Chapter 128,
The Yunjiang fish balls and cuttlefish balls were prepared in advance, so they could just be left to the apprentices to make. However, someone ordered a dish of braised eel with green onions, so Su Guoer had to cook it herself.
After all, the chefs in her restaurant are all locals and are proficient in local dishes. They don’t know how to cook Jiangnan cuisine at all, or the food they cook doesn’t taste like that. In the end, she still has to make it herself.
To make the dish of scallion-grilled eel delicious, you first need the sauce. The eel meat is a little dry and tough, so it can only taste better with the rich and smooth sauce.
The soaked eel meat was cut into pieces and fried in a pan. Over there, Su Guoer put a handful of chopped green onions, mellow soy sauce, half a piece of crushed rock sugar, and a little vinegar for seasoning into a small ceramic pot. The water boiled from the green onions and ginger was also put into the ceramic pot and boiled over high heat. Because of the rock sugar, the sauce could easily become thick.
That wasn’t enough, so she added a little sweet potato flour into it. When the sauce started to bubble up, she poured it into a big pot and started to simmer it.
You don’t need to add anything else during the process. If the color is not bright enough, add some black soy sauce. Just add some salt grains for seasoning. You don’t need to add anything else.
You just need to use high heat to collect the soup, and it is best if the soup just reaches the edge of the plate. When it is served, use a large spoon to scoop out half a spoonful of soup and evenly pour it over the eel. The soup seems to have a soul moving around in the plate and just stops at the edge.
If someone likes eel sauce and rice, they'll tell them in advance, and Su Guoer will add more sauce. When it's time to take the dish out of the pot, she'll find a bowl of rice, shake the big spoon, and the sauce will evenly cover the rice. The taste...
It smells so good!
Then four servings of grilled eel with green onions and white rice were brought out.
Wang, the owner of the steamed bun shop, poked the white rice covered in eel soup with his chopsticks with disdain, saying, "Look at this black stuff? How can it be delicious? Hey, Old Li, you've been around a lot, don't you know whether this eel rice is delicious? The meat is dry and tough, and the soup is sticky. How can it be delicious?"
This was the first time for the two of them to eat in this newly opened restaurant. The person who invited Manager Wang was Manager Li, who occasionally set up a stall at the night market. His shop sold groceries, and there were not many people in the east of the city, so he rented a stall at the Zhouqiao Night Market. The stall happened to have a view of Su Guoer's Fresh Food Restaurant. He had wanted to come and try it a while ago, and now he just happened to have time.
"Just try it. If it doesn't taste good, don't come back again," said the shopkeeper Li.
"Although I've traveled extensively, I've only had unagi rice a few times. I've only had authentic unagi rice once, and the others were either sour or bitter. Anyway... if unagi rice is to be delicious, it all depends on the sauce."
"You seem to be quite knowledgeable?" Shopkeeper Wang said. "Alright, I'll give it a try, shall I?"
As he spoke, he took a spoonful of the eel broth and scooped up some rice. The eel broth wasn't black, but a soy sauce-like brown, with a hint of scallion leaves in it. With one spoonful, the eel broth seemed to break apart, scooping out from the edges.
Shopkeeper Wang put the spoon into his mouth. He took a bite and his mouth was filled with the aroma of soy sauce...
There is also the aroma of green onions and rice. The mixture of the three makes one's appetite very strong. To be honest, he can eat two bowls of rice alone!
Shopkeeper Li opposite was still stirring the white rice and eel soup in the bowl with a spoon. He didn't stop until it was evenly mixed and each grain of white rice was evenly coated with a layer of eel soup. Seeing Shopkeeper Wang's expression, he knew that he had come to the right place today.
"What's the matter? Did it smell so good that you bit off your tongue?" Shopkeeper Li joked.
Shopkeeper Wang: "Woo woo..." He quickly swallowed the white rice and then said: "Delicious! Delicious, try it!"
Shopkeeper Li: "Okay, then I'll try it and see if this eel rice is authentic."
As he said that, he simply picked up a piece of eel meat with chopsticks, put it on the spoon with rice, and put it into his mouth.
But just one bite...
It was so delicious that he almost cried.
The eel meat was delicate and the sauce made it less dry and tough. So as soon as he put it in his mouth, he could taste the aroma of the sauce, the texture of the eel meat, and the rich flavor of green onions.
Grilled eel with green onions?
The sweet and sour rich sauce paired with the eel from the sea...it's really...a perfect match!
Shopkeeper Li couldn't help but hum, then nodded repeatedly: "This eel rice... is delicious!"
"I don't know if it's authentic or not, but when I first put this eel rice in my mouth, I forgot what the authentic eel rice I ate before tasted like. Anyway...it's not as delicious as this."
"That's it, from now on this will be authentic eel rice," he said to himself.
Shopkeeper Wang: "Hahaha, what? You changed the taste? In my opinion, no matter how delicious the eel rice in Bianjing City is, it can't be authentic eel rice. If you really want to eat eel rice, you have to go to one of those small, fly-infested restaurants by the sea to eat it!"
"How about we try some together next time we get some?"
Shopkeeper Li: "What do you want to taste as the owner of a steamed bun shop? What rare ingredients do you need to make steamed buns? Do you even need to go to the seaside?" Steamed buns are the most common dish in the restaurants in Bianjing. Anyway, the taste is the same, and there are not many variations no matter how you try.
Shopkeeper Wang: "Hey, don't underestimate me! I just asked someone to register for the Bianjing Chef God Competition. The competition still has more than a month to go. I thought I'd take advantage of this time to go there and look for ingredients. I want to make some unique buns and show off my chef skills!"
Bian Jing Chef Competition?
At that time, chefs from all nearby towns will come to participate in the competition, including the chefs from major restaurants in Bianjing, who will participate in the cooking competition?
Oh my God!
Not wanting to expose his daydream, Shopkeeper Li was stunned for a moment before he said, "Congratulations first. Don't forget to treat me to a meal if you win the competition."
Knowing his brother's cooking skills, he was afraid that he wouldn't be able to eat this meal, so he didn't care too much.
"Of course, of course!" Shopkeeper Wang said with a grin, and then continued, "I heard that there will be a lot of rewards in this Bianjing Chef God Competition. They are all real money!"
"For example, in the last cooking competition, there were supposedly eight hundred taels of gold and a jade ruyi (a sacred object) personally bestowed upon them by the emperor. The winner was Chef Yu from Bianjing's thousandth-ranked Wei Lou. His dish was made with a very rare bear paw. It's said that catching that bear took a lot of effort!"
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