Chapter 17: You're Told to Open a Food Shop, But You Operate at 3 AM

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Protagonist:

Lu Feng

Lu Feng arrived at Food Street a little after two in the afternoon.

He walked into the shop and put the ingredients he had bought into the refrigerator.

He hadn't originally planned to come this early, but leaving that many dishes at the rental house was too troublesome, so he simply came straight over.

It was still early, so Lu Feng locked the shop door and planned to wander around nearby first.

He strolled a lap through the shopping mall and discovered an arcade; feeling a pang of nostalgia, he went inside.

The arcade was mostly push coin machines, fishing games, and the like; Lu Feng wasn't interested in those.

He always felt they had a touch of gambling to them.

Some middle-aged men would sit at a single machine all day with a bottle of water and a pack of cigarettes.

Spending thousands or tens of thousands every month on these games, just to hear the sounds.

Lu Feng still preferred the arcade cabinets he played as a kid — one coin could last one or two hours.

He bought a few coins, sat down, and started playing the fighting game he used to play all the time as a child.

Before long, a few kids had gathered around him.

One of them even inserted a coin and challenged him.

Lu Feng figured that as an adult he should go easy on a kid, so he held back a bit during the match.

The result: he lost in under a minute.

Lu Feng got interested and decisively inserted another coin to continue.

He didn't expect that even going all out this time, he would still be carried away by the opponent's silky-smooth combo.

Lu Feng was a bit astonished — are kids this strong nowadays?

He used to be a high hand who dominated the arcade; even if he was rusty after years of not playing, he shouldn't have lost that badly.

Refusing to believe it, Lu Feng played a few more rounds with the kid and got beaten so badly he doubted his life.

Until the kid was dragged away by the ear by a middle-aged man with an iron face.

Lu Feng pulled off a series of moves to win the final round, and only then did he feel a bit better.

Checking the time, it was about right, so Lu Feng returned to the restaurant to start preparing for the evening business.

He opened the System Mall; besides pork belly, he also bought some fresh shrimp.

Today he planned to add a shrimp flavor to the xiaolongbao.

The system didn't stipulate what flavor of xiaolongbao had to be sold each day, so Lu Feng simply made them according to his own taste.

He planned to sell both fresh meat filling and shrimp filling xiaolongbao together today, mainly because he wanted to eat them himself.

The fresh shrimp bought from the System Mall were all plump and lively — they jumped high at the slightest touch.

Lu Feng put the fresh shrimp into a water basin, added some salt, and let them soak for half an hour first, to make them spit out the dirt in their bellies.

During this time, Lu Feng kneaded the flour into dough and set it aside to ferment.

When the water in the shrimp basin turned a bit murky, Lu Feng put on gloves, picked out the fresh shrimp one by one, and washed them clean with clear water.

Next he covered the basin holding the fresh shrimp with cling film and put it in the freezer compartment of the refrigerator to freeze for half an hour.

This way the fresh shrimp would gradually lose consciousness in the low-temperature environment, making handling them more humane later, while also keeping the shrimp meat fresh.

After washing the pork clean, he cut it into small pieces, then sliced each piece diagonally, crosswise, and lengthwise, dicing it into fine meat cubes.

Then Lu Feng brought down both knives, thud-thud-thud, and started chopping the meat.

Chopping meat filling is both a strength job and a skill job.

How finely the meat filling is chopped determines whether the steamed xiaolongbao turn out tender and fresh.

Only by chopping the meat filling fine enough can it fully absorb the scallion ginger water and seasonings, making it more flavorful to eat.

Lu Feng chopped very meticulously; the meat filling gradually developed gel under his chopping, becoming sticky and elastic.

He divided the chopped meat filling into two portions and put them into two separate bowls.

One portion for pork xiaolongbao, the other for shrimp xiaolongbao.

Lu Feng added diced pork skin jelly to the pork xiaolongbao filling, mixed in seasonings, covered it with cling film, and put it in the refrigerator to chill for later use.

He opened the freezer compartment; the fresh shrimp inside were now motionless.

