Chapter 104 First Game (Part 2)

The appetizers for both families were ready, and the four dishes were first evaluated by professional judges.

Chun Feng Lou’s signature dishes are honey-glazed barbecued pork and soy sauce chicken.

The surface of the barbecued pork is oily and bright red. After cutting it, you can see that it is made from pork tenderloin, with juice just enough to drip out, and it is roasted just right.

No feast is complete without chicken. This rose soy sauce chicken is not cooked in the traditional way of baking chicken with soy sauce. Instead, it is cooked in the same blanching process as boiled chicken to ensure that the chicken skin is smooth and tender.

They bring their own marinade, so the details are unknown.

The two dishes at Baohualou are four-color shredded radish with red oil and sea snails.

At Ningyan, although this dish is expensive, most of the people who eat there are not short of money, especially because the seafood mixed with radish is different every day, and the taste comes in three flavors: sweet and sour, hot and sour, and scallion oil. It has become a must-order dish for every table.

This boiled chicken is boiled chicken, but there is a layer of crystal clear chicken jelly between the chicken skin and the chicken meat.

After eating his grandfather's boiled chicken and boiled chicken from many other restaurants, Yue Ning found that in this era, people did not pursue this layer of jelly. Boiled chicken would occasionally have jelly on it, but no one took it seriously.

This is no longer the case a few decades later. In Guangdong city, boiled chicken with jelly has become a style of its own.

Each family has its own way of cooking. Yue Ning believes that if boiled in plain water, the jelly will be bland. In order to pursue flavor, boiled chicken cannot be cooked in plain water. If it is simpler, onion, ginger, cooking wine, salt and chicken essence can be used. If it is more complicated, matsutake mushrooms and scallops can be used instead of chicken essence to make the chicken sauce flavorful, but the chicken meat cannot be as salty and fresh as salt-baked chicken.

The boiled jelly chicken on the table now looks like her jelly chicken, but in fact, it’s better not to say.

The etiquette lady divided the food and served it to the professional judges. The remaining dishes were given to ten audience members who were randomly selected as public judges. The professional judges' scores accounted for 70% and the public judges' scores accounted for 30%.

The two teams stood together waiting for comments from professional judges. Soy sauce chicken and poached chicken are classics among Cantonese classics. The judges talked about these two types of chicken first.

Yang Yuhe first commented: "The chickens made by the two restaurants are similar. Chunfenglou's soy sauce chicken uses the blanching method of white-cut chicken, while Baohualou's white-cut chicken is marinated with the spices of soy sauce chicken. This just shows the difference between learning from each other's strengths and doing things in a mess."

Zhang Junming smiled at the criticism as if he was at home in his kitchen.

Yang Yuhe looked up at Zhang Junming and said, "Chef Zhang, I didn't give you face because I've eaten Ningyan's white-cut jelly chicken. The chicken jelly is smooth, fresh and lightly salty, but the chicken still has the original flavor of chicken."

"Yes, the soy sauce chicken at Chunfenglou has the smoothness of boiled chicken's skin and the tenderness and juiciness of boiled chicken, but without losing the fresh, sweet, salty and fragrant characteristics of soy sauce chicken. It's just right." Le Mei commented.

The chef judge first tasted Chunfenglou's soy sauce chicken. He agreed with the previous two judges and said this about Ah Ming's white-cut chicken: "I have always been troubled by the jelly in the white-cut chicken. It is bland and tasteless. As long as the chicken is soaked in ice water for too long, large pieces of jelly will appear. So I have been thinking about how to shorten the soaking time and keep the chicken skin smooth. Now you tell me that if there is no way to eliminate it, then don't eliminate it. Just season it. This is a good idea. However, forget about adding stewing ingredients. With so much water, red dates, codonopsis and the like will not affect the taste of the chicken too much, but cinnamon and bay leaves are extremely strong spices. White-cut chicken should be eaten in its original flavor. You turned this chicken into white-braised chicken."

Ming smiled and said, "I got the idea when I watched Ningning and Xing making Chongqing white braised duck."

Another chef judge said, "It's good to try. But chicken is different from duck. Duck has flavor, so it's more suitable to be roasted or stewed after adding ingredients. It's almost impossible to cook it completely in a boiled state. However, chicken has umami flavor, so the Suiyuan Food List says boiled chicken is delicious as long as salt is used as a dipping sauce. If you want to make a stewed chicken, the stewing broth is too light, the stewing ingredients are not enough, and the flavor is not absorbed."

After the professional judges finished speaking, they let the audience judges speak. The audience judges asked Ah Ming on the stage: "Chef Zhang, do you know what your Yue Ning's expression was when you added the spices just now?"

The audience member covered his eyes and the whole audience burst into laughter. He said: "She doesn't dare to watch it anymore."

Ah Ming looked at Yue Ning in shock. Yue Ning stood up. Nowadays, microphones are all wired. She walked out and the host handed her the microphone. She looked at Ah Ming on the stage and said, "Uncle Ah Ming, other people's masters and bosses sent them out to compete. If they lose, they may be scolded. You are my niece and I sent you out to compete. If you lose, I can't beat you up, right? Just compete seriously. It's good to be innovative. Can we go home and try it?"

The whole audience laughed even louder. A-Ming touched his forehead and said, "Got it."

On the other hand, even though both companies have their own strengths, in the first competition, Baohualou fell far behind because of Amin’s creativity.

The chances of winning against a master were not great, and he was still so far behind. Yue Ning could only comfort himself that at least it was not a technical gap.

