Setting Up Stalls – Chapter 165

It Can’t Be That Spicy, Right?

Su Ruixi was really so cute. She was clearly a rather proud and pampered person, and Sun Miao could have forcibly told her, “No processing it at home.” It wouldn’t have been a big deal if Sun Miao directly processed it in the courtyard, but Su Ruixi said, “It needs to be cleaned up thoroughly,” which was a subtle way of permitting her to prepare the zhe’ergen at home.

Sun Miao agreed with a smile, “Okay.”

But speaking of zhe’ergen, Sun Miao was a little confused. “Susu-jie, you really don’t eat zhe’ergen? Guizhou province is a major consumer of zhe’ergen. Didn’t you eat it when you were little?”

“I did,” Su Ruixi confessed honestly, but a look of disgust appeared on her face. “It’s precisely because I’ve eaten it that I don’t like it. That thing has another name, fishy-smell grass¹. Just from the name, you know what it smells like. I don’t like any of these things.”

“It seems you’ve disliked it since you were a child.” When they were buying fish earlier, Su Ruixi had said she didn’t like things with a strong fishy smell. This zhe’ergen did indeed smell somewhat similar to a fishy smell, and its taste was rather unique.

Those who loved it couldn’t get enough, while those who didn’t couldn’t eat it at all, and might even throw up.

At noon, she first made sweet flour sauce² and chili sauce. She didn’t make the one with fishy-smell grass. She planned to make that in the evening, and after she was done, she would clean the kitchen, air it out immediately, and then go upstairs to shower. This way, she could ensure that neither the house nor she herself would have any lingering smell, and Su Ruixi wouldn’t have to smell it.

The sweet flour sauce was a bit simpler. The basic seasonings were sugar, starch, soy sauce, and salt. When stir-frying them according to the ratio, she added the pre-made scallion oil³. The most difficult part of making sweet flour sauce was how to prevent it from sticking to the bottom of the pot while cooking.

Once the sweet flour sauce stuck to the bottom, the entire pot would be wasted.

Now, with high industrial development, the vast majority of sweet flour sauce is uniformly produced on assembly lines. Making it yourself is troublesome and laborious, and the result might not even be as tasty as the bottled kind. But Sun Miao was an exception. Her control over seasonings was exquisite and meticulous, and the sweet flour sauce she made was even better than what came off the assembly line.

The finished sweet flour sauce was reddish-brown leaning toward brown, with a thick texture, yet when stirred with a spoon, it flowed like water and wouldn’t stick to the spoon. At the same time, its surface looked shiny as if coated with a layer of oil, but it didn’t feel greasy when eaten.

Sweet flour sauce like this was delicious even when just used for large scallions dipped in sauce and wrapped in a thin pancake⁴.

The chili sauce was even more particular.

The method was also from Guizhou province, using glutinous rice cake chili⁵. The chilies selected were small hot peppers, but they had to be spicy without being pungent, with a rich, spicy aroma. They were not easy to find here. Sun Miao had searched several shops selling chilies before finally buying this type of chili from a shop run by someone from Guizhou.

The chilies were pounded together with young ginger and garlic cloves until the chilies resembled ciba, hence the name glutinous rice cake chili. Sichuan province also made it, with each side having its own flavor, but the Guizhou version customarily added zhe’ergen.

After everything was pounded, it was fried in oil and then drained. Only then would the chili sauce be fresh, fragrant, and rich, with the chili aroma immediately rushing forth. As Sun Miao smelled it, her mouth began to water a little. There was only one bad thing about being with Su Ruixi, and that was that Su Ruixi didn’t eat spicy food, so Sun Miao rarely made spicy dishes.

People who eat a lot of spicy food will especially miss that spicy taste if they don’t eat it for a long time. The current Sun Miao was exactly like this.

She swallowed a mouthful of saliva, put the chili sauce aside, and planned to use it for the fish head later.

The fish head needed to be steamed in a steamer. Fortunately, the steamer-oven all-in-one machine at home was big enough. She put the fish head inside, set the time, and went to do other things. Today’s main character was still the Guizhou Zhijin potato cake she had just learned from the system.

It was 12 o’clock by the time Sun Miao finished making lunch and brought it to the table to enjoy with Su Ruixi.

