Chapter 214 Arrival in Lyon
Yue Ning arrived in Lyon, France, and walked out of customs with Cai Zhiyuan.
French cuisine was established as the "crown of European cuisine" by court chefs at the Versailles Palace during the Louis XIV era, with their strict selection of ingredients, complex sauces and luxurious presentation. After the French Revolution, private chefs of exiled nobles brought court skills to the public, and the high-end restaurants that emerged on the streets of Paris made French cuisine go from the court to the public, and its exquisite etiquette and delicate dishes became a symbol of status.
In the past two decades, French cuisine has undergone a huge innovation and completely changed its appearance. New French chefs advocate returning to the original taste of ingredients, abandoning the heavy and greasy traditional sauces, and redefining high-end dining with fresh seasonal ingredients, simple cooking techniques and artistic plating. They focus on preserving the natural taste of ingredients, such as cooking beef only to six or seven minutes, pursuing the perfect tenderness of seafood, and incorporating innovative elements such as fruits and spices into the sauce. This change not only consolidated the high-end status of French cuisine, but also made it popular around the world with an inclusive attitude, becoming a benchmark for world cuisine.
The World Chefs Exchange, held every two years in Lyon, is a top event in the world culinary community. Chefs from Paris, New York, Tokyo, Milan and other places are proud to have an admission ticket.
However, the door to this event has never been opened to Chinese chefs before, or to chefs from poor countries. Yue Ning, as Lucas's special guest, is definitely a supreme honor for Chinese chefs of this era.
Yue Ning knew that this exchange meeting was the predecessor of the World Cooking Competition, which is known as the Olympics of the culinary world.
In her previous life, Paul Bocuse, known as the King of Chefs, founded the World Cooking Competition named after him in 1987. She led her team to the finals in Lyon, competing with 24 teams from all over the world, and finally won the 17th place. This result is not an honor for a country with 5,000 years of civilization and a long-standing food culture, but even a shame. However, this is the best result achieved by Chinese chefs in this competition.
There are many subjective factors in judging food, and stereotypes also influence the judges. Yue Ning knows that it is difficult for her to change the stereotypes of Westerners about Chinese food alone.
To change the stereotype of Chinese food among Westerners, Chinese food itself must be innovated first. Just like the failure of De Xiang’s live broadcast, the reason is that Chinese chefs do not understand that the current trend of the world’s culinary industry has broken away from the constraints of luxury, and high-end restaurants are pursuing health and nature, but they are still developing in the direction of rare and exotic, lacking creativity, with a complex and rich taste and over-processing.
She had a long talk with Cai Zhiyuan, hoping to hold a competition for Chinese cuisine, which would allow chefs to understand world trends through communication and enable Chinese cuisine to return to a status that matches its cultural heritage as soon as possible.
Cai Zhiyuan saw that the popularity of the previous year's "Hong Kong and Macau Chef King Competition" was not inferior to the Hong Kong Miss Selection, so he readily agreed. This time he came with Yue Ning to learn from the experience of this year's Chinese Chef King Competition.
Cai Zhiyuan looked at Yue Ning beside him. The girl who had joked with him on the plane was wearing a straight and wide dark green silk Zhang satin modified mid-length coat with four-sided Ruyi pattern. The red agate buckle on the slanting collar was hung with a filigree gold inlaid red Ruyi collar. The lower body was matched with a pair of Xiangyun silk wide-leg pants of the same color. Zhang satin is known as relief on silk. Velvet flowers are woven on the silk satin. The silk brilliance flows when she moves, showing low-key and gorgeous.
After living in Hong Kong for a year, Yue Ning's skin has become fair, and the indigo-colored clothes make her skin look even whiter. Today, she rarely wears lipstick that is the same color as the southern red agate, with a slight orange tint, and she looks bright and attractive.
Cai Zhiyuan controls half of Hong Kong's entertainment industry and has seen many beauties, but who among those beauties has such relaxed eyebrows and calm demeanor as her?
Yue Ning was also looking at Cai Zhiyuan. He was wearing a suit and tie, a pair of gold-rimmed glasses, and a Patek Philippe watch on his wrist. She turned her head slightly and said to Cai Zhiyuan, "Brother, you look so decent today. You are definitely the template for the scumbag character in your TV series."
Cai Zhiyuan, who was originally admiring his lively and lovely sister's transformation into a peerless beauty, suddenly came to his senses. He thought, how could she spit out ivory from her dog's mouth? Cai Zhiyuan replied: "You are the one who looks like a dog."
The HTV crew arrived in Lyon in advance and had started preparations with the local TV station. At this moment, their camera was focused on Yue Ning and their boss. France was at the peak of world fashion in the 1980s, and travelers stopped to look at this beautiful oriental couple.
"Ningning!" Qiu Chunming, Ning Yan's foie gras supplier, came forward with a Frenchman.
When Qiu Chunming learned that Yue Ning was coming to attend the exchange meeting, he immediately contacted the French supplier, who was a famous French food group. Yue Ning promoted French foie gras and Chaoshan foie gras at the Hong Kong Food Expo last time, and also launched foie gras and beef abalone rice at Ningyan, making it one of Ningyan's signature dishes.
In fact, the inspiration for this bibimbap comes from the foie gras and beef bowl that Yue Ning tasted in Japan in her previous life. Since it came from Japan, let it return to Japan. Coincidentally, Yue Ning was about to launch a new abalone sauce seasoning for Cui Ji, so she taught Hong Kong and Japanese viewers how to make a simple version of bibimbap with foie gras and beef on Xu Lemei and TS TV.
