Chapter 348: Soup-Filled Yellow Croaker

After wolfing down the Four-Joy Tangyuan at lightning speed, apprentice Xiao Qin arrived at his loyal kitchen.

The kitchen was filled with washed radishes, box after box, leaving almost no room to stand. Cao Guixiang didn't even enter; she stood at the doorway to watch.

"Once you finish cutting and consolidating these radishes in the kitchen, you can move on to the yams in the storage room," Cao Guixiang said.

Qin Huai understood; today was a day for cutting vegetables to build up his knife-work proficiency.

Cutting in his dreams last night and seamlessly continuing in the kitchen after waking up—the therapeutic effect was even better.

Without a moment's hesitation, Qin Huai picked up his kitchen knife and began rapidly shredding radishes.

The speed was similar to last night's; his blade fell fast, accurately, and ruthlessly. There was no hesitation, his movements were clean and efficient, and the knife striking the cutting board produced a rhythmic, steady sound.

The only difference was that this time, Qin Huai was cutting with conscious intent, not in that strange state from last night where his soul seemed to reach a higher level while his body cut radishes—a state where only his soul was practicing in the void.

Cao Guixiang pulled up a small chair and sat at the kitchen door, watching quietly, while Zhang Chu, being very experienced, lounged comfortably on the sofa playing on his phone.

Naturally, the phone was on silent.

The entire room was very quiet, save for the sound of chopping. Sunlight filtered through the window, landing on the furniture on the floor and also on Cao Guixiang's hair, illuminating her face in a mix of light and shadow.

The spot where Qin Huai stood in the kitchen faced the window directly; the sunlight spilled all over him, making the radish shreds on the cutting board appear exceptionally translucent.

"Xiao Qin, stop shredding. Try cutting radish slices—the thinner, the better," Cao Guixiang said.

"Okay." Qin Huai nodded and changed his technique.

Qin Huai knew how to cut radish slices; essentially, it wasn't difficult, just different from shredding. He had only been shredding because his technique wasn't up to par. His slices weren't thin enough—let alone being "thin as cicada wings," he'd need a flashlight just to see light pass through them.

Shredding was relatively simpler and didn't have such high requirements; as long as they were uniform in thickness, it counted as passing. It was better for practice.

Qin Huai began cutting radish slices.

First slice.

A bit thick.

It was much thinner than the slices he'd cut before, but Qin Huai knew clearly that he could cut them thinner and more evenly.

Without any hesitation, Qin Huai seamlessly transitioned to the second slice.

It was thinner than the last, but still not the best he could do.

Third slice.

The angle of the blade was slightly off as he cut; a mistake.

Fourth slice.

This one was cut very well; the slice was thinner and more uniform than before, but it could still be better.

Fifth slice, sixth slice...

Qin Huai continued cutting rapidly, one slice after another. He didn't care about mistakes; he just kept going until he found his rhythm.

Finally, just as he was about to finish one radish, Qin Huai cut a slice that he felt was very beautiful, given his current state.

Qin Huai put down the knife, picked up the slice, and examined it carefully for a few seconds. He looked back at Cao Guixiang, and seeing her just watching him with a smile, he turned around, held up the slice, and faced it toward the sunlight streaming through the window.

The sunlight hit the radish slice; it was translucent, but not perfectly so.

Semi-translucent.

It couldn't be called a crystal-clear slice, but it was definitely the most beautiful one Qin Huai had cut since he started practicing knife work.

At the very least, when he held this slice up, Qin Huai didn't feel like his world was going dark, lamenting how his knife work was truly unpresentable and wondering how on earth he had managed to cut such things before.

Cao Guixiang smiled with satisfaction: "Do you feel now that cutting a translucent radish slice isn't such a distant goal anymore?"

Qin Huai nodded sheepishly.

"At your current level, if you practice for another ten days or so, you'll be able to cut those 'thin as cicada wings' translucent slices you want."

Qin Huai:...

Such familiar words; it felt like he had heard them somewhere before.

No, it felt like he had *said* them somewhere before.

Qin Huai widened his eyes in horror, looking at Cao Guixiang in disbelief. His face clearly read: *If this is all real, I might as well die. While you're cutting radishes today, could you just cut me up too? *

"I couldn't have..." Qin Huai didn't dare face this terrifying fact.

Cao Guixiang pursed her lips, gave Qin Huai a meaningful look, twitched her mouth into a strange expression, and finally couldn't hold back, laughing out loud: "Your Grandpa Zhang and I are really curious about what you dreamed about this morning."

"How could you talk in your sleep so loudly? We heard you through the bedroom door."

Qin Huai:...

*I'm tired. Let it all end. Someone come and slice me into radish pieces. *

He had been wondering why that shout felt so fresh in his ears when he woke up; it turned out there really was a voice echoing in his ears.

