Chapter 944: Chapter 397: Baked Carp with Noodles, Yanjin... Oh No, Yinzhou Style! This Combo Is Absolutely Genius! [Monthly Ticket Please]

After making cuts on both sides of the fish, first marinate the fish with scallion and ginger water, salt, Light Soy Sauce, and Rice Wine. This fish is quite large, so try to marinate it thoroughly.

While marinating the fish, Lin Xu starts to prepare the batter.

For sweet and sour Carp, a whole egg crispy batter is used, the deliciousness lies in the crispy coating.

But Baked Carp with Noodles is different. The essence of this dish is in the noodles, and there’s a soft-boiling step. The whole egg batter can easily get mushy.

It needs to be coated with a dry powder paste.

Mix low gluten flour with potato starch in a 1:1 ratio and set aside on a tray.

By the time this step is completed, the dough for the noodles has also relaxed enough.

Lin Xu takes it out, rolls it with alkaline water, and starts elongating the dough. This aligns the proteins in the dough, making the noodles finer, longer, and more resilient when pulled.

Sprinkle some flour on the chopping board, place the elongated strips on the board, coat them lightly with flour, and then stretch them.

Hook the noodles from the right hand to the left hand and continue pulling.

While pulling, let the noodles roll on the flour to prevent sticking.

Lin Xu stops at the thirteenth stretch.

By now, the noodles are just slightly thicker than hair.

Xie Baomin watching on the side is full of admiration:

"Not bad, being able to stretch to thirteen stretches is already the mark of a master pastry chef... can these noodles still be stretched further now?"

Lin Xu felt the noodles and said:

"Quite fine, stretching to fifteen is no problem."

"Then you can learn how to make the master’s Clear Soup Noodles, learn it quickly so those rascals stop teasing me."

"Okay."

Lin Xu lays the stretched noodles flat on the board and cuts it into sections with a knife at one-foot intervals.

The noodles look very neat and must not be touched by hand, just insert a knife underneath to lift them.

When the oil in the pot reaches thirty percent heat, put the noodles in to deep-fry.

The noodles are thin, and have lost a lot of moisture during the stretching process, so they can’t be fried at high heat or they will burn as soon as they hit the oil.

This step is somewhat like frying instant noodles. Fry until the surface is golden brown until they become a noodle cake.

Gently scoop them out with a slotted spoon and place them on oil-absorbing paper to absorb excess grease.

The fish today is large, so more noodles are needed, to make sure there’s enough to eat.

Lin Xu fries some more noodles, then takes the marinated fish, removes the scallion and ginger, wipes off the excess moisture, and dips the Carp into the dry powder paste holding it by the tail.

Smear the dry powder over the fish, making sure both the body and the cuts are evenly covered.

Coat inside and out with the dry powder paste, shake off the excess powder holding it by the tail, so it doesn’t scatter into the oil and turn bitter when frying.

When the oil in the pot is fifty percent hot, hold the fish by the tail and immerse the head in the oil to set the shape.

Then, with one hand holding the fish tail, and the other holding a spoon, ladle hot oil over the body, making the large cuts on the fish sides rise, so the fish cooks through better.

After setting the shape with ladling, submerge the whole fish into the oil pot and start frying.

An eight-pound fish is difficult to fry properly, so it needs to be fried slowly on low heat.

While Lin Xu is busy frying the fish, Xie Baomin prepares the Grass Carp fillets for Boiled Fish, and the Snakehead is for Fish with Pickled Vegetables. Today is an all-fish banquet to satisfy everyone’s desire for fish.

Once the Carp is fried, start a separate pot on the side, add smashed scallion and ginger, and stock, then add a big spoonful of White Vinegar, a big spoonful of white sugar, and a small spoonful of salt.

When it gets hot, place the fried big Carp inside.

This step is the so-called soft-boiling.

Put the crispy, fragrant fried Carp into the stock to cook again, allowing the sweet and sour flavor to seep into the fish meat as much as possible, making it more delicious.

"This is different from sweet and sour Carp, in sweet and sour Carp you don’t have this step."

Zhu Yong, who is quite interested in fish, is somewhat curious about the relatively obscure dish Baked Carp with Noodles.

Xie Baomin chuckled and said:

"Sweet and sour Carp in Shandong cuisine is to be enjoyed, eating only the crispy skin and sweet-sour juice, but the people of Central Plains are more practical, every bit of meat on the fish needs to be eaten, hence, the soft-boiling step."

The originally hardened fried Carp is boiled soft again.

Because White Vinegar and white sugar are used, the fish doesn’t color.

According to this recipe, there should be no coloring during the soft-boiling, color is all in the sweet-sour sauce, which creates a visual contrast between the fish and sauce, making it more appealing to eat.

After cooking one side, carefully flip the fish using a slotted spoon, cook both sides thoroughly.

When all the fish becomes tender, remove the scallion and ginger, carefully lift it out of the pot.

A giant fish plate is already set up on the workbench, pre-heated to enhance the fish’s flavor.

The eight-pound, eight-ounce big Carp fits just right.

Next, it’s time to drizzle with the sweet-sour sauce.

This step is quite simple, the shop makes sweet and sour pork ribs every day, and there’s always sweet and sour sauce ready.

Lin Xu pours out the fish’s cooking liquid, adds three big spoonfuls of sweet and sour sauce, heats it, and then ladles a spoonful of hot oil from the fish pot into it.

As the hot oil blends in, the sweet-sour aroma wafts out immediately.

Spoon the sauce over the fish, drench even the plate’s bottom.

This dish is about noodles dipped in sauce, so there needs to be enough of it; you can’t let the noodles go unsauced.

The reddish sweet-sour sauce quickly boosts the visual appeal of the entire fish.

After drizzling the sauce, cover the fish with the deep-fried noodle slices, leaving only the fish head exposed, completing the dish.

By now, the other dishes are pretty much done too.

Dinner is served.

As Lin Xu came out of the kitchen with the fish platter, the gathered elders and family friends excitedly moved closer:

"Wow, this fish looks majestic!"

"Did you put a little blanket on the fish? Are you afraid it’ll catch a cold?"

"You can tell it’s good just by the presentation."

"Ahem, let me remind you, this was caught by the master angler gran, don’t you forget it."

Watching her smug cousin, Chen Yan rolled her eyes speechlessly.

It was just luck that she caught a small Carp, and now her tail is practically in the air.

Just wait, when we get a chance to go to the seaside, I’ll show you just how formidable a female angler can be when she’s one with her fishing rod!

What’s the big deal about an amateur angler?

If I’m gonna do it, I’m going to be the Matriarch of Fishing!

As she was muttering, Dundun had just eaten a charcoal-roasted small white fish and glanced up at the ceiling from the reception desk downstairs.

The seaside?

Even if you went to the ends of the earth, you still wouldn’t catch anything if it’s not meant to be.

But...this cat has yet to see the sea.

If there’s a chance to stroll on the beach, it wouldn’t be so bad...

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I find that whenever I research, time flies quickly. I originally intended to write more professionally, but it dragged on until now. This Chapter has 5,200 words, please vote for the monthly ticket, brothers! There will be another update tonight!