Many people who have tried it once will never forget the taste, because spicy seasonings are expensive and scarce, and they rarely have the opportunity to eat them. Now, you can eat it for only ten coins. Although it is just the cheapest vegetarian dish and the portion is not large, even if you can't get full, you can at least satisfy your craving.
The key point is that after eating, the whole person feels like they're on fire, unbearably hot. If you observe carefully, you'll find that when people who have finished eating spicy hot pot at Cheng's Snack Shop walk out of the door, they are all without outer clothing. They are all covered in sweat, and they take off their coats and walk directly into the wind and snow.
In such cold weather with frequent snowfall, keeping warm is such a precious thing!
Mala Tang (a type of spicy hot pot) is novel, delicious, and warming, and unsurprisingly, it quickly became a hit. A dozen days later, the group of people in the city who had followed the Cheng family's example and opened cold drink and ice cream shops started selling Mala Tang as well.
The main theme is to follow the trend to the end!
Unfortunately, pepper is too precious and rare, and Sichuan peppercorns and other spices are not cheap either. Not to mention that so many kinds of food need to be carefully prepared. A small bowl of spicy hot pot doesn't make much money at all after calculating the costs. No other family would be as willing to spend as the Cheng family. The difference between them is obviously very obvious.
Not only that, people also discovered that after eating spicy hot pot at Cheng's Snack Shop, their bodies could stay warm for at least half a day, while they couldn't at other shops. Over time, the business of other shops became worse and worse.
In the end, those shops that stubbornly survived were all those whose prices were much lower than Cheng's.
The secret to Cheng's Malatang being warmer than other places, besides the addition of a lot of spicy seasonings, is actually the phoenix tail chicken.
Thanks to this year's dry and hot weather, the breeding of the pheasant, which had been stagnant, has made a major breakthrough. Ruyi then discovered that the breeding conditions are actually high temperature and dryness.
Ruyi immediately replanned the breeding site, built three brick houses, each about 100 square meters, and added stoves inside. During the day, she opened the doors and windows to let the sun's heat fully enter the house, and at night she lit the stoves to maintain the temperature inside. After this series of operations, the production of the phoenix tail chickens could finally be basically controlled artificially.
After a period of time, Ruyi finally stabilized the breeding rate of the Phoenix-tailed Chicken. The first generation of hybrid chickens bred by Jinfeng and Caiyusujinji could hatch a brood of 10 to 15 chicks every 20 days. If the first generation of hybrid Phoenix-tailed Chickens were then bred with ordinary chickens, a brood of 5 to 10 second generation hybrid Phoenix-tailed Chickens would hatch every 30 days.
Six months later, more than fifty of the first generation of hybrid pheasants in the coop have reached adulthood. Moreover, after experiments, it was found that the hatching success rate of hybrid pheasants and ordinary chickens is higher. Therefore, the adult hens are kept for breeding, while the roosters are all turned into delicacies and end up in the stomachs of the people in the other courtyard.
To date, the chicken coop in the villa has been able to stably breed more than one hundred second-generation hybrid phoenix tail chickens every month. Ruyi had originally planned that if there had been no snow disaster, she would have sold these phoenix tail chickens directly to Zhiweiguan, just like Zhuifengtu.
Actually, it might have been more profitable to sell it to Zhiweiguan, but not many people can afford to eat at Zhiweiguan, and those people certainly don't lack warm clothing.
Mala Tang (a type of spicy hot pot) is different. It costs only a few cents and almost everyone can afford it. It can also help people in the middle and lower classes who haven't stocked up on enough warm clothing. When everyone is doing well, that's truly good.
According to the system's introduction, the chicken meat and eggs of this first-tier low-grade spirit beast, the Phoenix Tail Chicken, contain fire spirit energy, which can dispel cold, generate warmth, and promote blood circulation.
Now, we use three second-generation hybrid chickens every day to make mala tang soup base, which adds up to about a hundred chickens a month. We can eat the extras ourselves or continue to raise them.
Before, when the weather was too hot, Ruyi didn't dare to eat chicken with phoenix tails. She only tried making braised eggs with chicken with phoenix tails. Even so, she would feel hot all over if she ate them occasionally.
If the temperature hadn't dropped so much, she would never have dared to use it to make soup.
Unfortunately, even with all the stoves burning 24/7, the temperature in the breeding house can only be kept warm, which is incomparable to that in the summer. Fortunately, Xu Cui discovered that the temperature in the breeding house where Jin Feng, Cai Yu, and Su Jin were located was higher than the other two houses, so she moved all the chicken eggs there, which barely prevented the production from plummeting.
Cheng's Snack Shop in Huaishan County is doing as well as the hot pot of spicy hot pot.
