Chapter 47 Chapter 47

Although goods that are hotly sought after are not necessarily good, even if they are good, not many people will recognize their value if they are not sought after.

This is the case with snowflake salt. Before, when no one wanted to buy it, even if it was sent to the homes of some wealthy families, they were unwilling to accept it, let alone spend a lot of money to buy it. But when the restaurants in Kyoto were fighting for a piece of snowflake salt, snowflake salt soon became a precious seasoning that the kitchens of various mansions scrambled for.

Because as long as one family uses it, it's fine to eat at home. The main thing is that if the original salt is still used during a banquet, even if the kitchen staff is clever, unless all the dishes on the table don't use salt, the difference between using old salt and snowflake salt will be huge.

If someone is found not using snowflake salt, people will not think that you don't want to use it. They will just think that you are either uninformed or that you are short of money and can't afford to buy snowflake salt.

In wealthy families, even if they are really in deficit, they want to save face and dare not let others discover their weakness, so snowflake salt is naturally very popular.

Because the production of snowflake salt is limited, merchants from other places who come to Kyoto see how popular snowflake salt is and buy some to distribute to other places.

As for the claim that this is the sale of illegal salt, in fact no one cares, or those who care only investigate it secretly. After all, the illegal salt that is usually cracked down on is ordinary salt. The quality of illegal salt is even worse than official salt, and it is mainly sold to ordinary people who really have no money.

As for Snowflake Salt, although some people are jealous of the profits, no one dares to take action after tracing the specific circumstances. After all, the Snowflake Salt line is related to every family in Kyoto, and every family consumes Snowflake Salt. If they can replace each other, it will be fine. If not, the salt selling route will be cut off, and it will not be possible to make up for it, which will offend many people.

Even in the palace, the kitchen used snowflake salt. Even the emperor found that the dishes in the kitchen tasted much better than before, but no one told the emperor that it was because of the salt.

While the snowflake salt business was booming, Jiang Huai did not forget what he had thought about before, which was to improve his diet.

If there is a shortage of ingredients, then go look for them. Although you may not find them, what if these ingredients are available, or there are alternative ingredients, but the people of the Great Zhou have not discovered that these ingredients are edible, then he would have missed out.

As for the money needed to find new ingredients, Jiang Huai has no shortage of it. Not to mention the profit from selling salt this time, even the money earned from the sweater business is enough for him.

Although the weather has become warmer, only the sweater business has been affected. There are fewer merchants buying sweaters, but there are still many people buying wool yarn, because everyone knows that wool yarn can be used to knit sweaters, and when the weather gets colder, the sweaters can be sold for money.

Therefore, many people will take advantage of the current situation to buy more wool so that they can knit sweaters. After all, sweaters are not easily damaged and can be kept until winter.

After all, waiting until the weather gets cold to knit a sweater is a rush, and it takes a lot of time to knit a nice pattern. Thinking of how anxious people were to finish the sweaters last winter, many people think that now is the best time to knit a sweater. You can knit a little in your free time without delaying other things. After all, knitting a sweater is not time-sensitive.

Another impact of the booming sweater and wool business is that people have become more enthusiastic about raising sheep. In fact, some places in Anyuan Prefecture are more suitable for raising sheep. However, for the people, although raising sheep has its benefits, the benefits are not many. Sheep are raised for their skin and meat. The profit from wool is not particularly high, but the skin and meat can only be sold once. If something goes wrong during the raising process, the sheep will die and everything will be lost.

Now, wool can be sold for a stable profit. I shear the sheep twice a year. Although the profit cannot be compared with that from selling sheepskin and mutton, I can make a stable profit every year. A little bit of money adds up to a lot, so it is not a loss.

Although the wool sweaters have only been sold for a few months, the people of Anyuan Prefecture are very confident in them.

In addition to looking for new ingredients, Jiang Huai also found a chef to specialize in cooking.

After all, no one knows when new ingredients can be found. If he wants to eat well, he can only use the current ingredients. Jiang Huai is familiar with his cooking skills. If the ingredients are familiar, he doesn't have to worry about cooking. But if the ingredients are unfamiliar, if he wants to make a stir-fried dish that suits his taste, he has to try at least a few times, or even dozens of times.

He is not a professional chef. It is okay for him to cook a few times just for the sake of his hobby. But if he studies this specifically, it would be a waste of his time. It would be best to find a professional chef to do it.

Originally, Jiang Huai couldn't recruit any good chefs. After all, the good chefs were either kept privately in some wealthy families and would never be released, or they were kept in big restaurants. Unless Jiang Huai gave them enough time, it would be difficult for these chefs to appear under normal circumstances.

But it happened that Jiang Huai had eaten at Chunfeng Tower once and discovered the snowflake salt. Although the snowflake salt was later displayed through other channels, it still caught the attention of Chef Fang. When he learned that Jiang Huai was recruiting chefs to research dishes, Chef Fang came over to find out and then tasted the stir-fried dishes made by Jiang Huai.

After eating this dish, Chef Fang realized the specialness of it. After hearing the reason why Jiang Huai was recruiting a chef, he gave up his position as the head chef of Chunfeng Tower and came to work for the Jiang family.

