Gourmet: Midnight Vending

Chapter 471 - 393: Lethal Dose of Mala (Spicy and Numbing) _2

Dongyang is located in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, where people generally prefer lighter flavors; adding too much soy sauce and salt while cooking seems like a big deal here. Can this really have a market?

Bao Shuai started to have some doubts.

Before they could think it through, Chen Mo got a wok ready and poured it full of salad oil.

He then added the chopped scallions, ginger, garlic, along with onions all at once into the salad oil. As bubbles rose, the aroma quickly spread out.

This is just the simplest scallion oil.

Next door, three kinds of peppers were also cooked until they were almost mushy. After they were taken out with a large skimmer and placed on a cutting board, Chen Mo, holding the Black Blade in one hand, started chopping away.

Once the mushy peppers are chopped, they’re known by another name, mashed peppers.

When the mashed peppers are chopped and ready, they’re added to the oil pot nearby, which is why Chen Mo hasn’t turned any Sichuan Cuisine’s red oil, or seasoning, into an infinitely replicable category.

Sichuan Cuisine’s seasoning is ever-changing; different delicious flavors require varying degrees of spiciness and numbness. Using today’s red oil for a spicy rabbit head, the flavor would be too intense for a dish like couples’ lung slices.

After all, the ingredients are different.

Eating couples’ lung slices is not just about the Sichuan flavor but also the original taste of the beef and offal. Rabbit head, on the other hand, doesn’t have much flavor on its own and takes on whatever flavor the chef decides upon.

Therefore, the flavor must be strong!

He lifted the cutting board and shoveled all the mashed peppers into the oil pot, the bubbles in the pot burst violently and then slowly subsided, accompanied by a very complex aroma.

The scallion oil serves as a base, with a rich peppery fragrance, fragrant but not choking.

The mashed peppers in the pot continued to fry, while Chen Mo used chopsticks to pick out the scallions, ginger, onions, etc., discarding them.

At this point, the red oil is basically considered successfully made.

Chen Mo set up a sieve over a large stainless steel bucket, carrying the wok to slowly pour the oil and mashed pepper mixture onto the sieve.

The oil slowly dripped into the bucket, while the pepper residue was filtered out onto the sieve.

"It feels a bit wasteful," said Chen Mo, looking at the ladle full of pepper residue. "Pack it up; later, if we make some new friends on the road, we could give it as a gift."

Chen Mo then found a bunch of canned jars, spooned the pepper residue into the jars, adding a bit of red oil to keep it moist.

Just looking at it, it smells really good. If you add a spoonful of this when eating noodles, the taste instantly improves by several notches!

He filled over twenty jars before finally finishing.

Chen Mo stretched a bit, then remembered something.

"By the way, who of you is learning this spicy rabbit head?"

Bao Shuai raised his hand, "I’m learning it."

"Well, since you two are just idling around anyway, why not learn another snack?"

Liu Rong and Zhang Peng perked up at this, "Sure, little boss, but weren’t you also preparing a dish Emei Tofu Brain?"

Chen Mo pointed to a basket of eggs, "Learn how to make tea eggs then; it’s this tea egg that President Cheng was interested in when discussing business with me."

Tea eggs?

If Cheng Xiuli hadn’t mentioned it beforehand, the two really would have laughed.

After all, spending over ten years in the kitchen, anyone deeply involved with culinary arts will understand a key principle: given fixed ingredients, no matter how skilled the chef, it’s ultimately impossible to surpass the inherent quality limits of the ingredient itself.

In other words, the ceiling for eggs is already set; trying to improve the taste and texture of eggs purely through skill is quite unrealistic.

But since Cheng Xiuli mentioned it, the two went along with it.

Liu Rong asked, "Boss Chen, what do you need us to do?"

Chen Mo pulled out two baskets of eggs from the cart, at least over six hundred in total.

"See, like this."

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Chen Mo tapped the eggs lightly with chopsticks, causing cracks to visibly appear on the shells without breaking them completely.

