Chapter 30: Do You Know the Indian Ah San?

On the second floor of the stone tower, Lady Cao Sanniang was still sitting at the table she always used, waiting for Zhang Zhao. On the table were two or three small dishes and a pot of wine.

As soon as Zhang Zhao sat down, Lady Cao Sanniang brought a plate of pastries over and set it in front of him.

"Young lord, look at this! I'm sure you've never had it before!"

Hearing Lady Cao Sanniang speak with such certainty, Zhang Zhao picked up his chopsticks and examined it carefully. Hmm! Creamy white and round, with flowers delicately carved on the surface — it looked as though it had been steamed from glutinous rice along with candied jujubes and red beans.

Zhang Zhao quickly picked up a piece and put it in his mouth. Sweet, soft, chewy, and delicious — wasn't this just the famous Xi'an snack zenggao from later times?

Oh...! Whoever made this was clever enough to add some goji berries too.

"Glutinous rice from Wuxi County in Jiangnan East Circuit, candied jujubes made from Guanzhong sweet dates, paired with red beans and sugar frosting — truly incomparably delicious.

Though these Lingzhou goji berries shouldn't have been added; I'm not quite used to them. Still, well done! For you, Sanniang, to make the famous Chang'an delicacy Crystal Dragon-Phoenix Cake so deliciously here in Shazhou is no small feat!"

What a joke — Zhang Zhao smiled smugly to himself. You're telling a man from the future that he's never eaten glutinous rice? Isn't that nonsense? The desserts I ate in my old life are beyond anything you could imagine.

Zhang Zhao smacked his lips. Those cloyingly sweet Western pastries from his old life — tiramisu, macarons, and the like — now that he recalled them, they seemed so delicious.

Only now did he realize that being able to put so much sugar into a single pastry was, in this era, an unimaginable luxury.

Even a simple bowl of rice with toppings from the future, with its heavy oil and heavy salt, was beyond what an ordinary official's household could manage in this age.

How he missed it! If he could, he would still rather be an ordinary person in the future. Even if buying a house was hard, at least he'd have food and clothing without worry, and his safety would be guaranteed.

Lady Cao Sanniang stared wide-eyed at Zhang Zhao before her. She was now absolutely certain that this man — the only son of the White-Clad Son of Heaven Zhang Chengfeng, the sole direct-line descendant of the Dragon Tongue Hall of the Nanyang Zhang clan — must carry many, many stories she did not know.

Young Lord Zhang Erlang was by no means the useless fool who only knew how to eat vegetarian meals and chant sutras, as everyone believed. The White-Clad Son of Heaven must have left a great many things to his descendants.

Because other things could be faked, but experience — and the nostalgic look in Zhang Zhao's eyes — could not be faked.

This zenggao (Crystal Dragon-Phoenix Cake), which Zhang Zhao regarded as utterly ordinary, was in fact anything but ordinary. Even in the Great Tang, glutinous rice was considered a luxury food wherever you went.

At this time, rice was not actually grown over a wide area, because its yield per mu was much lower than millet, and its taste was not necessarily better than millet — except for the Xiangshui rice of Balhae and the glutinous rice of Wuxi in Shannan East Circuit. As a result, in places like Henan, Hebei, and Guanzhong, good glutinous rice was by no means cheap.

Sugar, of course, was even more precious. In earlier times, sugarcane juice was drunk directly rather than boiled into sugar; sugar was boiled from malt, so one can imagine the yield. It was not until the Northern and Southern Dynasties period that the Chinese learned to make sugar from sugarcane.

And the popularization of the actual technique had to wait until after Wang Xuance destroyed a kingdom single-handedly and brought Indian sugar-making craftsmen back to Chang'an as captives. Only then did cane sugar begin to spread — in all, less than three hundred years ago.

If Chang'an was like that, then Shazhou was even worse. Shazhou lies in the northwest, its connection with the Central Plains cut off by the Uyghurs and the Wenmo. Calling it a poor and remote backwater would not be an exaggeration. Most people here would go their entire lives without knowing what glutinous rice or cane sugar was.

As for Crystal Dragon-Phoenix Cake —

Heh!

Lady Cao Sanniang could only make a little of it during festivals and holidays. Even her son Murong Xinzhang, the eldest grandson of the Prefect of Guazhou, could eat three of them at a single sitting and would not stop until his belly was round and bulging.

Yet the Zhang Zhao before her had taken only one bite and then stopped, a nostalgic look appearing in his eyes. Clearly, he did not think this was particularly precious, nor did he find it especially delicious.

