Gourmets of the Heavens

"Red dates? This kind of medicinal material and tonic can be combined with cured meat?!"

Nakiri Senzaemon quickly changed his clothes with the help of his servants, and he looked incredible when he heard Zhao Yougan's words.

You must know that in order to prevent embarrassment, he brought a lot of servants with him. When he heard Zhao Youqian's words at this time, he couldn't hold back the reserved identity of the Patriarch of the Nakiri family, and he showed a look of surprise. You can know how good Zhao Youqian's answer is. It was beyond his expectation.

Speaking of things like red dates, it seems that almost no one will associate them with the preserved meat in Hunan Province.

Maybe some people put some goji berries, this is occasionally seen, for example, when stewing pork ribs and pork trotters, stew them in clear soup, put white radish and other ingredients, and end with goji berries, I hope you can bring some goji berries taste and lusciousness.

As for other ingredients of this type, no one has tried to combine them with preserved meat.

After all, in my impression, the cured meat, especially the preserved meat from Hunan Province, must be combined with chili. Even if it is the original flavor, it has a strong taste, and no one will add these nourishing things.

"Ah, I got the inspiration by accident. In fact, it's not that the smoky flavor of cured meat cannot be combined with nourishing medicinal materials."

"In the past, there was an example of goji berries, and there were also dishes in Europe that used smoked sausage and medicinal materials such as saffron."

In fact, it is not a completely new taste world, but such a technique is indeed very rare for Hunan or Yaozhou cuisine.

Especially the cured meat in Hunan Province has a strong smoky flavor. If the cured meat is smoked and grilled with firewood after stewing, it will inevitably have a smell of wood smoke left in the mouth, with a slightly astringent taste.

In fact, this kind of taste can be alleviated by pairing with white radish and other ingredients, but even so, there is still a little bit of astringency at the end of the tongue. The best way is to pair it with chili. taste.

But Zhao Youqian took a different approach this time, directly using the mellow sweetness of red dates to neutralize the astringency. This is very rare, and it also opened up an idea for Nakiri Senzaemon.

Since red dates can blend in such a smoky taste, can longan, which is also a dried product, be able to do so?

Thinking about it this way, it seems that many dishes can be discussed again, and there is even room for improvement.

"Yeah!"

"The cooking this time really opened my eyes!"

Nakiri Senzaemon has already experienced the explosion of his clothes, so he will not be easily shocked again. He continued to drink the soup in the bowl, and couldn't help but praise again and again.

"Yugan, your idea is really extraordinary. The sweetness of red dates combined with the sweetness of white radish and winter melon vegetables perfectly rounded the astringent taste of smoke into a special aroma, which no longer burdens the taste buds. burden."

"It's an idea to open up the wilderness of taste beyond imagination!"

Aware of the meaning of "opening up" artistic conception contained in the soup, Nakiri Senzaemon's progress towards Zhao Yougan can only be described as amazing.

It is not such a simple matter to develop a new production method, or even a combination of taste dishes, but once completed, the feedback to the cook is unparalleled.

This kind of spiritual and illusory thing, the more you get to Linchu, the more critical it is.

Therefore, Zhao Youqian was able to challenge a different sense of taste in such a short period of time, subverting the ratio of dishes, and to Nakiri Senzaemon, the shock caused was far greater than anything else.

‘Where is this Jiaolong? This is the real dragon species that really lurks in the creek, and will become a nine-day dragon in case of a storm! '

Not to mention the waves in his heart, Zhao Youqian is quite confident in this kind of cooking, and he even used a colander to scoop up a few pieces of cured pig's trotters, white radish, and winter melon into Nakiri Senzaemon's bowl.

"The chief will try other ingredients, the taste is not bad"

"After eating the original flavor, you can dip it into a plate and try it. There will be two different flavors."

As for the dipping dish, Zhao Yougan himself is still the same old way, minced garlic, spicy millet, scallion sesame oil with a little light soy sauce and mature vinegar, this is his favorite dipping dish, no matter what hot pot ingredients it is paired with, it will add flavor.

The preparation for Nakiri Senzaemon is different, a little seven-flavored powder, yellow mustard with yuzu vinegar and green onion powder.

The dipping dish tends to be Dongying style, which is a bit similar to the dipping sauce of "Xiabu Xiabu", but with the addition of yellow mustard, it is more like a dipping dish that can only be used when eating Kanto cooking.

Hearing Zhao Yougan's words, Nakiri Senzaemon couldn't help being a little more curious.

The cured pig’s trotters have already been cut into pieces. In Zhao Youqian’s method, after removing the sediment and black ash on the surface with a steel wool ball, it doesn’t take too long to blanch and cook. It takes about 50 minutes. Added radish and winter melon too.

The winter melon is more ripe than the radish, so put it last, first add the white radish and cook for about ten minutes, then add the winter melon and cook for another five minutes. The time required for such a pot of cooking is only one hour and five minutes.

It's just that when boiling, there is no need to add salt, and the ingredients only need to add four red dates, a little ginger, and a little cooking wine.

The amber color is when a little more soy sauce was added at the beginning of the stew.

After boiling the trotters for 50 minutes, adjust the taste of the soup to see if you need to add salt to increase the base flavor. Generally speaking, it is not necessary, and it is usually just right.

At this time, the cured pig's trotters should be stewed just off the bone, but the meat is still tight and delicate, and the gelatinous skin has a soft tenderness after being baked and boiled, and you can also taste a little soft and crunchy special taste.

This is one of the reasons why Zhao Yougan chose to use cured pig's trotters as the main ingredient of cured meat hot pot.

After cooking at the right heat, the meat of the cured pig’s trotters has become soft and rotten, and the inner layer of fat is like a viscous sauce, but the outer layer still retains a special crunchy and soft taste due to smoked and dried. , this is also a kind of sour taste that the old gourmets like to pursue most.

The soft and tender lean meat turns into shredded meat little by little in the mouth, and it turns into meat paste during chewing, so you don’t have to worry about clogging your teeth at all, followed by a layer of extremely soft and sticky fat layer under the skin, which turns into sticky meat in your mouth. Thick sauce, and finally a thin layer of brown pork knuckle skin.

It's like biting off a layer of heart tube, but it's much thinner than the heart tube. The taste is simply addictive.

At least Nakiri Senzaemon was also amazed by the taste of this rare cured meat ingredient.

The wonderful experience of several tastes paralleling and merging in his mouth made him feel as if he had flown to heaven.

‘The pig’s trotters are already so amazing, how about the white radish and winter melon that are generally more brilliant? '

Such a thought flashed in Nakiri Senzaemon's mind, and then he couldn't help but continued to reach out to the other ingredients in the bowl.