Chapter 366

"Your Majesty, the Imperial Kitchen has finished preparations and the banquet can start at any time."

A while later, Li Dequan, who went to prepare the banquet, returned to report.

In order to take care of the dietary requirements of the Emperor and the various ladies in the palace, large and small,

all kinds, and even at any time,

the Imperial Kitchen has always been on 24-hour standby, with all kinds of dishes prepared,

when there is a need for food, the dishes of the meal are heated up a little,

and dishes that need stir-frying are processed with prepared ingredients.

"Haha, Brother Lu, let's go."

Zhang Jie stood up from behind the imperial desk and smiled as he invited Lu Zhishen.

"Your Majesty first."

Lu Zhishen, whose eyes lit up when he mentioned drinking, jumped up from the imperial stool.

Although he intended to resign from the Great Gan's position and return to his identity as a monk, he had no intention of quitting drinking,

he wanted to be a wine-and-meat monk who could drink, eat meat, and practice martial arts.

Thinking of the fine wine that had been stored in the palace for many years since the former Song, saliva almost flowed from the corner of his mouth.

Lu Zhishen's anxious appearance made Zhang Jie laugh in surprise.

Although Jigong had not been born yet and had not said that widely circulated famous quote,

but Lu Zhishen, this flower monk who drinks, tattoos, fights,

and kills, clearly understood the essence of "wine and meat pass through the intestines, the Buddha remains in the heart."

Lu Zhishen: Although I drink, eat meat, tattoo, and kill, I know I am a good monk~

Arriving at the restaurant, on a small table, a copper hot pot was placed on it.

As the red charcoal fire underneath slowly licked the pot wall, the milky white soup in the copper pot rolled,

and the strong fragrance began to overflow, enveloping the entire restaurant.

Next to it, there were also several plates of mutton slices that had already been cut.

"Come, Brother Lu, please."

Zhang Jie waved his hand to dismiss Li Dequan and personally poured a glass of wine for Lu Zhishen.

"Your Majesty!"

Lu Zhishen, raising his glass, had tears in his tiger-like eyes.

The Son of Heaven pouring wine, what kind of honor is this?

Especially looking at the familiar scene before him and smelling this familiar taste, it moved him even more.

Although it is said that the Son of Heaven hosting a banquet with just a mutton hot pot is too shabby,

but this scene was the way this flower monk and Zhang Jie first met.

At that time, he was still a menial monk staying at the Great Xiangguo Temple, responsible for guarding the vegetable garden,

and because he bought wine to drink, he had a conflict with a mutton hot pot restaurant outside the Great Xiangguo Temple,

and was lucky enough to be helped by Zhang Jie, who was a scholar coming to the capital for the imperial examination.

Since then, a menial monk who drinks, eats meat, and fights, and a scholar who had just won the first place in the Jingdong East Road imperial examination,

and had a bright future, two people who should not have had much intersection,

became friends at first sight, as close as brothers, as righteous as brothers, together overthrowing the Great Song and establishing the Great Gan.

"Brother Lu, please!"

Zhang Jie toasted Lu Zhishen slightly and then drank the fine wine in his cup in one gulp.

"Your Majesty, please!"

Lu Zhishen was not ambiguous at all, raising the glass to his lips,

and between the opening and closing of his lips, he swallowed the fine wine.

"Satisfying!"

Feeling the fiery liquor passing through his mouth and throat like a ball of charcoal fire,

and then reaching his stomach, Lu Zhishen's face was full of comfort.

"Brother Lu, eat some vegetables."

Zhang Jie smiled and picked up a piece of mutton that was almost transparent under the imperial chef's superb knife skills,

thin as a cicada's wing, which was said to be an ingredient but more like a carefully crafted work of art, placed it into the rolling,

milky white broth to lightly swish a few times, then dipped it in thick sauce, and put it in his mouth.

Feeling the taste that seemed to explode on his taste buds, Zhang Jie couldn't help but nod with satisfaction.

The imperial chef's superb skills reminded him of a piece of news circulating in Bianjing.

It is said that Cai Jing, the Prime Minister Cai, was not only old and strong in his official career,

but also had not lost the favor of the emperor after the age of knowing heaven's mandate, quite like an evergreen tree in the Great Song court,

and in the outer court, he could be said to be one person below ten thousand, calling the wind and rain, and omnipotent;

(Angry Cai Jing: Let me repeat, in our Great Song court,

only one person can call the wind and rain, and that is the Emperor!

And only one person can block the wind and rain, and that is I, Cai Jing!

You all should not ruin my reputation!)

