Ye Chui came to challenge Chinatown in order to make the people in Chinatown acknowledge that their food was inherited from Chinese cuisine and let them return to their roots.
Ye Chui understood that sometimes simply being better at cooking was not enough to convince the other party. The best way to intimidate the other party was to "win them over with virtue".
Of course, winning people over with virtue depends on the person. People like Peng Song who are opportunistic can be crushed directly, but people like Chen Tian and Shen Zhongda are worthy of being made to understand the truth by using "virtue" in Ye Chui's opinion. So Ye Chui taught Chen Tian Mapo Tofu and Shen Zhongda Laobian Dumplings, so that they could know the profoundness of Chinese cuisine and let them wholeheartedly acknowledge their Chinese heritage.
In Ye Chui's opinion, Jiang Yuemei is like Chen Tian and Shen Zhongda. There is no need to crush them in cooking skills. He only needs to come up with a recipe that impresses her to make them admit defeat. So Ye Chui plans to teach Jiang Yuemei the most formal Maoxuewang.
As for why Ye Chui felt that Jiang Yuemei was worthy of doing this - he believed in his own judgment of people. This fat aunt was definitely not the kind of person who said one thing and thought another. Besides, fat people are generally good people, aren't they
(ps: cough... the cannon is the proof...)
"Master, what is the real Maoxuewang?" Although Han Yuyan was still upset about Ye Chui "tricking" her into eating duck blood, she also became very interested in the real Maoxuewang and asked.
Ye Chui had never cooked this dish before.
"The ingredients of real maoxuewang are very particular. The spicy red of Lahongzhuang looks very much like maoxuewang, and can be seen as a simple version of maoxuewang. It needs to be icing on the cake and add a few other seasonings." Ye Chui said, and then laughed, "First of all, we have to find a way to find duck blood... The vegetable market in Chinatown seems to sell live ducks. Who of you can help me buy one and kill the duck to get the blood?"
Han Yuyan quickly shook his head: "I don't want to go... Master, do you need anything else? I'll go buy it for you."
"Of course we need it." Ye Chui showed a sly smile on his face, "We also need tripe... Oh, tripe is the omasum of the cow. There is a slaughterhouse in Chinatown that supplies pork and beef. We should be able to find these things at the slaughterhouse."
Han Yuyan: “…”
Sister Han turned around and walked outside: "I'm going to buy a duck."
Ye Chui looked at Tang Shanshan with a smile.
The girl immediately got anxious and said to Ye Chui with a look of resistance: "Boss... You... You won't let me go to the slaughterhouse to buy some tripe, right? Let me make it clear first, although I am working for you for 500 yuan a day, I won't do everything. I have principles..."
"..." Seeing Tang Shanshan's expression as if he was going to do something evil to her, Ye Chui couldn't help laughing. He shook his head and said, "Okay, I won't let you go to the slaughterhouse. You can go to the vegetable market with Dayu and buy me some other ingredients. Oh, I'll write down what you want to buy."
Ye Chui found a pen and paper and wrote down the ingredients he would use: bean sprouts, eels, day lilies, fungus, lettuce, squid, and pork belly.
In addition, the most authentic way to cook Maoxuewang requires the use of ham sausage, but there is no such thing in the world for the time being, so we can only give up.
Taking the piece of paper handed over by Ye Chui, Tang Shanshan glanced at it and said in amazement: "So many things are needed. This dish is really exquisite."
“Any dish that has become famous has been developed over countless years. It is constantly improved during this process to make the taste gradually reach perfection. This is also the most fascinating part of food. When the recipe is finally developed, every ingredient and every seasoning it contains are already perfect.” Ye Chui said with some emotion. Some chefs with insufficient skills feel that when making some big dishes, the ingredients and seasonings used are too complicated, and it doesn’t matter if a few are missed. However, they don’t know that in the eyes of real gourmets, missing one thing, even an inconspicuous little thing, may make the whole dish taste bad.
Tang Shanshan didn't know whether she understood or not, so she nodded, looked at the paper in her hand and left the kitchen. Before leaving, Ye Chui asked him to call Chen Jiao in to help him find the tripe ingredients.
But a moment later it was Chen Tian who came in. She just came to Chen's Hotel to ask Ye Chui what he was going to do, and Ye Chui just asked her to go to the slaughterhouse.
As the proprietress of one of the seven major restaurants, Chen Tian's name is also very useful at the slaughterhouse.
Moreover, as a famous tofu lion, he was obviously not afraid of things like slaughterhouses and tripe. After Chen Tian understood what Ye Chu was going to use, he left happily.
By the evening, all the ingredients Ye Chui needed were prepared.
