Chapter 22: Color, flavor and aroma
There was too much meat to stew in one go, so Yu Sheng processed it into several dishes with different cooking methods.
The saying goes: the first time is raw, the second time is cooked, the third time is with onion, ginger and cooking wine - ancient humans in the early days of civilization probably also followed this process to gradually explore and try the gifts of nature.
Yu Sheng hummed a little tune as he cut the largest part of the meat into large chunks, boiled it in boiling water to skim off the blood foam, then put star anise, fennel, cloves, cinnamon and other stewing ingredients in a casserole, put the meat in, added enough water, salt, soy sauce and cooking wine to remove the fishy smell, and then put it on the stove to slowly stew.
While the meat was stewing, he stir-fried the remaining meat with chili peppers and garlic sprouts into two dishes. After tasting it, he found it fresh and fragrant, not too old or raw, and the meat slices were tender and smooth. However, he couldn't tell what specific type of meat the flavor was like. In terms of taste alone, it was a bit close to very tender beef.
As for the remaining ones, he planned to process them into bacon and store them after he finished eating them this time and confirmed that they were all ok... Or, after they were marinated and matured, he would use an air fryer to dehydrate them and make them into bacon jerky? He hadn't done this before, so he didn't know if it would work...
All kinds of ideas were running through Yu Sheng's mind. He felt like a scientist who was brave enough to try new things and was exploring possibilities in a field that no one had ever explored before.
So he explored the kitchen for nearly two hours, and after a lot of busy work he finally opened the door, and then moved the cups, plates, bowls and stew casseroles to the dining table one by one.
Irene in the painting looked at Yu Sheng busying around with horror, with two contradictory expressions on her face: "Forget it, let him be if he's tired" and "You can't, you fucking can't." After a long while, she finally couldn't help but speak: "You're not really going to eat it, are you? This is something you brought from a foreign land! Don't eat yourself to death!"
Yu Sheng looked up at Irene and said, "What if I told you that I've eaten there twice?"
The conflicted expression on Irene's face disappeared instantly, leaving only horror: "...Ah?!"
"Look, I'm still alive and kicking, so I should be fine. It would be a shame to throw away this trophy that I finally got back," Yu Sheng said as if it was a matter of course. "Do you know how to hunt? This is my prey - sooner or later, I'm going to get that thing back in one piece and let it know who's at the top of the food chain!"
Irene did not respond. Yu Sheng looked at the stunned expression of the doll lady and asked again out of curiosity: "But then again, has no one really tried the 'entities' in the foreign land? Didn't you say that they have all kinds of them? There shouldn't be a shortage of things that look edible."
"Who would try this!" Irene looked mad. "You never know what kind of weird properties this thing has. If it's poisonous, it's good. How could you put it in your mouth like this? And you ate two...did you really eat it twice?"
"Yeah, but the first two times were sashimi. The situation was quite urgent at the time and there was no time to process it. It was the kind of emergency where if I didn't eat it quickly, I would die." Yu Sheng said casually as he sat down opposite Irene, casually picked up a piece of meat with chopsticks and threw it into his mouth, eating with relish.
Irene was stunned when she heard this: "Then...what was your reaction after you ate it?"
"I died after eating it." Yu Shengte said frankly.
“Then you still…” Irene called out subconsciously at first, and then she felt something was wrong—but she didn’t know about Yu Sheng’s “resurrection from the dead”, so she just thought that he was teasing her, and glared at her angrily, “I’m serious!”
Yu Sheng grinned and laughed out loud as he looked at the frustrated puppet in the oil painting.
He found that he had begun to enjoy bickering with this puppet.
Anyway, there is no way the other party can jump out of the painting and hit you on the head.
He still didn't explain to Irene about his "resurrection". On the one hand, Irene was unable to detect the process of his death at this stage, and it would seem like a lie if he explained it. On the other hand, he had too many guesses about the changes that had taken place in himself waiting to be confirmed, and he hoped to discuss them with Irene after he figured out some things.
Irene had no idea how many messy thoughts were behind Yu Sheng's mischievous smile. She just couldn't help but take another look at the sumptuous meal on the table, and then watched Yu Sheng chewing with a dazed look in her eyes.
It looks... quite appetizing, and after processing the color is no different from ordinary meat, and there is no trace of the weird appearance at the beginning.
"……Is it tasty?"
The puppet in the painting finally couldn't hold it in anymore and asked, pretending to be indifferent.
Yu Sheng suddenly laughed, as if he had expected this scene, and picked up the empty bowls and plates that had been placed on the table, served Irene a portion of rice and broth, and placed them in front of the oil painting.