Chunfenglou was naturally unwilling to let him go, but Jiang Huai's identity made Chunfenglou wary. Even if they wanted Fang Paochu to come back, they didn't dare to have any bad intentions and could only try hard to persuade Fang Paochu.

If Jiang Huai simply wanted to recruit a chef, Chef Fang might not want to stay in the Jiang family, but Jiang Huai's goal was to use new cooking techniques to create new recipes, which was almost a major event in the culinary world. Chef Fang was only glad that he discovered it early and took the position early. How could he bear to leave? No matter how good Chunfeng Tower's words were, he still wasn't tempted.

Chunfenglou saw that Chef Fang was determined and knew that they had no way to convince him, so they had to give up.

However, Jiang Huai thought of something and felt that Fang Kitchen and Chunfeng Tower did not need to be completely separated.

Jiang Huai had inquired around and knew that Fang Paochu was a very important reason why Chunfeng Tower had become so famous in Anyuan Prefecture. He poached Fang Paochu, which was actually a bit like uprooting Chunfeng Tower's roots. If he really ignored it completely, Chunfeng Tower's business would definitely be greatly affected without Fang Paochu. Even if Fang Paochu's apprentices were still there, they were not Fang Paochu after all.

Jiang Huai’s idea was that since Chef Fang was going to learn how to cook, and stir-frying was the first cooking dish to appear, it could be seen from Wei Xuan and Chef Fang’s reactions that stir-frying would definitely be popular.

Sharing happiness with others is worse than enjoying it alone. He might as well share it.

Of course, Jiang Huai’s idea was not to share the recipe. After all, this recipe was not only the product of his hard work, but also the work of Chef Fang. Jiang Huai would not be a sucker if he shared it without spending a penny.

However, opening a restaurant would require manpower, material resources, and various preparations, which would be a hassle for Jiang Huai.

After starting the wool sweater business, Jiang Huai discovered that doing business was not easy. It was tiring both physically and mentally, especially the various social engagements. Sometimes he clearly didn't want to socialize, but he still had to do so for the sake of business. But he heard from others that because sweaters were a unique business, he had relatively few social engagements and didn't have to please people too much, so he was already one of the easiest people in the business world.

But opening a restaurant would be even more troublesome. Jiang Huai had never done catering business, but he knew how complicated and troublesome it was. He wanted to share the happiness. As for making money from the dishes, he didn't actually want to make too much money. If it would add too much burden to himself, Jiang Huai would be reluctant to do so.

However, if he cooperated with Chunfenglou, Jiang Huai felt that it would be a win-win situation. He could share the happiness and make some money. Chunfenglou had new dishes, so even if the chef left, the business would not drop too badly. It might even get better because before other restaurants replicated the stir-fried dishes, Chunfenglou would only have these dishes.

The quality of cooking skills will affect the business of a restaurant, but all these restaurants are on the same track. But what if one restaurant has a unique dish that other restaurants may not have?

Many of the merchants who came to the restaurant to eat were entertaining guests. In such an entertainment, the taste of the dishes was important, but face was more important.

Chef Fang was originally a little worried about the affairs of Chunfeng Tower. Although Chunfeng Tower could not do anything to Jiang Huai, he had been in Chunfeng Tower for so many years and had developed feelings for it. Naturally, he knew that if he left, even if all the disciples stayed, Chunfeng Tower would definitely have to go through some ups and downs.

But after listening to Jiang Huai's suggestion, he immediately became excited. Although Chef Fang had not yet started to study cooking, he knew how many diners would be attracted by the fried winter bamboo shoots with bacon he had tasted.

It is the beginning of spring now. In winter, the food eaten by wealthy businessmen and large families is mainly meat. Even vegetarian dishes, when cooked using traditional cooking methods, will still be watery or contain too much oil. It is rare to find vegetarian dishes as refreshing as stir-fried dishes.

After receiving the news from Jiang Huai, Chunfenglou did not think that there was anything special about the cooking. They just thought that Jiang Huai was pretending to be nice. He directly took the chef away and left only some recipes. If they wanted to use the recipes, they had to pay Jiang Huai and even go to the blacksmith shop designated by Jiang Huai to buy the pot. This was a bit too much.

In fact, Jiang Huai felt a little wronged. Not to mention the fact that he had to pay the money, he bought a pot because he had to buy a pot to cook, and the iron pot for cooking was not easy to buy. If he didn't go to the blacksmith shop where he ordered the pot before, other shops would have to study how to make the pot first, and it would definitely take some time for the finished product to come out.

Jiang Huai didn't mind wasting time, but the problem was that Chunfenglou couldn't wait. The restaurant's business would only get worse day by day. After a long time, maybe even if the food was cooked, it wouldn't be able to be saved, or even if it could be saved, it would take even longer.

Chunfenglou had no idea what Jiang Huai was thinking, and Jiang Huai was not aware of the misunderstanding. But no matter how upset Chunfenglou was, it finally chose to listen to Jiang Huai, order a pot, and then have people come to Jiang Huai to learn how to cook.

After all, they had already given in before, and now they were just giving in a little more. Now they could only hope that this new recipe was as useful as Chef Fang said.