Food starts with Mapo Tofu

Weddings and funerals are important events in life. Although Chen Nian was not the one who got married, Li Xu thought about it, Chen Nian was just such a big sister, and finally agreed.

In fact, according to the normal situation, an imperial chef like Chen Nian does not need to go through the emperor to ask for leave. He just needs to ask his superiors to apply.

But it is true that Chen Nian now has tasks every day.

But after the leave was approved, it was easy to handle, Chen Nian left the palace three days before his sister got married.

First, I went to the dim sum shop, and then went directly to Haifu.

Because the marriage ceremony is to be held here.

There are also chefs in Haifu, but Tan family cuisine is also a very famous cuisine in the capital. Chen Nian is the heir of Tan family cuisine from Song Qingzhou. Those rumors, so they did not dare to neglect.

Let Chen Nian take charge of some of the dishes.

This time the banquet, the Hai family also attaches great importance to it, so there are many dishes, in addition to the dried fruit candied fruit and other snacks at the beginning, there are 28 dishes.

Chen Nian is responsible for ten of them, and the rest is done by chefs from Haifu.

So after coming to Haifu, Chen Nian chatted with the head chef here.

"Master Chen, what kind of cuisine are you good at?" Zhao Liang, the head chef of Haifu, asked.

"I can do it here. It mainly depends on what dishes are missing in the banquet you designed, Master Zhao?"

"Since it's the wedding banquet of Lord Shangshu's family, it can't be too simple. There must be delicacies from mountains and seas, poultry, and livestock." Zhao Liang showed Chen Nian the list he made while talking.

After Chen Nian browsed around, he found that the other party's design was quite complete.

There are a total of [-] major dishes above, and the remaining ten dishes will be made by Chen Nian.

"Anyway, these are all discussed together by us. Master Chen feels that there is still something missing, so just add it."

Chen Nian smiled: "Master Zhao is being polite, you can just call me Xiaonian, Mr. Chen is too natural."

"No, no, you have an official position in the court. Although I work in the Shangshu Mansion, I am still a commoner. Naturally, I want to be called an adult."

"Master Zhao, what are adults and adults? I'm not used to it when you say that. We are all on our own. There is no need to do that. You are older than me, and your seniority is higher than me. Although I also come to cook this time, But it’s also because I want to do my best for my sister, so let’s call me Xiaonian.”

"Ok."

Chen Nian looked at the menu listed by the other party, and it was true that most of them were delicacies from the mountains, and there were also some dishes that the other party was good at.

"Master Zhao, I see that there are relatively few seafood on the list, so I will cook seafood. I wonder if there are any seafood ingredients in the house?"

"Yes, there are a lot of seafood, then I will take you to the warehouse to have a look?"

"it is good."

Then Zhao Liang took Chen Nian around the ingredients warehouse of Shangshu Mansion.

Indeed, there are a lot of ingredients here.

After roughly reading it, Chen Nian knew it well.

Going back and thinking about it, Chen Nian picked up a pen and listed ten dishes he was going to cook.

The Eight Immortals cross the sea and trouble the Arhats.

Braised Hydrangea and Shark Fin.

Crispy turtledove with sprouts.

Phoenix Crown Abalone.

Braised butterfly sea cucumber.

Crystal Shrimp Crackers.

Pollack Evans Tofu.

Stove meat roast eel section.

Shrimp on Ice Cream Bread.

And vegetarian three delicacies monkey head.

Among them are Shandong cuisine, Sichuan cuisine, Huaiyang cuisine, and Tanjia cuisine.

The main thing is a high-end and high-end dish. Most of these dishes are seafood, and some of them are game.

And there are two dishes created by Chen Nian himself. Pollock is actually cod, which is white in color. Chen Nian plans to put the fish and tofu together, which will also make the taste more delicious.

There is also ice cream, bread and shrimp, which is also a dish that Chen Nian has eaten in reality, but Chen Nian has improved it a bit.

After Chen Nian gave Master Zhao his menu, Master Zhao took a look at it.

He knows most of the above dishes, and he also knows that there are several dishes in it that are very complicated to cook. If it is not inherited from the master, others will not be able to learn it at all.

However, he was also a little puzzled, because he could tell that many of the dishes were not from the capital. If Chen Nian came from Yangzhou, it would be normal to have a few Huaiyang dishes in it, but among them Braised hydrangea shark's fin and crispy turtledove are not in the category of Huaiyang cuisine and official cuisine in the north.