In this era, French cuisine occupies the high-end market and is very expensive. Although French foie gras is famous, it is a niche market and is not consumed in large quantities.
Yue Ning's move persuaded Qiu Chunming to sell foie gras in supermarkets. Qiu Chunming immediately thought of the Japanese market and notified the company's sales manager in charge of East Asia.
This company's agent in Japan has only been supplying French restaurants and has no supermarket channels at all.
LiDe has already opened up the market in Japan, and has sufficient supermarket channels, which has helped them enter the imported food area of supermarkets.
Although the price of raw goose liver is relatively high, it is much cheaper than eating it in high-end restaurants. The sales volume of the company's goose liver in Hong Kong and Japan has tripled, which has made the food company see the consumption potential of the East Asian market and also witnessed Yue Ning's ability.
Originally, their sales staff planned to go to Gangcheng to visit Yue Ning, but when they heard that Yue Ning was going to take an exam, they postponed the trip.
Qiu Chunming told them that Yue Ning was coming to Lyon to attend a chef exchange meeting, and the group's sales manager in charge of the East Asian market was naturally very happy.
The manager also told Qiu Chunming that their boss's younger brother was a Michelin three-star chef, and he planned to ask for permission to let Yue Ning meet the boss's younger brother first to add some popularity to Yue Ning.
This request was surprising! The boss's brother turned out to be Lucas.
The two brothers had a conversation. Lucas's brother, the boss of Durand Group, mentioned that Yue Ning reminded them to stock their products in Japanese supermarkets. Lucas talked about Yue Ning's insights on cooking. They both believed that every suggestion made by Yue Ning was not made casually, but was a precise control of the market.
As a result, their liking for Yue Ning increased a little bit, and Lucas simply invited them to live in the family's wine estate in Beaune.
Qiu Chunming had studied in France, so he had the opportunity to be a French food agent. He translated the sales manager's words, and the manager said that Lucas was preparing lunch and Paul was waiting at the manor.
The group walked out of the terminal, and two Citroen DS cars quietly parked in the VIP lane. The sales manager personally opened the back door for Yue Ning. Cai Zhiyuan was invited by Qiu Chunming to get into another car, and the TV station staff got into a van.
In his previous life, in addition to participating in competitions, Yue Ning also visited Burgundy many times to explore the subtleties of French cuisine and search for his favorite wines.
In the distance, the Rhone River meanders like a silver thread, and workers in the vineyards are busy.
Half an hour later, the motorcade drove into the Durand family's manor. The iron gate slowly opened, and behind the neatly trimmed yew hedge was a white Baroque-style mansion. The car stopped steadily, and a man who looked like a butler opened the door for Yue Ning, who got out of the car. Lucas, dressed in a chef's uniform, stood side by side with a French man of extraordinary temperament.
"Ningning." Lucas called Yue Ning with an accent, kissed her on the cheek, and then introduced his brother Paul Durand.
Although HTV had an accompanying translator, Qiu Chunming still stepped forward to translate for them.
After a few words, Lucas asked Yue Ning to go to the room to put down the luggage and go to the kitchen together, because Paul was very interested in the bibimbap that tripled their foie gras sales. Of course, this was also one of the plots set for this trip.
Yue Ning changed into a chef's uniform and took a can of food. This was the soft-boiled abalone she had made before leaving. In order to make it easier to carry, she asked Cui Ji Seasoning Factory to help her package it into cans.
She and Lucas walked to the kitchen together. Lucas had a special liking for bladder chicken. In the pot, a chicken was wrapped in a spherical pig bladder and was cooking slowly at low temperature.
The rice in the pot was already cooked, and Lucas said, "We've been waiting for you!"
Yue Ning opened the can and saw ten premium soft-boiled abalones soaked in thick abalone sauce.
She placed the pot on the gas stove and heated the abalone over low heat. As the temperature rose, the abalone juice emitted a rich and fresh aroma.
During this time, she started to prepare other ingredients: cut the marbled beef and beef into thin slices and sprinkle them evenly with sea salt; cut the onion into shreds and coat it with starch; and slice the mushrooms.
Use a heated knife to cut the goose liver into slices, make diamond-shaped cuts on the surface of the goose liver, and sprinkle with a few grains of salt.
When the pan is smoking, she spreads the goose liver slices into the pan. The moment the fat meets the high temperature, the golden crispy edges spread rapidly with a "sizzling" sound. After one minute, she turns the slices over and fries the other side to create a golden crispy crust. The goose liver is ready.
At this time, a thin layer of clarified foie gras oil had accumulated in the pan. She used this oil to fry the beef slices. The pink tender meat slices changed color in the hot oil and were taken out of the pan when the edges were slightly charred.
Then, she added the mushroom slices and onion shreds to the pan, and the slightly burnt oil brought out the spicy onion and fresh mushroom flavor. After frying the onion and mushroom, she scooped a spoonful of abalone sauce from the abalone pot and poured it into the pan, then put the beef slices into the abalone sauce and stir-fried it for a while before serving.
The rice was ready, with a small ball of rice on each large porcelain plate. Yue Ning placed goose liver, beef, and mushrooms on the rice in order, with distinct layers. Finally, she took out the Jipin abalone and cut it into four slices. The runny meat was slightly trembling at the cut. She dotted the abalone on the top of the rice, then used a small spoon to pour a spoonful of thick abalone sauce, sprinkled with chopped green onions, and said, "It's time to eat!"
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