Chapter 404 - 203: This Line Is Very Authoritative
"Alright." Zhou Yan’s eyes lit up. He immediately went inside to look for a book and soon pulled an old, oil-stained volume from the shelf.
The cover read *Sichuan Cuisine Recipe*, with "Rongcheng City Food Service Company" printed below.
On the back was a line of small print: For Internal Distribution Only.
Zhou Yan’s eyes lit up again. ’That single line just screams authority!’
The Rongcheng City Food Service Company oversaw the entire restaurant industry in Chengdu. Famous establishments like Rongyuan Garden, Chengdu Restaurant, Chen Mapo Tofu, and Zhong Shuijiao were all under its management, and it had countless Grandmasters in its ranks.
This spoke volumes about the value of this internally distributed recipe book.
Zhou Yan opened the cover. The publisher’s note caught his eye, one paragraph in particular: "In order to critically appraise and carry forward our nation’s culinary arts, we have invited a number of chefs and professionals with practical experience to form an editorial team combining the old, middle-aged, and young generations. We have collected regional specialty dishes and compiled this *Sichuan Cuisine Recipe* to serve as a reference for culinary training programs and for the broader workforce to study..."
’This is the real deal!’
’It’s a textbook!’
’This is exactly what I needed!’
Zhou Yan flipped through a few more pages. The content of the recipe book was solid, and it seemed quite practical.
The quantities for main ingredients, side ingredients, and seasonings were incredibly precise, and the cooking methods were written out with perfect clarity.
’At first glance, it seemed like anyone could do it, right?’
But while the book was marked for internal distribution, it was actually a textbook for culinary training programs all over the country. The print run couldn’t have been small.
The publication date was July 1977, and there hadn’t been a sudden explosion in the number of Sichuan Cuisine Grandmasters since then.
Clearly, there was a vast gap between having a recipe and actually mastering the craft.
After all, even with a master teaching them step-by-step, most chefs needed three years of Knife Skills and three years of culinary training before they could be considered fully fledged.
Master Xu had the recipe for Chicken Tofu Pudding, but didn’t he still have to send it to him to study and see if it could be replicated?
Take the first step of Snowflake Chicken Porridge, for example: processing chicken breast into a fine paste.
Some chefs had no idea what consistency the "fine paste" should be, so they’d get stuck on the very first step of the recipe.
All culinary traditions had to be built upon a chef’s solid foundation of fundamental skills.
Zhou Yan wouldn’t dare claim he could perfectly recreate a dish just by reading a recipe, but this book was an absolute treasure and well worth studying in depth.
Take the fish-flavor profile, for instance. The book had recipes for Fish-Flavored Eggplant and Fish-Flavored Tofu. Zhou Yan only knew how to mix the fish-flavor sauce, but from this book, he could learn how to properly cook the eggplant and tofu.
When you already knew one half of the process, learning the other half was naturally much faster.
He was quite interested in the Fish-Flavored Tofu, since his shop actually had tofu in stock.
"Grandmaster, this is truly a treasure!" Zhou Yan said with a smile as he came out of the library and saw Wang, who had already poured himself a drink. "I’ll borrow this one, then. I’ll take it home to study and bring it back to you next week."
"No need to bring it back. I bought that book with my own money. It’s yours now, a return gift for the braised meat," Wang said with a laugh. "That book has been on the shelf for over a year and no one’s ever borrowed it. You’re probably the only person in all of Suji Town who’d appreciate it."
"Grandmaster! I’ll bring you more braised meat next time!" Zhou Yan was deeply moved. He had really struck gold. ’The Grandmaster is a treasure of a man!’
This reference book would keep him busy studying for a good long while.
"At best, that’s just a reference book. When you have time, you should read more classics to broaden your perspective," Wang said, his tone earnest. "I’m giving you this book, but now I want you to go get another one. On the first bookshelf, top shelf of the first row, take the very first book and bring it home to read at your own pace."
"Okay," Zhou Yan agreed. He went back into the library and emerged a moment later with another book in his hand: *Modern Chinese History*.
𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒆𝙬𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝒎
"Reading history makes one wise. You’d probably never get through those dense, stuffy tomes, so start with this *Modern Chinese History* by Mr. Tsiang Tingfu," Wang said with a gentle smile. "When you unfurl the long scroll of history, you’ll feel how small you are and how short life is. Naturally, you’ll start to see things more clearly."
"Grandmaster, thank you for the lesson. I’ll be sure to read it carefully when I get home," Zhou Yan said, nodding. He sat down with a smile on a small stool beside Wang and asked curiously, "Haven’t you and Mrs. Qiu met for a meal recently? She should be heading to Xiangjiang soon, right?"
Wang lifted his cup and took a sip, a philosophical smile on his face. "Even if she goes to Xiangjiang, we can still write to each other. Such is life, full of meetings and partings. We should just enjoy the time we have when we’re together."