Liu Rong and Zhang Peng took a deep breath, finding it quite novel.

"You mean to crack the shells first and then cook them? This way, they could indeed absorb the flavor better."

Zhang Peng wasn’t convinced, "But cooking them this way makes it hard to control the heat; if it’s a bit too high, the egg liquid could easily spill out."

The two were already deep in thought about how to control the heat and how to pair the seasonings.

Little did they know...

Chen Mo, seemingly out of nowhere, took out a pair of tweezers and started peeling off bits of eggshell, discarding them, leaving the originally intact eggs looking somewhat shattered.

"This!"

"No, but..."

Chen Mo pinched a handled egg at his fingertips, "Here, it should be like this. Now you guys handle the eggs, okay?"

Zhang Peng: ???

Liu Rong: 凸(艹皿艹)

"I’m starting to suspect that I’m not here to learn technique, but just to do manual labor."

Liu Rong felt the same way, but then again, something felt off, "But if we don’t learn this trick, we can’t claim to have learned any skills. But can this really be done?"

He picked up a chopstick and tapped away.

Alright, the first egg he tapped cracked directly, although no egg liquid came out, the shell was visibly dented, making it unsuitable for peeling.

"Hey? This is interesting." Liu Rong immediately sensed that this wasn’t as simple as it seemed.

Zhang Peng tapped a few more, breaking several before getting a handle on the force needed.

But it wasn’t easy.

Managing once was doable, twice wasn’t too bad, but replicating Chen Mo’s confident and rapid tapping without reflex is a challenge.

The two had plenty to keep them occupied now, sitting on small stools, diligently tapping away at eggs with people passing by occasionally asking if they were playing a wooden fish.

It nearly drove Zhang Peng and Liu Rong crazy, even making them doubt whether such eggs could even be cooked.

The two frequently imagined, when the pot of egg water boils, these eggs full of holes exploding one by one, turning into a joke!

Bao Shuai stifled his laughter and continued watching and taking notes on Chen Mo’s methods.

Once the red oil was successfully made, Chen Mo retrieved twenty rabbit heads from his cupboard.

Bao Shuai asked, "Boss, may I take a look?"

"Sure."

Bao Shuai took a look at the pristine rabbit head, examining it closely, "All the blood’s been drained clean. Hmm, even the trachea’s been taken care of. Boss, your handling is really good; even in my old kitchen, they might not have done it this well."

Chen Mo thought to himself, of course, it’s clean; my cupboard has a self-cleaning function, it’s not just clean, it’s clean to perfection, isn’t it?

Placing the clean rabbit heads in cold water to blanch them, taking them out, and heating the oil!

The rabbit head version from the food cart system combined several methods, the first step involved deep frying!

After frying, then braising.

Most small snack shops typically stop here; if a customer orders, they just take a rabbit head out of the braising pot, which not only is flavorful from the long soaking but also looks good and keeps warm.

This version is different, besides frying and braising, there’s an added step – roasting.

Roasting helps the seasoning penetrate more, offering a distinct method different from soaking and flavoring, allowing the fried surface of the rabbit head to gain a new texture.

The twenty blanched rabbit heads were all poured into the oil pot heated to eighty percent. Instantly, it seemed as if the oil pot was about to explode!

The rolling hot oil, mixed with heat waves, changed the once pristine rabbit heads to a pale yellow, gradually deepening into a golden yellow over time!

All rabbit heads turned a consistent color, looking slightly golden brown when Chen Mo fished them out.

Bao Shuai quickly noted down: Fry until golden yellow, then remove.

The twenty rabbit heads were neatly lined up on the cutting board. This time, without waiting for questions, Chen Mo said, "They look golden but are still raw inside."

"Yes, that’s correct."

Seeing Bao Shuai not asking further questions, Chen Mo wasn’t inclined to elaborate.

He merely thought this middle-aged man’s culinary skills were not even on par with his own amateurish self.