Chapter 271 Chef Zhang Cooks Shanghainese Cuisine

After the opening remarks, the two teams on the field began to get busy.

On the Shanghai Jinhua team side, Chef Zhang was busy making soup. Valere saw Chef Zhang cutting the ham into pieces and said, "This is the ham I just saw."

"Yes, Jinhua ham, mainly used for making soup."

Master Zhang's assistant began to cut the pork belly. The ingredients they brought this time were rice leaves and straw.

The assistant cuts the pork belly into large pieces, rolls them tightly with bamboo leaves, and then ties them with straw.

After Master Zhang's soup was cooked, he returned to the stove, placed a large casserole on the stove, poured in oil, added scallions, ginger, bay leaves and star aniseed to stir-fry until fragrant, then put the pork belly wrapped in rice dumplings into the pot and cooked in a whole bottle of Shaoxing Huadiao.

The Huadiao wine sizzled into the casserole, and the aroma made Pierre take a deep breath: "This wine smells so good."

"I'll treat you to this drink tomorrow."

The host asked Chef Zhang: "What dish are you going to make?"

"Jiangnan braised pork." Chef Zhang replied.

Fukuyamaro in Japan is a restaurant specializing in Sichuan cuisine, and the contestants are a father and son.

The father's name was Zhao Ping'an, and he spoke fluent Sichuan dialect when introducing himself. The son's name was Zhao Ping'tailang, but he spoke Chinese haltingly.

One of the father and son was making soup stock while the other was using a meat grinder to make minced meat.

The host passed the microphone to Zhao Pingtaro: "Chef Zhao, what are you doing?"

"I want to make an authentic Sichuan Mapo Tofu." Zhao Pingtaro looked at Yue Ning, "We have been insisting on making authentic Sichuan cuisine in Japan, and we have customers who like us. But unfortunately, one day a lot of customers came in and asked for Mapo Tofu, but what they wanted was completely different from the authentic Mapo Tofu we made. It can't be called Mapo Tofu at all, it's just fried tofu with minced meat to please the Japanese."

After hearing this, the host walked up to Yue Ning with the microphone and asked, "Ning Ning, what do you think about this?"

A while ago, Yue Ning taught a dish of Mapo Tofu on Xu Lemei's show. The inspiration for this dish comes from the father and son of Sichuan cuisine master Chen Jianmin, who immigrated to Japan in their previous life. Chen Jianmin once taught how to make Mapo Tofu on TV, making this dish a Japanese family dish; in the 1990s, Master Chen's son Chen Jianyi combined bean paste with kelp soup and brought it to the "Iron Chef" program, making it a collective memory symbol of the Heisei era, and Chen Jianyi is said to be the prototype of the Japanese anime "The Cooking Master Boy".

In this life, Yue Ning found that Sichuan cuisine was not as popular in Japan as in her previous life, and there was no such phenomenal father and son in Japan. Yue Ning used Japan as her main market in both of her lives, and spent a lot of time researching it. In order to pay tribute to the Chen family father and son in her previous life, she made a dish of mapo tofu that suited the Japanese taste in the program. It is said that tofu in Japan became a scarce commodity during those days.

Yue Ning was a little speechless: a person whose name even has an oriental accent and who can't speak standard Chinese, is talking about authentic Sichuan cuisine. I think it's because the "Hong Kong and Macau Chef Contest" was a hit in Japan last year, and with the increase in Japanese tourists visiting Hong Kong, Chinese cuisine has become more popular in Japan. This year's competition is expected to be popular as well. The other party came to participate just to increase the popularity of the restaurant in Japan, and said these words at this moment, just to increase the topic.

Yue Ning had no intention of arguing on this occasion, so she said, "When I teach my Japanese sisters to cook, they probably can't buy Sichuan peppercorns, so I used the common Japanese sansho peppers. Japanese people prefer sweet taste, so I added more sugar. Japanese people don't eat spicy food that much, so I reduced the spiciness. I also added miso, and when thickening, I added more starch sauce, and added a hot spring egg to make a bowl of rice. This is indeed very different from the Chinese mapo tofu. But I can't teach my sisters to cook dishes they don't like, right? That's meaningless."

"If you want to teach housewives how to cook homely dishes, can you not use the name 'Mapo Tofu'?" Chef Zhao said.