Let’s have a good competition in the next round!

In the second round, the hot dishes segment begins.

Ah Ming boiled the fish head, tail and bones in chicken fat while Ah Xing cut the frozen shrimp jelly into small pieces, and then took out the Northwest white flour steamed bun that was said to be made by Yue Ning himself, and cut it into small pieces.

Ah Ming added water to the pot and boiled the fish soup, which was also set for half an hour. He came over and worked with Ah Xing to wrap the jelly with the seasoned shrimp paste, and then rolled it with white flour buns.

Le Mei said, "Is this a hot dish?"

"Exploding Juicy Flower Balls." Yang Yuhe said, "Is this the name?"

In Cantonese cuisine, shrimp balls are mostly called Baihua, so there are Baihua stuffed duck feet and Baihua stuffed fresh scallops.

Ah Ming and Ah Xing made the shrimp balls together. He turned on the heat of the pan and fry the shrimp balls the first time. The second time, he poured the hot oil on the shrimp balls.

Ah Xing took out his tools, kneaded the dough, and used pigments to adjust the color. He made a red ball, overlapped the red, yellow and blue discs to make the eyes, wrapped the red ball with white strips, and cut the beard with scissors...

At this time, Chunfenglou’s first dish, Longteng Sihai, has already been served. Hot dishes cannot be served at the same time. A slight difference in temperature will result in a big difference in taste.

Chunfenglou's Dragon Soars Four Seas has a lobster with an upturned head and an arched tail in the middle, forming a complete lobster shape. One lobster and four flavors are served on both sides, with four bowls, one containing lobster and black truffle steamed egg custard, one containing fish maw and shrimp brain soup, and the other containing dry-fried lobster with XO sauce and lobster with scallion oil.

The judges were tasting the dishes from Chunfeng Tower, but their eyes were on Baohua Tower. Ah Xing placed a cute lion dance in the middle of the plate.

The freshly fried shrimp balls are placed around the lion, and the edge of the plate is decorated with a lace border. For the best presentation effect, there are only six shrimp balls in it. The plate for the audience judges is on the side, without the little lion.

Ah Ming raised his hand: "Awakening lion playing with pearls."

Both restaurants focus on traditional auspiciousness, but the handmade lion dance is much more skillful than the lobster shell plating.

Chunfenglou offers four ways to cook lobster, while Baohualou offers a shrimp ball that is crispy on the outside and tender and juicy on the inside. The taste is simply amazing.

Le Mei looked at the cute little lion and said, "It's probably because there's not enough time. If there's enough time, give it to Chef Ma and he can make a lion cake."

"Such a cute little lion, you want to eat it?"

The aroma was overwhelming at Chunfeng Tower, where they were making raw crispy grass carp, while Baohua Tower was frying balls of pork belly slices.

This time, Chunfeng Tower was completed first.

The judges are eating the crispy raw grass carp from Chunfenglou.

Crispy grass carp is a product that the Guangdong Food Import and Export Company has been promoting. Yue Ning discovered that the food ingredient that was common in his previous life is quite expensive in this life. After asking the comrades from the import and export company, he learned that this grass carp that cannot be cooked has only been cultivated for six years, and the quality is unstable. It takes three years to raise a batch.

Yue Ning ate crispy grass carp when he went to Chunfenglou. It turned out that Boss Liu was from Zhongshan, and his hometown asked him to help promote this new variety in the port city.

The crispy grass carp meat is crispy and chewy, fresh, sweet and fragrant. It is delicious whether it is served in hot pot or made into zhezhe pot.

Several judges went out of their way to praise the dish, not because the import and export company was the sponsor of the show, but because it really tasted novel and delicious.

At Baohua Building, Ah Ming was preparing the sauce for sweet and sour pork. Ah Xing put ice cubes on a bamboo mat and served Ah Ming's sweet and sour pork on the ice as soon as it was ready. Their ice and fire sweet and sour pork was also ready.

Now the judges commented on A-Ming’s sweet and sour pork.

"This dish is a very traditional one. However, few people use meat slices to wrap the meat balls now."

"When I was learning cooking, I only knew to choose pork belly or pork belly, and I also chose spare ribs, but I never learned to cook it this way. It's cold on the outside, hot on the inside, sweet, fragrant, crispy, sweet and sour, and has a rich fruity aroma."

"The old law disappears for a while and becomes the new law."

Both families had finished preparing the hot dishes and were standing together waiting for the second round of results to be announced.

Baohualou won the first dish of both restaurants. The lobster dish of Chunfenglou was well done but lacked creativity. The shrimp balls of Baohualou, excluding the lion on the plate, had a novel and rich taste that was simply loved.

Ah Ming told everyone, "This juicy shrimp ball is a dish Ning Yan just tried out. I entered it into the competition before it was even released."

The second dish was different in its own way. The crispy grass carp tasted so special and the way it was cooked raw was amazing. Baohualou took the Cantonese classic sweet and sour pork and said that it restored the traditional taste, but it tasted new to the audience and elevated it to another level.

One is the outstanding raw materials, and the other is the amazing cooking method.

In the end, the first dish, Baohualou, made up a little bit of the gap, and the second dish was only slightly higher, which did not help much in the overall score.

There was only one main dish and one soup left, and it might be difficult to catch up. The audience quietly felt sorry for Baohualou and also disliked Chef Zhang on the stage. If he hadn't come up with such a creative idea, Baohualou would definitely win.

But the boss and the chef were still cheerful.

Alas! It is true that the emperor is not anxious, but the eunuch is.