It's just that even if he has these questions, it's not easy to ask them. What if it involves things in other people's sects?

It's just that what he didn't know was that the dishes he wasn't familiar with were from Sichuan cuisine.

Although there was no pepper in ancient times, due to the development of Shu, it is basically only a little worse than Chang'an, Suzhou, Hangzhou, Yangzhou, so the food culture is also quite developed.

As many people have said, it is not that there are no non-spicy dishes in Sichuan, but those non-spicy Sichuan dishes are not available or affordable to ordinary people.

Seeing that there was no conflict between the dishes on this list and the list he made earlier, Zhao Liang planned to use these dishes directly.

"Xiao Nian, then you just do these things. Whether it's the helpers or the ingredients, just tell me."

"Good Master Zhao."

Then Chen Nian began to prepare here.

Most of the other dishes do not need to be prepared too early, but the ingredients used in the dish of Eight Immortals Crossing the Sea and Arhats are extremely precious, and the price of the ingredients alone has surpassed the same level of Buddha Jumping the Wall.

Deer tendons, shark skin, skirts, fish lips, abalone, sea cucumber, scallops, prawns, all these ingredients are used in this dish, but in addition, eight treasures are used, that is, matsutake, morel , boletus, chicken matsutake, deer matsutake, bamboo fungus, chicken longitudinal and flower mushroom.

Whether it is the delicacy of mountains and seas in the front, or the eight treasures composed of eight kinds of fungi in the back, the sum is only the first half of the name Eight Immortals Crossing the Sea.

In this dish, Luohan refers to the egg yolk taken from the belly of a hen more than three years old.

Chicken yolk, also known as chicken yolk, is also a kind of Chinese herbal medicine. It is sweet in taste and flat in nature, and it has the heart, spleen, and kidney meridians.

It can nourish yin and moisten dryness, nourish blood and relieve wind, kill poison and deworm, etc.

In some prescriptions, chicken yellow is also used to facilitate labor and promote miscarriage.

All the ingredients used in this dish are of the highest quality. After all, Hai Shaowen is the Minister of the Ministry of Household Affairs. This is the Minister of Finance of the whole country, and in terms of power, he is even greater than the Minister of Finance.

Because in addition to being in charge of the country's financial situation, formulating fiscal policies, and managing the country's fiscal revenue and expenditure, they also need to conduct statistics and management of the country's household registration. In addition, they are also responsible for part of the relationship with other countries, land issues, water conservancy projects, and domestic affairs. agricultural issues, etc.

It is equivalent to integrating part of the work responsibilities of the Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development and other departments at the market level.

This is the management system of the Great Xia Dynasty. Compared with the previous ones, Hubu Shangshu has less power. If we count back more than 1000 years, Hubu Shangshu is the top boss among the three lords.

But even so, the Hubu Shangshu of the Great Xia Dynasty was also a second-rank official.

Therefore, the standard of holding a wedding is not too high.

Many of these ingredients were given by others, and some of them were rewarded by the palace.

To make those dried seafood among the Eight Immortals Crossing the Sea and Arhats, you need to soak them three days in advance.

And although those fungi don't take that long, they also need to be soaked in the first two hours of cooking.

Dry hair is soaked in warm water, so the water has to be changed constantly, but due to aging and other things, I handed over this work to other chefs in Haifu yesterday.

Maybe those imperial chefs in the palace who have never been in touch with old age will look down on old age, and perhaps those old chefs in the former Tan Mansion who don't know the level of old age will also look down on old age, but because they themselves are of this era. The top chefs, even if Chen Nian already has the status of an imperial chef, he may not necessarily be better than them.

But although there are several top chefs in Haifu, they are usually too lazy to take care of things, they are only responsible for cooking, and Zhao Liang is responsible for coordinating the usual chores.

As for the chefs below, they are their apprentices and grandchildren, so compared with Chen Nian, they don't have so much capital to be proud of.

At most, everyone's level is about the same, but they still wear official status in old age.

What's more, even if you throw yourself into the imperial dining room in the palace, it may not be faster than Chen Nian.

"You always check the temperature of the water inside, and change the water if it feels cold."

After arranging them, Chen Nian started to make soup with chicken, duck, goose, pork bones and other ingredients.

This process is a bit similar to Buddha Jumping Over the Wall, but the difference is that the soup of Eight Immortals Crossing the Sea and Arhats does not need to be thick to that extent.

So there are a lot of things missing.