Although the Lishan Snack Shop branch has started operating, it still doesn't have much business. Fortunately, Cheng Ruyi had anticipated this situation, so the branch's main function now is to serve as the main kitchen, where food for the snack shop and all the daily meals for everyone in the villa are cooked.
Previously, the kitchen helpers here only cooked for the hired workers, and they made ordinary meals of the day. There were no secrets involved.
However, if they were to make mala tang and other foods, it would involve many recipes that Ruyi had modified from modern times. Although she didn't mind these recipes being leaked, if they were leaked too early, it would affect her money-making plans. Therefore, she could only require all the kitchen helpers to sign contracts in order to continue working here.
The contract stipulated that the recipes of the Cheng family could not be disclosed to anyone or in any way for three years. If the person left the contract midway, in addition to not being able to disclose the recipes, they would also be prohibited from engaging in the snack business for two years. Otherwise, they would have to pay the Cheng family one thousand taels of silver as compensation.
This contract is quite strict and looks intimidating at first glance, but in fact, as long as you don't intend to betray the Cheng family, there won't be any problems at all.
In the end, only six of the original eight people were willing to sign the contract, while the other two chose to leave immediately.
Of the remaining six people, two are quite experienced. One of them is a woman in her forties whose family used to run a noodle shop. She is very familiar with the rules of shop operation, as well as making soup bases and cooking flour products. She can be considered the white food chef of Lishan Snack Shop. The other woman in her thirties is just an ordinary village woman, but because she cooks well, she is often invited by people from all around to cook banquets. Ruyi has also tried her food. The dishes are indeed just ordinary home-style dishes, but for some reason, they taste better than others. She is especially good at cooking meat dishes, so she is currently the red food chef of the snack shop.
The remaining four people did not have any special cooking skills or experience. They were of different ages and all of them were just people who had been cooking at home for many years, so they were quick and responsible and were kept on.
These six people, plus Ms. Wen and her two daughters, make a total of nine people, which is enough manpower.
With the snack shop doing so well, the spa naturally couldn't lag behind. In fact, after the temperature dropped, Ruyi launched a heartwarming winter package overnight and restored the hot spring pools that had been adjusted to cope with the sweltering heat to their original settings.
However, Lingyun Pavilion is positioned as a high-end brand, so snacks like mala tang need to be repackaged to better match its sophisticated image.
With the support of the Zhou family, Ruyi was able to use as many precious ingredients as possible when making soup bases. As a result, in addition to the spicy soup base, she also added hot and sour soup base, pepper pork tripe and chicken soup base, and nourishing medicinal soup base.
The ingredients were upgraded as well, including shrimp paste, stuffed pork meatballs, and even beef, donkey meat, and venison. Zhou Yin had originally planned to use some even more precious ingredients, but Cheng Ruyi strictly forbade it, because in her eyes, the sources of these so-called "ingredients" were too cruel...
In mid-November, heavy snow continued to fall, and the temperature continued to drop slowly, approaching the lowest temperature ever recorded in Huaishan County.
After more than half a month, the people gradually got used to the cold weather, and trade between the various counties resumed. However, due to the frozen river, waterways were completely impassable, so everyone could only travel by land. As a result, the number of merchants and travelers passing through the official road next to Lishan has been gradually increasing recently.
In the freezing cold of the snowy landscape, a small caravan of about ten people slowly made its way to Huaishan County.
Qiu Yong was wrapped up like a bear, but he was still freezing. He stared intently at the distant city wall, barely holding on with his strong will.
His hometown, Quanzhou, is actually just south of Chongzhou. The two places are not far apart. Although the temperature has dropped recently, it is still basically the same as in previous winters. He did not expect that the temperature would be so different after only going north to one prefecture. However, the destination of their caravan, Baiyan Mountain, is located in the northernmost part of Dayue. It will probably be much colder than Chongzhou!
Qiu Yong felt increasingly disheartened as he thought about it, and with his heart chilled, his body felt even colder.
"Hey, can you smell something?" someone in the group suddenly exclaimed, then looked around, "It smells so good, can't you smell it?"
"Is someone cooking in one of the nearby villages? You have such a strong nose, all you ever think about is food!"
"That's not right. We haven't seen any villages around here, but we're almost at Huaishan County. The news probably came from the county town, right?"
"Bullshit! The county town is still far away, how could it have spread here... Oh dear, speaking of which, I'm actually quite hungry..."
"I see it! It's by the official road not far ahead. There looks like a snack shop there. The aroma is definitely coming from there. There are lots of mule carts and donkey carts parked around it! Let's go check it out!"
Upon hearing this, Qiu Yong quickened his pace and walked forward. He did indeed see the shop ahead. He had actually smelled a fragrance just now, but at first he thought it was his hallucination.
When the caravan members arrived near the snack stalls, they realized that things seemed different from last year. Why were so many new shops suddenly built at the foot of the mountain?
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