When Lin Dan arrived, the young chef Qiu was standing at the back door, looking out. When he saw the carriage, he immediately came to meet them: "Master, be careful when you get off the carriage. Don't jump. I'll help you."
Unfortunately, he was still too slow to speak. Lin Dan had already opened the car curtain, jumped down swiftly, and strode towards the door. "I heard that Yan's Restaurant has a new signature dish called Braised Fish Head?"
"That's right. It's made with boneless silver carp heads, and it received rave reviews from diners as soon as it was launched. I originally wanted to ask a friend to help pack a portion to take out, but Yan's Restaurant refused to sell it, saying that if you want to eat it, you can only eat in the store, and they don't deliver. This is to prevent our Qiaoyuan Restaurant. Chef, I heard that the fish head has no bones at all. After cooking, it is tender and tender, and the taste is very delicious. How do you think they did it? What kind of knife function can remove all the bones in the fish head? It's too delicate." Chef Qiu exclaimed.
"It's nothing sophisticated." Lin Dan explained simply, "There are two ways to debone fish, one is to debone it raw, and the other is to debone it cooked. The fish head has a lot of bones and little meat, so it may seem impossible to debone it, but in fact, it can be easily deboned if you put it in water and cook it until the meat and bones are separated."
After Lin Dan said this, the problem that had puzzled Chef Qiu for a day and a night was solved. When it comes to cooking, he has never seen anyone more knowledgeable and quick-witted than Lin Dan. Previously, Yan's Restaurant launched three new dishes: squirrel mandarin fish, braised black sea cucumber with scallions, and crab meat lion head. The squirrel mandarin fish originally sold very well and attracted all the old diners of Qiaoyuan Restaurant, which almost caused Chef Qiu to close down. But after Lin Dan introduced the golden lionfish, the old diners all came back, and they looked forward to Lin Dan coming to the restaurant to teach every afternoon so that they could take advantage of the situation and have a few bites of her cooking.
In order to help Qiaoyuan Restaurant, Lin Dan would cook five tables of dishes every day. Just with these five tables of dishes, he was able to retain several of the most discerning gourmets in Beijing. Nowadays, these people would rather starve to death than go to other restaurants to eat, so they just sit in the store and wait.
Seeing that the squirrel mandarin fish could not carry the banner of Yan's Restaurant, the royal chef Yan developed a new dish called Braised Black Sea Cucumber with Scallions. The whole black sea cucumber is simmered on low heat with a thick sauce. It has a soft and glutinous texture yet has a few chewy textures, and the taste is very unique.
Lin Dan seemed to be competing with the other party. The next day, he also made a dish called stuffed black sea cucumber with sauce. The exquisite craftsmanship and seasoning were much better than the stir-fried black sea cucumber with scallions. "Niang" is a special way of cooking ingredients. It means sandwiching, stuffing, or pouring the filling into another ingredient to make a dish. This method is called "Niang". Common stuffed dishes include stuffed tofu, stuffed eggplant, stuffed bitter gourd, etc., but this is the first time that Chef Qiu has seen stuffed black ginseng.
The so-called "sauce" in "sauce-making" does not refer to sauce, but shrimp paste. Take some shrimp roe, fry them, mix them with light soy sauce, cooking wine, fine salt and other seasonings, put them into a jar, seal it, and wait for fermentation. After complete fermentation, knead it into long strips and stuff it into the belly of the black sea cucumber. First add milk soup and then red soup. Heat high heat to reduce the juice and then simmer over low heat to allow the salty and fresh taste of the shrimp paste to fully blend into the black sea cucumber. This is then the dish. After serving the dish to the guests, the waiter has to take a small knife and cut the black cucumber into small pieces about an inch long so that the guests can share them.
The well-cooked black cucumber is wrapped with tender and fragrant shrimp roe, which tastes sweet, salty and fragrant in the throat, leaving a long aftertaste. The stuffing of the stuffed buns can also be adjusted according to the customer's requirements. You can replace it with chewier mullet roe, or directly use fresh fish roe. Just for this one dish, by slightly changing the cooking method and fillings, you can create three or even more flavors. How can your guests not be satisfied? Therefore, the black cucumber with green onions and stir-fry didn't make much of a splash. On the second day after its launch, it was completely overshadowed by the black cucumber with sauce stuffed in sauce from Qiaoyuan Restaurant.
After all, Chef Yan was the imperial chef and refused to give in easily. Half a month later, he launched a new dish called Crab Roe Lion Head, which was made with chopped pork and crab roe. It tasted fresh, juicy and delicious. Seeing that the business of Yan's Restaurant was picking up again thanks to this dish, Lin Dan introduced a new dish called Fortune Meatballs. The name sounds mysterious, but it is actually made of chopped pork, but the taste is fresher, more tender and juicier than the crab meatballs.
She soaked the chopped pork in scallion and ginger water. The scallion and ginger water must be squeezed from old ginger with bright yellow flesh and green onions with beards, otherwise the taste would not be strong enough to cover up the fishy smell of the pork. To make the meatballs more tender, she mixed in chopped fish paste, which would increase the stickiness and prevent them from deforming easily. Finally, she smashed the pig bones, took out the bone marrow and added it to the minced meat to completely blend it, and then kneaded it into shape. After these three steps, the meatballs are fresh, fragrant, delicious and juicy. They can be fried, braised, or cooked in clear soup. No matter how they are cooked, the texture is so soft, tender and smooth. Taking a bite is like biting into solidified nectar, with your mouth full of rich gravy.