"Alright, I won't bother you anymore. Keep cutting radishes. Remember to slice them, and be quick, or we won't be able to eat on time tonight," Cao Guixiang laughed.

Qin Huai hurriedly continued cutting radishes.

This was crucial; he absolutely couldn't be sloppy. If he cut too slowly and delayed Cao Guixiang's cooking, causing dinner to be late, Qin Huai would truly become a sinner.

Two hundred jin of radishes—it wasn't a lot, but it wasn't a little either. At Qin Huai's previous speed, it might have taken nearly an entire afternoon.

But after his knife work leveled up from beginner to intermediate, his speed increased significantly. Cao Guixiang didn't intentionally chat or distract him, allowing for higher efficiency.

In the end, Qin Huai successfully finished cutting all the radishes before 4:00 PM, clearing the kitchen for Cao Guixiang to cook.

Qin Huai watched from the side, taking the opportunity to rest.

Cao Guixiang had thoughtfully prepared a hot towel so Qin Huai's wrists and arms wouldn't give out after two days of such heavy chopping. Cao Guixiang was making a grand feast that night.

Qin Huai had eaten most of these dishes before, such as Steamed Chicken with Straw Mushrooms, Braised Shark Fin, Braised Duck Liver, Two-Colored Shrimp, Tan-Style Beef, Steamed Pork with Preserved Mustard Greens, and Golden Bamboo Shoot Soup. Most of the ingredients for these dishes had been prepared in advance. If the Lu Song yellow croaker hadn't arrived later than expected, Qin Huai could have eaten this feast last night; all the prep work for many of the dishes had been completed two days ago.

Only one dish was made from scratch starting with the main ingredient, and it was the only one Qin Huai had never eaten.

Soup-Filled Yellow Croaker.

Considering Qin Huai definitely wouldn't know what Soup-Filled Yellow Croaker was, Cao Guixiang gave a brief introduction to the dish while cooking, just like Huang Anyao.

To introduce Soup-Filled Yellow Croaker in one sentence: it was a famous dish from the Manchu-Han Imperial Feast and also a standard Lu cuisine dish.

Since it involved the Manchu-Han Imperial Feast, the ingredients had to be magnificent. Cao Guixiang had told Qin Huai more than once that many famous, high-quality dishes weren't necessarily difficult to cook, but the processing of the ingredients was always extremely complex and luxurious.

Cao Guixiang knew how to make many top-tier famous dishes, but she rarely made them on ordinary days. It was basically only during holidays, or when Zhang Zhiyun and Chang Qingqing got exceptionally good exam results, that she would make them as a reward for her grandson and granddaughter.

Cao Guixiang had to admit that these famous dishes were famous for a reason—they tasted excellent and had a very high ceiling. It wasn't that she was unwilling to make them for her family due to cost; it was mainly because it was troublesome. To say nothing else, just making the soup for these dishes required several days of preparation.

If the children could eat these grand dishes every day, they wouldn't be satisfied, and then Zhang Zhiyun and Chang Qingqing wouldn't study hard for the sake of eating something good. When she really wanted to reward the children, she wouldn't have a suitable reward to give.

Cao Guixiang, an expert at raising children, had her own unique way of doing so.

Qin Huai agreed with Cao Guixiang's philosophy. Although he didn't have children, he had a younger sister. For all these years, Qin Huai had followed this policy with Qin Luo: delicious snacks couldn't be eaten every day; he had to control the quantity and quality.

Given Qin Luo's personality, if she ate good things too often and for too long, it would be too easy for her to become picky, making it hard to motivate her to work hard for the sake of snacks.

Qin Huai watched as Cao Guixiang used chopsticks to remove the internal organs of the large yellow croaker.

Soup-Filled Yellow Croaker required a yellow croaker weighing over two and a half jin; theoretically, the bigger, the better. The main ingredient was the yellow croaker, and the accompaniments were shark fin, ham, sea cucumber, abalone, shrimp, dried scallops, and large dried shrimp—this was the full-set Soup-Filled Yellow Croaker. If one wanted a low-end version, just picking a few ingredients would suffice. To let Qin Huai taste the best in one go, Cao Guixiang used Lu Song shark fin.

One could tell from the ingredients that Soup-Filled Yellow Croaker focused on freshness—pure freshness, the freshness of seafood.

After removing the organs, the fish had to be deboned whole.

Back when Qin Huai was at Huang Ji, the grand dishes Huang Shengli made basically all required deboning. Whether it was Braised Silver Carp Head, Braised Whole Pig Head, or Three-Set Duck, all tested a chef's deboning level—which, to put it bluntly, was their knife-work level.

At that time, Huang Shengli didn't avoid Qin Huai when cooking, though there was nothing to avoid, because Qin Huai truly couldn't understand it back then.

