Chapter 94 Welcome Banquet
During the war years, many wealthy families in Hong Kong and Southeast Asia sent their children to the United States to escape the war. Zhuang Baoru had classmates and playmates in Hong Kong whom she had not seen for more than 20 years. Ye Yingyi discussed with her sisters and invited all of them.
Twenty or thirty years have passed, how many storms and waves have there been? Those who have fallen on hard times no longer want to see their old friends, and most of those who come are those who have remained with the family.
Therefore, many luxury cars came to the parking lot in front of Ningyan Restaurant, which had not yet opened.
Zhuang Baoru, who had been used to wearing cloth shirts and trousers for years, changed into a beautiful dress, put on makeup, and tied her hair with the company of her sisters. Mo Weiwen also put on a suit again.
The two men, along with their daughters, tried to identify the faces in their memory. In the blink of an eye, their black hair had turned white. They had so much to say that they didn't know where to start.
"Let's sit down together. We'll eat first and talk while we eat." Ye Yingyi took her sister's arm and sat down.
Cui Huiyi attended the banquet as Qiao Junshen's girlfriend. As soon as she sat down, she couldn't help smiling at Qiao Junshen.
Qiao Junshen was puzzled by her laughter. She said, "Is this carrot meeting going to become Ning Yan's signature?"
Today Yue Ning’s radish is holding a meeting, and the special guest is the sea cucumber. Various colored radishes surround the sea cucumber.
The other dishes were not the same. The red sauce and white marinated ducks were arranged in the shape of yin and yang fish, a shrimp with sauce was placed in a transparent jelly cup, the crispy skin was made into a boat with red strawberry pieces, white yam with blueberry jam, and green cantaloupe pieces, the cucumbers were stitched into an open book, and four kinds of roast meat were used in the platter. Under the Qingshan Pagoda and the setting sun was the white eel with the bones and skin removed, the edamame, duck tongue, belly tip and half-peeled crab claws formed a four-piece marinated dish, and next to it was a red-crowned crane and a pine tree flapping its wings, the red skirt was mixed with white cloud fungus, and the red and white colors were arranged in the shape of a peony flower. These are the eight cold dishes today.
"So beautiful!" Xiaoya said softly.
Mo Weiwen said: "Ningning is being lazy."
"Ah?" Xiaoying was puzzled.
"These don't require any skills. They are the simplest ways of plating. Your uncle Zhirong can carve a lifelike flying dragon out of a radish, and Ningning can do it, too." Mo Weiwen pointed to the Qingshan Pagoda and said, "This one is very simple. Just cut a few slices of cucumber. For the pagoda, your uncle Zhirong made a tool himself. He cut off the head and tail of a radish and used the concave and convex knife to cut it out on all four sides. For the red-crowned crane, he cut the radish into slices. He has a red-crowned crane model made of bamboo strips, so he drew it. There are so many tables today and she is alone. She doesn't have time. With her skills, she can use the painting on the dishes."
"Yes! Ningning made it for us. The one I remember most is the one with snow on the broken bridge..." Qiao Junxian started, and the others followed suit.
Yu Jiahong, the eldest brother-in-law of the Ye family, stood up and raised his glass. Everyone stood up together. Yu Jiahong said, "Twenty-four years ago, Baoru returned to Singapore from the United States. She bid farewell to her grandparents and family. Ying Lan and I sent her to the port city. She carried her suitcase alone, walked through the port, and returned to her motherland. After more than 20 years, she is back. We welcome Baoru home."
Zhuang Baoru and her family raised their glasses: "Thank you everyone!"
She is eloquent, but she doesn't want to say more at this moment. The past cannot be retrieved. In the industry, the gap between domestic and foreign countries is like an insurmountable gap. She chose to come back because she didn't want to build aircraft carriers for other countries, but wanted to build warships for her motherland. Today, she still has this goal. Now that the rain has passed, there is no need to mention it again.
After toasting, Yu Jiahong sat down and picked up a piece of duck. He said to his wife in surprise, "Yinglan, Chongqing braised duck."