In terms of eating, he also deeply understood the teachings of the Confucian ancestor Kong Qiu, "food is never too refined, minced meat is never too fine,"

it is said that his meals, in terms of exquisiteness, deliciousness, and variety, were even better than the Emperor's imperial meals.

Speaking of which, before Zhang Jie opened the mountain and set up the roller at Liang Shan, when the world was still the Song Dynasty of the old Zhao family,

a certain official bought a maid in Kaifeng, and this maid said she was from the bun bureau of Prime Minister Cai's kitchen, which was specifically for making buns.

The official, who had also heard of the richness, extravagance, deliciousness,

and mouth-watering nature of Prime Minister Cai's meals, asked the maid to make a few buns that the Prime Minister had eaten to taste.

Official: Hey, today I will also live the life of Prime Minister Cai, and enjoy the treatment of Prime Minister Cai!

But the maid said she didn't know how to make them; in the bun bureau, she was only responsible for cutting onion shreds, and nothing else.

These onion shreds were said to have to be carved with exquisite patterns.

Cutting onion shreds for buns requires hiring a special person; you say how many people have to serve Prime Minister Cai to eat a bun?

Is this still the ordinary bun we usually eat?

President Yuan during the Republic of China also had a similar example. An official met President Yuan eating,

and found that President Yuan, as the head of a country, only ate a bowl of millet porridge and two crucian carp for a meal,

and was immediately filled with emotion. The President is so frugal, he is truly a model for the world.

So the person next to him told him that the millet used in the millet porridge President Yuan ate was all picked out one by one by hand.

There are two famous novels in the Qing Dynasty, one is Wu Jingzi's "The Scholars,"

and the other is Cao Xueqin's "Dream of the Red Chamber." Both books involve ancient food waste,

but they are different, and comparing them is quite interesting.

Wu Jingzi's background was okay; according to his own words, it was "family reputation and imperial examination have always been beautiful,"

it was a family that could truly make people give a thumbs up, but after all, it was also ordinary people,

and later the family fell, and he tasted the cold and warmth of the world.

In his "The Scholars," whenever official banquets are mentioned,

it is big bowls of sea cucumber, big bowls of cooked beef, big bowls of white-cut mutton,

big bowls of stewed pork, a bit like the earthy food broadcasts of the 21st century, winning by quantity.

This is Wu Jingzi, this poor scholar's imagination of the extravagant diet of officials.

Let's look at Cao Xueqin. Cao Xueqin was born in a true official family,

his grandfather Cao Yin was the companion of Kangxi, the eternal emperor of our Great Qing,

and Kangxi lived in their house when he went to Jiangnan, which is the area of the Great Palace in Nanjing.

How did Cao Xueqin write about the diet of an official family?

In the forty-first chapter of Dream of the Red Chamber, Granny Liu entered the Grand View Garden for the second time,

and Grandmother Jia invited Granny Liu to taste a snack made of eggplant,

Granny Liu finished eating and felt it was extremely delicious, and couldn't taste the eggplant flavor at all.

Granny Liu, as a farmer, couldn't believe that this snack was made of eggplant,

so she asked for the specific method, and Wang Xifeng smiled and replied:

"This is not difficult. Peel the eggplant, only use the clean meat,

cut into small pieces, fry with chicken oil, then use chicken breast meat and mushrooms,

fresh bamboo shoots, mushrooms, five-spice dried tofu, all kinds of dried fruits, all cut into small pieces,

stew with chicken soup until dry, collect with sesame oil, add some fermented oil and mix, put in a porcelain jar and seal tightly,

when you want to eat, take it out and mix with fried chicken melon."

Granny Liu heard this, shook her head and stuck out her tongue and said: "My Buddha!

It took more than ten chickens to match it, no wonder this taste!"

A snack made of eggplant would cost more than a dozen chickens,

which Wu Jingzi, who was born as a poor scholar, could never have imagined,

his ceiling for imagining extravagant delicacies was big bowls of sea cucumber, big bowls of beef,

which also reflects the huge difference in food waste between the two groups of poor and rich in ancient times.

The waste of the poor is eating excessive ordinary food, for example, if you can only eat pork once a month,

eating white rice is also enough to gain strength, if you eat pork every day, it must be a waste, too wasteful.

The waste of the rich is completely different; eating an eggplant also requires the people below to rack their brains and spare no cost to make patterns.

You see, just eating an eggplant, but behind it, ten chickens are already gone;

you see him eating cabbage, but the soup for stewing the cabbage is made from abalone and sea cucumber,

it is said that an official during the Yongzheng period actually used ginseng as firewood to stew cabbage.