Chapter 103 The First Game (Part 1)
A 40-50 minute episode takes half a day to shoot.
The first stage is the preparation stage. The preparation time for cooking is very long. According to the competition rules, as long as the food is not cut and served at the end, it can be counted as the preparation stage.
The two participating teams went to get the ingredients. Chunfenglou first took meat, chicken, squab and taro, and Baohualou also took meat and chicken, as well as pig's feet and chicken feet.
Yang Yuhe, Le Mei and the head chefs of two major restaurants, Hong Kong City and Macau City, are today's professional judges.
The chef at Chunfenglou peeled the pork. Ah Xing, who was chopping chicken at Baohualou, asked him, "If you don't want the pork skin, can you give it to us?"
The assistant from Chunfenglou brought the piece of pork skin over. Ah Xing thanked him and used a blowtorch to burn the pig skin to remove the remaining pig hair and the fishy smell.
Chunfenglou was cutting and marinating the meat, Ming from Baohualou was chopping the chicken, and Xing was removing the fat from a piece of pork skin from the pork belly.
Yang Yuhe explained: "It can be seen that Chunfenglou did not take the novel route, but brought out their most powerful signature dishes, which shows that they regard Baohualou as a strong opponent."
Another chef said, "If our restaurant participates in the competition, I will definitely be very prepared to deal with Baohua Restaurant. After all, you can never guess what dish Yue Ning will serve to deal with you."
Le Mei picked up the phone: "I really don't know. Do you think Yue Ning, the steamed bun from the northwest, has any secrets?"
This is a question that needs to be answered.
Both families picked up their pots. Chunfenglou steamed the chopped Lipu taro, while Baohualou blanched chicken feet, pig's trotters and pig skin.
Ah Ming went to the ingredient area and brought back scallops and ham. Ah Xing scraped off the remaining fat on the pig skin, cut it into thin strips, and stewed it in a pressure cooker with chicken feet, pig's trotters, old hen, scallops and ham, added onions, ginger and cooking wine.
The professional judge explained: "I can see that Baohualou is going to make pork jelly. Yue Ning is good at both northern and southern cuisines, so is he going to make soup dumplings?"
Amin went to the raw material area and picked up a chicken. Next to him were things sponsored by a seafood company. In order to facilitate the chef's use, the dried sandworms had been cleaned in advance, and the sea cucumbers and fish maw had been soaked in advance.
Amin picked up the dried sandworms, returned to the table, put the baby chicken aside, and took a handful of scallops left over from cooking the jelly, and put them together with the cleaned dried sandworms.
There was still half of an old hen left from cooking the jelly. Amin took a piece of chicken fat from the chicken’s stomach and turned to the fire to refine the chicken fat.
He added scallions and ginger to the chicken fat, and the flames rose. He poured out half of the chicken fat, leaving the remaining ingredients and base oil, and then turned down the heat and added the scallops and dried sandworms.
Yang Yuhe was a little surprised: "No wonder the soy sauce chicken at Baohualou is so delicious, but isn't it too extravagant to add scallops and dried sandworms to soy sauce chicken?"
"If Bao Hua Lou's soy sauce chicken is added with dried scallops and dried sandworms, and the soy sauce chicken instant noodles do not have dried scallops and dried sandworms, does it mean that it is not authentic Bao Hua Lou soy sauce chicken?" another professional judge joked.
Le Mei said, "Maybe this is Ning Yan's soy sauce chicken? I've eaten Ning Yan's soy sauce chicken and white-cut chicken, and they are different from the two types of chicken at Baohualou."
“That’s possible.”
Soy sauce chicken must be added with soy sauce, but they saw Amin added a spoonful of water.
"Is he trying to make soup?"
"To make the soup stock, you don't use chicken bones or pork bones, but only add dried scallops and sandworms, and no ham? These are all ingredients to enhance the flavor, and cannot be the main ingredients for the soup stock."
Just then, Amin brought over a deep pot.
Seeing the deep pot, the judges were confused again and asked, "What is this for?"
