The secret that Ruan Chanchan spoke about was red wine, sothing that she had long poured into an inconspicuous vessel, such that no one would be able to detect anything wrong with the ingredients inside. The red wine was quite useful when it ca to making the fishy sll of seafood disappear.
The reason the young ones were refusing to eat the seafood was due to the fishy sll. If she were to get rid of that fishy sll, everything else would be fine. For the sake of making the dish even better, she decided to take out the clarified sea butter she had rendered while cooking earlier as well.
She picked up the shell pot and then placed it on the raging fire. She waited for the shell pan to get hot and once it started to steam, she poured a generous amount of the seabutter in the shell pan. The butter was half solidified to begin with so when it hit the steaming pot, it lted instantly. The delicious aroma spread across the square like a promise.
All the rs took a whiff of the scent and were stunned because they had never slled sothing so good before.
Master Luo inhaled sharply and looked at Ruan Chanchan with a surprised expression on his face. He remarked, "I have never slled sothing so good before."
"Of course you have not," said Ruan Chanchan as she marinated the lobster at and applied a thick coat of the red wine before slicing the at into thick dallions and placing it on the shell pan.
She said to herself more than to anyone else, "Make sure the next ti you make this thing, never ever overcook the strong and thick muscles. The taste will be ruined by half."
The second the first piece of at touched the butter, a sizzling sound echoed in the entire space. The fat coating the at crackled and hissed perfectly with the butter in the pan. The edges of the at soon turned opaque white and then slowly turned golden. However, Ruan Chanchan was not in a hurry to turn it. She let the at sear more and more.
Patience was the key to making delicious food.
The sll deepened. It turned sweet, briny and rich. The kind of scent that wrapped around one’s spine and tugged them toward it.
The leader of the processing team inhaled deeply.
The rest of the rs also took a whiff of the scent as well; they stepped in closer to the shell pan without even realising it.
By the ti, Ruan Chanchan realised that she had been surrounded, the heat around the pan had turned searing hot. She raised her head and looked around the entire surroundings, and then she saw that the entire processing team had surrounded her from front to back.
"You all are crowding the pan," Ruan Chanchan said calmly.
Everyone stepped back at once.
Once the airway cleared up, Ruan Chanchan turned her attention back to the dallion. The underside of the at piece was caralised to a perfect golden crust.
Ruan Chanchan smiled at the sight of the golden crust. She then added crushed garlic and herbs into the butter, tilting the shell pan so that the infused fat pooled at one edge. Then, using the carved spoon, she started to baste the lobster at in the boiling hot butter. Slowly, the butter started to cascade over the lobster at, carrying herbs into every cut she had made on the lobster at.
So of the drops of the butter ended up in the fire, causing the flas under the shell pan to start popping.
Smoke started to rise but it wasn’t harsh but fragrant.
"What are you doing?" Master Luo couldn’t help but ask, as he thought that the at was already done. "Is it not over yet?"
"Cooking," Ruan Chanchan said in a light-hearted voice. "It’s more about controlled transformation. You will ruin the dish if you try to rush it. at like this needs little to no heat. If you apply too much heat, then the at will lose its tenderness. And if it’s not the correct amount, then you will lose the depth of the taste."
Master Luo looked at the woman who was preparing the at as if she were planning a strategic battle, and maybe in a way, she was doing just that. A second later, Ruan Chanchan pulled the piece of at out of the rendered butter and then placed another one, just like the first one. She was very careful with it and pulled it out at the exact mont.
Once she was done with the dallions, she turned her attention to the claws; she cracked them open and extracted the long strips of at, which were slightly darker and denser than the at from earlier.
"These cook faster than the ones from earlier," she explained. "There is no need to cook them for more than a few minutes."
Once the at had turned opaque and glistening, she picked them up and out of the butter before placing them on the clean leaf next to her.
When she was finally done laying everything out on the broad sea leaves, the square had gone silent all of a sudden. The dallions glead faintly with caralised edges, and the centres were moist. Ruan Chanchan looked at the al that she had prepared and nodded to herself. She then took out the wild li that she had found in the mountains and squeezed it on the at. Once the li juice landed on the at, they started to glitter in the sun like dewdrops.
"Alright, it is done," Ruan Chanchan said casually. "You can eat it now."
Of course, it was an easier said than done task; the al looked so tempting that no one wanted to disrupt the delicious feast in front of them.
"What’s with the holdup?" said Ruan Chanchan with a tilt of her head. "It won’t taste good if you don’t eat it when it is warm."
And that was all it took. Everyone moved in an instant and rushed to the feast laid out in front of them; unbeknownst to them, soone was eyeing their al closely.
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