Chapter 10 – Crayfish in Mala Sauce (Part 3)
Rehosted by – Kitchennovel.com
Translated by Prosperousfood.com
Retranslated and Edited by Gumihou
Before cooking the crayfish, she first prepared the spices and side ingredients. She had collected quite a lot of natural ingredients from mother nature. The hills near the shabby temple had quite a lot of herbs growing there, most of which had been conveniently transported to their little garden.
Bu Yan watched as she collected a bunch of leaves and dried fruits and minced them up as she waited for a wok of oil to heat up. When the inch deep oil started smoking a little, she first threw in sliced scallions, ginger, garlic and chilli peppers, stirring constantly to prevent burning.
Oh, so these things could be stir fried?
Bu Yan was dumbstruck.
Next, he saw Shiyu threw in the minced leaves and fruits into the wok and stirred them well.
In a short while, the entire house was filled with a mouth-watering fragrance. Because of the chilli, everyone started to cough and sneeze from the spiciness.
For some reason, Bu Yan felt that it was very exciting.
At this moment, Lao Er carried in the cleaned crayfish. Shiyu grabbed the basket of crayfish and poured them onto the spices. When most of the crayfish turned red, she poured a splash of wine in, some sugar, and stirred again. When the mixture started to look sticky and the fragrance increased, she added half a cup of water into the mixture and covered it, before taking it off the fire.
“Alright, let’s make other things to eat.” Shiyu said.
With just the spicy Mala Crayfish, everyone would feel thirsty. Since most people in the house was still young, they can’t have alcohol, which was why Xiao Wu and Xiao Liu had been sent off to purchase some dried plums. Let’s have sour plum soup with the crayfish, ba.
Once she judged the crayfish done, Shiyu lifted the lid. A most amazing fragrance floated out, making everyone sigh, before gulping.
Bu Yan actually had had crayfish before and he had to say that there was nothing to recommend it. However, the smell of this dish was actually tempting him to try some.
“Go ahead, and try, ba!” Shiyu handed a pair of chopsticks to him. She love watching people eat her food.
Bu Yan also did not decline, he fished out one of the crayfish, peeled off its shell and placed the tender meat into his mouth. The succulent, springy texture had absorbed the spicy fragrant sauce. As he chewed, his eyes actually closed in pleasure.
“Delicious!” Bu Yan cried out. The tender prawn was plump and juicy, he had just started to savour the spicy taste of his tongue when the whole thing was swallowed into his stomach.
At Bu Yan’s incredible eating expression, the little radishes could not resist anymore. One after another, the little crayfish were picked out of the wok, and soon everyone was hissing from the heat, as they went after the succulent meat within.
“Come, come, let’s eat outside.” Shiyu scooped the crayfish onto a large plate, and placed it on a table under the large tree.
As soon as the plate was set down, it was surrounded by hungry children. As they ate, Shiyu gave each person a bowl of sour plum soup, before she too sat down to eat.
A whole wok of crayfish, several bowls of plum soup[1], enjoyed under a star filled sky as everyone ate to their heart’s content.
When infused with the spicy sauce, the crayfish was almost too irresistible. Even if they wanted to, they were unable to stop until all the crayfish were gone. After which, they poured the sauce of fluffy white rice and swallowed it down. Once everything was gone, everyone happily set down their chopsticks.
Bu Yan supported his swollen belly as he left. He had already made up his mind to not say anything to his master no matter how he was questioned. Also, he planned to visit again in the future.
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The next day, Shiyu was selling steamed buns as usual when she overheard, “Xiang Man Restaurant is now selling steamed buns too, and the flavour was quite similar.” She smiled to herself, and once the cart was put away she set out on her own.
When she returned, there was an extra purse filled with silver on her person.
The following day, majority of the restaurants in Qing Shan City were selling similar steamed buns.
“Grandpa, look, we have about 100 silver taels. Let’s open a shop of our own!” Shiyu proposed as she counted out the money.
“This kind of thing, it’s up to you to decide.” The old man nodded agreeably. A child blessed by an immortal was certainly different. Much more resourceful and cleverer than regular children.
“Very well, let’s find a suitable shop to rent.” Actually, Shiyu had already asked around, the rental for a small shop for half a year was about 50 to 100 silver taels. Since this was the best season for crayfish, it’s probably a good idea to start with Mala Crayfish to make an impact. “Since I’m too young, people might not take me seriously. So, I’d have to depend on grandpa to negotiate in my stead.”
In order to fulfil the ideal situation to activate the divine artefact thing, the easiest way was to earn money and get her hands on spiritual ingredients. Aside from the rental of a shop, she had also been putting out feelers on how to get her hands on spiritual ingredients.
