Gourmet: Midnight Vending

Chapter 543 - 427: Perilla Plum Flying Fish Roe Burst Balls Nine-Turned Pork Intestines! (Part 2)

"Hm? This piece is good, the texture is about right, but it’s much finer and more unctuous than just now. The pork intestine’s own flavor is coming through too! It’s not very strong, but you can faintly sense it."

That’s it.

Chen Mo clenched his fist; seemed his earlier guess was correct.

With pork intestine, besides the great texture when you eat it, there’s also a very particular flavor.

Some people say that’s the taste of shit. But it’s actually not... it’s just a very special taste. If you say it stinks, it’s not exactly a stench. But if you have to call it something, you can only say, yeah, it’s a stinky taste!

It’s the kind where, if you like it, you can’t put it down, but if you don’t, just the smell will make you gag.

"What about this piece?" Chen Mo pointed at another one.

Granny Chen, a bit puzzled, picked it up and tasted it.

After just lightly chewing twice, Granny slightly covered the corner of her mouth as she swallowed the intestine. "This piece is a bit greasy."

Chen Mo understood.

Three levels of processing on the same ingredient gave three completely different flavors. This was also why the recipe said it’s best not to strip the fat inside the intestine too clean.

Now he had his answer.

If you remove it all, then after simmering in such a strongly flavored sauce over low heat, all you get is the seasoning, and you lose the ingredient’s own flavor, with only the texture left.

If you keep it all, then because there really is too much fat, and the boiling doesn’t effectively remove it, it still tastes a bit too fatty.

Removing about half is the best way to handle it.

Then Chen Mo asked Granny to taste the three versions of the "nested intestines", but the conclusion turned out a bit different.

For nested intestines, the defatted one actually tasted the best. Chen Mo thought about it a bit and felt it did make sense.

With nested intestines, in a way, one bite is like taking several bites of "un-nested intestines." The density goes up, so of course the flavor does too, right?

"So if I want to make Nine-Turned Pork Intestines in the future, I should remove the fat and then nest the intestines. But not now. Right now I’m making fusion snacks!"

Chen Mo still had his own ideas.

He gave all that batch of pork intestines to Granny Chen, then grabbed his phone, opened the map, and jogged to a nearby supermarket.

Nesting intestines and then stuffing them in gua bao to eat? Chen Mo wasn’t about to make something that simple and totally uncreative.

What he wanted to make was...

In the supermarket, Chen Mo tracked down an ingredient that mainland folks tend to find hard to accept just from the name—flying fish roe. But if you change the wording, maybe it’s easier to accept: flying fish seeds.

"Traditional Flying Fish Roe Sausage is made by mixing lean pork with fish roe, stuffing it into casings, and then roasting."

"What if I just stuff flying fish roe straight into pork intestines and make it into Nine-Turned Pork Intestines?"

The intestines already have a very dense, soft texture; bite down and your whole mouth fills with fish roe bursting, biu biu biu!

Just thinking of that bizarre texture, Chen Mo felt it was kind of fun.

And the flavor of pork intestines is very special; if he could mix in the taste of the sea as well, it would bring a bit of salty umami, which should make it even more addictive!

The only downside was, pairing intestines with fish roe and then braising them in such a high-sugar caramel sauce—would that be too cloying?

But success never comes in a single shot. Worst case, he’d just try a few more times!

Chen Mo bought some high-quality flying fish roe from the supermarket.

This roe had already been processed. Usually, you first wash it repeatedly in a pot two to three times, then soak it in water to leach out the salt until there’s no salty taste.

That way, no matter what you cook with the flying fish roe, its inherent saltiness won’t affect the final flavor.

After settling the ingredients, Chen Mo immediately ran back to Chen’s, only to see that Granny had somehow drifted back into the kitchen and was eating a bowl of rice with that plate of intestines.

"This dish really goes well with rice. It’s a pity I rarely see Lu Cuisine restaurants here in Taiwan. When I went back to Fujian to visit relatives, I ate at a Lu Cuisine place once and thought the dishes there were really tasty."

Eating Lu Cuisine in Fujian?

Chen Mo felt his brain glitch for a second.

Then you should eat more. I’m going back to experimenting with snacks!

Seeing Chen Mo carrying a big bag of flying fish roe, Granny Chen seemed to have already guessed what he wanted to do, but there was still curiosity in her eyes.

She kept calmly eating her rice and dishes. So good!

If only she could eat Nine-Turned Pork Intestines this good every day. Granny Chen was even thinking of asking Xiaochen how exactly this dish was made. Once she learned it, she could make it for Kexin sometime.

Chen Mo went back to the pressure cooker and made another batch of intestines. This time it was much better: he removed about half the fat from all the intestines, then pressure-cooked them until soft, and cut them into little segments about two centimeters long.

After cooling, he started stuffing in the flying fish roe.

He scooped with a spoon and carefully filled every segment of intestine. As soon as the tiny flying fish roe went in, you could see them immediately wrapped by the residual fat inside. He kept packing more in until each piece of intestine was plump and bulging.

"If I leave it like this, it’ll be easy for the filling to spill out when I braise them later."

Chen Mo thought for a moment, then switched out the wok for a frying pan, added a bit of lard, heated it to about 50% hot, and laid all the intestine segments in, openings facing down, to shallow-fry slowly.

After frying for a bit, he flipped them over.

The side that had just been fried had turned a little golden and crisp, and the exposed flying fish roe on that side had fused together, looking like a layer of "scorched crust."