Chapter 187 The Eight Delicacies
It is only about ten minutes' walk from Po Wah Building to Lou Ka-fu's Fu Kee Roasted Meat Shop, and Yue Baohua once opened a shop there in his early years before moving to Mong Kok.
It was here that Yue Baohua took in Li Xinrong. At that time, there were only a few tables in the store and the shop was rather simple. The master and apprentice depended on each other for survival.
Li Xinrong walked into the store and saw Lou Jiafu preparing soy sauce chicken for the dinner.
Seeing the eldest senior brother, Lou Jiafu quickly wiped his hands and came out: "Brother Rong."
"Just keep doing it." Li Xinrong told him.
Lou Jiafu did not delay and continued to prepare for the dinner market, which would open at 3:30. The housewives from the neighborhood would come to buy roast meat and take it home for dinner. At 5 or 6 o'clock, people who were getting off work would come to have a hot meal.
"Give me the vest! I'll deliver it for you and find out what the master has to say about it." Li Xinrong said.
Lou Jiafu said happily, "Okay! Brother, help me watch the pot, I'll go get it."
Li Xinrong watched the pot for him. Lou Jiafu quickly took the vest back and handed it to Li Xinrong: "Brother Rong, here you go."
Li Xinrong collected the bag and was still thinking about how to tell Lou Jiafu that even if his master forgave him, he would not be able to return to Baohua Building.
Lou Jiafu knew that others didn't believe him, but he still had to say: "Brother Rong, I don't want to go back to Baohua Tower, and I don't have the face to go back to Baohua Tower. I have fallen these days, and when I think about it carefully, I think that all these years, the master has treated me as his son, and I am narrow-minded and blame him for being partial. I just want to be able to call him 'Master'."
"You finally figured it out." Li Xinrong shook his head and sighed, "When Ding Shengqiang escaped from the mainland, he was covered with lice. The master took him in and let him learn the craft. What about you? All of us can live a good life because we met the master. I won't say anymore. I'll try for you."
"Um."
"I'm leaving."
Li Xinrong left Fu Ji and returned to Baohua Building.
Like previous years, Baohualou was closed for dinner today. The wives of several fellow apprentices were in the lobby with their children and Sister Hua, chatting and laughing.
Sister Hua saw the bag in his hand and asked, "Brother Rong, did you go get it?"
"Yes!" Li Xinrong asked, "Have the Master and the others arrived?"
"We're all here, we're all here, we're busy in the back!"
Li Xinrong walked in. Ah Zhong held the chopped preserved radish and asked Yue Ning, "Ningning, is this enough to steam three pomfret?"
“Enough, enough!”
Ho Ka Fai saw his chef coming in and called out, "Chef, come and taste my soup."
Li Xinrong tasted the soup first. His apprentice looked at him with his small eyes wide open: "Is it delicious?"
"It tastes good." said Li Xinrong.
Li Xinrong handed the bag to Yue Baohua: "Master, this is the vest Jiafu bought for you. I didn't tell him that Baohualou would no longer want him. He told me first that he had no intention of returning to Baohualou. He just wanted to call you 'Master'."
Yue Baohua took over the bag and taught the apprentice carefully for more than ten years. When he suffered the blow of losing his son, he ran to Ding Shengqiang and said he would be lying if he said he was not heartbroken.
It can be seen that he is down and out, divorced, and feels sad.
Ningning advised him that small mistakes could be laughed off, medium mistakes could be dealt with according to the circumstances, and big mistakes could not be forgiven.
She thought that Lou Jiafu's mistake was moderate, and that he had sincerely repented, so she should be given a chance and there should no longer be any conflict of interest between them.
"Okay." Yue Baohua put away the clothes.
Yue Ning brought a camera today and asked everyone to take pictures before dinner.
She sat next to her grandfather, with his four apprentices, Uncle Abang who had been taught by her father, Ma Yaoxing and A Zhong who had followed her for so long although they did not have the official status of master and apprentice, and Grandpa Luo's grandson Luo Guoqiang.
Sister Hua raised her camera, and this year Uncle Hua's brows were the most relaxed. It seemed that it was not just Uncle Hua, everyone else was smiling brightly.
After the meal, Yue Ning went home and called Uncle Mo who was far away in Shanghai. Uncle Mo said that the ointment he brought him this time was very effective and his legs felt much better after using it.
He is very busy now. The domestic shipbuilding industry is very poor. He and his mother are trying to understand international standards every day. It is very difficult to build a ship that meets international standards.