I saw Amin pouring the boiling scallop and sandworm soup into a deep pot and starting to add a lot of water.
A chef judge said: "This is boiled chicken."
“Why do you add scallops and sandworms to boiled chicken?”
While the judges were discussing, Yue Ning in the audience was looking at the stage with a smile on his face, obviously very satisfied with his own team.
In an instant, Yue Ning's face changed and she covered her eyes with her hands.
At this moment, she wanted to die. Her Uncle Ah Ming! Although they were not related by blood, they looked exactly alike. She liked to try new recipes when cooking, and he liked it too. Usually, she would encourage him, but was this the time for him to innovate? It was no big deal for this guy to add red dates and codonopsis to the pot, and adding peppercorns was fine, but he also added cinnamon and bay leaves? Isn't this nonsense?
Yue Ning saw that Ah Xing was cutting radishes very fast, so she asked Ah Xing to partner with Ah Ming so that they could cooperate with each other and complement each other's strengths. She also wanted him to be familiar with the recipes and control Uncle Ming's wild imagination. But Ah Xing was still using a fancy knife to cut radishes and didn't see it.
It's over, it's over! Look at the master chef of Chunfenglou, this uncle of ours... Let's go on a day trip!
Yue Ning covered her face with her hands. Seeing her like this, Song Ziqiang tilted his head and asked, "Ningning, what's wrong?"
Yue Ning put down his hand and said to Song Ziqiang: "Uncle Ming mixed the seasonings randomly, the taste is wrong."
"You can't taste the taste of such a big pot of water and such a small amount of seasoning," said Song Ziqiang.
Director Song is not a professional in this field and he doesn't understand it. Yue Ning has no way to explain to him that this kind of competition, especially compared with the old restaurants, if the taste is a little worse, there will be a world of difference.
No matter what, as long as I finish the race, that's all, Yue Ning told himself.
Amin added salt to the pot and looked at Yue Ning. Yue Ning didn't want to put pressure on him, so he treated it as an exercise in the kitchen and forced a smile at him.
"Why did he add salt? You can't add salt to boiled chicken." Le Mei said.
Yang Yuhe shook his head: "The boiled chicken I ate at Ningyan had jelly under the chicken skin, and that jelly had a light salty taste."
He tilted his head and whispered to Le Mei: "Look at Yue Ning's expression, it should be like this, right?"
Amin has completed two soakings and two liftings. The previous two soakings were in ice water for a short time. This time it will take half an hour to soak until cooked. He set the timer and put it aside.
He went to get other ingredients, and the judges discussed the deliciousness of Chun Feng Lou's barbecued pork and soy sauce chicken.
Commenting on Ah Xing who was cutting vegetables, Yang Yuhe said: "Ning Yan's signature dish, a gathering of heroes that costs 180 yuan."
Le Mei is also familiar with this dish. She smiled and said, "It's also called Radish Meeting. Who is today's special guest?"
Yang Yuhe and Le Mei talked about this classic dish of Ning Yan together. They said that the special guests would change every time. Ah Xing took two big conches, so everyone knew that today's special guests were conches.
Amin went to get the beef, cut it into cubes, and put it aside for later use.
The professional judges said: "The first hot dish at Baohualou is black pepper beef cubes."
But I saw Amin taking two broken conchs from Axing and cleaning the snail meat.
Ah Xing soaked the chopped radish in water, cleaned the chopping board, and chopped the beef into a paste.
“So it’s not black pepper beef cubes?”
The professional judges found that they had guessed wrong again.
The other party guessed it was so good that they brought a big lobster over.
At this time, Amin also went to ask for a fish. He wanted an ordinary grass carp. They only needed to order the fish and someone would kill it.
Amin turned off the fire of the pressure cooker.
The grass carp came over and Ah Xing started to slice the fish.
"He is worthy of being the best knife in Fuyun Building. Watching him cut vegetables is really a pleasure."
“Indeed, there are still capable people in the mainland.”