Chef Zhang, who was cleaning the small pomfret, took over the conversation: "If she didn't say it was 'Mapo Tofu', you would say she was clearly making it according to 'Mapo Tofu' but insisted on giving it another name and forgetting her ancestors. In short, it's wrong to change anything. She should stick to the authentic Sichuan Mapo Tofu, right?"

"What did our master say when we were learning the craft? This is inheritance." Chef Zhao said while processing the offal.

No one expected that the contestants would quarrel with each other, so the two hosts quickly took care of their own affairs.

While pickling small pomfret, Chef Zhang said: "I'm sorry! I have six masters and dozens of apprentices. Both masters told me not to try to run before I can walk, which means that before the basic skills are solid, don't rush. But they also said that the master can only lead you to the door, but you have to practice on your own, and the most important thing in cooking is not to stick to the rules."

His apprentice came over and said, "Master, please try this stew."

Chef Zhang took the spoon from his apprentice and tasted the saltiness: "It was brewed for a short time, so the taste should be stronger."

"OK."

Lucas seemed to have discovered something new and said to Nicholas, "Look, the chef is removing the chicken bones."

As expected, Chef Zhang started to debone the whole chicken. The host asked him, "Chef Zhang, do you want to make a bag chicken or a glass crispy glutinous rice chicken?"

"I'm making Changshu Beggar's Chicken," said Chef Zhang as he removed the bones. "The origin of this dish is unknown. It's said that beggars stole chickens and didn't have stoves, so they picked lotus leaves to wrap the hairy chickens, sealed them with yellow mud from Yushan Mountain in Changshu, and then picked up firewood to roast them. If we follow tradition, Beggar's Chicken is that simple. However, today, the process of making Beggar's Chicken has become very complicated."

These words were obviously spoken to the Zhao father and son on the opposite side.

Yue Ning saw Nicholas stretching his neck to look, so he asked, "Nicholas, do you want to take a closer look?"

"May I?"

Yue Ning motioned the host to come over and said, "Nicholas wants to see a whole chicken deboned, is that okay?"

Chef Zhang nodded, and Nicholas walked to the stage, watching Chef Zhang deboning the chicken attentively.

Chef Zhang took out the leg bones: "In Jinhua Hotel, the original beggar's chicken was not boned. But the last time I came to Hong Kong City, I saw the bag chicken and crispy glutinous rice chicken, and I thought: why can't our beggar's chicken be boneless? Beggar's chicken also needs stuffing, so I gave it a try."

After removing the bones from the chicken, he asked his apprentice to bring a glass of water. Nicholas watched intently as the water was poured into the chicken's neck until the entire chicken was filled with water. He couldn't help but exclaim, "It's really amazing!"

He returned to his seat and described what he saw to Pierre. Pierre looked at his son's excited expression and said, "Don't get too excited. There will be plenty of opportunities to learn in the future."

Chef Zhang began to marinate the whole chicken, and then prepared the ingredients: stir-fried pork, mushrooms, bamboo shoots, and diced ham with scallions.

After preparing the ingredients, he found olive oil, eggs, white vinegar and lemon.

Nicholas looked confused: "What is he doing?"

The host also went over and asked, "Chef Zhang, are you going to make mayonnaise?"

"Yes, make mayonnaise and then Shanghai style mashed potatoes," said Chef Zhang.

“Are mashed potatoes Chinese food?”

Chef Zhang explained: "Shanghai is a city of immigrants, just like Hong Kong."

He pointed to the pickled pomfret and stewed meat wrapped in rice dumplings and said, "People from Suzhou and Wuxi brought sweetness;"

Then he looked at the refrigerator. "My apprentice just made braised prawns and abalone. The people from Shaoxing and Ningbo brought freshness and saltiness."

He beat the egg yolks. "After Shanghai opened its port, foreigners brought Western food with them, so there were mashed potato salads with sugar and borscht with tomatoes instead of beets. Today, mashed potato salad is one of the most common cold dishes made by Shanghai people in summer."

Chef Zhang added a spoonful of sugar and whipped cream to the mayonnaise, and his assistant handed over mashed potatoes, diced sausage, egg whites, cooked green beans and corn kernels, and a dish of mashed egg yolks.

"Isn't this our mashed potato salad? It even has hard-boiled eggs." Nicholas said to Yue Ning in English.

