiling the large-sized Tangyuan like Four-Joy Tangyuan well, also required a certain technique.

To boil Tangyuan, you must gently put them in along the edge of the pot after the water boils, and stir them gently from time to time when boiling to prevent the Tangyuan from sticking to the bottom. When the water in the pot boils again, you must add water in time to keep the water in a state of boiling without surging. Until the Tangyuan float up at the end, cover the pot lid and boil on low heat for two minutes, and it is considered boiled.

The above is theoretical knowledge.

In actual operation, there is a large space for floating and sinking.

For example, Tangyuan are made of glutinous rice; theoretically, the chef's level is high enough, and the Tangyuan boiled at the end can look white and translucent like white porcelain, sticky enough that they won't break when clamped to the bottom with chopsticks, won't stick to teeth when eaten, and the filling is full but won't overflow.

The above are all theoretical.

In general, Tangyuan is a snack that looks very home-style, but the upper limit is very high, and the lower limit is also very low.

This directly caused Qin Huai to be a bit nervous when boiling Tangyuan.

How to say it, boiling Tangyuan boiled out the feeling of adjusting soup.

The last time Qin Huai stared at a pot so nervously, constantly paying attention to the state of the water in the pot, was when he was hanging high soup in the Yunzhong cafeteria.

Finally, the Tangyuan were out of the pot.

There was no rich fragrance, only the faint smell of glutinous rice flour after being cooked. Qin Huai served 4 bowls of Glutinous Rice Balls, one for himself, one for Ouyang, one for Gong Liang, and one for Guo Mingzhu. The two bowls next door were first put in the insulation box, and after Qin Huai and Ouyang finished eating and confirmed there was no rollover and no problem, they would be sent over.

Yes, there was even an insulation box in the kitchen.

The Tangyuan just boiled were hot to the mouth; even if they were already blown until the skin didn't seem hot, Qin Huai didn't dare to take a bite. Without Qin Luo as a reference, Ouyang didn't dare to take a bite rashly, and could only blow at the Tangyuan while sniffing.

Qin Huai didn't know what smell he could smell; Tangyuan had no fragrance, at most it was the smell of cooked glutinous rice flour, not even counting as clear fragrance.

"What kind of Tangyuan is this? Such a big one, and it's weirdly shaped. I just saw that there seemed to be meat filling when you were wrapping it." Ouyang asked.

"Four-Joy Glutinous Rice Balls, a specialty snack of Longcheng. I haven't eaten it before either; I checked the method online and tried making it once today."

"Remember to give me feedback after you finish eating."

"Don't worry, buddy has helped you taste so many things, don't you know me yet? Professional taster!" Ouyang said, taking a bite.

"Hiss—"

Ouyang almost spat the Tangyuan in his mouth out directly.

He picked a sesame filling one; sweet fillings were all hot.

Ouyang hissed while inhaling, while frantically stirring in his mouth with his tongue. Looking up with his mouth open, like a fish washed ashore and about to die of thirst, he struggled for a while before swallowing the Tangyuan.

"Sweet." Ouyang gave an evaluation.

Qin Huai:...

What exactly was he expecting?

Qin Huai had already given up on Ouyang being able to give him any useful comments, and used a spoon to accurately scoop out a vegetable-meat filling Tangyuan, taking a small bite.

Very soft and sticky, and didn't stick to teeth.

With Qin Huai's current level of kneading, he could make very beautiful Tangyuan skin.

Qin Huai glanced at the Tangyuan in the spoon.

Beautiful.

The filling of the vegetable-meat filling was green; at first glance, you could only see the green shepherd's purse chopped into pieces, and the meat was only sporadic meat foam, tasting very much like shepherd's purse dumplings without much meat.

Wrapping dumpling filling into Tangyuan wasn't to say it wasn't delicious; it was very fresh, and the color of the filling was also very beautiful, it was just a bit strange to eat.

Qin Huai was 70% full for dinner, and now he didn't dare to eat the big Tangyuan quickly, so he could only eat it slowly in small bites, tasting the taste of the Tangyuan while eating, pondering in his brain whether this shepherd's purse filling could be changed.

When he searched for recipes online, the fillings for vegetable-meat fillings weren't uniform; there were shepherd's purse fillings and shredded radish fillings. These two were very popular vegetable fillings, and Qin Huai felt he could try shredded radish filling tomorrow.

After eating the vegetable-meat filling, Qin Huai started eating the pure meat one.

Delicious!

Full meat filling stuffed into the Tangyuan, without any extra ingredients, mainly meat filling to fill the stomach, meat filling was the kingly way.

This was the taste of the most ordinary and delicious meat filling snack.

Qin Luo would definitely fall in love with this filling Tangyuan, for no other reason than that there was a lot of meat.

By the time Qin Huai finished eating the fresh meat filling Tangyuan, Ouyang had just managed to swallow the sesame filling one, and after drinking a few mouthfuls of Tangyuan soup, he could speak:

"Delicious."

"It's just too hot; it almost scalded me to death."