"I didn't say I wanted..." Irene muttered.
Yu Sheng said casually: "You can't really eat it anyway, so you don't have to care about the ingredients of these things, right?"
Irene thought about it and felt that it made sense: "Yes, really?"
So she became calm again, and appeared in front of the dishes and chopsticks that Yu Sheng had laid out, with her voice and smile still there.
Halfway through the meal, the topic of the two inevitably returned to their previous discussion about "professionals".
"In fact, no one has come to find you yet. There is another possibility," Irene said as she sat close to the edge of the picture frame, holding her teddy bear, thinking, "That is, a certain organization or official has actually noticed something is wrong here, but they don't think they can take immediate action based on their professional judgment, or they haven't yet accurately located the connection point and related intelligence in the foreign land, so they can only arrange surveillance measures first."
"Surveillance?"
"Yes, there might be a bunch of plainclothes officers stalking your house right now. After all, you managed to escape back from a foreign land before anyone could rescue you. Whether it's because of your strength or luck, the people who specialize in dealing with this kind of thing didn't have time to take action, and most likely didn't have time to locate you. Naturally, they can only arrange surveillance around you... You can pay attention to whether there are any unfamiliar faces around here in the next two days. Maybe they are plainclothes agents, detectives, investigators, etc. They are just something to keep an eye on so that you can look for advertisements on nearby telephone poles..."
Yu Sheng ignored the other party's remarks about the "small advertisements on telephone poles" and instead looked out the window.
Irene said simply, pay attention to whether there are any unfamiliar faces around here - how would he know which one is a stranger! He has only been here for two months, and he stayed at home for almost the entire month before that. In addition, he has a bit of face blindness to begin with, so in his eyes, half of the people here must be strangers! "Do you think the pancake seller at the intersection looks like a plainclothes police officer?" After looking out the window suspiciously for a long time, Yu Sheng muttered to Irene.
"I don't know. I can't see."
"Oh, yes, I forgot," Yu Sheng realized, and quickly stood up to pick up Irene's picture frame, and placed it in front of a nearby window facing outside, "The one over there..."
“No.”
"So sure?"
"Nonsense, 50 seconds for a set with sausage and egg. If it was a plainclothes officer, I'm afraid he wouldn't even know how to apply the oil in 50 seconds."
"...That's true. What about the guy with the phone screen protector next to him?"
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"No, he's too nimble."
"Oh... well, look..."
"Don't look at it. It's useless to just be suspicious. Besides, if they are really professional stalkers, you will definitely not be able to tell." Irene interrupted Yu Sheng. "Instead of guessing, why don't you go out more these two days? You have the smell of foreign lands on you. If you get close, those professionals will definitely see it at a glance."
“…Yeah, that’s right.”
Yu Sheng sighed, unable to refute the other party, so he turned around and went back to prepare to clean up the dishes on the table.
As soon as he turned his head, he heard Irene yelling behind him: "Put me back first! I'm still lying on the window!"
Yu Sheng sighed helplessly again, and as he turned around and moved Irene down from the windowsill, he muttered, "Tsk, what a hassle."
"Then please find me a body as soon as possible so I can run away by myself," Irene in the painting raised her eyelids and looked at Yu Sheng who was putting her on the dining table. She then added, "I feel like I'm a little more familiar with you today, so I'm asking again..."
When Yu Sheng heard this, the corners of his mouth twitched involuntarily.
When Irene discussed the "escape plan" with him before, she did say that they were not familiar enough, so cooperation in this regard had to wait until both sides were familiar with each other, but he did not expect that this puppet's judgment criteria for "familiarity" would be so flexible.
"Let's talk about it later. I have a lot of things to do right now. At least wait until I'm done with this..."
"Yeah, okay," Irene was easy to persuade, just a little disappointed and nodded, "Then don't forget it!"
Then she was quiet for a while, and when she saw Yu Sheng clearing the dishes on the table, she started to chatter again: "What are you going to do next? Are you going to go out and look for the telephone pole?"
"You can't get past the electric pole, right?" Yu Sheng glared at her. "I'm going upstairs to sleep now! I'm dying of sleep after going through so much!"
Irene said "oh" and raised her hand to point at the TV opposite the picture frame.
"Then can you fix the TV first? Suddenly there is no signal and I can't watch anything..."
Yu Sheng: “…”
After a moment, he let out an exceptionally heavy sigh.
After such a short time with this Bibiji, he already began to miss his own carefree and happy life of living alone.
(End of this chapter)
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