Far away in Moscow

Chapter 26
Hu Yi lived to the point that he always had New Year's Eve dinner with his whole family, and the rest of the preparatory students were no exception.Now Yan Zhiwen, Lu Tao and other old students have all returned to China for the New Year, and they are the only ones left to spend New Year's Eve in Moscow.

Student gatherings are different from inviting guests to dinner. Although the AA system was not popular at that time, each person invited had to prepare a decent dish by himself. Eat with peace of mind.With Hu Yi and Li Baoqing as the hosts, it is reasonable to have a few more dishes.

The dishes reported by Li Baoqing fully demonstrated the characteristics of Russian regional cuisine. Potatoes did their part to provoke the burden of side dishes: stewed pork ribs with potatoes, beef stewed with potatoes, chicken stewed with potatoes, fried onions with potatoes and carrots. Seeing this, Yu Feifei frowned: " Don’t stew potatoes in every dish, okay? I also use potatoes in my salad, and let’s use mushrooms instead of stewed ribs.”

Li Baoqing rubbed his hands shyly: "Hey, okay, listen to Feifei. I wanted to fry hot and sour potato shreds."

Peng Song, who was standing in the corner of the room with his hands behind his back, suddenly took a step forward: "I've been using potatoes to stew chicken for the past few months, and I'm getting tired of eating it. Let's change the taste on New Year's Eve. I'll fry Zaozhuang for everyone. Spicy Chicken!"

"What? Tired of eating? When did you miss a bite of Baoqing's stewed chicken?" Hu Yi squinted at him angrily and with a smile: "Do you know how to fry chicken? It's so rare. You have never eaten it in the past few months." I haven't seen you open a fire, and you come to eat every day, and you have the nerve to say that you are bored."

Peng Song blushed, shrinking his neck and retreating.Li Baoqing couldn't bear it, so he hurriedly smoothed things over and said, "Hey, it's the Chinese New Year. Everyone cooks to have fun! Peng Song, I'll leave the spicy chicken dish to you! Damn it, we'll cook for you all day long. Whatever you say this time, you have to taste your craft."

On the morning of the New Year's Eve, Hu Yi and others went to the market to make a big purchase according to the list of raw materials, and immediately started preparations when they returned to the dormitory.

Although it was the first time to plan such a large-scale dinner party, and the conditions were extremely simple, Hu Yi arranged all the work in an orderly manner. Everyone performed their duties according to the schedule, and they did not seem particularly hectic.

At this time, it was windy and snowy outside, but the heater in the house was very hot, and it didn't feel cold even wearing unlined clothes.They didn't have a refrigerator, so they hung the meat they bought outside the window, and took it in to defrost it in the afternoon, and changed the beer and drinks outside by the way, so that it was just cold and refreshing when the meal was served.

Li Baoqing was quick with his hands and feet. He chopped ribs, cut beef, peeled potatoes, and soaked mushrooms. He took the lead in putting his two big dishes on the stove and simmering them on a low heat. Hu, I forgot to tell you, that... I also invited a guest."

Hu Yi was playing cards with a few other classmates, and he responded casually: "Okay, Chinese New Year, let's join in the fun." Turning around and seeing his subtle expression, he couldn't help feeling a little strange, and asked: "Who is it?"

"It's a Russian, you know it too. It should be here soon, I'll go downstairs to pick it up." Li Baoqing smiled shyly, dressed and hurried out.

"Damn, it's quite mysterious." Hu Yi looked at his back shaking his head and smiling.After playing two more cards, Li Baoqing opened the door and came back, followed by a tall figure whose forehead was blocked by the door frame, and only half of his face could be seen.

Everyone in the room turned their heads to look at the past. Li Baoqing coughed twice, and introduced with a bit of pride: "Everyone, this is Martha, our classmate of Ma Ji."

The person outside the door lowered his head and entered the door. It turned out to be a big ponytail from the women's basketball school team.Li Baoqing stammered and gestured to her: "These people, my friends. Cook later, and then we will have dinner."

"Hello everyone, Happy New Year." Martha waved her hand generously and quietly, took out a bottle of red wine from her satchel and handed it to Li Baoqing, and then looked at Hu Yi friendly: "Hello, Anton."