"Who told you to eat so urgently? If you ate the bean paste filling, it would be even hotter. Haven't you heard that famous joke? Eating a bean paste bun hot all the way to the back of the head."

After Qin Huai finished eating the two salty filling Tangyuan, he had a count in his heart; sweet filling Tangyuan was originally his home court, and the bean paste filling and sesame filling for wrapping Tangyuan were both personally boiled by Qin Huai some time ago, so they definitely wouldn't rollover, and wouldn't be bad.

"You eat the rest first; I'm going to send Tangyuan to the neighbors." Qin Huai got up and went to the kitchen to carry the bowl.

Ouyang continued to eat the bean paste filling while hissing.

Qin Huai carried two bowls of Four-Joy Tangyuan and rang the neighbor's doorbell.

"Coming, who is it?"

It was Gong Baozhu who opened the door; because the heating was on in the room, she was wearing thin clothes, and the hem, sleeves, and even pants were a bit wrinkled, looking like she was working.

"Master Qin!" Gong Baozhu said in surprise, and after glancing at the bowl Qin Huai was carrying, she screamed directly, "Four-Joy Tangyuan! Haven't eaten this for a long time!"

Gong Baozhu hurriedly got slippers for Qin Huai and welcomed Qin Huai in.

"Master Qin is here. Old Gong, don't look for that broken tea of yours in the room; Master Qin is here to visit." Guo Mingzhu stood at the kitchen door and shouted inside, "Master Qin, do you want to drink juice? I just happen to be juicing."

Gong Liang hurriedly came out of the room and said to his daughter: "Baozhu, go look at the cabinet above again; I clearly remember there was a can of Mountain Cloud Mist."

Gong Baozhu's eyes were already fixed on the Four-Joy Tangyuan: "Dad, let's not look for it today; maybe you left it at another house and forgot to take it. Let brother look for it tomorrow."

"Tangyuan will be cold if we don't eat it now."

Only then did Gong Liang see the Four-Joy Tangyuan.

Gong Liang was almost moved to tears.

He only told Qin Huai at noon that he wanted to eat Four-Joy Tangyuan, and Qin Huai made it in the evening!

And he made it while working overtime!

So moved, moved to the point that he wanted to buy something for the house next door right now.

Zheng Da truly didn't know how to do things; Qin Huai lived alone and rented a two-bedroom apartment, not knowing to rent a bigger house.

If he rented a detached villa, preferably one with a garden, wouldn't there be more things to buy?

"Mr. Gong, I happened to have time today, so I made Four-Joy Tangyuan after returning. Please taste if it's authentic, if there are any problems; I'm also doing it for the first time and have no experience."

"No problem, no problem, what problem could such beautiful Tangyuan have." Gong Baozhu couldn't wait to go to the kitchen to get a spoon, scooped up a shepherd's purse filling Tangyuan and sent it to her mouth.

One bite.

Gong Baozhu showed a satisfied expression.

"Hmm~ Eating the meal Uncle Huang made at noon, and eating the Four-Joy Tangyuan Master Qin made in the evening; if only I could eat like this every day."

Guo Mingzhu stood at the kitchen door, helplessly watching her daughter who had no ambition, shaking her head and smiling: "You only have this much ambition, not as good as your dad. Your dad's ultimate ideal when he was young was at least to eat a month of double crab buns after eating a month of crab roe shumai, and you are satisfied after eating a bite of Four-Joy Glutinous Rice Balls."

"Mom, it's different, it's delicious!" Gong Baozhu said seriously, "The Four-Joy Tangyuan Master Qin made is super delicious!"

After saying that, Gong Baozhu wrapped the remaining half of the Four-Joy Tangyuan in one bite, and then went to scoop the shepherd's purse Tangyuan in the other bowl.

"Dad, anyway you don't like eating shepherd's purse filling, and Mom doesn't like it either, I'll help you eat them all!" Gong Baozhu said vaguely.

Qin Huai grasped the point instantly and looked at Gong Liang: "Mr. Gong, you don't eat shepherd's purse?"

Gong Liang nodded: "Ate too much when I was young; sometimes when the family ate dumplings like in the North during the New Year, I wanted to cry when I saw they were shepherd's purse dumplings."

Qin Huai nodded: "That was my mistake, forgot to ask if you had any dietary restrictions. Four-Joy Tangyuan also has shredded radish filling; I'll make shredded radish filling tomorrow."

"My dad doesn't like eating shredded radish filling either." Gong Baozhu preempted, "He just loves eating that hundred-fruit filling that basically no one makes now."

"Hundred-fruit filling?" Qin Huai thought for a while and dug out relevant information from his brain, "Mixing a variety of nuts and dried fruits, as well as sweet fillings similar to coconut shreds and sesame, usually used as filling for mooncakes?"

Gong Baozhu wasn't very clear, swallowed the Tangyuan in her mouth: "Maybe, I don't know exactly how it's made either. Basically, you can't buy hundred-fruit filling Tangyuan now; everyone doesn't like eating it."

"That's because they don't know how to make it." Gong Liang said, "The hundred-fruit filling Tangyuan Master Jing made back then was the most delicious!"

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 211 =====