"This all-fish banquet tonight is to calm Sister Yan’s nerves!"
In the private room upstairs, everyone sat around the table and started dinner.
Normally they ate in the booth by the kitchen door, but there were a lot of people today, and with the elders all here, eating by the kitchen door felt a bit inappropriate, so they ca up to the private room.
The whole table was packed with fish: in the middle was Baked Carp with Noodles, next to it Stead Fish Head with Black Bean Sauce, and around them were Sour Cabbage Fish, Boiled Fish, and Grilled Fish, plus a plate of Pan-fried Sharpsnout Bream and a plate of Deep-fried Fish Fillets.
There was also fish soup, Fish Balls, and other dishes.
For an all-fish banquet, what you want is exactly this kind of overwhelming lineup and effect.
After being laughed at by everyone, Chen Yan wasn’t scared anymore. She just wanted this al to be over quickly, because not a single fish on the table was caught by her, yet everyone insisted on talking about their catch.
How is that not awkward?
Shen Guofu said,
"Co try the Baked Carp with Noodles. Back then I watched ’1942’ and went straight to the Central Plains Beijing Office to order it. It was decent, not as amazing as I’d imagined. Don’t know how good this one that Lin Xu made is."
"It’s definitely delicious, Dad. This is a big carp I caught with my own hands, okay?"
Chen Yan: "..."
That’s enough, cousin. If you keep hyping it up, the space station will know you caught a fish.
What’s so great about big fish anyway? Small fish taste better.
She muttered as she picked up a piece of carp to try. The sweet-and-sour flavor was indeed great, but for so reason she kept feeling there was a hint of lemon in it.
Oh big fish, big fish, one day I’m going to reel one in and wash away this humiliation!
"This tangy sweet taste is really great, and the fish is so tender. Lin Xu’s cooking is wonderful."
Han Shuzhen fell in love with it as soon as she tasted it.
The sweet-and-sour flavor didn’t overpower the freshness of the fish; the fish had a tofu-like texture, and the layer of crispy fried noodles on top, once soaked in the sweet-and-sour sauce, beca fragrant, crisp, and tasty. The flavor and texture instantly leveled up.
Lin Xu said,
"For this dish you have to pick up so fish and so baked noodles together, dip them in the sweet-and-sour sauce at the bottom of the plate, then eat. That way you get the crisp of the noodles and the tenderness of the fish: two textures, multiple sensations."
Everyone tried it as soon as they heard that, and it really was good. The crisp noodles set off the fish, making it taste even more tender, and the freshness of the fish also cut down the greasiness of the sweet-and-sour sauce.
In terms of both texture and flavor, it was superb.
Chen Yuejin asked curiously,
"With a dish this tasty, Lin Xu, are you going to put it on the nu?"
Lin Xu shook his head.
"I’m not planning to add it for now. This dish is delicious, but the cooking process is too complicated. It’s hard to charge enough for it, and custors won’t order it that often. No need to prep for it."
You can’t just put every tasty dish on the nu; that’d put way too much pressure on costs.
And this dish has to be fried and made to order, and the baked noodles can’t be prepped in advance. That makes the labor cost relatively high. In contrast, that Pickled Fish that Xie Baomin made could be worth doing later.
After all, you just stew it in one pot and it’s done. Not complicated, not labor-intensive.
Restaurants love dishes you can finish in one pot and then just wait for custors to show up.
The more a dish needs its own dedicated wok and process, the more carefully you have to think before adding it to the nu.
It wasn’t just the Baked Carp with Noodles that tasted good; the other dishes on the table were also excellent. After all, they were all wild fish, and all freshly alive, so the at was very tender.
Shen Guofu raised his glass and clinked it with Ren Chongmo’s.
"Professor Ren, you seem a bit down today. Got sothing on your mind?"
Ren Chongmo shook his head.
"Not really, just that I want to teach but have nowhere to go. The school only schedules so many class hours for . I want to talk to the students about a few things, but there’s no chance."
As he got older, he felt a stronger urge to pour out all the learning he had accumulated.
But this traditional Chinese language major is relatively niche; the students are too restless. Even if they study, it’s just to get enough credits; their hearts aren’t really in learning.
In the past, Ren Chongmo could go to other schools to give lectures and such, but after he beca a chair professor, that got stopped, and he suddenly had a lot of idle ti.
With all that idleness, he felt even more strongly that the knowledge in his head needed to be shared.
And gradually he grew more and more low-spirited.
He didn’t expect anyone to actually co up with a solution; he was just rambling. Then he raised his glass and clinked it with Shen Guofu’s, and drained it in one go.
Hearing this, Lin Xu said,
"Professor Ren, you could teach online. You can lecture one class at a ti, record them as videos, and then upload them. Sister Yan does exactly this. She can handle the operations later and push it across the platforms. Maybe you’ll attract a whole bunch of students who genuinely love this discipline."
As soon as he said that, Chen Yan nodded imdiately.
"Yeah, we can turn it into a full professional course. As long as the class hours are recorded, I’ll take care of the operations... Our company has a bunch of influencers anyway, it’s about ti we added so depth to the company."
It might not necessarily blow up, but as long as her father-in-law had sothing to do, he wouldn’t be sighing every day.
And the company happened to be short of faculty in this area; this was the definition of a win–win.
Besides, on top of Ren Chongmo, her mother-in-law Tian Qinglan could also record so professional courses.
Even if no one studied along for the ti being, they could still store these courses. Maybe soday they’d bump into a student who just happened to love this major.
And the knowledge would then be passed down.
Ren Chongmo opened his mouth but didn’t quite know what to say. For soone his age, the internet might have entered his life, but it was still sowhat unfamiliar.
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