I'm the Culinary God

Qi Zhentao really hadn’t expected his son to be this promising—he actually wanted to pursue Zeng Xiaoqi.

She’s the kind of person who can resign from a TV station in a fit of anger, then take her whole team and join Joyful Media. If it were anyone else, who would have that kind of guts and courage?

What’s more, Zeng Xiaoqi is pretty without being pretentious, has a great personality, and no matter how you look at it, she’s the ideal choice for a daughter-in-law.

He carried the tea he’d just brewed over to his son, and said in a low voice:

"When we go back to our hometown for New Year this year, I’ve got to visit the ancestral hall and give thanks to our ancestors for finding us such a good daughter-in-law."

Qi Siming almost burst out laughing:

"There’s not even a hint of fate written down yet, can you stop hyping things up over here? And anyway, if our ancestors really could show miracles, back when you were taking on your godson, wouldn’t they have beaten you senseless with a shoe sole?"

Yang Sihui couldn’t help laughing, then felt it was a bit inappropriate, so she raised her hand and gently patted her son’s back:

"Is that how you talk to your dad? Oh right, I told you to ask Miss Zeng out for Western food—why didn’t you go? No money? If you’re short on cash, Mom can sponsor you a few tens of thousands."

Qi Siming spoke while sketching out the layout for the pastries:

"We at Joyful Media just DISSed Western food and completely stripped it down to its underwear. If at a time like this someone snaps a picture of the on-camera chef and program planner from Human Flavors eating Western food, that would totally destroy the show’s persona."

Qi Zhentao said:

"Then eat Chinese food—find a restaurant with a decent reputation... this... this is actually not that easy to find."

Even though Beijing has plenty of good restaurants, the chefs Zeng Xiaoqi usually deals with are all head chefs from the very top restaurants in Beijing. Even when she’s just having a regular meal, she eats at Lin Ji’s Food.

Under those circumstances, trying to find a restaurant she’d be satisfied with is actually not that easy.

And if the two of them are eating and the head chef of that restaurant happens to recognize her, just thinking about it feels awkward.

Qi Siming said:

"You really don’t need to worry about all that. I’ll handle my own business."

Yang Sihui patted her son again:

"I told you to message Miss Zeng every day—have you been doing it? Don’t leave her hanging. You should say hi when you should say hi, don’t keep acting all deep and mysterious. If you can’t manage, give me the phone, Mom will chat with her for you."

Qi Siming let out a bitter laugh:

"Please don’t scare her off. Feelings are something you have to build up step by step. I’m not in a rush yet, but look at you two, stirring things up over here. If it falls through later, you’ll have to compensate me for my emotional losses. Without at least ten meals of boiled tripe, I’m not forgiving you... Eh? I could ask Director Zeng out for boiled tripe. She seems quite interested in this kind of street snack."

As soon as he said that, Qi Zhentao started painstakingly analyzing which place in Beijing had the best boiled tripe.

While the whole family was busy drafting a strategy for Zeng Xiaoqi, on the other side, Lin Xu, who had already marinated the pork in liquor, carried over the three ducks that had been slaughtered earlier.

He didn’t start cooking them directly. Instead, he picked up a cleaver and began trimming and cutting the ducks.

Shen Jiayue watched in mild surprise:

"You still need to recut them, Xu Bao?"

Lin Xu followed the slit along the back of the duck and cut straight up to the neck so the duck’s body could unfold completely into a round sheet, then explained:

"The ducks need to be completely opened up, that way they dry more easily and dry through."

After all three ducks had been recut, he smeared them all over with liquor as well, using the liquor to marinate them.

While the soy sauce brine hadn’t completely cooled yet, Lin Xu used table salt and spices like Sichuan peppercorns and star anise, stir-frying them together to make the Five-Spice Salt for the salted duck.

Whether you’re making salted duck or Salted duck, you have to rub salt all over the surface and leave them in a basin to marinate for a few days, then hang them up to air-dry.

Once they’re dried, the salted duck can be eaten directly, while the Salted duck is best lightly smoked, just like smoked cured pork, so the fruity wood fragrance fully penetrates the meat.

In fact, salted meat and cured meat are essentially the same thing; different regions just call them by different names. As for the smoked cured meat eaten in the Southwest Region, that’s basically adding a smoking step.

When smoking, you usually hang the meat above the Fire Pit, add slightly damp fruitwood to the pit, and might even throw in green tangerine peels and other aromatic extras.

In the swirling smoke, the cured meat develops a new layer of flavor.

Lin Xu isn’t used to eating smoked cured meat, so he figured it was fine to simply make these ducks into salted duck. Relatively speaking, salted duck better suits Northern eating habits.

Once the salt was stir-fried and the soy sauce brine had cooled almost enough, it was time to soak the meat.

But the meat couldn’t be soaked in the kitchen; the temperature there was too high. Lin Xu picked up several basins and went up to the top floor, setting them in the empty room next to the tea room.

They’d originally planned to put a pool table in this room and play a bit of billiards when they had time, but they’d been too busy and never got around to it, so the room stayed empty.

He set the basins down on the floor, then carried in all the meat that had been soaked in liquor and laid it into the basins one piece at a time.

There was quite a lot of meat—he filled three basins before it was all in. The two ducks meant for Soy Sauce Duck were also laid into the basins at this point.

Once that was done, he ladled the soy sauce broth into a bucket, carried it upstairs, and slowly poured it over the big basins of meat.

"Xu Bao, why are you doing this upstairs?"

Shen Jiayue felt that doing it directly in the kitchen would be the same, wouldn’t it?

Lin Xu kept busy as he answered:

"It’s cooler up here, so the Soy Sauce can penetrate the meat better. It’s the same principle as putting marinated meat into the fridge to chill—lower temperatures make it easier for the meat to absorb moisture."

When everything was done, he took a few round plates, flipped them upside down over the basins, then pressed down so the meat would be completely submerged in the broth.

Next, he’d just need to turn the meat over once a day, and in three days hang it up for ventilation and drying.

Back downstairs, the salt had already cooled. Lin Xu grabbed a handful of salt and thoroughly rubbed down the last duck inside and out, then covered it with plastic wrap to start marinating.