Chapter 158 - Soy Sauce Fish
Chapter 158: Soy Sauce Fish
The Jade Mountain Fruit was actually fragrant fruit and was relatively famous in Jade Mountain, so it was given another name.
Xu Le didn’t have the time to correct her. He thought for a moment and said, “I’ll make Dongpo Tofu later.”
The numbers on the screen were still rolling. Occasionally, they could see the number 100. Li Qing couldn’t help but complain, “If it really stops at 100 dishes later, with our amount of ingredients, we’ll just give each person some bits of meat to eat.” Fortunately, the final number stopped at five. In other words, the two teams had to make five dishes, and the number of dishes had to be enough for the entire audience to taste.
Fujian dish was not Zhang Tong’s specialty. He looked at the pork belly in front of him and felt a little embarrassed. He knew how to make lychee meat, but he could not guarantee that it would be done well.
“Let me do it. There are so many people in the audience today. Even if everyone takes a bite, the amount needed will be especially large. Thank you for your help.”
With that, Xu Le picked up a piece of pork belly and said to Li Qing, “Heat up the oil and fry the onion that’s unique to Fujian cuisine. Don’t use leaves, or it’ll be burnt easily.”
“Don’t you think ordering me to prepare this is a little overkill?”
Li Qing complained as he did as he was told. He turned on the fire to heat the oil, cut off the shallots, and prepared to fry them.
“Did someone take a lobster just now?”
“I saw it.” Li Qing said, “But the other party took it away. Are you planning to make tea noodles?”
“Yeah.”
Xu Le resisted the urge to roll his eyes at him and said, “If there’s no lobster to top it off, then I’ll make some pork belly tea noodles.”
“But I took the abalone and placed it on the far right.”
Zhang Tong couldn’t stand it and said, “Can’t you finish your sentence at once?”
“I can’t.”
Li Qing had a provocative look on his face. Fortunately, Zhang Tong had a steady personality and could not be bothered to argue with him. He went over to get the abalone and started washing it.
“The main ingredient for making tea noodles is still stir-fried tea sauce, but the sauce produced from each place tastes different. Which one are you planning to make?”
Xu Le rummaged around and finally managed to categorize the ingredients roughly, making it slightly easier to find them. He said, “We will make the taste with whatever ingredients we have… I think you should make black sugar tea sauce. If we add add some black sugar to the original sauce, the texture will be richer when it comes out. Let me make it. Mom, please prepare the noodles.”
“That’s simple.” Shen Hui immediately took some flour and water and prepared to make noodles.
They had roughly decided on soy sauce fish, lychee meat, tea abalone noodles, and Dongpo Tofu. There was still one last dish that they had not decided on.
However, the ingredients had almost been categorized. Xu Le was worried for a moment, but he quickly threw this thought to the back of his mind. He thought to himself, I’ll see what ingredients are left later.
Soy sauce fish was an extremely common dish in Xiamen. Usually, it was stewed with a few different types of fish. If one fish was cooked alone, it would taste bland. When several types of fish were combined, they tasted different. Some were fresh, some were chewy, and there was no idea how the next piece of fish would taste. It was surprising and delicious, like opening a mystery box.
The white pomphret, yellow fish, smooth fish, and leaf fish were all cleaned and eviscerated.
Xu Le instructed, “Cut the big fish into pieces and form some cuts on the surface.”
The ingredients prepared for the competition were all very fresh. Just by processing them, Zhang Tong could tell that these fish would definitely be easy to cook and would taste good.
The light soya sauce would make it salty, the dark soya sauce would give its color, and the sauce would make it taste refreshing and fragrant. After pouring it all into the casserole in moderation, he added rock sugar and cooked until it turned amber.
A small amount of oil was poured into the pot. Dried radish, sliced ginger, and garlic were stir-fried. A small amount of dried chili was added, along with white sugar, MSG, and salt.
After frying all the ingredients, he added the fish in order of size. He added the pepper sauce and the soy sauce that had just been prepared. The heat was at moderate level. He had to keep an eye on the fish until it was cooked into a gelatinous state and the soup became thick.
The difficulty of this dish was in the control of the fire. Zhang Tong was halfway through cooking when he realized that he could not control the texture. He immediately raised his voice and asked, “Xu Le, what’s wrong with my dish?”
Xu Le was cutting the pork belly into slices. He looked up and said, “Keep it under medium heat. Don’t break the fish meat and stir it with the spoon. The heat control is not bad so you should be able to prepare this dish.”
Zhang Tong’s confidence increased at his praise. Ten minutes later, the large pot of fish with sauce was cooked.
The onion oil of Fujian cuisine was sprinkled around the fish before it was served. The ordinary-looking soy sauce fish instantly became bright and shiny. Finally, it was sprinkled with garlic sprouts and could be brought backstage to be distributed to the audience.
The pork belly was cut into thin slices horizontally. On top of it, it was slanted and covered with a layer of knife marks, making the surface look like the shell of a lychee.
The lychee meat was sour and sweet. It was one of the most famous home-cooked dishes in Fujian, where the climate was hot and humid. From ancient times, everyone would eat this dish since they were young.
Cooking dishes from other places, especially home-cooked dishes, was the most difficult. After all, if the taste of the local dishes was wrong, it would be easy to judge that they were not authentic.
After the fancy cuttings was done, he cut them into triangles along the veined path.
The lychee meat was only complemented with water chestnut. The water chestnuts were first smashed with a knife and cut carefully, retaining some granularity.
The red yeast rice was mixed with the wine, stirred into a colored liquid, and poured into the pork belly.
Instead of bright red, the red yeast rice appeared dark red, much like the surface of a lychee.
After the lychee meat was colored, starch was poured in, ensuring that the fried texture was crispy and easy to hold onto the taste of the sweet and sour sauce.
In the inner area of the meat, he had to turn the triangle upside down and wrap it around the water chestnuts. After it was fried, the outside would be sweet and sour and crispy. Once a person bit through it, he could taste the fragrance of the water chestnut.
It was a tedious task to wrap the water chestnuts. After all, there were so many steps to do. Zhang Tong came over to help wrap them up and said, “Let me do this step. Go and cook other dishes first. You can come over and continue frying after I’m done?”
“Sure.”
That was what Xu Le wanted to hear.
He turned aside and began to prepare the tea sauce.
The tea abalone noodles was prepared with sweet and savory tea that was paired with the unique oily noodles of Fujian. Not only could one taste the unique Southeast Asian flavor, but there was also a slight spiciness in the sweet fragrance. It was very appetizing.
The ratio of brown sugar to rock sugar was 3:1. Adding milk powder to it would increase the smooth texture. The other condiments and dry shell powder would also increase the texture of the seafood. There was also the standard MSG fish sauce that was slightly salted…
Xu Le lowered his head in concentration. Li Qing, who was frying onion oil at the side, could not help but say, “When I went on a trip previously, I tried Fujian dishes, especially things like tea noodles. The taste is different across the streets. If you want to say that it’s authentic, it might not be uniform…”
“But what doesn’t change is the texture.” Xu Le naturally knew this. He explained, “No matter how different the taste is, in the end, a popular restaurant will always make the best food. As long as the sauce tastes good, it will be fine.”