Next came processing the fresh shrimp.

He took the fresh shrimp out of the ice water one by one, removed the heads, peeled the shells, deveined them, leaving the translucent shrimp meat.

Processing fresh shrimp is normally time-consuming, but with Lu Feng's full-level culinary arts bonus, his movements were flowing-water fast.

Very quickly, all the shrimp meat was processed.

Next he cut the processed shrimp meat into small pieces, mixed it together with the meat filling and seasonings, and stirred uniformly.

The shrimp filling was now ready too; he put it in the refrigerator to chill.

Just then the dough had finished fermenting; Lu Feng took out the dough and kneaded it for a while until it became smooth and elastic.

He cut off a piece of dough with a knife, rolled it into a long strip, cut it into small portions with the knife, and used a rolling pin to roll them into wrappers that were thick in the middle and thin at the edges.

For the first steamer basket, Lu Feng decided to make shrimp filling first — perfect to steam and eat as his own dinner.

He took a wrapper, placed a spoonful of meat filling on it, with the shrimp wrapped inside the meat filling.

Then his right hand pinched pleats while his left hand slowly rotated the wrapper in his hand; in the blink of an eye, exactly eighteen pleats closed the xiaolongbao.

Lu Feng's technique was practiced; he quickly wrapped 3 portions of shrimp xiaolongbao.

This was naturally for himself to eat; just now, when he was mixing the filling, the aroma had already stirred the glutton in his belly.

He naturally had to eat his fill first, only then would he have the strength to make delicacies for the customers.

Placing the wrapped xiaolongbao into the steamer baskets, Lu Feng had already turned on the steamer's switch in advance; by now the water was nearly boiling.

The steamer baskets went into the steamer, and while waiting for them to finish steaming, Lu Feng began preparing the xiaolongbao to be sold today.

Before long, the steamer baskets atop the steamer began emitting waves of aroma, spreading from the kitchen to the hall, then drifting out the door.

Outside the shop door.

The boys from Dorm 203 had already arrived at Food Street.

"Brother Ming, did we come a bit too early?"

Wang Hao asked, looking at Sun Qiming walking ahead.

It was just past seven-thirty in the evening; Sun Qiming had hurried everyone to set off early, they hadn't even eaten dinner.

"What do you know? The early bird gets the worm. Those xiaolongbao are made so deliciously, there definitely won't be few people today." Sun Qiming said with great certainty.

That post on the Campus Forum is still burning hot; quite a few people have shown great interest in Lu Feng's xiaolongbao.

After he saw that post, a sense of crisis immediately rose in his heart.

Everyone who has eaten Lu Feng's xiaolongbao knows — it is a flavor they haven't tasted in a lifetime, and after eating they still want to eat more.

If they don't come a bit earlier, they might not be able to buy any today.

Turning the corner at Food Street's intersection, the group arrived near Lu Feng's shop.

"Holy shit, what's the situation?"

At this time Lu Feng's shop gate was still closed, yet quite a few people had already gathered at the entrance, and had already begun queuing.

The line stretched from the shop entrance all the way to the street corner, and more people kept joining.

From within the queue, Sun Qiming spotted a few familiar figures.

Those few queuing in the middle of the line — aren't they the ones from Dorm 204?

"These beasts! They came early and didn't even give us a shout!"

Watching the Dorm 204 bunch laughing and chatting in the queue, Sun Qiming grit his teeth with envy.

"Hurry up and get in line!"

The Dorm 203 group exchanged a glance, then sprinted toward the end of the queue at hundred-meter-dash speed.

……

At the same time, Li Jiang and his friends, who had been hanging out outside all day, also arrived at Food Street.

Looking at the long queue at Lu Feng's shop entrance, each of them gaped.

"It's only been open one day, is this kid's business already this good?"

Li Jiang scratched his head, muttering under his breath.

The group came to the entrance, just about to prepare to knock, when those queuing behind immediately shouted.

"Hey hey hey! What are you guys doing? Have you no manners? Go queue at the back!"