Su Qingluan looked at Song Bo: "I heard that you guys prepare your own food, so do you have enough raw materials?"
Song Bo was a little curious: "It's just for two people, four dishes, a soup, and a staple food, how much ingredients do they need?"
Su Qingluan exclaimed, "Aren't you too cruel? I worked so hard for so long, and now I don't even have the right to eat a bite?!"
Seeing the young lady opposite him accusing him with an expression of disbelief, Song Bo quickly said with a smile, "Madam Su, you misunderstood. The 'two people' I mentioned refer to you and my host. I usually don't sit at the same table with my host."
"There are only two of us anyway..."
"Etiquette cannot be abolished." Song Bo's attitude was very firm.
Su Qingluan was a little surprised: in her opinion, Song Bo was still careless about many details of life. But thinking about it carefully, Su Qingluan did not see Song Bo sitting down with Mu Xingzhi to drink tea or taste any snacks.
Su Qingluan was too lazy to study the etiquette between the master and servant, so she simply put the matter behind her and asked Song Bo to take her to the kitchen.
The kitchen was more spacious than Su Qingluan had imagined, and it was very clean. It was not as messy as she had imagined, with two grown men lying around with pots and pans scattered all over the floor.
Perhaps noticing the surprise in Su Qingluan's expression, Song Bo smiled and said, "It's just two people, so it's easy to clean up."
"But it's very tiring for you to wash and rinse from morning to night..." Su Qingluan sighed: Especially in this era, there are no fully automatic washing and drying machines, nor any sweeping robots.
Song Bo's expression was hard to describe: "Actually... there are still servants in charge..."
Su Qingluan turned around: "But I didn't see it once!"
"Because they often 'go out to visit famous doctors for Mr. Mu.'"
Su Qingluan suddenly realized: I understand, it is probably some kind of secret guard. Such people will not be easily discovered even when they are working, not to mention a newbie like her who knows nothing about tracking, so it is normal that she cannot be discovered.
As she was speaking, Su Qingluan saw chickens and ducks in cages, chopped pork and mutton, and even crabs in bamboo cages blowing bubbles in the corner of the kitchen!
Su Qingluan's eyes lit up: "This is really a lot of good stuff!"
Song Bo nodded: "The boss's intention is to prepare as many ingredients as possible so that Madam Su can show off her cooking skills."
"The one who understands me best is Mu Xingzhi!" Su Qingluan's eyes lit up.
To be honest, ever since she traveled through time, she has basically been making food based on the existing ingredients and tools. Although she can make every meal she prepares delicious, she lacks the sense of freedom she had before when she had so many ingredients and tools to use freely.
She even forgot the joy and excitement of randomly cooking all kinds of weird foods in the kitchen.
Of course, in most cases, innovating dishes is something that can only be encountered by chance and requires the right time, place and people.
However, Su Qingluan also wanted to make some showy dishes, and this time was a good opportunity - after all, many showy things were a waste of ingredients.
And if she was discovered, she would probably be beaten by her parents - although she might not be beaten, she would definitely be scolded for a while.
Every time Su Qingluan felt like trying, she would imagine that scene, and then the little flame of eagerness would suddenly go out with a "puff".
When Su Qingluan said this to Song Bo, Song Bo was a little skeptical: "It's just four dishes and a soup, how can it be wasted?"
Then, he saw Su Qingluan start to kill chickens, ducks, and cut bacon.
Song Bo was stunned: "Madam Su, are you going to start preparing tomorrow's dishes today? Will they go bad overnight?"
Su Qingluan shook her head. "Today we're just stewing soup—and it's just the base soup. The fire in the furnace can't be extinguished tonight. It can only be kept at the lowest temperature. I'll adjust the heat myself later. I'd like to trouble Uncle Song to help keep an eye on it and make sure it doesn't go out midway."
Song Bo nodded: It’s nothing, just pay a little attention to the temperature and charcoal.
Su Qingluan first put all the ingredients into a large soup pot, added onions, ginger, cooking wine, and spices such as bay leaves and star anise to remove the fishy smell. While waiting for the water to boil, she took a look at the crabs.
I counted them and found there were quite a few of them, about twenty.
Su Qingluan smiled and said, "With these crabs, we can have something delicious tomorrow."
Song Bo sighed, "These crabs are freshly caught, plump and roe-filled. Madam Su, would you like them steamed or pickled?"
Su Qingluan smiled and kept the secret: "That's so uncreative. Crabs should be eaten in different ways!"
She had considered pickling drunken crab, but without chili peppers, the flavor wasn't strong enough. She also couldn't control the alcohol content of the liquor to ensure it fully killed the parasites.
After thinking about it, it was really not worth it to let Xiao Juhua suffer just for the sake of a meal. Su Qingluan thought about it and finally gave up. At the same time, she sighed again: In ancient times, there was no strong medical conditions, which was really unbearable. People couldn't even eat happily!
After skimming off the foam on the broth, Su Qingluan took a look at the soup base—chicken, duck, pork bones, and sliced bacon were all in, without missing anything. So she said to Song Bo, "I'll go back today and come back tomorrow morning."
Song Bo stared at the two pieces of meat covered with a wet cloth on the plate that Su Qingluan placed beside him. After a long while, he couldn't help but ask, "Did you forget to put the chicken breast and duck breast in?"
Su Qingluan was stunned for a moment, then smiled and said, "Oh, those two pieces of meat are not for the soup. I will use them to 'sweep the soup' tomorrow."
Perhaps he had never heard of this term before, so Song Bo asked in confusion, "What is 'sweeping soup'?"
"It's about mincing chicken and duck breast into a paste to absorb the blood foam and impurities in the soup, making the soup clearer and more transparent."
"What about the chicken and duck?"
"Well... can it be used as feed?" In the previous life, there was no need to worry too much, because kitchen waste had its own recycling system.
Even though Song Bo was probably from a wealthy family, he was still shocked by this "extravagance and waste" behavior: "Throw it all away?"
"...After all, it's the ingredient for making the soup base..." Seeing Song Bo's incredulous expression, Su Qingluan added softly, "This is what they call 'father sees a beating, mother sees a beating'."
...Song Bo took a deep breath, fully understanding the meaning of "If the father sees a beating, the mother will see a beating": If his children were so extravagant and wasteful, just for such a pot of soup, would he also want to beat them up?!
When Su Qingluan returned home, it was already very cold and the sky was as dark as ink - it wasn't that it was very late, but as winter was getting closer, the sky might be pitch black just after the afternoon, so most of the time people ate dinner by candlelight.
Looking at the starry sky, Su Qingluan gathered her collar to prevent the cold wind from blowing in, and muttered, "I hope tomorrow will be a good day."
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