I'm the Culinary God

Mix well with the cabbage, so that the ingredients coat the surface of the cabbage evenly.

Then put it in the refrigerator to marinate for an hour.

The purpose of marinating is to draw out the moisture, allowing the flavor to penetrate the cabbage stalks.

Mustard Dumpling, this snack, is actually about the crunchy texture of the cabbage, so you should try to use the cabbage stalk as much as possible. If there are too many cabbage leaves, it will taste soft and lose the essence of this snack.

Therefore, when making it, it’s best to cut off the top leaves of the cabbage.

As for the cut leaves, they won’t go to waste and can be made into another Beijing delicacy—Qianlong Cabbage.

Beijing’s local delicacies are essentially centered around mustard and sesame sauce, and Qianlong Cabbage is a typical representative of sesame sauce dishes.

The method is very simple, dilute the sesame sauce with honey, white sugar, rice vinegar, and other condiments, then pour it over the torn cabbage leaves and mix well.

This delicacy is completely opposite to Mustard Dumpling.

Mustard Dumpling is pungent, you can smell the stinging mustard smell from afar.

But Qianlong Cabbage is fragrant, the aroma of sesame sauce is not pungent at all, but rather has a delicate fragrance.

In terms of texture, one is crisp and refreshing, the other is soft and tender, with a noticeable difference.

These two dishes vividly showcase Beijing’s two major cold dishes, but ironically, they both use the same ingredient, giving a sense of the two sides of a coin.

Lin Xu tears the cut cabbage leaves piece by piece, rinses them with clean water, and places them in a basket to drain.

Then in a larger bowl, he adds some sesame sauce, a tablespoon of Light Soy Sauce, a little Dark Soy Sauce, a tablespoon of soft white sugar, a small spoonful of honey, and two tablespoons of rice vinegar, stirring to mix the sesame sauce.

The reason for using soft white sugar instead of white sugar is that white sugar is relatively difficult to dissolve and will form small granules when mixed with cabbage, so the easily dissolvable soft white sugar is used instead.

Once the sesame sauce is thinned, pour the drained cabbage leaves into the bowl, and add the prepared sesame sauce, mixing evenly by hand.

Simply mixing with chopsticks doesn’t easily infuse the flavor, so it’s necessary to wear gloves and gently mix by hand, ensuring the sesame sauce evenly coats the cabbage leaves.

After mixing, sprinkle with roasted white sesame.

Let it marinate for a few minutes, allowing the salt and sugar in the condiments to draw out the moisture from the leaves, which will make the texture softer and more flavorful.

Guo Xinghai, after finishing his work, saw Lin Xu’s Qianlong Cabbage and smiled, saying:

"I never knew about this dish until those two hosts from Jinmen quarreled, and I found out about this cold dish... By the way, did Emperor Qianlong really eat this cold dish?"

"What nonsense, this dish didn’t even exist thirty years ago, it’s a ’youngster’ in Beijing cuisine compared to Mustard Dumpling."

Zhuang Yizhou, who has worked at Yanjing Hotel for many years, knows this dish quite well.

Though it’s a ’youngster’ in Beijing cuisine, the fame of Qianlong Cabbage is quite high, especially after the two hosts quarreled, making everyone on the internet eager to learn Qianlong Cabbage.

Even some foreign content creators have seriously researched the recipe.

Despite having elements of curiosity and hype, there’s no denying that the name Qianlong adds a lot of talking points to this dish.

Lin Xu flipped through the "Imperial Food Records" at home, which specially recorded the two cold dishes Emperor Qianlong ate, one was cubilose with chicken, and the other was tiger salad.

There’s completely no trace of Qianlong Cabbage, not even cabbage appearing as a main ingredient, there was never a dish made primarily with cabbage.

Furthermore, even the two dishes of cubilose with chicken and tiger salad didn’t appear at formal meal times.

The "Imperial Food Records" recorded them as dishes served outside official meal times, for a simple reason—that cold dishes were not presented on the dining table.

So, Emperor Qianlong never ate Qianlong Cabbage, nor did he invent it.

It’s entirely because the sesame sauce is yellow, and the premium cabbage leaves are also yellow, hence borrowing the royal reputation, and the trending topic in the culinary world naturally concerns the royal family of Da Qing with Qianlong at the forefront.

In any case, there are already many unrelated dishes attributed to this emperor, so adding one more Qianlong Cabbage doesn’t really matter.

After finishing Qianlong Cabbage, Lin Xu brought over a few tender cucumbers.

His father-in-law had asked him to make Cucumber Dumplings.

But this dish, like Mustard Dumpling, traditionally requires marinating for two to three days before it can be eaten. To fulfill his father-in-law’s wish and also help him eat more vegetables, Lin Xu plans to expedite the pickling process of the cucumbers.

The long marinating time for Cucumber Dumplings is because cucumbers are hard to pickle through, so as long as the pickling process is accelerated, theoretically, it can be eaten the same day like the quick method of Mustard Dumpling.

To pickle thoroughly, Lin Xu specifically used the Suo Yi Knife Skill, transforming these clean cucumbers into Suo Yi Cucumbers.

The Suo Yi Knife Skill is not difficult. First, make vertical cuts, slicing the cucumbers into continuous sections with a two-millimeter interval. If you have trouble mastering it, you can place chopsticks on either side of the cucumber when slicing.

This way, no matter how you cut, the cucumber remains connected on the bottom.

If your knife skills are good, you can do it without chopsticks, simply tilt the knife forward, allowing the knife’s blade to tilt back, and when you cut down, the cucumber remains connected.

Once one side is done, rotate the cucumber half a turn to reveal the connected parts, and then slice it again using the oblique knife method.