Gourmet: Midnight Vending

Chapter 464 - 390: Pack First, Explain Later!_2

Chen Mo skillfully wrapped the pre-prepared five-spice mix with gauze and tied it up, wordlessly looking at the man who had asked the question, "My eggs, 2 yuan each."

At a night market, this price is practically charity.

The main reason is that Chen Mo didn’t intend to make much money this time. At 2 yuan, he’s definitely not losing money, but to really make any, he’d have to sell in volume.

The spiced package was dropped into the cola, and then Chen Mo added light soy sauce, dark soy sauce, and refined salt to the pot.

There’s no such thing as thick sauce when making cola; the color relies on dark soy sauce.

After taking care of that, Chen Mo squatted down and pulled out an extension cord from underneath.

"What a hassle... I’ll have to prepare all this ahead in my own truck tomorrow."

[Do you want to use the save function?]

"Can I use it now?"

[Detected that you are using your dedicated food truck, accessible.]

Ho!

Chen Mo had thought of converting the RV into a food truck, and many functions might not work, but if it hadn’t been for the system’s reminder, he would have missed out.

"Save!"

First, he poured the jasmine tea into a small electric pot to bring it to a boil; it was just a normal operation, letting the boiling water gradually extract the tea aroma from the leaves.

After successively brewing tea with three different flavors, once saved, Chen Mo placed the tea in a basin and began the hardest step of the peel-less eggs.

But for Chen Mo, it wasn’t that difficult.

All three pots were lit at once!

The cola gradually heated up, dense bubbles started to form at the bottom, and as it was about to boil, Chen Mo immediately turned off the heat!

Controlling the heat at this "almost boiling" stage is quite different from before; more bubbles are produced during the cola boiling process, which can easily fracture the eggs.

So before too many bubbles emerge, you have to quickly turn off the heat. Once the cola calms down in the pot, heat it again!

Repeating this process a few times until the surfaces of all three pots were steaming and reaching boiling temperatures, yet no longer bubbling, Chen Mo then carefully adjusted the flames to a simmer.

Then he poured the three types of prepared tea into the pots.

The mastery of "almost boiling" makes its return!

Sun Jianhong began a new round of operation on his side; once his pot of eggs was cooked, he took them all out, clacked a big spoon against them to crack an egg, and then tossed it back into the pot.

Behind his mask, Chen Mo’s mouth twitched incessantly.

Does it actually get flavored this way?

Sun Jianhong’s actions attracted quite a few customers to stop and line up, challenging Chen Mo’s culinary understanding with this strange phenomenon.

Chen Mo looked down at his three pots of boiling eggs, the progress ball on the screen slowly gliding along.

Three minutes.

This is the time it took to make the peel-less egg, just three minutes, much shorter than the time to cook an ordinary boiled egg.

When the glow ball approached very near to the flash point, only thirty seconds away, Chen Mo could faintly smell a variety of wonderful aromas, even through his mask.

"I used to only use black tea to boil eggs, turns out I was naive!"

The making of eggs generally has two popular methods, one being marinated eggs where the egg is first fried and then cooled in an ice bath for a tiger-skin texture; it absorbs plenty of marinade when soaked with marinated meat and bursts with flavor along with the inherent aroma of eggs.

The other is the five-spice tea egg. Cooked eggs are cracked open, allowing the flavors of the spices to penetrate within, complemented by the fragrant tea aroma to form a unique flavor with the egg’s own taste.

However, the aromas Chen Mo is smelling right now differ from both of those.

Though there was no meat added, there was still a faint scent of meat, emanating from the five-spice mix.

The cola aroma also gradually spread, a peculiar and hard-to-describe sensation. Beyond that base flavor combination, the fragrance of jasmine was notably detectable, along with that of black tea or the subtle taste of green tea.

The fragrance was so distinct even through the mask, it was evident how rich the aroma from Chen Mo’s three pots of tea eggs must be!

So much so, several customers waiting in line next door to buy urine eggs curiously turned their heads.

The guy who had earlier asked Chen Mo if they were rubber eggs even stepped out of the line and stood at Chen Mo’s stall.

"Hey, young boss, those tea eggs still need a long time?"

"No need." Chen Mo turned off the flame, "You can eat them now."

The man furrowed his brows in thought, "But with them like this, will the tea eggs actually get flavored?"

To such questions, Chen Mo typically replied, "You’ll know once you try."

Two yuan, you won’t get ripped off, nor will you feel cheated, and the man didn’t hesitate much, "I still need to wait for the urine eggs, so I’ll try a tea egg first. If it’s good, I’ll pack a few more to go."

The man came to the night market for dinner, initially just planning to have a bowl of noodles or a roujiamo; seeing the urine eggs made him want to buy some, and now, lured by the aroma of the tea eggs, he decided to give it a try.

It’s just two yuan, after all.

Chen Mo held a black ladle, pointing at the three pots, "Longjing, Phoenix Dan Cong, Jasmine, which flavor do you prefer?"

"Hey?" The man suddenly found it amusing, "Now even tea eggs have so many flavors? Give me a Jasmine one first."

While waiting in line, the man had already noticed the strong jasmine scent luring directly up his nose.

The black ladle scooped up a soy-colored egg and placed it into a disposable small lunch box, "Two yuan."