Yue Ning nodded: "Shanghai used to have the French Concession and the British and American International Settlements, where Western food was popular, and then it gradually became localized."

Chef Zhang mixed the mashed potatoes, covered them with plastic wrap and put them in the refrigerator, then went to the stove to make the sauce. A Taiwanese food judge asked, "Chef Zhang, what are you going to do?"

"Shanghai smoked fish is made with small pomfret. The authentic old Shanghai smoked fish really has to be smoked with tree branches. Nowadays, almost no Shanghai restaurants smoke it anymore. In fact, it has become fried fish, but it is still called smoked fish according to the old custom."

On the judges' bench, Yang Yuhe said, "Chef Zhang, the smoked fish Ning Yan is making now is still smoked."

"Really? Then I'll have to try the old flavor tomorrow or the day after tomorrow." Chef Zhang added chopped pomelo peel, Puning dried plums and two spoons of candied osmanthus to the sauce.

"Chef Zhang, is there anything special about your use of grapefruit peels and prunes?"

"Nothing special. Our restaurant often uses fresh tangerine peels and orange peels, and Cantonese-style preserved plums. Hong Kong has authentic Puning preserved plums, which can bring out the sweetness and sourness and fragrance when put in juice." Chef Zhang poured half a basin of rock sugar into the pot. "This dish was influenced by Suzhou and Wuxi. It must be sweet. It won't taste good if it's not sweet."

The sauce exudes a unique aroma when it is cooked, but what is even more intense on the scene is the aroma of the meat wrapped in rice dumplings leaves in the casserole. The aroma of rice dumplings leaves and meat are intertwined, which is particularly tempting.

While Chef Zhang was making the sauce, several French people noticed that his assistant was softening a piece of mud with rice wine.

"This is the mud used to seal jars of yellow wine. It contains the aroma of wine just like the cork of red wine. After being dissolved in yellow wine, it can increase the fragrance and can be applied to the outside of the chicken. Chef Zhang just said that beggar's chicken originated from beggars stealing chickens, and because they didn't have a pot, they wrapped them with yellow mud..." Yue Ning explained softly.

Chef Zhang filtered out the thick sauce, removed the spices, and placed the sauce and the bowl in ice water.

He stuffed the fried stuffing into the chicken's belly and tied the two wings together. He spread out a piece of lard and wrapped the chicken in the lard.

Yang Yuhe explained: "In Chinese cuisine, in order to increase the richness of the taste, lard is often used to wrap the ingredients. In the last "Chef King Competition", there was a dish called Sebu eel, which was also wrapped in lard."

Chef Zhang wrapped the chicken in lard, then wrapped the whole chicken in lotus leaves, wrapped it in four lotus leaves, then covered it with mud, and finally wrapped it with another layer of lotus leaves outside the mud.

He went to wash his hands, and his assistant had already preheated the oven for him, and he put the chicken into the oven.

Afterwards, Chef Zhang came back and opened the lid of the clay pot with the meat wrapped in zong leaves. A hot steam mixed with the fragrance of zong leaves and meat hit us. The dark brown soup was bubbling in the clay pot, the skin of the pork belly exposed between the zong leaves was shiny and oily, and the aroma of fat and wine instantly filled the whole place.

Lucas sniffed the fragrance in the air and marveled at the similarities between the aroma of the Chinese meat stewed in wine and the Burgundy red wine beef stew that he was familiar with.

Chef Zhang covered the pot with a lid, turned off the fire, and let the meat in the casserole simmer for a while. This process is called "焐" in Shanghai, and as the saying goes, "a thousand boils are not as good as one 焐."

He picked up a rag, wiped his hands, poured half a pot of rapeseed oil into the pot, took out the marinated pomfret, used dry gauze to absorb the moisture on the fish pieces, and then started frying the fish.

The on-field reminder says that the cold dish segment is about to begin and the dishes can be served.

The pomfret pieces are fried three times, drained of excess fat, and immediately soaked in the cold sauce.

The assistant put a small piece of blanched okra on each plate, and Chef Zhang placed the soaked smoked fish and okra alternately, and used a small spoon to drip two drops of sauce on the edge of the plate for decoration. In another large plate, the smoked fish was piled in the center, surrounded by okra, and the green and sauce colors complemented each other, which was very beautiful.

"Shanghai-style smoked fish, serve!" said Chef Zhang.