Listening to their anxious words, who would have thought that a few decades later, China's shipbuilding industry would be the world's number one? Yue Ning said: "Uncle, take your time, it will get better."
"Of course. Your eldest mother said that she couldn't build a big ship, but your sister Xiaoya could make it happen!"
Sister Xiaoying studies architecture in the United States, and sister Xiaoya follows in her mother's footsteps and studies naval architecture.
"Yes!" Yue Ning said.
"Nannan! Making money is important, but studying is also important. Uncle is waiting for your good news."
Uncle Mo was worried that she would not be able to get into university, so she smiled and said, "I will come to Shanghai to show you the admission letter when I get it."
"I've been so busy that I haven't visited your father. Now that you've received your admission letter, let's go to your father's grave and say hello to him."
"Um."
While others in the catering industry were on holiday, they were very busy. Yue Ning went out for social events twice and stayed in Ningyan the whole time.
The day of the live broadcast is approaching, and all kinds of ingredients have arrived one after another. Their preparations were filmed by TS and HTV together and broadcast on TV stations in both places.
"Ningning, Mr. Cai called." Secretary Miss Li came into the kitchen and said to her.
Yue Ning, who was looking at the grouper skin making, put down what he was doing, walked into the office, and said to Miss Li, "Please bring it in."
Yue Ning picked up the phone: "Brother Zhiyuan, looking for me?"
Cai Zhiyuan said in a particularly serious voice today: "Ningning, come to the TV station immediately."
"What's wrong?"
"Japan's NC TV station broadcast a news report saying that what you cook cannot represent Chinese cuisine. It caused an uproar in Japan. Mr. Ishikawa will call us later and arrange for you to be interviewed. Please come here immediately." Cai Zhiyuan said.
"How can one meal represent Chinese cuisine? I just want to arouse everyone's interest in learning about Chinese cuisine through this meal."
"It's hard to explain over the phone, come over and talk."
"I'll be there soon." Yue Ning hung up the phone and asked, "Ms. Li, is the driver here?"
"Yes, I have arranged it."
Yue Ning went to the kitchen to give instructions, took off his chef's uniform, and went downstairs immediately. The car was already waiting.
This car is not her exclusive car, but a company car. She has been saying that she wants to take the driver's license test, but she has been busy, so she can only wait until the test is over.
When Yue Ning arrived at HTV, the receptionist said to her, "Ms. Yue, please go to the sixth floor. Mr. Cai is in the screening room number three."
Yue Ning went upstairs and found Cai Zhiyuan. The HTV team who were broadcasting the live broadcast in the screening room, as well as two TS people were all there.
Cai Zhiyuan said: "Replay it."
A news clip appeared on the screen, which was the highlights of their preparations. Then an old man in a mandarin jacket appeared. He spoke standard Beijing dialect.
He spoke slowly and calmly, "As an insider, I recognize Miss Yue for her skills at such a young age. However, looking at the ingredients in their preparations, there are delicacies from land and sea, but most of them are middle and lower eight delicacies. If she doesn't use the upper eight delicacies, how can she call it a top-notch Chinese banquet? It's really not worth 50,000 Hong Kong dollars per meal."
These words were translated into Japanese, and the reporter asked, "Master Chen, what are the eight delicacies of Chinese cuisine?"
"This requires us to start with the history of the Eight Delicacies..." Master Chen started from the Zhou Dynasty and talked about the changes in the concept of the Eight Delicacies. By the Republic of China, it was divided into upper, middle and lower levels, with eight ingredients each, for a total of twenty-four ingredients.
He said, "I have listed so many of them, and you have all heard them. This ape lip is the most precious delicacy, and there are also camel hump, bear paw, and monkey brain. But Miss Yue's ingredients do not include these, right? Dishes made with the middle and lower eight delicacies are really not top-notch."
Cai Zhiyuan turned his head and said to her, "This old man is Ge Zhongxiong, the master of Shandong cuisine who was brought to Taiwan in 1949."
Yue Ning certainly knew that in 1949 many top talents from all walks of life went to Taiwan. This person must have extraordinary skills to be able to be taken away.
Yue Ning asked Cai Zhiyuan: "Let me ask you, can you eat monkey brains raw?"
Cai Zhiyuan showed a disgusted expression: "What's the difference between that and eating human brains?"
"That's right! According to the classics I read, the orangutan lips are not just the orangutan's lips, but the orangutan's entire head. Do you want to eat it?" Yue Ning asked him again.
