Chapter 109: It was just normal at that time
Qi Huan stared at the line of words for a long time.
What's going on?
Why is there a notebook with Qi Qing's handwriting in Uncle Lin Sen's chef certificate?
Could it be that Qi Qing is also on the Waste Star?
How come she is here too? Why haven't I ever heard anyone around me mention this name?
Wait, the color of this paper looks very old. Could it be that the original owner’s mother is Qi Qing?
The question marks in Qi Huan's mind were like the bubbles in a can of carbonated drink, popping out one after another, each one more explosive than the last.
Don't think about it, read it first. He took several deep breaths in succession, temporarily blocking out the messy thoughts in his mind and shifting his attention back to the notebook.
Below that line of simplified Chinese characters is a line of smaller characters in another color, which translates this sentence into the world's current common text.
Continue to turn to the next page, and the four words "Tomato Scrambled Eggs" on the left page suddenly catch your eye.
It’s actually a recipe!
Qi Huan's heart skipped a beat, and he read on, only to see that it was divided into several parts, recording the method of making scrambled eggs with tomatoes in the format of ingredients, auxiliary ingredients and seasonings, cooking methods, tips, and taste.
The amounts of ingredients, raw materials and seasonings are accurate to grams. In the description of the method, the dimensions of the food processing are also marked and described in detail. The time for processes such as heating oil and stir-frying dishes is accurate to seconds and even detailed to the temperature.
How should I put it? This recipe was written almost entirely in the same way as recording data in an experimental report. It is so detailed that it is a bit cumbersome.
Strictly speaking, scrambled eggs with tomatoes was the first dish Qi Huan learned to cook.
He even clearly remembered the scene when Qi Qing explained the origin of the dish while eating it.
Qi Qing told him that this seemingly simple dish, which is familiar to almost all Chinese people from south to north, does not belong to any domestic cuisine at all. Instead, it was created as Western food by the last emperor about a hundred years ago based on the recipe of borscht.
Qi Huan initially thought that his sister was fooling him, but Qi Qing made a bet with him and dragged him to check data on the computer. Qi Huan then realized that although tomatoes were introduced into China in the Ming Dynasty, most people only regarded them as ornamental plants, and even inconspicuous ornamental plants. It was not until the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China that they became popular in the food industry as a sauce ingredient.
The result was naturally that Qi Huan lost and had to wash a bunch of dishes.
Thinking of Qi Qing's smug look at that time, Qi Huan couldn't help but shook his head.
After the word "taste", there was a blank line and another sentence was written, "Not very satisfactory. No matter how I adjust the proportion of seasonings and operating parameters, I can't get the taste of Huanhuan back then."
Looking at those familiar handwritings, Qi Huan's nose felt sore and tears suddenly flowed out uncontrollably. Qi Qing wanted to eat the food he cooked, so he tried to cook it himself and then recorded the most satisfactory version of the data?
Just like the previous page, in addition to Qi Qing's handwriting, there are also small handwritten translations in other fonts at the bottom, which looks like the Zhi Yanzhai version of Dream of the Red Chamber, and there are even research annotations in a third and fourth font. Except for the last sentence, there are translations for all of them.
The content on the page on the right is [Kung Pao Chicken].
The format is exactly the same as that of Scrambled Eggs with Tomatoes, and the records are also filled with a large amount of data.
Qi Huan's heart suddenly skipped a beat. The order and format of the recipe were exactly the same as the childish version of the recipe in the original owner's book.
So the original owner had seen this cookbook and even memorized some of it from memory, but he was too young and didn't understand the meaning of many parts, and he didn't remember it all, so in the end he wrote down the contents in such a fragmented manner.
No, wait a minute, another even more ridiculous idea suddenly popped up in his mind. Could it be that this handwritten recipe book by Qi Qing was the family recipe that the people in the Qi family had been longing to find?
He closed the book and looked at it carefully again, and found that there were some residual offset printing on the spine, which meant that the book should have originally had a cover.
Looking at the disassembled lining card again, it was obvious that someone had modified the inside. A layer of padding was added and a square groove was dug out in the middle. The size was exactly based on the notebook in his hand. It was probably because the gap was too big that the notebook shifted and fell into the corner.
As for the person who hid this recipe book in the chef's certificate badge, it was most likely Uncle Lin Sen.
If this is really the Qi family's heirloom recipe book, then Lin Sen undoubtedly got it from the young original owner and kept it carefully until his death.
As for whether he had time to tell the original owner where the recipe was hidden before he died, only God knows.
He flipped through the menu again and saw braised shrimps, boiled meat, and braised fish fillets.
Several dishes in a row were originally signature dishes of Renjian Restaurant. It seemed that Lin Sen’s cooking skills were probably acquired by studying this cookbook.
