Abnormal Gourmet Chronicle-Chapter 1155 - 556: Reciprocity

On the second day, Qin Huai woke up bright and early, at 3:30 AM, and set off for Yunzhong Restaurant under the starry sky to make sugar cake.

The video tutorial of sugar cake was something Qin Huai quickly glanced at before bed the night before, finding nothing worth learning.

The parts where they skimped were what needed attention. As the heir of a century-old sugar cake shop, Zhang Yi's skills somewhat betrayed their family's brand, but his level of skimping was commendable.

There is a record of sugar cake in the Ming Dynasty's "Southern State Chronicles": "Tea stall sells snow rings, glutinous flour wraps thrice." From this record, it's clear how important glutinous rice flour is to sugar cake. Normally, sugar cake is made by mixing wheat starch with glutinous rice flour, adding sugar and lard, boiling water to scald the dough into rings, frying them to set shape and then coating them in sugar.

The difficulty isn't very high.

While looking at the dish details, Qin Huai thought Zhang Yi's skimping was in not coating much sugar and using less sugar and lard in kneading the dough.

This was the limit of what Qin Huai imagined, but it wasn't Zhang Yi's limit.

Zhang Yi managed to skimp in every aspect. Wheat starch is made by repeatedly washing a dough in water to remove the proteins, leaving only wheat starch, traditionally called washing out the dough's gluten. Wheat starch is usually used for crystal dumplings, allowing the dough skin to achieve a half-transparent state post-steaming.

Zhang Yi's wheat starch was skimped on too, he couldn't bear to wash it too cleanly, just washing it casually twice was considered done.

The amount of glutinous rice flour was incorrect while kneading, possibly because glutinous rice flour is quite expensive, he skimped on it. But using less glutinous rice flour requires something else to make up for it, and wheat starch is quite expensive too, being white dough, but Zhang Yi chose to substitute it with the cheaper cornmeal.

Cornmeal sugar cake, indeed the masters hide among the people.

In some sense, the sugar cake An Youyou ate that day was no longer sugar cake, it was a peculiar mix of cornmeal, wheat starch, and glutinous rice flour, not well fried and barely coated in sugar, and lard just made a courtesy visit, a whole new snack.

This new snack managed to get a Level D… hey, who knows, maybe Zhang Yi's culinary skills were alright, not betraying their family's century-old sugar cake legacy.

Qin Huai carefully replicated it 1:1 in the back kitchen.

He only watched the video tutorial once, so a perfect replica was impossible, making it randomly was the strategy, if he accidentally did too well it would definitely be above Level D. But it wasn't a major issue, the hint didn't say it had to be a Level D sugar cake. Qin Huai believed in his excellent employee An Youyou's fundamental pursuit of good food, a bit tastier would definitely be more palatable.

An Youyou arrived in the kitchen while Qin Huai was kneading the dough, as always, being such an early bird as Qin Huai's excellent employee.

"Good morning, Master Qin." Now An Youyou was used to Qin Huai occasionally arriving earlier than her, no longer feeling frightened like before, worrying about job security just because Qin Huai was earlier.

"Youyou, you're here, don't start working yet, just watch me make snacks." Qin Huai said.

An Youyou didn't think much, assuming Qin Huai was in an especially good mood and willing to teach today, happily rushed to stand beside Qin Huai, and studied earnestly.

After a while, An Youyou felt something was off.

Though she wasn't an excellent snack master, not even a snack master, but after being an apprentice at Zhiwei Restaurant for a few months, she somewhat understood basic snack-making principles.

Why does it feel like the snacks Qin Huai is making now don't comply with the basic principles?

An Youyou shook her head, banishing this scary thought from her mind, convincing herself it's Master Qin's unique creativity that she just couldn't perceive at her lower level, then continued watching intently.

Watch as sugar cake got finished.

It didn't look great, not well-fried causing it not to set properly, and hardly coated in sugar. The entire sugar cake looked limp, as if left idle for a long time, seemed ready to be tossed into the trash at any moment.

An Youyou: ?

Never mind, Master Qin must have some special ingenuity.

"Youyou, have a taste, see if you like it." Qin Huai said.

Getting An Youyou to eat something was too easy, didn't even need an excuse, just told her to eat.

An Youyou obediently picked up a poor-looking sugar cake with chopsticks, gave it a dubious look, but still popped it into her mouth and took a big bite.

Hmm, not very sweet.

Soft, not glutinous, not sticky, the texture felt rather coarse, lacking in finesse, a bit dry.

Good… good but quite average, yet not exactly bad, a mix of sugar and oil.

An Youyou got confused, pondering if this was a test from Qin Huai to see if she's an honest employee, brave enough to point out the boss's flaws, deliberately setting this trap. If she flattered too much, she'd lose the chance to run for future restaurant manager, but if she was upfront, she'd gain the boss's favor.

But if this wasn't a test, being too frank might get her fired on the spot?

Is this when the art of language should be applied?

An Youyou started to recall that time she spent a dollar buying "The Art of Workplace" online which mentioned methods to deal with such situations, but she wasn't good at embellishing her words, what to do, what to do.

An Youyou chewed the sugar cake expressionlessly, the tiny person in her mind already frantically jumping around, feeling she was facing the biggest challenge of her career.