Han Yuyan bought three live ducks at once. When Ye Chui killed the ducks, his sister and Tang Shanshan hid back in their room. The duck blood was collected and placed in a large basin. Then Ye Chui poured a small amount of water, white wine and most importantly, salt into it.
Stir gently and set aside.
Salt will act as a coagulant, causing the duck blood to gradually coagulate into blocks and become blood stew and blood tofu.
The next thing is to deal with the tripe that Chen Tian brought.
The general way to eat tripe is to dry it and then soak it in water. This can greatly reduce the bitter taste in the tripe. However, the tripe that Chen Tian brought now is the freshest and there is no condition to dry it in a short time. In order to remove the bitterness in the tripe, Ye Chui first steamed the tripe at high temperature. By the next morning, the tripe was completely soft and could not be recognized as it originally was.
The next step is to officially prepare the dish Maoxuewang.
First, stir-fry the peppers, peppercorns, ginger, sour, salad oil, etc., and add the thick soup from the tripe. After boiling for ten minutes, remove the residue. The soup at this moment has become a turbid bright red. Pour the soup into a small pot, and slice the bean sprouts, eels, squid, day lily, fungus, lettuce and other ingredients and put them into the pot - of course, the eels, day lily, squid, fungus and lettuce need to go through a blanching process before adding them to the pot.
The so-called blanching is to blanch these things in boiling water until the ingredients are half cooked.
Pour various ingredients into the soup, take out the solidified duck blood, cut it into cubes and pour it into the pot.
Duck blood and other ingredients account for less than half of the dish, but they are indispensable to this dish and are the highlight of the dish.
Heat the soup slightly for a few minutes to allow the ingredients to cook through.
Then comes the last step, which is to set up another pot, pour in salad oil, add chili peppers and Sichuan peppercorns, stir-fry until the oil turns red, and finally quickly pour it into the pot.
The authentic Maoxuewang has a glossy color, and the red oil accounts for a considerable proportion of it. At this point, the Maoxuewang is officially ready.
In fact, Ye Chui thinks this dish still has some flaws. If he wants to make the taste of this dish as authentic as possible, there are still some missing ingredients, such as ham.
Some people have also developed the idea of adding sea cucumber and yellow throat to Maoxuewang to make it taste even more delicious, but this is not feasible.
Sea cucumbers are easy to find, but if you want to add them, you need to combine them with yellow throat, which is an ingredient made from large blood vessels of livestock such as pigs and cows. It is obviously not easy to prepare these ingredients.
The finished Maoxuewang exudes a rich aroma that makes people salivate.
After knowing that the so-called blood stew is actually duck blood, Tang Shanshan and Han Yuyan swore not to eat this kind of thing. But at this time they wanted to change their original intention. They stared at the red tofu cubes in the bright red soup with gloomy eyes.
Chen Tian, Li Xiuyun and Chen Jiao didn't mind the special taste of these ingredients and wanted to taste them, but they were stopped by Ye Chui.
"Let's go to Lahongzhuang first. When this is over, I'll let you eat your fill." Ye Chui said with a smile.
There are still a lot of ingredients left for making Maoxuewang, enough to make several tables.
He took a pot lid, covered the fruit with it, and held it up with both hands: "Let's go now."
…
Lahongzhuang is a restaurant that doesn't look very big, and its location isn't very good either, but as the saying goes, good wine needs no bush. When it first opened, it was just an inconspicuous little shop, but the unique taste of lahong made this dish famous and it was even once called a famous American dish.
Even now, it is still one of the most popular representative dishes in Chinatown.
Just when Ye Chui set out for Lahong Zhuang, in the kitchen of Lahong Zhuang, Mrs. Gao was looking at Jiang Yuemei standing on the chopping board with a smile, waiting for her answer.
"I'll do my best." Jiang Yuemei didn't look at Madam Gao, busy with the things at hand, "I told Ye Chui that as long as he can guess what Lahong is, I will admit defeat."
"But this is not enough." Mrs. Gao's voice was very cold.
Jiang Yuemei turned her head and looked at Jiang Yuemei: "What else do you want me to do?"
"Ye Chui has won three games in a row, he must lose the fourth one." Mrs. Gao said without question.
Jiang Yumei sneered, "What if I can't win?"
Mrs. Gao's old face showed a trace of anger: "Jiang Yuemei, don't forget that your husband was a gambler and owed a huge amount of money. In the end, I helped him out. As a result, your husband died of a serious illness. The debt you owe me is enough for you to pay for the rest of your life. I'm telling you now, if you can't win this game, then you can't run your Lahongzhuang anymore!"
Jiang Yuemei finally stopped cutting vegetables. She didn't say anything. Her fat face, which looked very kind, showed an inexplicable determination... (~^~)