Cai Zhiyuan shook his head, but he asked again: "Then you can have the bear's paw, right? You can't have your cake and eat it too."
Yue Ning said coldly: "Hong Kong enacted law to protect wild animals in 1977, and Japan introduced the Animal Protection Law in 1974. The whole world is promoting animal protection. Although black bears are not listed as protected species, our program has such a great influence, are we still promoting eating these? There are so many delicious foods in China, and there are more than 50 Chinese cooking techniques, which are enough for us to show. Why do we have to show these exotic ways of eating? The animals that fly in the sky, walk on the ground, and swim in the water, aren't they enough for you to eat? Besides, bear paws are like French chicken bladders. If they don't understand your culture, TV viewers can't imagine what you are eating, and they may even find it disgusting."
Yue Ning didn't say that the Japanese are quite accepting of this dish. In the 1980s, China enacted law to ban the consumption of bear paws, but Japan did not. So Japan learned this dish and added seasonings suitable for the Japanese taste. The dish of braised bear paws has always been available in Chinese restaurants in Japan.
"That makes sense." Cai Zhiyuan nodded and said to the others, "Call Ishikawa."
After answering Ishikawa's call, Yue Ning told Ishikawa his thoughts through an interpreter.
Ishikawa failed in his last shot of bladder chicken, and after hearing what Yue Ning said, he agreed with what Yue Ning said. But he was also having a headache, he said: "What you said makes sense, but we just got the news that NC saw that your food show was very popular. NC is our rival again. They found this Taiwanese master and prepared almost at the same time as us. They plan to do a Chinese cuisine live broadcast the day before our live broadcast. They are going to prepare a full banquet with a total of 108 dishes, which will be eaten for three days. We are just one day between them."
Yue Ning leaned back in his chair: "Let them do it. They are curious and we are broad-minded. Each of us does our own thing."
Yue Ning asked someone to replay the interview with the master. She watched this part carefully and didn't quite understand. What good could it be for such a master, who was older than her grandfather and whom she had never met, to join in the fun?
No matter what? Crisis public relations should be done as early as possible. Yue Ning accepted interviews from TS and HTV.
She smiled on the screen: "I'd also like to talk about the first-ranked orangutan lip. "Lüshi Chunqiu. Original Taste Chapter" says: 'The most delicious meat is the orangutan lip and the roasted badger.' However, I have seen books that record this dish in detail. One is Ji Xiaolan's "Notes from the Yuewei Thatched Cottage", which says: Among the eight delicacies, only bear paws and deer tails are common. Camel humps are rarely seen outside the Great Wall, and orangutan lip is only a name. In the second year of the reign of Emperor Qianlong, the military governor Min Fu gave me two pieces and stored them in a brocade box, as if they were very precious. So I peeled them from the forehead to the chin and cured them, and the mouth, nose, eyebrows and eyes were all clear. Like a theater mask, not only the two lips . Another article says that during the Jiaqing period, Liu Fenggao, a cabinet scholar and minister of rites, was sent as an envoy to Korea. The Korean king hosted a banquet for him. At the banquet, a waiter brought a red lacquer round plate covered with silk brocade. The waiter came to Minister Liu and lifted the silk brocade cover. Minister Liu saw that it was a human head and turned pale with fear. The waiter cut off a piece of lip from the head and gave it to Minister Liu to eat, saying it was "gorilla lip". This is the only two real records I have seen, which means that in history, someone did eat it, and ate a whole orangutan head. There are very few records, probably because few people ate it. "
The reporter who interviewed her was shocked when he heard this story.
Yue Ning sighed slightly: "As a cook, I remember the words in Suiyuan Food List: 'The violent do not care about human merits, and the wasteful do not spare material resources.' 'As for using hot charcoal to roast the paws of a live goose, and using a bayonet to take the liver of a raw chicken, these are not what a gentleman would do.' Not to mention killing a bear to eat bear paws, cutting off the head of an orangutan to eat orangutan lips, and slaughtering a camel to eat camel humps. China is vast and has a diverse food culture. The mutton soup steamed buns in the northwest are rough, the sweet-scented osmanthus sugar rice cakes in the south are gentle, the hot pot in Sichuan has a spicy and fragrant Jianghu atmosphere, and the morning tea in Lingnan carries the fireworks of market life. Chinese food is not only the delicacy at the banquets of emperors and generals, but also a bowl of steaming fish soup in front of my father's stove. This is my understanding of Chinese food. I make food with my heart and will not waste it. Thank you!"
Quoting classics, isn't this her strong point?
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