Qi Huan's fingers paused, then turned back to the first page and glanced at the seven words on the title page.
【The best thing in life is pure joy】
Qi Huan's heart trembled slightly. Could it be that the name of "Renjian Restaurant" was taken from the first two words of the sentence on the title page?
Lin Sen had been dead for almost a year, so naturally no one could answer his question. Qi Huan sighed lightly and could only continue flipping through the pages.
Mushroom and Chinese cabbage, sweet and sour spareribs, noodles with soybean paste, shredded pork with Beijing sauce…
At first glance, there's nothing special about them, but if you think about it carefully, they are actually the home-cooked dishes he once made for Qi Qing.
Looking at the annotations in different fonts, it is clear that more than one person has carefully studied this handwritten recipe book by Qi Qing.
Qi Huan's heart was pounding. So, the legendary powerful ancestor of the Qi family who appeared hundreds of years ago was Qi Qing?
Qi Qing disappeared inexplicably after joining the Tianma research team. Did she actually come here? Qi Huan's head buzzed. Did she also travel through time? If so, are those people in the Qi family actually Qi Qing's descendants?
Before I knew it, the thin notebook had turned to the last page, which had only a few lines of simplified Chinese characters, without any annotations or translations.
[At that time, I thought it was normal.]
When you miss home and Huanhuan, try doing one or two to comfort yourself.
Qi Qing August 12731
Five hundred and four years ago.
Seeing the casually written signature time, Qi Huan suddenly burst into tears. At this moment, he suddenly realized clearly that Qi Qing, his extremely smart, decisive and capable sister, was no longer here.
In the past, he could still deceive himself and say that Qi Qing was still alive and well in some corner of the universe.
Now, no more.
My mind was filled with all kinds of memories of my past with Qi Qing, and there was no room for anything else.
Qi Huan suddenly stood up, ran all the way to the temporary kitchen outside the small starship, tied on an apron, and began to work according to the recipe.
He has read countless ancient cookbooks, and sometimes even looked for different versions of the same cookbook. This is mainly because the longer the time interval between recipes, the simpler the recipe will be, and with the passage of time, it is easier for various deviations and misunderstandings to occur.
For example, in the record of the Burning Tail Banquet, the Imperial Jade Mother Rice only had ten words recorded, "rice noodles with egg fat and various flavors", however, compared with other dishes at the same table, this was already a lot of records, while the Brahman Light Noodles had only two words, "steamed in a cage", which was shockingly brief, and some were even just named.
The recipes in the Qing Dynasty were relatively much better. They changed from vague descriptions such as "add a little salt" and "leave a little liquid" to relatively detailed descriptions such as "a cup of autumn oil" and "a cup of wine", and the taste would naturally be closer when restored.
Qi Qing's lab report-style recipe showed enough advantages at this time. As long as the materials and tools were complete, he could make a taste that was close to the original one by one according to the description. The only difference was probably the subtle difference in the ingredients and seasonings.
[500g purple melon, cut into 3.5cm pieces, 200g eggs, about 3 eggs...]
Qi Huan kept crying while cutting the purple melon.
Back then, Qi Qing wanted to find the taste of the dishes he cooked in his memory. Now he wants to know what the dishes tasted like when Qi Qing missed his hometown and thought of him.
The guards patrolling the area discovered that the light was on at the stove next to the starship, and that someone was still busy at the stove late at night. They were a little confused as to why, but they did not dare to approach and disturb them. They just quietly increased the frequency of patrols.
Jiufang Yan coaxed Si Liang to sleep, and showed off the gifts she received in the past two days to her husband on video chat, praising Qi Huan for half an hour. After hanging up the call, she felt thirsty, but the water in the room was empty.
It was late at night and she didn't want to trouble others, so she planned to get two bottles from the refrigerator in the starship's public kitchen. As soon as she walked into the corridor, she saw Qi Huan cutting vegetables at the stove outside through the porthole, wiping tears as he cut.
What did this brat Jiufang Yu do in the middle of the night to make Qi Huan cry?
Jiufang Yu's eyebrows raised, and she didn't go to the public kitchen, but walked straight to Jiufang Yu's room and knocked on the door.
"Sister?" Jiufang Yu, who came to answer the door, was also a little surprised to see her.
"You little rascal, why are you still here? Did you bully Huanhuan or have a quarrel with others?" Jiufang Yu came up and twisted his ear hard.
Jiu Fangyu was beaten for no apparent reason. He covered his red ears with his hands and said innocently, "I was just looking at the second phase planning table of the new base and didn't see Huanhuan at all."
Jiufang Yu's hand that was pulling out the pearl hairpin froze in mid-air. Looking at Jiufang Yu's expression, he really had no idea, and his momentum weakened. "Then why was he crying while cooking?"