The judges on the stage were commenting. Ah Ming went to get a bowl of live nine-segment shrimps, peeled the shrimps, gave the shrimp meat to Ah Xing, and took the shrimp heads for himself.
Amin turned on the fire and stir-fried the shrimp heads in the pot until fragrant. He added ginger, garlic and rice wine. At this time, the steam from the pressure cooker had been released. He poured the stewed ingredients in the pressure cooker, including the soup and ingredients, into the shrimp heads that had been stir-fried to produce shrimp oil.
"Is he going to add shrimp oil to the jelly?"
"Look, Ma Yaoxing is chopping shrimp paste. So this dim sum dish is shrimp dumplings with soup? The crystal skin of shrimp dumplings is not chewy. Can it hold so much soup?"
Hearing the timer for the poached chicken go off, Amin turned down the heat, turned off the pot where the chicken was soaked, and scooped half a basin of ice from the ice maker.
He came over and scooped the chicken soup for soaking the chicken into the ice cubes. When the hot chicken soup touched the ice cubes, the ice cubes melted quickly and the chicken soup also cooled down quickly. The chicken soup became ice-cold. He picked up the chicken from the pot and soaked it in the ice-cold chicken soup.
"Is this soaking the chicken in ice chicken soup? This is the first time I've seen this." said the judge.
"Yeah! Normally everyone soaks the chicken in ice water. I've never seen anyone use chicken broth. What are you trying to do?"
"Ningyan's dishes are very unique. Their cooking methods are relatively novel, which is normal."
Amin soaked the chicken in the icy chicken soup, then turned to season the soup for the jelly. After adjusting the taste, he filtered the soup twice, poured it into a stainless steel basin, and took half a basin of ice. He placed the stainless steel basin on the ice to allow the jelly to solidify quickly.
Ah Xing chopped the shrimp paste, and Ah Ming took it over and started pounding the shrimp paste with a wooden hammer.
"He is trying to beat the shrimp paste into elasticity. It looks like they are going to wrap the shrimp jelly with shrimp paste so that the juice is in the middle of the shrimp paste and will not break the shrimp dumpling skin." said the professional judge.
Here, Ah Xing began to show off his knife skills again, slicing the pork belly into long strips that were translucent.
"What do you want to do with the pork belly slices?" Le Mei asked.
"have no idea."
Ah Xing's pork belly slices were ready, so he went to get a pineapple and an orange and started cutting them.
"Sweet and sour pork with pineapple? But why do we need sliced pork belly?" said the professional judge.
Yang Yuhe suddenly remembered and said, "The traditional method of making sweet and sour pork is like this. Slice the pork belly, season it, soak it in egg liquid and roll it into balls. That's how sweet and sour pork is made."
In the audience, Boss Liu, who was once praised by Yue Ning for his delicious sweet and sour pork, looked at Yue Ning and said that they would never cook sweet and sour pork that way.
Yue Ning told him: "The inheritance of Fuyun Building, but Baohua Building will not use such a troublesome method. Ning Yan did it this way."
Boss Liu suddenly realized.
Song Ziqiang asked Yue Ning: "Is it the sweet and sour pork with ice and fire?"
"right."
Amin was making sweet and sour meatballs, while Axing sliced the blanched conch into strips and placed them on the side. He started to make plate decorations. He didn't have Yue Ning's skills, but he could still put together a gourd and a few flowers.
As time passed, the host prompted: "The preparation phase is over. Please serve two cold dishes within fifteen minutes."
Amin used the recipe taught by Yue Ning to season the food and made Northwest red oil. He seasoned the shredded radish and sea snails and put them on a plate.
Then add chopped green onion, ginger, salt and oil to make a classic poached chicken seasoning.
Ah Xing had also taken the chicken out of the ice chicken soup, chopped it up and put it on a plate.
Ah Ming raised his hand, and the host announced: "Baohualou's appetizers are ready."
Soon the other party also raised his hand, and the host said: "The appetizers of Chunfenglou are also ready."
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