Chapter 878 - It“s Much More Comfortable Sitting Here Than Standing In The Kitchen
Mag continued to search for top-grade beef while explaining to Firis. The girl listened attentively. She had already gotten totally used to the smells of the market and the scenes of animal slaughter. She asked questions when she didn’t understand, and Mag answered them one by one.
They visited five beef stands in a row, but only managed to find two acceptable pieces of chuck meat. “Considering it’s already noon, I can’t complain too much. Anyway, the two pieces should be enough for you to practice your skills, I think.”
“When is the best time to come to the market, Boss?” asked Firis curiously.
“The best time to come is in the morning, when all the ingredients are the freshest,” answered Mag, “but smart buyers will wait here even before dawn begins to break because that’s when the butchers start to work. This way, they get to see the health of the cattle, and the beef cut from the freshly slaughtered cattle is indisputably the best.”
“You are obviously an expert in buying meat, sir,” a man running a beef stand cut in. “The people who are responsible for buying ingredients for big and small restaurants come here as soon as the market lights go on in the early hours of morning. They place their orders even before the livestock is killed, so you can’t hope to buy a good part like a kidney if you don’t come early enough.”
“Some people come here that early just to buy the best parts of meat?” Firis didn’t understand, but she looked at Mag with admiration. She had seen his attitude towards food, so she was convinced that Mag had to be among those people.
Mag nodded. “Ingredients are the foundation of food. A great chef can make a delicious dish with inferior ingredients, to be sure, but that dish is far from perfect in his mind.”
“Are perfect ingredients always expensive and rare?” asked Firis.
“Not necessarily. In fact, perfect ingredients have nothing to do with price or rarity,” Mag said, shaking his head slightly. “It’s meaningless to use phoenix eggs in fried rice for ordinary people. Different restaurants target different kinds of customers. Know your target customers and make the best food they can afford. That’s the basic ability of an excellent chef.”
“Make the best food the target customers can afford,” Firis echoed, thoughtful.
There were many kinds of vegetables at the market, such as radishes, cabbages, and green peppers. Mag also found some strange ones that were unique to this world, such as monkey heads and overlords, which opened his eyes to a large extent, but he still hadn’t figured out what vegetable he should cook for the competition.
The system wanted him to do the impossible, so he judged that he only had himself to rely on to win the veggie dish rankings.
Perhaps the system wanted to test his creative abilities in cooking.
He could never do such a shameful thing as dancing in front of the restaurant in female clothing.
Mag made note of the vegetables he had seen today in his mind. He decided to think about the veggie dishes he had tried in his previous life when he went back. Without the system’s experience bag, he felt pressure weighing down on him.
“It’s getting late. Time to get back. It takes time to make sauce. If we go back too late, I won’t be able to teach you how to cook kebabs today,” Mag told Firis. He bought some spices at a spice stand, and then took Firis back to the restaurant.
Mag put on his apron, stopped at the kitchen door, and looked back at Firis, who was tying up her apron around her waist. “Are you sure you want to become a cook?” he asked suddenly.
Firis thought for a moment, and then nodded solemnly.
“Good. I hope you can become a good cook soon. I’ll promote you and double your salary when you’re good enough.” Mag smiled and stepped into the kitchen.
“The temperature of the cookfire is crucial when grilling beef kebabs,” Mag said when they were both in the kitchen. “It will take a lot of practice to get the hang of adjusting the temperature, but before that, I’ll teach you how to make sauce, which is also very important.
“If kebab is the body, then sauce is the soul. Anyone can grill kebabs, but they can have 100 different tastes in 100 different places. Why is that? Because they use different sauces. As such, how good a kebab tastes depends largely on how good the sauce is.”
Mag put the spices he had just bought at the market on the table.
“So how to make the sauce, Boss?” Firis asked, looking at Mag nervously. Her learning journey had begun.
“There are three kinds of sauces I make, which are barbecue sauce, spicy sauce, and garlic sauce. The three sauces bring three different flavors to the beef Kebabs sold in the restaurant, which can satisfy most of the customers.” Mag smiled. “Of course, you can always be inventive and create new sauces, but unless customers love them, you can’t use them. Now let me show you the spices you need and how to make the three sauces.”
Firis nodded. “OK.” She seldom used spices when cooking; salt was the only seasoning she added in most cases, so she didn’t know much about the spices, which had strange fragrance.
Mag put the beef in the fridge, and then patiently introduced Firis to the spices.
Of course, a chef’s best teacher was their tongue and nose. After chewing dozens of peppercorns, Firis memorized the numbing sensation they created in the mouth.
Mag taught her how to make the barbecue sauce first. He told her in detail the order in which each spice was added, the amount needed, and the time interval between them. Then he walked out of the kitchen, leaving Firis to it.
It had taken Mag several tens of days to master the skills of making the three sauces, so he didn’t hold out much hope of her making something to his satisfaction by dinner.
Mag found a piece of paper and a pencil, and put them on the table. He then poured himself a cup of tea and sat down. It was much more comfortable sitting here than standing in the kitchen.
He began to think about the vegetable dishes he had eaten in his previous life that impressed him.
“Sour and spicy shredded potatoes, braised bamboo shoots, fried corn…” One dish after another passed through Mag’s mind. He had tried many amazing veggie dishes, but he didn’t know which one could beat all the restaurants in the Aden Square and make it to the top of the veggie dish rankings.
“Which one should I choose?” When he raised his head and looked into the kitchen, his eyes widened in disbelief.
Spices were flying in a circle around Firis, like the ribbon around a dancer.
Green light shone from her body, her eyes closed tightly; she looked as if she were meditating.
Suddenly, her eyes snapped open.
The spices fell into the bowl in front of her. The soy sauce bottle floated up, the lid came off, and the soy sauce poured into the bowl without her even touching it. More bottles and cans were opened, and various kinds of spices and seasonings were added into the big bowl in an orderly fashion.