Chapter 349: Boss Shi

Cao Guixiang was still making the Soup-Filled Yellow Croaker. The yellow croaker had been air-dried in advance, and the shark fin had been soaked and processed ahead of time, but the ham, sea cucumber, and abalone were all cut and processed on the spot.

Qin Huai felt Cao Guixiang was doing it on purpose—intentionally not preparing these ingredients in advance so he could cut them into shreds and dices in front of her, letting him see what higher-level knife work was like.

How should he put it? Simple and unadorned, but very difficult.

When cutting radishes into shreds or slices—ingredients that were relatively simpler and more suitable for practice—knife work could be very flashy.

It could be very fast, fast enough to create afterimages. It could also be exaggerated, as if a camera were about to cut to a close-up of the blade edge in the next second.

But Cao Guixiang didn't do this when processing sea cucumber, abalone, and ham. Her blade didn't move fast; it was even a bit slow and methodical. Her cuts weren't heavy either, giving people a feeling of being slow and gentle, just like a beginner who had just learned to cut vegetables and didn't dare to cut too hard, so the movements were light, slow, and appeared somewhat cautious.

Of course, Cao Guixiang didn't have that caution. She processed all the ingredients gently and slowly, arranging them neatly. A closer look would reveal that the shreds she cut were uniform in thickness and width, and the dices she cut were almost as if they had been carved from the same mold.

Knife work that moistened things silently.

After processing these ingredients, Cao Guixiang began mincing the shrimp into a paste. The movements were still very slow, still looking very light and gentle, only the force of the blade was heavier, and the knife striking the cutting board produced a rhythmic mincing sound.

Cao Guixiang spoke at the right time to explain: "When cutting vegetables, you must pursue speed, but you cannot pursue speed alone."

"When you were cutting radishes, I told you to cut faster because there was still a lot left to cut, and it was because you were still at the stage of not having entered the door. At this time, what you need to do is be fast, accurate, and ruthless. You need to practice extensively to become proficient; you need to build up your speed and become handy and skillful."

"Of course, you have already entered the door now, but you still need to practice speed because entering the door doesn't mean you understand. Entering the door only means you can start laying the foundation, and as for how long this foundation needs to be laid, I'm not very sure either."

"Once your basic skills are solid and you have processed various ingredients, you can start challenging higher-difficulty things. For example, deboning a whole chicken, melon carving, or even pure knife-work show-off dishes like Wensi Tofu—you have to start learning to slow down."

"When processing such grand dishes, you must be slow—not just slow in movement, but also slow in mentality. Haste makes waste; you can't cook good food in a hurry. Slow doesn't mean unskilled; often, slow means meticulous."

"This is also why many masters don't like impatient apprentices when taking them on. It's not that an impatient personality is bad, but once such a habit is formed, it's very easy for problems to arise when doing things. Those who move slowly and appear gentle don't mean they are stupid; sometimes it's just that they are more cautious and meticulous."

Hearing Cao Guixiang say this, Qin Huai suddenly thought of Gu Li.

Gu Li cooked very slowly, sometimes so slowly that people on the side couldn't bear to watch, even Tan Weian couldn't bear it. But regardless of whether anyone urged him, Gu Li always cooked in this slow state, and he always had no small problems but constant big problems.

This wasn't scolding him; often, big problems were because he wasn't skilled enough and couldn't do it, which was unavoidable. But many small problems could be avoided. Within his ability, Gu Li avoided all the problems he could, and the rest was purely a lack of strength.

Qin Huai asked thoughtfully: "Then Master, when I cut vegetables and make snacks in the future, should I slow down my speed a bit?"

Cao Guixiang shook her head, seasoning and stirring the minced shrimp: "You are not an impatient person, and you don't need to change your usual habits for the sake of so-called 'better.' Everyone has their own personality traits and habits; no one can be perfect. When your level is high enough, you are perfect."

"Now your knife work has just entered the door, so naturally, many faults can be picked out. But if your knife work has reached the peak, even if you have too many unreasonable habits and small faults, others will only say that this is the style of a master."

"Anyway, when I was a chef in Qiu County, my boss praised me like this every day," Cao Guixiang said, starting the pan and heating oil, beginning to fry the shrimp heads, simmering slowly over low heat, and pressing the shrimp heads while pouring oil. "Even if I made a mistake and was absent-minded while cooking, leaving out an ingredient, the boss would ask if it was a new recipe I had researched."

Qin Huai was shocked when he heard this: "It can be like that?"

Cao Guixiang was multitasking, chatting while her hands didn't slack off, frying the scallions and shrimp heads, stir-frying the ingredients, her expression and demeanor still in the state of chatting.

