Abnormal Gourmet Chronicle-Chapter 854 - 426: Carbohydrate Feast
Qin Huai never could have imagined that what started as a simple holiday gathering sparked by eating dumplings would turn into this.
Master Zhou sat in the living room, waiting for the last batch of snacks to be ready.
Zhao Cheng’an, like a middle-aged man who didn’t want to go home after work and just wanted to hide in the garage for a smoke, was dawdling in the kitchen, doing who knows what.
An Youyou was trying her best to employ her workplace social skills, dismantling the fruit baskets she and Shi Dadan brought, washing them, and slicing them into a fruit platter.
By the way, given that An Youyou wasn’t skilled with the knife, the fruit platter ended up looking a bit unappetizing, and she wasted quite a bit of the trimmings. Reluctant to waste anything, she nibbled while she cut, and Qin Huai, watching from the side, was afraid she’d fill up on fruit before the meal.
Shi Dadan was the most relaxed of everyone, sitting at the dining table chatting with Master Zhou, lavishly praising his egg tarts, and sharing how he queued up every afternoon at Zhiwei Restaurant to buy them, earnestly trying to convey his simple wish to enjoy more snacks.
Though Master Zhou often had a sarcastic streak, he was always kind and genial to guests, especially those who liked his snacks. Shi Dadan’s unpretentious words, along with his sincere smile, made Master Zhou feel like a gentle breeze in spring, and his smile when talking to Shi Dadan almost matched the warmth he showed when speaking with Huai.
As for Qin Huai, he hid out in the kitchen with Zhao Cheng’an, escaping reality while trying to figure out what was going on.
Wasn’t it just a regular gathering? How did the head of Zhiwei Restaurant end up here?
Qin Huai had reason to suspect he was being set up by Zhao Cheng’an.
"Wronged, I’m just as wronged as Dou E!" Facing Qin Huai’s accusation, Zhao Cheng’an could only plead, in a voice as soft as a mosquito but with a high-pitched tone, "Before Master called me last night, I didn’t know today would be like this either."
Raising an eyebrow, Qin Huai glanced around at the snacks visible in the kitchen.
Already prepared and ready to eat were peach cake, lotus cake, jujube paste cake, peach blossom cake, Lucky Cloud Pattern Cake, and salted egg yolk cake. Among these layered pastries, the most challenging are the lotus cake and peach blossom cake due to their complex shapes.
Master Zhou creates these layered pastries with utmost artistry. Whether it’s the lotus cake or peach blossom cake, they appear animated and three-dimensional at first glance — the kind of presentation that could easily sell for a high price, like 188 or even 288, just by being placed on a plate.
In this kitchen, however, the peach blossom cake and lotus cake were so numerous that they were stacked on plain white porcelain plates without any pattern at Zhao Cheng’an’s home.
Because the snacks in the kitchen weren’t limited to layered pastries.
Qin Huai also saw five plates of Crab Shell Cake, two plates of baked buns sprinkled with white sesame seeds and baked to a golden crisp, two plates of already steamed buns with an unknown filling, a plate of dumplings, or more accurately, assorted fruit dumplings — one of Master Zhou’s signature snacks at Zhiwei Restaurant.
A small plate contained six differently shaped dumplings, each small and exquisite, indistinguishable from real fruit, and not just basic versions like apple dumplings.
For example, the plate currently in the kitchen featured two bunches of grape dumplings in the center, one green and one purple. Both grapes were vividly lifelike, with detailed stems and grape leaves, with even the leaf veins clearly visible.
Surrounding the grapes were individual fruits, including slices of watermelon, loquat, orange, strawberry, persimmon, giving the impression of a fruit platter from afar, though why was the watermelon so small? 𝓯𝓻𝓮𝙚𝙬𝓮𝙗𝒏𝙤𝒗𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝒐𝓶
This is the kind of luxury snack an ordinary but fortunate customer might buy at Zhiwei Restaurant on a good day when Master Zhou was in a great mood and luck was abundant.
It was also the kind of appetizer snack brought out when Master Zhou was making boat-shaped pastries.
In this kitchen, this platter just barely managed to fit without overlapping like other snacks did due to the small plate, and maintained an intact form, placed in a relatively stable corner of the kitchen counter.
Qin Huai scanned the kitchen once more, noticing dumplings made by Zhao Cheng’an, frozen fried pumpkin cakes, sugar triangles, and thousand-layered oil cakes on the vegetable shelf, and green bean cake and Butterfly cold rolls chilling in the fridge.
Qin Huai recalled what Master Zhou had said earlier about casually making a few practice items.
"Practice"
Redefining practice.
Qin Huai tore his eyes away from these dazzling snacks, resisting the urge to sneak a taste, and asked in a hushed voice, "So what’s really going on? There’s no way all this was made in one day."
"I truly don’t know, I’m genuinely wronged!" Zhao Cheng’an only continued to plead his innocence, "My master stayed over at my house last night, and these snacks obviously can’t be made in a single day. I started assisting him from last night."
"From when I got off work at 7 PM, we worked until 1 AM. This morning, I got up around 6 and have been working ever since. Do you know how difficult these snacks are? Do you know how long such an assorted fruit platter would normally take to make? Do you know why I missed your calls? Because I’ve been busy working, and didn’t dare turn my phone volume up. If Master hadn’t asked me when you’d arrive, I might have completely forgotten we were having you all over, thinking it was just another day of training at home." As Zhao Cheng’an spoke, he was almost in tears, "Isn’t today a holiday? Why do I feel more exhausted than on a regular working day?"
