The Game of Life-Chapter 858 - 857 I Want to Go and See
Chapter 858: Chapter 857: I Want to Go and See
Chapter 858 -857: I Want to Go and See
Jiang Feng was exceptionally skilled at making broth, so skilled that he once even sleepwalked into the kitchen and made a pot of broth one night; he woke up the next morning and wouldn’t have found it strange at all.
If you are particular about cooking, different dishes require different broths.
Jiang’s Sea Cucumber Soup, Yellow Braised Shark’s Fin, Taishi Snake Soup—these dishes that require precise selection of ingredients from the beginning, also need different broths. The method of making them may vary widely, but their broth ingredients each differ, and if you really want to create a top-quality high-class dish, making a custom broth and clear soup for each dish is essential.
If there is one thing these broths have in common, it’s that they all take time.
You need to wait.
Jiang Feng, being a skilled worker, also preferred to handle everything himself when making broth, starting from processing the most basic ingredients, without delegating tasks to the assistants at Yonghe House; he did everything himself.
His movements were skilled and incredibly smooth.
To better simulate the final competition, Jiang Feng even timed himself from the moment he started preparing the ingredients for a whole dish of Yellow Braised Shark’s Fin, just to see how long it would take, which would help him better estimate the time needed for Jiang’s Sea Cucumber Soup—he had forgotten to time it the last time he made Yellow Braised Shark’s Fin at a holiday resort.
While Jiang Feng was dealing with the old hen needed for the broth, Master Xu found Lu Sheng in the main hall, quietly informing him about Jiang Feng wanting to delay the serving time by an hour or two.
Lu Sheng was talking to an old patron in his mouth, although this gentleman was a benefactor of Yonghe House, Lu Sheng wasn’t really familiar with him. The gentleman had been abroad when Lu Sheng was still in school, and they had hardly any interaction.
Lu Sheng was discussing the development of Yonghe over the years, like how Yonghe has been getting better and better, its reputation ever increasing, and securing its status as a renowned old brand, things that the elderly love to hear like, “The money you spent back then wasn’t wasted.”
“What’s wrong, any problem in the kitchen?” the old gentleman asked.
“It seems there’s a bit of an issue with the broth, it might need to be made again, so the food might be delayed by one to two hours, not sure if Mr. Lu—you…” Lu Sheng’s face showed an apology.
“No problem, just a minor issue, a delay of an hour or two is fine,” the affable Mr. Lu, who shared the same surname as Lu Sheng, said, “I’ve been abroad for so many years, and I didn’t expect Beiping to have changed so much. This area has changed a lot of houses; if it weren’t for the housekeeper guiding me back here, I might have lost my way.”
“The changes in the country these years are indeed substantial, you should come back more often,” Lu Sheng said.
Mr. Lu shook his head, sighing, “Can’t come back, my kids, the business all abroad, I’m back this time just to handle the real estate. I would like to come back, but the kids don’t want to, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”
“Then, this house you also want to…”
“Have left it to a professional agency to handle,” Mr. Lu said with a bitter smile, changing the subject, “Speaking of which, is raising pigs now popular in the country? These past few days, I keep seeing in the front residential area, a family’s matriarch walking a pig.”
“Ah?” Lu Sheng was startled, “Keeping Dutch pigs seemed quite popular a few years back.”
“Not small pigs, home pigs, the big kind you eat, I think her pig looked well-fed, probably around four hundred pounds.”
“This…”
Lu Sheng was at a loss for words and after nearly forty seconds managed to stammer, “Maybe it’s a personal hobby.”
At that moment, the real owner of that pig, Jiang Feng, in the kitchen, suddenly felt his nose itch, rubbed his nose and resisted the urge to sneeze.
Meanwhile, Mr. Lu and Lu Sheng continued their conversation in the main hall.
“Mr. Lu, although my father has thanked you many times in the past, I really want to thank you once again. If it hadn’t been for your generous donation back then, Yonghe might have closed down long ago. I’m truly grateful for the support you provided to our family, which is beyond repayment,” Lu Sheng said.
Mr. Lu waved his hands with a smile, “It was nothing, just happened to have some spare cash back then, thought I might as well help, after all, my grandfather was in the same line of business as your family.”
“Your grandfather was in the catering business too? That’s unexpected; I’ve never heard my father mention it.”
“Normal, seems I rarely bring it up as well. After all, it’s all in the past, and the way my grandfather acquired that restaurant wasn’t exactly honorable. I remember the restaurant was later bought back by a sister from that family at a high price; it wasn’t opened again, but I’ve heard since coming back that it reopened and is doing quite well.”