At that time, Qin Huai's knife work was only at the beginner level, because the game system's lowest rating was beginner.

Now that Qin Huai's knife work had been upgraded, and after a brilliant epiphany, he had been promoted to intermediate—could he understand Cao Guixiang's deboning?

The answer was: not really.

For apprentice Xiao Qin, who was still struggling to cut translucent radish slices, trying to understand how Cao Guixiang deboned the large yellow croaker was simply too difficult.

Cao Guixiang didn't use any flashy movements like thickening a sauce; Qin Huai felt she just reached a small knife into the fish's belly from its mouth, turned it a few times, stood the fish up, and snapped it twice. After hearing two *crack* sounds, the deboning was complete.

Simple and unadorned, yet like magic.

Seeing Qin Huai's face full of question marks, Cao Guixiang couldn't help but smile and explain: "In a sense, this kind of deboning no longer belongs to the realm of knife work; it belongs to technique."

"The methods and techniques for deboning fish, whole chicken, whole duck, and pigeon are all different and require practice. A chef needs to be sufficiently careful, knowing when to be light, when to be heavy, and when to be decisive. You absolutely cannot be sloppy or have the slightest hesitation."

"Of course, with your current level of knife work, you definitely can't practice these techniques. To practice them, you need a certain foundation in knife work. Your current knife work can at most be considered entry-level; you haven't reached the necessary threshold."

Qin Huai:...

Intermediate knife work was only entry-level. As expected of the basic skill among basic skills, he'd better honestly stick to cutting his radishes.

After processing the yellow croaker, Cao Guixiang marinated it simply. Qin Huai asked casually: "Master, how long does this fish need to marinate?"

"Not long, just two hours," Cao Guixiang said.

Qin Huai: "?" Aren't we eating at 6:30 PM today?"

Qin Huai remembered Cao Guixiang saying dinner was at 6:30 PM. If it were earlier, Zhang Zhiyun and Chang Qingqing wouldn't be back from school; if it were later, these two growing children would be so hungry they'd be clawing at the kitchen door.

"That's right, but the yellow croaker for Soup-Filled Yellow Croaker needs to be marinated for two hours. Two hours is already very short; after marinating, it still needs to be hung to air-dry for 12 hours," Cao Guixiang said.

"Ah?" Qin Huai was stunned.

Seeing Qin Huai's expression, Cao Guixiang couldn't help but laugh out loud again: "Alright, I won't tease you. This is the Soup-Filled Yellow Croaker for tomorrow. The one we're eating today, I already processed yesterday."

"Savory dishes are like this—the more famous and precious they are, the more troublesome they are. Otherwise, I wouldn't be unwilling to make them. Spending over ten hours making such a dish really isn't as good as just braising some pork belly and stir-frying two vegetables to eat with rice."

"If I could eat like this every day, I'd be happy, but if I had to cook like this every day, why would I have retired in the first place? I might as well have gone back to the restaurant to be a chef; after working a few more years, the restaurant might have been mine."

Qin Huai realized that Cao Guixiang really liked teasing children, and his dear Master had been treating him like a child to tease.

"But Master, why do I feel like every time I stay at your place, I eat very well?" Qin Huai said softly. "It's all grand dishes and good food, and many ingredients require Grandpa Zhang to specifically find suppliers to order them."

"Of course, Xiao Qin, you definitely eat well when you're at home. Do you know how much Yunyun and Qingqing like you? During the time you were gone, Yunyun and Qingqing asked me more than once: 'When is Brother Qin Huai coming back? Is Brother Qin Huai coming back to learn to cut vegetables? When Brother Qin Huai comes back next time, will he make baozi, mantou, and tangyuan?'"

"Those two little gluttons finally found an opportunity. They haven't studied seriously this semester, and their exam results aren't great, so they can't eat good food. They've been counting on you coming back every day."

"Don't let it slip at the dinner table today. If they ask, just say I only made this one grand feast."

"Definitely!" Qin Huai indicated that when it came to fooling children, he was the best.

"But..." Qin Huai still wanted to ask, taking off the hot towel on his wrist, "Master, why do you make so many grand dishes?"

"It looks really troublesome."

"Because I am your Master," Cao Guixiang said with a smile. "A master proving their level to their apprentice, showing off their muscles, and making a table of good food to trick the apprentice into their hands is a very standard operation."

"Not to mention that now that I've tricked you, of course, I have to make the apprentice feel that they weren't tricked in vain."

"I am a very conscientious master. You didn't kowtow or serve me tea, and I won't give you red envelopes during holidays, but I should at least let my apprentice eat a few bites of good food."

Cao Guixiang blinked her eyes.

"Don't let it slip in front of Yunyun and Qingqing tonight. These two children have had loud voices since they were small; when they cry, it's like an alarm clock. At my age, my ears hurt just listening to it."

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 349 =====