"He cried?" Jiufang Yu's expression changed slightly, and he started to walk out. He took half a step and paused, then turned to look at Jiufang Yu, "Where is he?"
"The temporary stove outside." Jiufang Yan pointed in the direction of the door.
Jiufang Yu ran away.
"If it's not Akan, then who else could it be?" Jiufang Xian frowned his beautiful eyebrows in confusion at the empty corridor.
Jiufang Yu rushed to the door of the starship and saw Qi Huan standing by the stove, stir-frying with a spatula in his hand and wiping his tears as he did so.
His heart tightened slightly, and he slowed down his pace and walked over slowly, stopping about five steps away from Qi Huan. He was hesitating about how to start, but Qi Huan spoke first, "You're just in time, come eat with me later."
He was clearly talking about the food, but the tone sounded like he was saying "have a drink with me".
Jiufang Yu pretended to be relaxed and asked, "Are you hungry?"
"I guess so." Qi Huan roughly wiped away the remaining tears from the corners of his eyes, handed him the freshly fried Kung Pao Chicken, and said, "Put it on the table for me."
Jiufang Yu stretched out his hand to the bottom of the tray, which scared Qi Huan. "It's hot, you can't hold it like that. Do it like me, with your hands on both sides."
Although Jiufang Yu felt that the heat from the dish would not hurt him, he still followed Qi Huan's instructions and changed the way he held the plate to holding both ends with his fingers, and placed it next to the original dish on the table.
Purple melon fried eggs, Kung Pao chicken.
Seeing the two dishes on the table, Jiufang Yu's obsidian eyes flickered slightly.
He remembered that the last time they chatted at this base, Qi Huan clearly said that he didn't want to cook these two dishes.
Qi Huan, who was half drunk at the time, also said, "Those were my sister's two favorite dishes. I never cooked them again after she disappeared."
Now he suddenly made these two dishes in the middle of the night. Did he find news about his sister, or was it because Jiufang Yu was around these two days and he was reminded of some nostalgic memories?
Jiufang Yu glanced at Qi Huan, who was still busy at the stove, with a complicated expression, and silently called out Xingqi Ba.
Hei Tuanzi's nose moved, and he was about to rush towards the Kung Pao Chicken following the aroma, but Jiufang Yu grabbed the back of his neck and forced him to turn towards the stove where Qi Huan was.
Zhou Qiba blinked his amber eyes twice, realized that the subject wanted it to coax people, and jumped towards Qi Huan.
"Oh, you want to stew the meat yourself!" Qi Huan was worried that it would fall into the pot, so he quickly caught it.
"Ohhh~" Zhou Qi raised his head and rubbed it against Qi Huan's neck, trying hard to act coquettishly and cutely.
"It's so itchy, don't move." Qi Huan held down the madly tossing little guy, burst into laughter, and warned without any deterrent effect, "If you move again, I will really put you in the pot and boil you."
Seeing Qi Huan smile, Jiufang Yu at the table felt relieved.
Qi Huan cooked seven dishes in one go: braised shrimp, boiled meat, braised fish fillets, broccoli with mushrooms, sweet and sour spare ribs, shredded pork with Beijing sauce, and noodles with soybean paste. He didn't stop until the area on the desk with the lights on was full.
"Try it." Qi Huan sat down opposite Jiufang Yu, took out two pairs of chopsticks from the chopstick holder, and handed one pair to Jiufang Yu.
Jiufang Yu first tasted the purple melon scrambled eggs and frowned slightly.
Of course, he had never tasted the purple melon scrambled eggs made by Qi Huan. If it was before he met Qi Huan, he might have thought it tasted good, but now, he just felt for no reason that Qi Huan could have made it better.
To confirm this feeling, he picked up another piece of braised shrimp. Qi Huan had made this dish before, so it was the most direct comparison.
Sure enough, it was not right. It was similar but different, similar in appearance but different in spirit. He couldn't tell the specific difference, but he could clearly feel that it was not the taste of Qi Huan's usual cooking. From a subjective point of view, the difference was about 100 points and 80 points.
When I tried the sweet and sour spare ribs again, I still felt the obvious gap.
Jiufang Yu frowned even deeper. What happened to Qi Huan?
Qi Huan also tasted each dish. After finishing, he felt lost and sighed softly.
"How does it taste?" He looked up at Jiufang Yu who had just tasted the ribs.
Jiufang Yu hesitated for half a second, but decided to tell the truth, "It's OK, but slightly worse than the dishes you made in the past."
Qi Huan shook his head, took out the thin book found in the chef certificate, put it on the table, and gently pushed it towards Jiufang Yu.
"If I'm not mistaken, this should be the family recipe that the Qi family is looking for."
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