The more Lu Sheng listened, the more something seemed off, especially the part about reopening the restaurant felt eerily familiar: “May I ask, what’s the name of that restaurant?”
“Taifeng Building,” Mr. Lu said.
Lu Sheng: ???
???????
Seeing Lu Sheng’s shocked face, with a huge question mark hanging over it, Mr. Lu asked, “What, do you know the current owner of Taifeng Building? I remember the original owner’s surname was Jiang; is it their descendants who have reopened the store?”
Lu Sheng thought to himself, more than knowing, you might not believe it but Jiang, the one from Taifeng, is currently in the back kitchen cooking for you.
“Well, isn’t that a coincidence,” Lu Sheng could only give a wry smile.
“Didn’t I tell you before that most of the old chefs in the restaurant had retired, and we didn’t have enough head chefs to hold the Swallow-wing Feast, so we asked a familiar chef from another restaurant to help?”
“From Taifeng Building.”
“This chef’s last name is Jiang, and, moreover, this restaurant is passed down through his family.”
Mr. Lu was genuinely shocked this time. Although Taifeng Building had been an affair of his grandfather’s generation and had little to do with him, he was immediately enveloped by a sense of how small the world really is and how mysterious fate can be.
“This is indeed a coincidence,” Mr. Lu exclaimed.
“How about we go have a look in the kitchen?”
When Mr. Lu and Lu Sheng quietly arrived at the kitchen, Jiang Feng had already begun making the stock.
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Making stock is particularly time-consuming and demanding during the initial and final phases because it requires skimming and careful attention to fire control. One cannot leave it even for a moment. It requires full concentration, or else the stock will end up like the one Yonghe House had prepared that day.
Jiang Feng did not notice their arrival; he had now developed a habit where he focused entirely on cooking, no longer becoming distracted and causing mishaps like before. Now when he is cooking, he seldom chats with Jiankang or Sang Ming, except occasionally during prep.
The steps and movements of Jiang Feng making the stock were incredibly graceful, nothing short of perfect.
Mr. Lu didn’t understand nor know about cooking, but he could tell that Jiang Feng must be very skilled.
His movements were filled with elegance, and he was truly focused, making him look capable even to those who didn’t understand the process.
The two came quietly and left quietly.
“Actually, I was quite embarrassed to trouble him to help, especially since he has his finals next Saturday, and I feared it would delay him. But as he said, today’s Swallow-wing Feast is like a simulation of the finals, which convinced me to ask for his help,” Lu Sheng explained.
“The finals, is he competing in something?”
“Just like I mentioned earlier, the one where Master Peng is going to be a judge, and Chef Arno will also compete. Don’t be fooled by his young age; he’s recently become the most prominent chef ranked sixth the first time he was listed in the celebrity chefs’ list, and I guess the whole culinary circle is waiting for next Saturday’s finals,” Lu Sheng bragged about Jiang Feng.
“That’s impressive,” Mr. Lu, though not really keeping up with culinary circles, had heard of the celebrity chefs’ list.
Studying the celebrity chefs’ list could help him make better choices in restaurants for business dinners, though in recent years, that task had shifted to his son due to his age.
“Are there tickets?”
“Huh?”
“I mean, are there tickets for the live event? I’d like to go see this competition.”
“Didn’t you book a flight back four days from now?”
“My visa hasn’t expired yet; I can just change the flight,” Mr. Lu said nonchalantly.
“But the final might last more than thirteen hours, and staying that long might be hard on your body…”
“It’s fine, isn’t sitting on a plane also about sitting for several hours?”
“Okay, I’ll try to get you a front-row ticket. It should still be possible to arrange,” Lu Sheng agreed immediately.
“Thank you for the trouble.”
Lu Sheng looked at Mr. Lu, somewhat puzzled as to why he suddenly wanted to watch the competition, especially one he hadn’t known about before and only decided to attend on a whim after hearing about it.
“May I ask why you are suddenly interested in this final? Because it seems like you don’t usually focus on these things,” Lu Sheng asked.
“I don’t usually pay attention, and I’m not particularly interested, but I am interested in Master Jiang whom we just talked about,” Mr. Lu said with a smile, “Although my grandfather acquired the building by less than honorable means, he was indeed proud to have been the owner of Taifeng Building and boasted about it for many years.”
“So I really want to see what the current level of the heir of this restaurant is, and whether he is as skilled as the Master Jiang my grandfather used to tell me about when I was a child.”
“Let’s hold off on the tickets for now; let me try the food today, and then I’ll decide whether to go or not.”