"Hello." Hu Yi gathered up the poker cards and handed them to the classmates watching the battle behind him, got up and went to greet her briefly, and then stared at Li Baoqing with a half-smile: "Why did you two get together? What's the situation? "They sometimes played ball with Martha in gym class, but they didn't talk much, and it was a surprise to see her on New Year's Eve.

"Don't talk nonsense, there's nothing wrong with it." Li Baoqing's face flushed. "A few days ago, I ran into her in the cafeteria. She asked me what was wrong with my face. I chatted with her for a while and invited her to celebrate the New Year together."

"You can actually talk to her clearly?" Hu Yi folded his arms and looked at him with a smile: "It's not easy, don't look at the fact that you can't speak a few whole sentences in class, but you are quite good at picking up girls."

"Don't look down on me, my Russian is actually pretty good." Li Baoqing puffed out his chest, and seeing Hu Yiwu's disapproving expression, he scratched his head and smiled, "Hey, I have a Russian-Chinese electronic dictionary. You can look up words you don't understand. .”

"Okay, it can be regarded as a kind of learning motivation." Hu Yi wanted to continue to sarcasm, but Li Baoqing rushed to say: "There is no place to sit in the house, I will go with her to Peng Song's room for a while, and come over for dinner later." Then he squeezed to the table and picked up Erhantong, and took Masha to the next door.

"Small." Hu Yi smiled with the corners of his lips turned up, and turned around to greet everyone to disband the game, and began to tidy up the room and arrange tables and chairs.Yu Feifei and the others arrived one after another with all kinds of kitchen utensils. They walked into the kitchen one by one to cut vegetables, cook them, put them on plates, and fry them.Martha and the Ugandan next door were attracted by the smell of cooking vegetables in the room. They stood at the door of the kitchen and asked questions curiously. Li Baoqing answered them one by one with an electronic dictionary, and learned a lot of words by the way.

The ribs and beef were already stewed, and several cold dishes were served one after another.The dining table made of two writing desks is filled with all kinds of utensils, including bowls and plates, pots and pots. Although it looks messy, it is also full of unique festive warmth that only wanderers far away from home can fully experience.

Peng Song's spicy chicken was the finale. The chicken had been hanging out of the window for a long time. It was frozen hard like a stone.Peng Song swung the kitchen knife and chopped it a few times, leaving only a few messy cuts on the surface.

It seems that it will take a long time to thaw. Peng Song thought for a while, put the scarred frozen chicken in a frying pan and carried it to the toilet, turned on the water pipe and connected half of the pot of hot water, and waited for the frozen chicken to slowly blanch. Pick up the pot and prepare to pour the water into the toilet.

He put the frying pan on the edge of the toilet, awkwardly blocked the chicken with a wooden spatula, and slowly tilted the pot, seeing that most of the water had been poured out, but the chicken "slipped" around the spatula and rushed out of the edge of the pot , slid into the toilet in a circle.

"Ouch!" Peng Song exclaimed softly, and hurriedly put down the pot and reached out to fish it.But the chicken had just been blanched, so it was so hot that it was hard to handle, and the chicken skin was smooth and greasy, and it would slip and slide along the toilet wall with a little force.He scooped it up several times in a row, and the chicken he was chasing went over and over in the toilet bowl, rubbing the inner wall of the toilet bowl so that it was shiny, and then he picked it up and put it back into the pot smoothly.

Peng Song bared his teeth from being burned, and turned his head to look out in panic while blowing on his hands.Fortunately, everyone in the room was chatting enthusiastically, and they didn't notice the movement in the toilet. Only Hu Yi happened to be sitting diagonally opposite the toilet, looking at him in astonishment.

The two stared at each other dumbfounded for a moment, and Hu Yi lowered his eyelids first.Peng Song stayed for a while, then walked into the kitchen with the pot as if nothing had happened, rinsed the chicken briefly under the faucet, then chopped it into small pieces with a knife, heated the oil in the pot, and poured all the chicken pieces on the cutting board into it. in the pot.

(End of this chapter)