Moreover, aside from Xiao Qi who wants steamed buns and Xiao Wu who dreamed of chicken, she found out that grandpa also have a dream food he wanted to eat. Grandpa really wanted to try the much treasured spiritual beast meat. Lao Er and Xiao Liu too want to try eating food made with spiritual ingredients.
In this world, the most common food were ordinary meat and vegetables. On top of that were spiritual plants and vegetables that influential families jealously grew and protected in secret locations. Beyond that were spiritual beasts meat. Naturally, aside from these three levels of food, there exist higher ranking ingredients someone like them could not even imagine.
Within Qing Shan City, aside from the important clan families, most people could not even afford a mouthful of this divine meat. If they really want to try it, one of the way was to hunt down a spiritual beast on their own. However, for most people, this was just a suicide mission. Only actual cultivators stand a chance against them.
Even Cultivators were divided into several levels: Basic, Elementary, Medium, High, King, Master, Grandmaster, Divine and finally, the Emperor Level. Nine levels in all, by the way, each level was also divided into nine sub levels.
Right now, Shiyu was just a commoner. A regular clan disciple averaged at Basic Level 3. However, male lead Lin Fan could not even reach Basic Level 3, which was why the people around him considered him a ‘failure’ and a ‘trash’.
In this world where strength was everything, naturally Shiyu too wish to increase her power. An ordinary person have no way of protecting themselves or go after things they want.
At any rate, with Grandpa acting as the face, they managed to rent a shop near the city gates. They managed to get their hands on this prime location because the shop owner had some personal issues in their home town and needed the money urgently. Thus, they managed to rent this place former breakfast diner at 70 silver taels for six months.
Within the breakfast diner were tables and chairs, and several other kitchen things they would need as a small diner. This saved them quite a bit of money.
All they need to purchase now were ingredients, and pick an auspicious opening day.
“Let’s sell breakfast stuff in the morning, flour products in the afternoon and crayfish in the evening.” Shiyu’s plan was simple. Their shop was an ordinary shop, and their sales target should be ordinary people. Also, nothing should be too expensive.
There was no objection to this. Grandpa had been a scholar who had passed the imperial exam in the past, and knew how to read, write and do arithmetic, so he was in charged of money. As for the rest of the little radishes, most of them would help out as waiters during peak hours, and sent out to catch crayfish during their free time.
The main problem was their lack of manpower. Shiyu solved this by putting up a notice at the entrance, stating their willingness to buy crayfish. Price depending on the amount of crayfish brought in.
Crayfish quite dumb creatures, so even little children could catch quite a lot of them in one afternoon. Thus, when news that someone was buying crayfish circulated among them, they immediately informed their parents and rushed towards the river to catch crayfish.
On the first day of the notice, Shiyu already received several baskets of crayfish. She was actually at the point of wondering if she should dig a pond to keep these creatures.
It took them three days to get the shop ready. She had already decided on the name much earlier. Er Gou Fat Onion Crayfish.
Why such a weird name?
Oh, since her two writer have come up with this world, neither of them were mentioned anywhere here. Let’s commemorate them this way, ba!
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Notes:
[1] They use bowls to substitute for cups.[Gumihou: Shiyu could be really weird. Also, here’s a link to the Mala Crayfish where I got the picture from. Ahh, I want to eat some now…]
^_^
Translated by Gumihou from kitchennovel dot com.
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crayfish quite dumb —> crayfish are quite dumb
dig a pond <=== Crawdads need water that is aerated. A small still pond without a creek or irrigation canal running through it would cause them to suffocate. I caught crawdads in the irrigation canal (fast moving water) when I was very young. There were plenty of them and the slightly murky water meant they couldn't really see my shadow until it was too late. So if I moved slowly and didn't splash, they didn't hear me well enough to move away. I'd feel around and grab them. I took some home and had dug out a shallow spot and heaped the edges with dirt to form a water basin a few feet across. But 100% of them died very fast. I was too naive to know better. I had always wondered until someone told me they breathe thru gills, and without aerated water, they will die. Unlike goldfish that will desperately suck air if put into a tank without an air pump, crawdads don't do that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seafood_boil has some crayfish/shrimp cooking methods and at public boils, they don't purge (or clean guts out) before cooking. Yuck, boiling them means the heat forces gut contents into the water they are cooked in. As to how whole shrimps are cooked, and I wonder if they tried to cook crawdads like that, they used new thirty-gallon galvanized garbage cans, filled one third full of water and brought to a boil with seasonings in the water. The shrimp were divided into 25 pound batches and stuffed into new pillow cases and tied off. Twenty-five pounds of shrimp took about 25 minutes to cook. One batch came out and the next went in.