"Of course. When was I a chef? To put it bluntly, Qiu County was just a county town. How rich could the resources be? Relying on the mountains, you eat from the mountains; relying on the sea, you eat from the sea. There was no shortage of seafood, but many vegetables and seasonings couldn't necessarily be bought on the same day. I won't even mention ginseng, deer antler, bear paw... In the first few years I was a chef in Qiu County, I could still make bear paw dishes, but sometimes I couldn't even buy high-quality millet."

"The boss I had at that time was a very good person, generous. Not only was my salary high, but my share was also high. At that time, Chiyuan—that's my son—would come to the restaurant every day after school and lie on the counter to do his homework, and the boss wouldn't care. Every time the boss came, he would bring Chiyuan some melon seeds, preserved plums, candies, and so on. Later, when Old Zhang and I bought a house in the city, the boss also helped us pay a lot of money. He was truly a great person."

"It's just that his methods weren't good. At that time, several restaurants wanted to poach me, and they even stuffed red envelopes into Old Zhang's and my hands, but the boss didn't know anything about it."

"Other restaurants tripped him up and cut off his ingredient supply, and he didn't solve it very well. The most famous restaurant in Qiu County was short of ingredients every three days, which really forced me into a corner. Sometimes I cooked randomly, and it was almost like making Kung Pao Chicken without chicken dices."

Cao Guixiang used simple words to describe a sinister business war. Qin Huai listened with great interest, and at first, he didn't even notice that Cao Guixiang had already stir-fried the abalone, sea cucumber, and other ingredients and taken them out of the pan.

Saying they were stir-fried and taken out of the pan was actually a bit inaccurate. These ingredients were the soup to be poured into the Soup-Filled Yellow Croaker. After stir-frying, they needed to be poured with clear soup, dried scallop water, and the shrimp oil just simmered, then simply thickened with starch to collect the sauce. In the end, a pot boiled down to just a small bowl, fragrant and overflowing, the soup thick and golden, with grains of sea cucumber, abalone, dried scallop, and fresh shrimp visible. At first glance, one might think it was Buddha Jumps Over the Wall.

The soup was done; the rest was the yellow croaker.

Cao Guixiang burned another pot of hot oil to fry scallions, took out the scallions, and began to pour hot oil over the yellow croaker to make its skin tighter. While pouring, she continued to say:

"Thinking back, it was indeed quite absurd. Being a chef in a peaceful era felt like being in a famine, with this missing and that missing. One moment using this ingredient to make up the numbers, the next moment using that ingredient to top it off. If it weren't for the money being good, I would have quit long ago."

"But it really did train my cooking skills. Before I was a chef in Qiu County, I had been an educated youth in the countryside for a long time, and my skills had become rusty. If it weren't for the boss's incompetence increasing the difficulty for me, my skills wouldn't have been picked up so quickly. To use you young people's words, it really was 'upping the intensity' for me."

As she was speaking, the oil pouring was finished.

Cao Guixiang poured the 'soup' she had just made into the belly of the yellow croaker, sealed the opening with shrimp paste, spread shark fin, ham shreds, and dried shrimp on the yellow croaker, seasoned it simply, and steamed it in the pot.

"Alright, the Soup-Filled Yellow Croaker is basically done at this step. It only needs to be steamed over medium-high heat for a quarter of an hour to be ready," Cao Guixiang said. "Sometimes you can't blame me for not wanting to make these grand dishes. These dishes, truly speaking, the final cooking process is very simple, but the preliminary preparation work is too complex." "For this 15 minutes of steaming, it takes 15 hours of preparation."

Qin Huai said with a smile: "Master, it's the same for us making white-case snacks. Steaming baozi only takes a few minutes at the end, but the time required beforehand is very long."

"When my parents opened a breakfast shop, they had to get up at two o'clock every day."

"That's right, having this awareness is good, not afraid of trouble." Cao Guixiang, who habitually fished for information, nodded with a smile and continued to make the next dish.

Qin Huai:... If Zhang Chu practiced fishing techniques with Cao Guixiang more, he would have caught big fish long ago.

Cao Guixiang had made the remaining dishes in front of Qin Huai, so she didn't explain them. To be precise, explaining them was useless because Qin Huai couldn't understand them at all.

"Master, after you resigned, is your boss still running the restaurant?" Qin Huai asked curiously.

From Cao Guixiang's description just now, Qin Huai heard that Cao Guixiang's boss had a very good life.

It didn't matter that the boss was a Zhang N-card waste; the employees were SSR and their loyalty was maxed out, leading him to fly the whole way.

"Of course not. Old Shi wasn't running a restaurant at the beginning. He was a fisherman at the beginning, going out to sea to catch fish every day. At that time, it was poor, and cooking lacked seasonings, and he was reluctant to use oil. Old Shi and these fishermen ate fish and seafood by steaming, the kind where they were reluctant to even use oil."

