Abnormal Gourmet Chronicle-Chapter 646 - 336: Time to Come Back

After speaking, Cao Guixiang put on her glasses and stared intently at her phone.

On the other side, Qin Huai was attempting to make Crab Yellow Sauce from scratch for the first time.

How to put it, maybe the talent for thickening had given Qin Huai some confidence. It might also be because Ouyang lived downstairs, so he could send the sauce to him once finished without letting it go to waste.

Normally, Qin Huai would never tackle Crab Yellow Sauce at home when he knew his skill level wasn’t as good as Zheng Siyuan’s, but today was different.

Today he really felt it.

How to put it. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝕨𝕖𝗯𝚗𝚘𝕧𝕖𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝕞

To say something cheeky, when Qin Huai did his first thickening attempt in the afternoon, he felt like he was the chosen one, like he had divine guidance. On the second attempt at thickening, he realized the first attempt had felt too good.

After returning in the evening to stir-fry yam and thicken it, lowering the difficulty, Qin Huai again felt like he was the chosen child.

Such a great feeling.

Qin Huai often found a rhythm when making snacks, but in terms of meat cooking techniques, this was the first time he felt it so strongly.

Before, whether practicing fire control or knife skills, everyone told Qin Huai the most often that these are basic skills that cannot be skimped on. Even with talent, you need to spend time and effort to practice and accumulate; there are no shortcuts.

Indeed, these facts were reflected vividly in fire control and knife skills, whether practiced much or little.

The feeling of instinctively mastering pastry snacks, doing it casually and doing it well, like adding wings to a tiger; Qin Huai had never felt that in meat cooking.

Qin Huai’s feelings about meat cooking were identical to Tan Wei’an’s.

Where’s the feeling? What is the feeling? Where is the feeling? Is there really feeling in meat cooking?

Qin Huai always thought there was no feeling in meat cooking; it was 99% effort plus 1% sweat, and you had to fill up the first 99% on the progress bar, lay the knife foundation well, before using talent to break through the last 1%.

Now Qin Huai feels there’s a bit of feeling in meat cooking that one has to find themselves.

He feels very in tune with thickening.

Thickening is so exceedingly simple.

His fried yam may be average, but his thickening is good! Unfortunately, the game system didn’t count thickening as a skill, otherwise, Qin Huai feels his thickening would be at least advanced level.

Qin Huai is very seriously simmering Crab Yellow Sauce.

His fire control is pretty average; everyone knows this. Qin Huai’s fire control is only slightly better than knife skills. The reason it’s better isn’t that fire control is good, but because knife skills are really quite poor.

Of course, now knife skills have caught up, but not much; these two basic skills are still equally mediocre.

But considering Qin Huai’s fire control is almost advanced (just 1000 skill points short, though these grow very slowly), and his knife skills are almost intermediate (just 100 skill points short, which also grow slowly), Qin Huai can still brag a little that his fire control is better than his knife skills.

There are many issues with Qin Huai’s sauce simmering; some of them he can spot at a glance, but he can’t fix them.

Simmering Crab Yellow Sauce is actually a challenging technical task. Using fresh crab yellow sauce might be a little less difficult, but reprocessing the ready-made crab yellow sauce drastically increases difficulty.

This is also why simmering Crab Yellow Sauce is still Zheng Siyuan’s task — Tan Wei’an’s skills aren’t up to it.

Zhang Chu sat next to Cao Guixiang watching Qin Huai simmer Crab Yellow Sauce.

The angle of Qin Huai’s phone was placed very well; the situation inside the pot could be seen clearly, and only the back of Qin Huai’s head could be seen, a standard monitoring perspective.

Zhang Chu, as a carpenter who doesn’t cook much but has tasted many good dishes, gave an outsider’s comment, "Xiao Qin isn’t simmering this sauce well."

"Is the heat too high? I remember when you simmered sauce at home before, the sauce in the pot wasn’t like this. Or is there a difference between different sauces, and their simmering methods? Does the way you simmer Fried Sauce, Sweet Bean Sauce, and Crab Yellow Sauce differ?"

Cao Guixiang didn’t really want to deal with her husband and replied perfunctorily, "Xiao Qin’s fire control isn’t good; this is not urgent, it can be corrected slowly."

"If you want to watch, just watch quietly without saying anything."

Zhang Chu: ?

Did he offend his wife today? Did he miss a bowl while washing dishes? Did he miss a bag of trash when throwing garbage? Or did he not catch any fish the day before yesterday, bought two from the market to make up the numbers, and got caught today?

Zhang Chu’s mind raced.

As he was wondering if he had embezzled grocery money last week and was being found out, Qin Huai was about to begin his first attempt at thickening.

He was adjusting the starch water.

Adjusting starch water is actually also a technical skill.

What kind of starch to use, the ratio of starch to water, whether or not to mix two kinds of starch — all this needs research.

Simply following the recipe’s ratio, it’s tough to make good food.

Cooking is a very flexible task and often relies on the chef’s experience and intuition. When Qin Huai thickened fried yam twice before, adjusting the starch water was easy because the importance of the ratios wasn’t high, but Crab Yellow Sauce is different.

Crab Yellow Sauce requires mung bean starch for thickening; it also requires a light thickening, which makes the way you adjust the starch water very important.

This afternoon, Zang Liang adjusted the starch water for Qin Huai.

While Zang Liang was adjusting it, Qin Huai didn’t really pay attention; he was focused on listening to Zang Liang’s instructions. This directly led to Qin Huai being at a loss on how to adjust the starch water himself when it really came time to do it.

Qin Huai was a bit stunned.

Qin Huai thought for a moment and decided to go with his intuition.