"Young lord, aren't you going to eat more? This cake is so delicious!" As Zhang Zhao was lost in recollection, the young maid Shanniang pursed her lips and came over to pour him a large bowl of wine, though her eyes never left that bowl of zenggao.

Zhang Zhao gave a wry smile, then shook his head. It had already been seven or eight days since he'd crossed over — what was the point of dwelling on all that? Since he was here, he might as well settle in. He picked up the bowl of zenggao that had stirred up so many memories and handed it to Shanniang.

"I won't eat any more! Your young lord has eaten things a hundred times, a thousand times more delicious than this before. This bowl of zenggao — I'll bestow it on our little Shanniang!"

Shanniang's face immediately filled with flattered astonishment. She turned and looked at Lady Cao Sanniang with a mixture of hope and nervousness.

Lady Cao Sanniang tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and nodded with a doting expression. Shanniang was, after all, her personal maidservant, and after enduring so many days of hardship together, they were nominally mistress and servant but in truth almost like sisters.

"Since the young lord has bestowed it on you, sit down and eat it properly. Look at that greedy face of yours!"

Seeing that Lady Cao Sanniang had agreed, Shanniang happily sat down at once and fell upon the zenggao with great relish.

"Young lord, you say there are cakes in this world sweeter and more delicious than zenggao? What would they look like?"

A true foodie indeed — with zenggao in her mouth, she was still thinking about the desserts Zhang Zhao had mentioned, the ones even better than zenggao.

Zhang Zhao raised his head and thought back. "Your young lord here used to love drinking a kind of fruit juice called cola. It looked all black, but once chilled it was extremely refreshing. On the hottest days of summer, one gulp — sweet with the fizz of carbonated bubbles — sent a bone-chilling coolness from head to toe. I can't tell you how comfortable it felt.

Girls, for their part, mostly liked a thing called chocolate. I didn't used to like it, because I found it too sweet — so sweet it scratched the throat.

But now that I think about it, that stuff was silky, fragrant, and soft — rich sweetness with just a hint of bitterness, and in that soft, smooth texture, a bit of crisp, fragrant crunch from peanuts. It really was quite good."

At this, not only did Shanniang's eyes light up with envy — even the zenggao in front of her no longer seemed fragrant — but Lady Cao Sanniang was stunned as well.

Because she was quite certain that the things Zhang Zhao had mentioned — whether it was the somewhat awkward-sounding "chocolate," or the two items "cola" and "peanuts" — she was sure she had never heard of any of them.

And "so sweet it scratched the throat" — Lady Cao Sanniang truly could not imagine what kind of person would complain that something was too sweet!

How much sugar frosting had he put in? A jin of sugar frosting cost a hundred and fifty wen — enough to buy more than a dozen dou of rice.

Moreover, Lady Cao Sanniang thought back to that brown sugar frosting. Even if you used one liang of glutinous rice to one liang of sugar frosting, it still couldn't possibly be so sweet that it cloyed!

"Really? Then the young lord's household must have had a great deal of sugar frosting — so much that you didn't even want to eat it!"

Shanniang narrowed her eyes and sank into fantasy, but in an instant her face turned nervous and pale. Of course the young lord's household had once had plenty of sugar frosting — because his father had been the White-Clad Son of Heaven of the former Jinshan Kingdom.

Zhang Zhao waved his hand, signaling that Shanniang needn't be nervous. He didn't mind others bringing up his past — and besides, the cola and chocolate he'd mentioned weren't from the former Jinshan Kingdom anyway. They were from the future.

"Sugar frosting may seem precious here, but in this place, it's actually not all that rare. This time, when your young lord goes to the Golden Kingdom of Khotan, I'll be sure to bring back plenty of sugar frosting for Shanniang — and not that brown kind, either, but white sugar, white as snow and clear as ice!"

Zhang Zhao dipped a finger in a bit of wine and began drawing on the table. Lady Cao Sanniang leaned in and looked, puzzled. This place was to the lower right of the Golden Kingdom of Khotan. It seemed... it seemed...

Lady Cao Sanniang felt it was somehow familiar, but then suddenly she couldn't remember where it was!

"This is India, the birthplace of Shakyamuni Buddha. But this place holds more than just the Buddha — it also has sugarcane, fragrant leaves, sappanwood, pepper, nutmeg, and other fine goods. The country is rich but its people are weak. With three thousand brave warriors, one could establish hegemony here. I shall surely take it for the Son of Heaven's uncle!"

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