"This method is said to be eating the original flavor of seafood. It's okay to taste it once or twice, but eating it year after year, no one can stand it, and they want to vomit when they smell it."

"Old Shi's family had been fishermen for generations, and they had eaten like this since they were small, dreaming of eating white rice until they were full. Later, when the policy opened up, he didn't want to be a fisherman anymore. Following others to do business and flip seafood, he wasn't good at business, but his luck was quite good, and he made a lot of money. At first, he was selling seafood."

"Boss Shi was originally selling seafood. After opening a restaurant, he could still be cut off from the source of goods?" Qin Huai was stunned.

Compared to Boss Shi, Huang Anyao still had merits; at least the young master wouldn't be cut off from the source of goods in this way.

"Otherwise, why would I say Old Shi doesn't know how to do business? He is just like this, honest. At first, he believed whatever others said. After being cut off several times, he gradually learned how to do business. But it was precisely because he was honest that I was willing to be a chef in his restaurant."

"At that time, neither Old Zhang nor I had the quota to return to the city, and we wasted several years in the countryside, seeing that both children were grown up and needed to go to school. Our village secretary pulled strings to find Old Zhang a temporary job at a timber mill in Qiu County. The salary of that temporary worker wasn't enough for our family of four to live on. At that time, I was planning to borrow money to set up a stall in Qiu County to sell big-pot dishes, and Boss Shi came."

"My skills were very good, but in that situation at that time, saying your skills were good was useless. We were in a place in the countryside, only famous in a few villages. Your Grandpa Zhang's carpentry skills were also top-notch, but without money, connections, or paths, even if the village secretary talked until his lips were broken, looking for people everywhere to find connections, couldn't he only find a temporary job?"

"Old Shi was also instigated by others at that time to open a restaurant in Qiu County, thinking that he was originally in the seafood business and had a source of goods, so he wouldn't be cheated. As a result, he had already set up the shop, and the agreed-upon chef quit at the last minute. Your village's Secretary Qin knew this news and specifically came to tell our village secretary, and our village secretary went to find Old Shi, and that's how I got the job."

"As a result, I didn't expect to work for so many years, and the restaurant business was so good that Old Shi didn't even do his own seafood business, staying in the restaurant every day waiting to eat."

Qin Huai:...

Is this Boss Shi a relative of Han Guishan? How can both of these people have such good lives?

Does he also have a Wen Yao fish assistant?

Zhang Chu, who had been sitting on the sofa playing on his phone, came over to join the fun when he heard Cao Guixiang talking about Boss Shi, echoing: "Old Shi is indeed a great person."

"Not only did he pull strings to help me change from a temporary worker to a regular one at the timber mill, but he also introduced me to a lot of private work. Later, when we transferred Chiyuan and Siyu to the city, he also helped us get their school status. It is said that he spent a lot of money, but Old Shi refused to admit that he spent money, insisting that it was because he had connections."

Cao Guixiang shook her head with a smile: "What connections could he have? He's just stubborn, and it's like this now."

"This Lu Song yellow croaker is obviously not his goods. It must be that he bought higher quality ones from others, but he insisted that it was his new good goods, and he had to sell them to us at his price."

Qin Huai was shocked: "Ah? The Lu Song yellow croaker was bought from Boss Shi?"

"That's right," Cao Guixiang nodded. "After I resigned, the restaurant closed, and Old Shi didn't have the talent to run a restaurant, so he went back to his seafood business. He has done quite well in business over the years. Not to mention being rich and noble, he has earned quite a lot."

"On ordinary days, I want to make grand dishes and good food, and the ingredients are all taken from him. Otherwise, I don't run a restaurant, and the goods I usually need aren't large, so how could I get high-quality good goods from ordinary suppliers?"

"Oh right, Guixiang, when I went to get the goods two days ago, Old Shi asked me why I suddenly bought so much. I guess he wants to come over to mooch a meal," Zhang Chu said.

Cao Guixiang said: "Let him wait two days. Let him come on the day Xiao Qin leaves. These days Xiao Qin needs to practice knife work and thickening, so there is no time to make him Three-Shred Shark Fin."

Zhang Chu scratched his head: "I really can't understand, Braised Shark Fin is so delicious, why does he love Three-Shred Shark Fin?"

"Oh right, Old Zhang, when Old Shi comes to eat, remember to pay him for the yellow croaker. We paid for ordinary yellow croaker, but he gave us two wild yellow croakers weighing 4 jin each. The price difference is too big, so this money must be paid to him."

Qin Huai:...

Who said Boss Shi doesn't understand human relationships? Doesn't he understand quite well?

High-end hunters often appear in the form of prey.

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 350 =====