Abnormal Gourmet Chronicle

During lunch, Pei Xing quietly asked Li Hua in confusion, "Didn't Master Qin always let us taste the dishes together after trying them out in the past?"

"Why is he just quietly cooking, eating, and then dumping them today?"

Pei Xing's face was full of the desire to contribute to Master Qin's efforts.

Li Hua looked deeply at Pei Xing, finally understanding why this connected individual couldn't make it at Zhiwei Restaurant either. Talent is one thing, emotional intelligence is another.

Li Hua silently took a bite of his meal and said, "Master Qin has his own judgement; if he feels it's unnecessary, then it's unnecessary."

Some dishes are worth tasting, while others are not even worth the taste test.

The pigs eating the canteen slop today are lucky.

On the other side, Qin Huai was doubting life while making cold sea cucumber salad.

It wasn't because it tasted bad but because he was questioning the difficulty of sea cucumber dishes.

Previously, Qin Huai could say he knew nothing about sea cucumbers. Even though Cao Guixiang gave him a brief over an hour of basic theory class and told him to practice on his own, Qin Huai still didn't understand sea cucumbers.

Now he does.

Sea cucumbers are...

Really fishy!

Compared to sea cucumbers, the fishy smell of fish, meat, or seafood seems insignificant. The fishy smell of sea cucumbers is the real deal. It's not terribly strong, but if not handled properly, it will immediately ruin the dish and directly reveal the chef's lack of skill.

It's not particularly hard to handle.

But it's certainly not easy to handle.

Qin Huai's master-level seasoning skills meant he couldn't make any major mistakes in flavor.

The process of making cold sea cucumber salad today was indeed like this. Initially, due to his unfamiliarity with the ingredient and his inexperienced technique, he encountered many problems, making the first few batches quite hard to eat.

Learning new dishes is a constant process of discovering and correcting issues, and Qin Huai corrected them quickly, but he only corrected them.

He only managed to eliminate the fishy smell from the cold sea cucumber salad, reaching an acceptable standard, but it wasn't particularly delicious.

Sea cucumber itself is tasteless. All its flavor is introduced during the seasoning process, making it a dish to show off one's skills.

Showing off skills implies there must be skills to begin with.

In the morning's process of making the dish, Qin Huai could say that each small progress he made led him to question life a little more.

Because as he became more acquainted with sea cucumbers, a question posed by Cao Guixiang earlier also started to linger in his mind.

Sea cucumbers as an ingredient… can they be paired with crab yellow sauce to make buns?

How did the chef who invented this recipe dare?

This isn't just a matter of being highly skilled; it's simply… willfulness.

How can these two ingredients be combined at all?

And as he understood sea cucumbers more, Qin Huai realized that the method invented by Master Jing to fry sea cucumbers for a few seconds was sheer genius.

Zheng Da indeed has outstanding talent.

His ideas are unconventional, but his results are astounding.

As he was working, Qin Huai found himself filled with admiration for Master Zheng.

This admiration and confusion lasted until noon. Even while slicing radish into strips in front of his phone camera, he kept thinking about how sea cucumber and crab yellow could be paired together — is this right?

Is the Double Crab Bun made with crab yellow sauce the same Double Crab Bun made with fresh crab yellow?

Qin Huai even started to somewhat understand Zheng Siyuan's mindset, feeling that ignorance can be bliss, thinking everything is possible when there is no concept of boundaries. The more one knows, the more limited one's thinking becomes. It's not exactly limited, but knowing the difficulties and barriers prevents one from thinking in certain directions in the first place.

Thinking about it this way, Zheng Da is indeed a genius.

He dares to throw anything into the oil for a fry. This behavior is outrageous, but this mindset is genius.

"Xiao Qin, what's wrong? You seem distracted, what are you thinking about?" Cao Guixiang noticed Qin Huai's slight absent-mindedness and reminded, "It's not a good habit to be distracted while cutting vegetables. Be careful with your hand."

Qin Huai didn't instinctively look down at the knife, but directly explained, "I'm thinking about how to pair crab yellow and sea cucumber together for bun filling."

Cao Guixiang couldn't help but burst into laughter, coughing twice and quickly taking a sip of water: "Looks like you've learned how to cook sea cucumber today. Let me guess what else you did. You definitely can't make hot dishes, your knife skills and fire control aren't there. As for cold dishes, probably only cold sea cucumber salad could you manage, right?"

"Did you use the recipe I gave you?"

"Yes," Qin Huai nodded.

"Then you should practice well," Cao Guixiang said, "The recipe I gave you is not an ordinary one, at least it's a secret recipe, with high difficulty in seasoning, requiring either highly experienced or very skilled chefs in seasoning to make."

"But what you said earlier isn't wrong either; combining crab yellow and sea cucumber for bun filling is outrageous. The difficulty of this filling isn't lower than the seasoning challenge I gave you with the cold sea cucumber salad. If you manage to make the cold sea cucumber salad well, I believe you might have a chance of succeeding with the Double Crab Bun you mentioned."

Qin Huai: ?

Qin Huai looked up in shock: "Ah, the cold sea cucumber salad recipe you gave me is very difficult?"

"Of course, it's a secret recipe. How can a secret recipe be easy? If it were easy, others would have already learned it from us," Cao Guixiang looked at Qin Huai through the camera innocently. If she could hold back her smile, her innocence would have seemed more genuine, "Besides, the secret recipe tastes better. The flavor of ordinary cold sea cucumber salad is generally average, nowhere near as delicious as what this recipe can produce."