Chapter 142 Japanese Guests
In the evening, Cai Zhiyuan and his assistant came to Ningyan with three Japanese and an interpreter.
A receptionist in a dark grey suit led them in, and a waiter who was specially assigned to the private room took them into the room.
This private room has a great sense of design, with a glazed entrance hall. Walking through the entrance hall, the curtains of the floor-to-ceiling glass windows are drawn. It is almost dark at this moment, with a slight blue tint in the sky. The lights in the houses in Repulse Bay have been turned on, and the sea surface is sparkling under the lights.
The box was divided into a dining area and a lounge area, and the waiter took them to the dining area.
In front of each seat was a long porcelain plate with a white background and a blue lotus pattern. There were four appetizers on it, including a handful of radish topped with a slice of fresh abalone, a red and white hawthorn roll drizzled with sugar osmanthus sauce, a base of lettuce slices topped with a small slice of roast duck, and a slice of Chaoshan goose liver.
There was a menu on the bone plate.
After Cai Zhiyuan asked the guests to take their seats, the Japanese guests opened the menu, which had words written in a flamboyant style.
A Japanese guest asked: "Which calligraphy and painting master designed this menu?"
Cai Zhiyuan said seriously: "Master Yue's hand, Master Yue's calligraphy, painting and cooking are three masterpieces."
Chinese and Japanese calligraphy and painting are similar. The guests carefully looked at the menu. One guest was reading the menu. Four appetizers were already on the table. The guest asked Cai Zhiyuan what the second dish, "fish sashimi", was.
Cai Zhiyuan was stunned by this question. He could only ask the waiter. The waiter served them wine and said, "It's sashimi. Su Dongpo wrote in "Going to Huzhou to Play with Mr. Shen" that 'the slices of sashimi of Wu children are so thin that they are about to fly'. This means that the chefs in Huzhou cut the sashimi as thin as a cicada's wing."
The translator told the Japanese customer this, and he suddenly realized, "It's sashimi."
“We Hong Kong people call it yeh sheng.”
The wine was served, Cai Zhiyuan toasted and introduced: "Let's eat this roast duck first."
This is a piece of glass crispy skin roast duck. The crispiest skin on the duck breast melts in your mouth. I just took a small bite and it was gone.
Cai Zhiyuan ate the piece of lettuce below to clear his mouth, and then ate the pink foie gras. He introduced the origin of this foie gras, using Yue Ning's words, saying that it was not inferior to French foie gras.
The goose liver is soft and glutinous, and the aroma of the brine still remains in your mouth after you finish eating it.
At this time, the waiter began to serve the second dish, which was called "fish sashimi" on the menu, "fish sashimi" by Cai Zhiyuan, and "sashimi" by the Japanese.
When the plate was placed in front of the guests, the dark blue porcelain plate was surrounded by various side dishes in an outer circle, with a small blue pot on the side. In the middle was sashimi cut as thin as a cicada's wing, arranged to form a goldfish. The key point was that the shape of the goldfish in each person's plate was different.
Japanese cuisine is very particular about knife skills, which is inseparable from its development process. In the early days, Japanese food culture was very chaotic. In the Tang Dynasty, the Japanese sent Tang envoys to China and brought Tang culture back to Japan. On this basis, Japanese food culture was established. However, due to the lack of natural resources in Japan, when we developed oil stir-frying in the Song Dynasty, iron pans were not popular in Japan. Secondly, Japan issued a "meat ban" in the eighth century, and the Japanese did not eat meat for more than 1,200 years. It was not until the Meiji Restoration that meat eating began to be advocated.
Therefore, for more than a thousand years, the ingredients and cooking methods were simple. Chefs pursued improvement in their craft by focusing on knife skills and plating. Kaiseki cuisine pays great attention to these two aspects.
These people may only have a general knowledge of global cuisine, but they are very familiar with their own food culture. The knife skills and plating of this dish in front of them, whether it is sashimi or sashimi, can compete with those of the masters if it were in Japan.
After showing the dishes to the guests, the waiter took a small blue pot, poured the sauce on the goldfish, mixed it with chopsticks, and invited the guests to enjoy.
Cai Zhiyuan poured the sauce and mixed it himself. When the other guests saw it, they did the same. The goldfish disappeared and the fish went into their mouths raw. No mustard was needed, just salt and peanut oil with a little seasoning. The fish meat was tender and smooth, and the taste was wonderful.
People are most likely to accept cuisine that is similar to what they are used to. So they naturally like this fish sashimi and say, "It's delicious, very delicious."
The waiter removed the plate of sashimi and served them a soup bowl. He opened the lid and saw a ball of white tofu pudding in the clear soup, dotted with some pink ham minced meat, a green vegetable core, and a bright red wolfberry.
"Chicken tofu pudding, please enjoy."
Cai Zhiyuan picked up the spoon and put a mouthful of chicken tofu pudding into his mouth. The others followed suit and tasted it. Sure enough, it was as tender as tofu pudding and melted in a sip. The tofu pudding was labeled chicken tofu pudding on the menu.
This clear soup is chicken soup but also has other flavors. It is very complex. These people, who claim to be food experts, don’t know what this soup is made of.
I asked the translator, who asked the waiter.