Ye Yinglan also picked up a piece and took a bite: "Yes, the taste is almost the same."
"This is camphor tea duck." Qiao Qiming ate the duck, "The red and white ones are full of Sichuan flavor."
Xiaoya ate a glass of shrimp balls. She tilted her head back, tears about to come out.
Ye Yingyi gave her niece some tea: "The shrimp balls have mustard in them. You might not be used to it the first time you eat them, right?"
Xiaoya took a sip of tea and tasted it carefully: "Actually, it's quite delicious."
At this time, a strange aroma with the smell of wine came over.
Qiao Qiming took a deep breath and said, "Is this a bad pot?"
Zhuang Baoru nodded: "It seems so."
Mo Weiwen smiled: "Definitely. Zhirong asked Nannan to memorize this recipe."
Qiao Qiming stretched out his chopsticks and picked up a piece of fried tofu. He put the fried tofu soaked in the broth into his mouth. The rich broth came out, and the aroma could be smelled from his mouth to his nose. He swallowed it and kept saying, "Delicious, delicious, delicious! It tastes like Dexing Restaurant."
Mo Weiwen wanted to applaud this piece of pig lung, it was so soft, fresh and fragrant that he couldn't stop eating it after one bite.
Zhuang Baoru simply used a soup spoon to scoop the soup and other ingredients into the bowl, and put the sliced pork liver and heart into her mouth, also praising the dish highly.
Those who were born in Shanghai and were present had a taste of the long-missed flavor of their hometown.
People who were born in Hong Kong or Southeast Asia also enjoy eating it. As long as it is well cooked, zaobotou is a very popular dish, except for those who don't like offal. After all, people like pig offal from south to north, from east to west, such as Chaoshan's pig offal porridge, Beijing stewed pork, stir-fried liver, Sichuan and Chongqing's maoxuewang... There are too many to count.
Since she was welcoming Grandma, she had to cook a Shanghai-style dish, but it was a dish that was hard to find in Shanghai, and both the Qiao and Ye families were from Ningbo and had lived in Shanghai in their early years.
The Zaozui flavor originated in Shaoxing and became popular in Shanghai as the Zhejiang business community gained influence in Shanghai.
The rice wine bowls Yue Ning had seen in his previous life were all made into cold rice wine. Looking up recipes, the old recipes from the 1950s and 1960s had hot rice wine, which was a soup dish. Using offal to make soup dishes, the steaming hot soup has the flavor of offal.
Beijing's fried liver and stewed pork have taken a different path. In the market, a hot bowl of fried liver has a bit of dirty smell. Sichuan's maoxuewang is spicy and spicy, which suppresses the smell.
This Shanghai zao pot contains pig lungs, large intestines, pig stomach, pig heart and pig liver. It does not use a large amount of minced garlic to remove the fishy smell and has to be eaten hot. The requirements are that the soup should be thick, fresh, hot and fragrant, and must not have any fishy smell.
Probably because of this problem, most restaurants gave up hot fermented grains and gradually turned this soup into a cold dish. Yue Ning wanted to ask, what is the difference between that and fermented grains?
In the previous life, a Shanghai tycoon in the science and technology industry had eaten the fermented food she made, and he told a story at the dinner table: the big boss who was very influential in Shanghai before liberation went to Hong Kong in 1949, and missed the fermented food of Dexing Restaurant. He sent his accountant back to Shanghai to ask Dexing Restaurant to make this dish for him.
Finally, the chef arrived in Hong Kong via a third country and prepared this dish for him.
The old man ate the tripe noodles in cold fermented rice and said, "I wonder what magic this fermented rice bowl has that made him go to so much trouble to get a chef to come to Hong Kong to cook?"
I replied to him: "Don't look at me. Even if you send me to Shanghai, I still can't do it."
"I can't ask you to do that either!"
This matter has already passed. To Yue Ning, he was considered a wealthy man, but technology is developing too fast nowadays. He may be in the limelight today, but he may fall and become a debtor tomorrow.
