I'm the Culinary God

"What dishes are you making with all this meat?"

Shen Guofu knew there was no way they could finish off these hundreds of jin of meat in one meal today, but even if they didn’t eat it right away, just seeing so much meat piled up made him feel very comfortable.

It felt like he’d finally achieved pork freedom.

Shen Jiayue said:

"Xu Bao’s going to make Soy Sauce Meat, kind of like salted pork or cured pork, and he’s also planning to do two Soy Sauce Ducks and one Salted Duck. I’m going to help later too, this is something we’re doing together."

She was finally going to cook together with Xu Bao; later she had to get Yan Bao to film a bit.

Spring Festival was coming up, so of course the New Year goods had to be prepared.

"Soy Sauce Meat?"

When Shen Guofu heard that, he perked right up. In his younger days he’d roamed all over the country and eaten every kind of meat there was, so Soy Sauce Meat wasn’t unfamiliar to him at all.

But he’d only ever had Soy Sauce Meat in restaurants before; this was the first time making it at home to eat.

Looking at the meat on the table, he asked:

"Is this enough meat or not? How about I find someone to buy another hundred jin? What if we don’t have enough to eat over New Year, then what?"

People who grew up hungry always have a kind of food-shortage anxiety, constantly afraid the food they’ve prepared won’t be enough.

Lin Xu finished cleaning the duck offal, poured the fried soybeans into the duck meat, and then said:

"It’s enough. We’re all going back to Yinzhou to celebrate this year, and they’re making plenty of salted meat and air-dried meat over there too, all done up in the mountains, and the quality’s even better than this."

After a while, once the wedding was done and arrangements here were settled, Lin Xu and his wife would be heading to Yinzhou for New Year together with Shen Guofu, Han Shuzhen, and Grandma Shen.

The two families would have a lively, boisterous reunion New Year, with the elders sitting together chatting and playing mahjong.

New Year, for the young folks, was about relaxing body and mind; for the elders, it was about having the whole family together.

And this way Old Shen could also inspect the construction progress at the Horse Farm; if anything needed adjusting, he could talk it over with Second Uncle.

As soon as he heard there’d be salted meat and air-dried meat in Yinzhou, Shen Guofu finally felt at ease.

Lin Xu cleaned the duck intestine, cut it into sections, then tidied up the other duck offal, and started getting ready to cook.

For this kind of offal you need to blanch it, to strip away as much of the odor as possible.

After blanching, Lin Xu went straight in with the braising-in-sauce technique and set the duck offal to stew.

Once the duck meat broth in the pot was almost cooked down, he added young ginger, Erjing chili peppers, and pieces of scallion, then a bit of salt and a small spoonful of sugar, and stir-fried it all together.

Finally he brought over the duck blood, stirred it with a spoon, poured half of it into the pot first, stir-fried a few times, and let the duck blood coat the duck meat evenly.

The spicy, fragrant duck meat wrapped in duck blood had such a concentrated savoriness that just the smell made your mouth water.

Once the duck blood in the pot had solidified, he poured in the rest of the duck blood.

This method of adding in batches is called "jus-wrapped thickening" in the trade. Some dishes that require the sauce to be thickened twice or even three times, such as Mapo Tofu, are classic examples of this technique.

Lin Xu stir-fried a few more times; when the duck blood in the pot had set again, he turned off the flame and ladled out the Blood Duck, now stained a dark brown-black by the duck blood, into a serving bowl.

Outside the kitchen, Tan Yajun sniffed and said:

"Mm, that’s the smell. Last April I polished off over half a kilo of the local homemade Rice Wine with an order of Blood Duck. I didn’t feel anything at first, and who knew the kick would be so strong—I ended up lying in my hotel room the entire next day."

Old Tan was a foodie too, very particular about what he ate.

He hadn’t been keen on that Blood Duck at first because it didn’t look great; he just meant to take a polite bite, and then he couldn’t stop. The local audit bureau leader had joked about it with him the last time they met.

Smelling the spicy, fresh fragrance now, he sighed a bit and said:

"It’s a shame we don’t have that kind of rustic liquor to drink today... Xu, you know how to make fruit vinegar, so you can brew liquor too, right?"

Lin Xu brought the small heaping bowl of Blood Duck to the dining table and said with a smile:

"I can, but I don’t really dare to make it, because homemade liquor can easily produce methanol by accident, and drinking that is bad for your health. So it’s safer to just buy."

Homemade liquor tends to come out with methanol in it, and there are often news stories about people getting seriously hurt from drinking it.

You can’t rush drinking this kind of liquor; it’s best to pour it into a bowl and shake it a little before drinking, making use of the fact that methanol evaporates more easily than ethanol, to let the methanol dissipate.

The reason red wine has a "letting it breathe" step in the first place was also to let methanol and those funky fermentation smells escape.

Once the wine has sat in a special vessel for a bit, what’s left is mostly ethanol and rich wine aroma; over time, this became the standard for red wine tasting.

Lin Xu went back into the kitchen, dished up the braised duck offal, then fished out the cooked rump meat, sliced it thin, and served it with the garlic dipping sauce he’d mixed earlier. Just like that, a delicious plate of Pork in Garlic Paste was done.

For this dish to be good, you have to use freshly slaughtered meat.

Especially when you put the meat into the pot while it’s still warm from slaughter, the pork has a unique freshness; it tastes rich but not greasy, both satisfying and indulgent. Almost every region’s "slaughter pig feast" has a similar dish.

Next up on the table was a cold dish Lin Xu had just made by blanching tender Spinach and glass noodles, then tossing them with Yellow Mustard Sauce.

With these four dishes, plus the smoked fish, lotus root slices, braised meat, roast chicken, sweet-skin duck and other dishes Car Boy had packed from the shop, tonight’s dinner was ready.

"Time to eat!"

Lin Xu called out, then set the wok on the stove, turned on the heat, and added half a wok of water.

He brought the water to a boil on high heat, added a spoonful of lard, then drizzled in two beaten Eggs in a circular motion to make egg flower, tossed in a handful of Spinach, and seasoned it with salt, pepper, Rice Vinegar and other flavorings.