As a result, the diners that Yan's Restaurant had finally regained flocked to Qiaoyuan Restaurant again, and the business was truly up and down, with business being bleak.
After two consecutive competitions, the diners also noticed something. Seeing that Chef Yan Yu had introduced a new dish called Braised Fish Head, they all came to Qiaoyuan Restaurant after tasting it. It was self-evident why they came here. It was inevitable that guests would feel bored while waiting, so the old shopkeeper invited a few street performers to tell stories in the hall and served them melon seeds and fresh fruits, entertaining the guests well.
Lin Dan only cooks five tables of dishes at Qiaoyuan Restaurant every day. If you don’t come early to reserve a seat, you don’t know when you will be able to taste her cooking again. For gourmets with particularly picky tastes, this is more painful than torture. Seeing that it was almost noon, Prince Cheng took the lead in urging, "Boss, that chef hasn't arrived yet? Look at Yan's Restaurant, the braised fish head has been on sale all day, isn't it time for her to put up her sign?"
"Yes, yes, yes, I've been waiting from last night until this afternoon, and my stomach is empty." Prince Gong patted his stomach without any hesitation, making everyone laugh.
Although the new dishes of Yan's Restaurant are delicious, they have become the weather vane of Qiaoyuan Restaurant. When they point out the direction of the wind, diners will go to Qiaoyuan Restaurant. This is a conditioned reflex developed after two months of competition.
Although Yan Yuchu is an imperial chef and is favored by the emperor, she is only an imperial chef after all, and her status is many levels lower than those princes, dukes, and first-rank officials. When people come to your restaurant to eat, it's a courtesy, but it doesn't make sense for them to curry favor with you. As I said before - if it tastes good, it tastes good; if it’s not so good, it’s not so good; diners’ stomachs cannot be fooled.
Lin Dan had just entered the kitchen to explain to Chef Qiu how to stew fish heads when the old shopkeeper came running in and said respectfully, "Chef Lin, the customers are waiting impatiently. Will you make a new dish today?"
"Of course I'll make new dishes." Lin Dan rolled up his sleeves slowly, "We agreed at the beginning that if Yan's Restaurant promotes a dish, I will teach you a dish here. Unless Yan's Restaurant closes, this will always count."
You are trying to bring down Yan's Restaurant! Chef Qiu lowered his head in silence for the Yan family, but then he raised his head and looked at his master with sparkling eyes.
The old shopkeeper was completely relieved and ran out quickly to tell the long-waiting diners the good news.
Lin Dan washed his hands, picked up a four-pound sea bass, patted it unconscious and placed it on the chopping board, then said slowly: "I've just told you that there are two ways to debone a fish, one is cooked deboning, the other is raw deboning. The dish I'm teaching you today is called Fairy Boneless Fish, which also has no bones. It combines the raw and cooked deboning methods, so watch carefully." As he finished speaking, he cut from the fish spine, completely severing the spine and ribs. The meat in the belly of the fish was still connected, and after separating it, it became a beautiful butterfly wing shape. After that, he held the fish tail and removed the entire fish spine along the direction of the fish head, then made two thin cuts to separate the ribs.
Sea bass have few bones, just a spine and two rows of ribs. With four cuts by Lin Dan, all the bones were gone, and below the head and above the tail, there was only intact meat.
"This is the raw fish cutting method. The knife skills require a clean and light approach." Lin Dan put the two pieces of fish together and tied them with green onion leaves. This way, it looked like a whole fish again, but it could prevent the fish from breaking apart during the cooking process.
"This dish draws on the techniques of Huaiyang cuisine and can be cooked with a variety of flavors." Lin Dan put the boneless fish into the pot and continued, "It can be cooked with three fresh flavors in milk soup, braised flavor in red soup, spicy flavor in spicy soup, hot and sour flavor, all depending on the customer's requirements. A variety of people can cook a variety of flavors, and each flavor is rich. This is the biggest feature of the fairy boneless fish."
As the young chef Qiu listened and took notes, he saw Lin Dan's incomparable skills and heard Lin Dan's vivid explanation. For a moment, he was intoxicated and couldn't help but sighed: "Master, how do you know so much? My father and my grandfather are old imperial chefs in the palace, but they don't seem to know as much as you."
Lin Dan chuckled and said, "If we follow the standard, dishes can be divided into palace dishes, government dishes, and folk dishes. But do you know? There is no palace dish or government dish in the world. Both of them are developed from folk dishes. The real delicacies all come from the folks. The more you eat, see, and cook, the more you will naturally understand. In order to hone my cooking skills, I would work as a chef in every place I went to, and prepare banquets for people who were preparing weddings and funerals. There are many kinds of folk banquets, such as eight big bowls, nine big bowls, thirteen specialties, and even a table of 52 dishes, which is not much worse than the palace banquets. Just think about it, 52 dishes, no two dishes are the same, how much effort does it take? And because weddings and funerals need to be grand and cautious, they must not spoil the appetite of the guests. How much knowledge is there in this? After studying all these skills and knowledge thoroughly, cooking skills will naturally be learned."
Little Chef Qiu remained silent for a long time. After the divine boneless fish was out of the pot, he said sincerely: "Master, compared with you, Yan Langqing is really far inferior!"
Lin Dan shook his head and chuckled, but did not respond. He asked the waiter to bring the dishes out, and then picked up a sea bass, stun it and debone it.
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