They were not close friends, so it was not appropriate to make such jokes. Yue Ning only treated him as an ordinary diner and did not want to have any close friendship with him, so he positioned him as a guest who needed to make a reservation one month in advance.
Later, this guy's company was suppressed by foreign countries. He was very tough. Under the heavy difficulties, he came to her place to arrange a meal. He was depressed on the phone: "If I can't pass this level, maybe I will no longer be a member of this circle, and I will never be able to eat the food you cook."
Yue Ning said to him on the phone: "I want to organize a party? I'll treat you!"
She prepared the banquet for him and also found several bigwigs for him, injected capital into him, and provided him with a market in which to survive.
He was deeply moved at the time, and after overcoming the difficulties... something went wrong afterwards. He actually pursued her in a big way. Yue Ning was helpless. Many men would definitely believe her no matter if they were ordinary or not. She could only block him, and he couldn't even make an appointment.
Yue Ning comforted herself that after all this incident, she had invested in this person, made some money, and also figured out the trick.
In this life, her father made her memorize this recipe. There is a line in the recipe that says to clean the lungs, intestines, stomach, and heart, blanch them, and then stew them with white radish for about 20 minutes to remove the odor.
After trying it, Yue Ning found that the sweet white radish can indeed remove residual odors.
Then add these ingredients into the white soup cooked from chicken rack, pork bones, ham and pig's trotters, and continue stewing.
She takes out the stewed ingredients and soaks them in the fragrant lees marinade she made herself, allowing the aroma of the lees to be fully absorbed by the ingredients before slicing them.
The rich soup is filtered and brought to a boil. Then add bamboo shoots, fried tofu and pork offal slices soaked in fermented rice wine. While the soup is boiling, add raw pork liver slices. Finally, add a spoonful of fragrant fermented rice wine and a handful of garlic leaves.
This hot dish is considered successful only if the rice noodle soup is fresh, fragrant and has no peculiar smell.
"Everyone says it's delicious!" News came from outside.
Yue Ning looked at the lobster rolling in He Yunbang's pot and said, "Serve the food."
This dish of stir-fried lobster with three green onions is stir-fried over high heat. The green onions, onions and shallots bring out different aromas. Combined with He Yunbang's superb cooking skills, Yue Ning's main idea is to make the food in a high-end restaurant taste like that of a food stall.
After this dish, the main dish of this banquet is Kunlun Baofu.
When the Kunlun Baofu was seated, a lady saw this dish and shook her head and said to the man next to her: "I don't want to eat this fish skin, you eat it for me!"
The man next to him was also in the same mood: "Then leave it there!"
Some things are precious and rare, so what? If they don’t suit your taste, they don’t suit your taste. The couple went to Yulongxuan two days ago and ordered this 688-cent Kunlun Baofu dish at the waiter’s recommendation.
When the food was served, the lady enthusiastically cut a piece of fish skin and put it in her mouth. It wasn't the fishy smell that was so strong that she wanted to vomit, but she just couldn't eat it.
My wife said that the Kunlun abalone at Yulongxuan had a fishy smell and was not tasty. My husband didn't feel the smell, but thought it was not worth it. He might as well eat a Jipin soft-boiled abalone. He ate both plates of abalone and didn't eat the skin.
He cut the abalone open. It was really good, with a runny flesh. He put it in his mouth and found that it didn't taste like the abalone he usually ate, or even the abalone from Baohualou. It had the fresh aroma of sea fish, as well as fruity and refreshing fragrance.
He saw the person at the same table eating the grouper skin first, and narrowed his eyes: "It is worthy of being the top dish in the Manchu-Han banquet."
He cut a piece of grouper skin with doubt. It was soft, glutinous and springy, without any greasy feeling like the one from Yulongxuan. Was that the fishy smell that his wife mentioned? He turned around and whispered to his wife, "It's delicious. Would you like to try it?"
The lady also heard other people praising this dish, and since her husband said so, she decided to give it a try reluctantly!
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