I'm the Culinary God

Both sides are fully fried, put them on a plate, and start frying the next pancake.

To make the potato strip pancakes more delicious for her daughter-in-law, Chen Meijuan specially sprinkled a bit of raw sesame and dried chili powder into the potato strips, giving them a spicy flavor.

For the third pancake, she added some chopped dried vegetables, which filled it with the fragrance of dried vegetables.

The ingredients for each pancake were different, so after finishing her morning exercise, Shen Jiayue ate them with continuous praise:

"I’ve eaten chips and fried potato strips for so long and never thought potato strips made into pancakes could be this good. Mom, you’re really amazing."

Chen Meijuan said with a smile:

"Just a homely meal, it’s nothing. If you like it, I’ll make it for you again tomorrow morning."

"Yay, yay, thank you, Mom, haha. I’m going to post on social media and show off to them. Having such a great mother-in-law is truly a blessing from my previous life."

"Having a daughter-in-law like you is the real blessing for our Lin Family. Even now, it feels like a dream that my son found such a perfect girlfriend."

The mother-in-law and daughter-in-law exchanged flattering compliments, while Lin Xu, like an outsider, ate the crispy yet soft potato strip pancakes, occasionally sipping the spinach and shrimp soup from his bowl.

Ah, delightful!

After the meal, Shen Jiayue voluntarily drove Chen Meijuan to Ginkgo Garden.

Unless there are unexpected circumstances, today should be the day to finalize the construction plans. Before construction starts, she intends to check if there are areas that need revising.

If modifications are made after construction begins, it might be too late.

This investment in Ginkgo Garden isn’t large, as the park is small, and massive investment isn’t suitable. Additionally, dining is the main focus, with recreation as a secondary feature.

A place suitable for family day trips and weekend outings needs dining options capable of retaining visitors, regardless of how good the play area is.

The attractions are merely methods to lure people in.

If in the future the benefits are good, Ginkgo Garden can undergo a second expansion, like enlarging to a thousand acres and adding small animals, among other possibilities.

For now, the focus is on small investments. In today’s cash-is-king era, it’s better for the money to depreciate in the bank than to invest recklessly, which could result in losing everything.

In the shop, Lin Xu placed Dundun on the service counter and scratched the little fellow’s chin:

"I’ll give you goose liver for lunch, but you can’t have it for the next few days. Eating too many high-fat ingredients is bad for your health. Starting tomorrow, you’ll have bullfrog and chicken thigh meat to balance the diet."

"Meow~~~"

Dundun rubbed his round head against Lin Xu and then went to play with Shu Yun.

Lin Xu went upstairs and saw the pig’s head prepared by the staff.

The pig’s head was quite large, nearly twenty pounds, and its big ears looked perfect for pairing with drinks.

The whole pig’s head had undergone preliminary processing and looked pretty clean, but it still needed further handling.

Lin Xu boiled a pot of water, and once it boiled, he placed the pig’s head in it for a few minutes, then took it out to rinse with cold water for cooling.

The purpose of this was to cause the pork skin to shrink, making the bristles protrude outward, which makes it easier to clean up.

"Wow, it looked clean, but after boiling, it seems like a few days without shaving. The bristles are all out."

Zhu Yong, who was helping nearby, touched the pig’s head skin and realized it was full of prickly bristles.

Wei Qian said with a laugh:

"This is normal. Nowadays, pig hair is shaved rather than pulled out, so boiling naturally reveals bristles. If it were done the old way with rosin burning, the bristles would stick and come off, leaving it perfectly clean."

Rosin refers to the resin secreted by pine trees, which can be softened by burning, then applied to the pork skin. After cooling down and removing it, it would take the bristles and roots off directly.

The principle is exactly the same as wax hair removal.

Some rural slaughterhouses in the past would use asphalt for hair removal to save money, but that practice was stopped, and now it’s all done by shaving.

Lin Xu held a blowtorch and began searing the pig’s head skin.

By burning, the bristles and any dirt within the follicles are eliminated, enhancing the pork skin’s texture.

This was an arduous task due to the pig head’s complex surface, with hard-to-shave areas such as inside the ears and eye sockets still having quite a few long hairs, necessitating a thorough sear of the pig’s head.

Only then would the resulting pig’s head be delicious and enjoyable.

Previously, the father-in-law spent money to order a pig’s head in Yangzhou, where the chef might have been too lazy and skipped the step of searing, coupled with rough cooking techniques, causing the family to eat unsatisfactorily.

After searing for a while, Lin Xu passed it over to Zhu Yong to continue.

He asked curiously:

"I read online that braised whole pig’s head was invented by monks using chamber pots. Doesn’t that sound unappetizing?"

From not far away, Zhuang Yizhou responded:

"This saying indeed exists in our Jiangsu hometown, but whether it’s true is uncertain."

Regarding this matter, Lin Xu was very knowledgeable, as Ren Chongmo and Tian Qinglan had gifted him the "Imperial Food Records" which had detailed records.

In the past, the salt merchants in the Huaiyang region didn’t frequently eat pig heads, reserving them only for offerings to deities and ancestors alongside ox heads and sheep heads, collectively known as the Three Lives.

After the sacrifices were completed, the pig heads were discarded.

Calling someone a pig head back then implied inferiority among the Three Lives, meaning they were cheap goods.

The location where ceremonies were held was often within temples.

After the wealthy finished their rituals and left, the pig’s heads were casually discarded. Monks felt it was a waste, especially with the past tendency of impoverished locals hanging around temple entrances begging for food and drink. Monks would clean the pig’s heads and simmer them with a terracotta basin with crystal sugar on a low heat until tender, distributing them to the poor to eat.