The waiter said: "Chicken tofu pudding is a specialty of Sichuan cuisine. It is about 'eating chicken without seeing the chicken' and 'eating meat without seeing the meat'. This clear soup is made with old hens, ham, scallops and other ingredients, stewed for eight hours, and then beef, pork and chicken minced meat are added to the soup to clarify the soup base, and only then can such a bowl of clear soup be obtained."
"Simmer for eight hours?"
"Yes! Chef Yue said that Chinese cuisine emphasizes long-lasting cooking and delicious soup, while Japanese cuisine emphasizes quick cooking. They are different."
The Japanese customer still shook his head, saying he couldn't understand why such a clear soup base was stewed for eight hours. Japanese tonkotsu ramen is also boiled for eight hours, but that's a thick soup. How do you clarify beef, pork and chicken?
"Will you ask Chef Yue later?" Cai Zhiyuan said to them.
The next dish had a lid and was still served one by one. When the lid was opened, there was a fresh fragrance from the braised sauce of eel and mutton. In addition to the eel and mutton, there was indeed one more piece on the plate.
The waiter said, "Fish and lamb, fresh eel."
"What is this?"
"It's grapefruit peel. It's in season this time of year and has absorbed the juices from the fish and mutton," the waiter explained.
Cai Zhiyuan introduced to them: "Here, we can make many dishes with grapefruit peel, such as abalone sauce grapefruit peel."
When they were watching the game just now, they were attracted by the aroma at the scene. It was hard to believe that eel could taste even better than yaki.
The eel was plump and juicy even though it had not been grilled. The grilled eel was delicious, but that did not stop him from thinking that the eel was tasty. How could it be gone in one bite?
I picked up the trembling mutton, which was soft, smooth and slid quickly down my throat. Before I could fully taste it, there was only a piece of pomelo peel left. The pomelo peel was so soft, and it had the fresh fragrance of eel and mutton. I ate it slowly, just two bites.
"Chef Yue has several other ways to cook eel, and they taste great too," said Cai Zhiyuan.
"Really? Then can she make kabayaki eel?"
Cai Zhiyuan thought for a moment and said, "Probably, but I think the kabayaki eel she makes might be different from the kabayaki eel you eat in Japan."
"I'm a little excited, what should I do?"
"You might as well look forward to her Wagyu Chikuzen."
"Will she really do this?"
The waiter came over and cleared their plates, only to see another dish arrive.
"Is it Chikuzen-niku?"
When the lid was opened, a deep-fried prawn with some side dishes was revealed. A Japanese guest smiled and said, "Is this deep-fried prawn tempura?"
"No!" the waiter said, "This dish is called Marshal Shrimp. It is a state banquet dish served by the leaders of the mainland to entertain Marshal Montgomery."
The customer picked up the prawn with chopsticks and took a bite. He found the crispy shell and tender prawn meat, which was actually wrapped with runny cheese and grainy pickles. The rich taste was hard to tell whether it was Chinese or Western food. I can only say it was delicious.
When I ate a steaming hot prawn, my mouth was filled with the rich taste of cheese, as if... as if... there was an indescribable charming taste.
"Is there white truffle sauce in it?" the translator asked on behalf of the guest.
“Yes, Chef Yue borrowed it from the Italian chef in Hong Kong,” the waiter replied.
The two Japanese were talking, and the translator told Cai Zhiyuan, "Mr. Yamamoto said he would go back and advise his good friend to do the same."
"It may be difficult. The difficulty of this dish is to cut the prawns into thin slices without breaking them. Most of our chefs here don't know how to do it." The waiter said extra.
The translation went on like this, and the Japanese guest said something incoherent, and the translator translated it again: "My friend is a Japanese cooking master."
The waitress knew she was talking too much. Ningning asked her to introduce them today, so she did. Normally, she wouldn't talk too much when guests were dining. She smiled and said, "Sorry."
The next dish came again, and this time it was the Chikuzen-don they had been looking forward to, and it really did contain beef cubes.
The beef cubes have a unique burnt aroma and are very tender inside. The lotus root, burdock, carrot, konjac and other vegetables are soft and cooked over a slow fire, and the vegetables have indeed absorbed the aroma of the beef.
There was only one piece of each ingredient in his dish, and he finished it before he could figure out how Yue Ning combined the stewed vegetables and the grilled wagyu beef so perfectly.
He asked a question, and the translator asked Cai Zhiyuan: "Mr. Ishikawa remembers that Chinese food was served in large portions, why are the dishes here only a little bit?"
Cai Zhiyuan almost laughed to death. After all, the Japanese were not as direct as he was. He remembered the first time he ate a dish cooked by Yue Ning, he almost went crazy with every dish.
"Don't your high-end dishes like kaiseki have small portions? Isn't the common gourmet beef rice also very large?" Cai Zhiyuan said, looking at the table. "This is high-end Chinese cuisine. Of course, quality is more important than quantity."
After the Chikuzen with Japanese Kyushu flavor is cooked, another covered bowl is served. When the bowl is opened, there is a ball of noodles and two wontons in the clear soup.
"Japanese-style Hong Kong-style wonton noodles." said the waiter.
Now the Japanese guests finally tasted the familiar kelp flavor in the soup, but the dried fish tasted different, it did have a Japanese flavor, but not quite, but it suited their appetite. The only downside was that there was still too little!
And this is the last dish on the menu, only desserts are left.
At this time, Yue Ning, wearing a chef's uniform, knocked on the door and came in...
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