First, cut these ingredients and blanch them in water, skim off the foam on the top, until the bottom of the soup is clear.

Then start another pot and use the fried crucian carp to make milky soup.

After boiling, remove all the residues in the fish soup, and mix this milky white fish soup with the previous soup.

Although the fish soup is milky white, after being mixed with the chicken soup, it only makes the color of the chicken soup more saturated. After all, there is a gap in the proportion, and the fish soup only provides a umami taste.

After aging, continue to put the previous ingredients in and cook slowly with the lowest fire.

Chen Nian also arranged the work of making soup.

After that, he soaked the ingredients used in other dishes in the same way.

"You just do as I said just now, I have to go out again." After Chen Nian finished talking to the cooks, he went to talk to Zhao Liang, and left first.

Although he has to cook ten dishes here, my sister also has to go back to help. The room for my sister's wedding needs to be furnished, and some dowry things have to be brought over when she gets married, and these things have to be cleaned up.

Even if the Shangshu Mansion has already started to decorate the lanterns and festoons, but I also have to decorate there.

There are a lot of things to do, and it is not easy for my cousin to do too much work as a bride. Although the neighbors and Fu Xin will send people to help, there must always be someone to communicate with.

After being busy for half the afternoon, Chen Nian went to the blacksmith's shop and carpenter's shop after dinner in the evening.

My sister is going to get married, so I naturally have to give some gifts.

Chen Nian made the gift for his sister by himself. Now that he has a laboratory, Chen Nian also took advantage of his position to make a lipstick for his sister.

In this era, there are many rouge and gouache powders, but most of them are packed in boxes, while old-fashioned lipsticks are modern lipsticks, which can be turned out after opening the lid.

For his brother-in-law, Hai Mingxian, Chen Nian made other preparations. He didn’t have the time to do it by himself, so Chen Nian prepared the drawings in advance and asked the blacksmith and carpenter to make the parts.

However, these two shops have basically finished all the old parts.

"Please help to send these parts to me tomorrow."

After settling down, in the next two days, Chen Nian began to work on both sides.

In the morning and noon, I prepare ingredients at Haifu, and in the afternoon, I return home to help my sister prepare things for her wedding.

Splice the parts at home at night.

Waiting until the day when his sister got married, Chen Nian settled down with the helpers sent by Fu Xin, packed his presents, and brought them over when the time came, then Chen Nian returned to Haifu and started to get busy.

He has been busy preparing all kinds of ingredients since the morning, Chen Nian is now very handy in making these things, Zhao Liang and other chefs in Haifu can't help but admire.

Young people like Chen Nian are the most suitable students in their minds. Unfortunately, now that Chen Nian has a master, it is impossible for Tan Jiacai to give them such an excellent apprentice.

At nine o'clock, the sound of gongs and drums sounded outside, and it was very lively.

The guests came one after another.

The ruling and opposition parties also knew that the third son of Shangshu Hubu was going to get married, and they had received invitations a long time ago.

Although Li Xu was inconvenient to come due to her status, she also prepared gifts and arranged for Wang Jin to send them over at that time. On the other hand, she also shortened the time at the court meeting as much as possible so that everyone had time to attend Hai Mingxian's meeting. wedding reception.

The ceremonial officer kept singing about which adult was coming in the court, and at the same time sang about the gifts that everyone came to give.

These important officials of the imperial court were extraordinary in their actions, such as thousand-year-old jade corals, rare luminous pearls, various precious medicinal materials, as well as some bottles and jars and celebrity calligraphy and paintings they collected in their daily collections.

When the time was up, Hai Mingxian took a lot of gifts and a dozen carriages, and went to Lu Wanxing's dim sum shop to pick up his wife.

Although the main event was at night, there were also a group of guests who wanted to have a banquet at noon, but after Chen Nian finished his work, he brought some meals and came outside his sister's wedding room.

At this time, there were two little maids standing outside the wedding room.

"Son."

The two little maids saluted quickly after seeing Chen Nian.

"Is my sister in there now?"

"Yes, Miss is resting inside."

"Then can I go in?"

"My lord, you can't go in now, and you won't be able to meet the lady until tomorrow."

"Okay, I'm sorry, you two, help me deliver this food to my sister."

"Good son."

The two little maids looked about fifteen or sixteen years old, and they were a little shy standing in front of Chen Nian.

The two of them were also sent by Fu Xin. After all, they were going to marry a wealthy family, and they would be laughed at if they didn't bring two dowry maids. (end of this chapter)