The first thing Su Ruixi saw was the potato cake. She actually couldn’t quite remember what the ones her grandmother made looked like, but she subconsciously felt that her grandmother’s were definitely not as good as Sun Miao’s. Just by looking at it, she knew that Sun Miao’s must be extremely delicious.

Golden and brilliant, with just a hint of brown, they sat one by one on the white porcelain plate, looking both well-behaved and cute.

Sun Miao said, “Be careful, it’s hot.”

Su Ruixi’s chopsticks had already reached out, picked up a potato cake, and started eating.

This potato cake was not hard; it was still a bit soft, and because it was pan-fried, the middle was slightly fluffy. When the chopsticks clamped onto it, the two sides naturally dented a little towards the middle. The moment it was picked up, a faint “kacha” sound could be heard.

You could tell it was crisp just by listening, but the middle was soft. Su Ruixi had never had much resistance to this kind of food.

She opened her mouth and took a light bite of the potato cake. The outer shell of this potato cake was crisp, but not crunchy. It wasn’t that Sun Miao couldn’t make it crunchy—the crispness of the crab shell yellow she made was something most people couldn’t achieve. She didn’t make it that way because potato cake didn’t need to be too crunchy; this pan-fried crispness was just right.

The crisp feeling quickly faded, and the next second came the unique soft and fluffy texture of potato.

It was delicious, really delicious. It was the most original taste of potato, fragrant to eat. With one bite, the hot air inside rushed out with the aroma of potato. Su Ruixi could taste the slight sweetness from the potato’s starch. It was grainy and soft in the mouth, and the more she ate, the more fragrant it became.

Sun Miao timely pushed the dipping saucer toward Su Ruixi. Inside was the sweet flour sauce.

Su Ruixi picked up the potato cake, dipped a little on it, and started eating again. This time, the feeling was different from before. It became sweeter and saltier, but it didn’t feel overwhelming. Instead, she felt that this bit of sauce could make her eat even more potato cake.

Although the potato cake was a bit hot, Su Ruixi still finished one in a three-down-five-divided-by-two⁶ manner. When she wanted to grab another, she was stopped by Sun Miao. “Susu-jie, eat some other dishes too. Don’t just eat the potato cake. It’s delicious, but it’s all starch and not that easy to digest. It’s a staple food, so eat more… of the other dishes.”

“Okay.”

Su Ruixi ate a few of Sun Miao’s usual dishes and also ate the fish balls, but her gaze fell upon the fish head. She had never eaten it herself, but even if you haven’t eaten pork, you’ve seen a pig run⁷. She had seen other people at her table order it in restaurants.

Generally, the most common one sold in restaurants is dual pepper fish head⁸, which uses both chopped chili⁹ and fresh chili. The one Sun Miao made was simpler, with just chili sauce spread on top, only one flavor of chili and no chopped chili. Although the flavor was certainly not as well-matched as chopped chili fish head, the chili sauce Sun Miao made was delicious, both fragrant and spicy, making the entire fish head delicious as well.

If nothing else, the spicy fragrance of that chili kept wafting into Su Ruixi’s nose, genuinely making her a bit curious.

Besides, she had eaten chili before.

Referring to the beef chili sauce that Sun Miao thought wasn’t spicy at all, which had made her eyes red and almost brought her to tears.

Su Ruixi was quite confident in herself. She had never really suffered any grievances growing up, so a sense of confidence arose spontaneously: Since I’ve already eaten Sun Miao’s chili sauce before, and later even finished that tiny fingernail-sized bit of chili sauce in the plastic bag, then trying a little bit now shouldn’t be a problem!

Su Ruixi also trusted Sun Miao, believing that the fish head she made would definitely be delicious. The fish balls were very delicious. This time they were made looser, soft and delicate in the mouth, melting with a gentle press of the tongue, and their shape was very similar to crab roe lion’s head.

But there wasn’t the slightest fishy smell; on the contrary, it was very delicious.

This fish head definitely had no fishy smell either, and it would be delicious!

Su Ruixi found many excuses for herself, and her whole demeanor could be summed up in four words—eager to try.

Her expression was too obvious. Sun Miao was sitting right across from her, facing her directly. How could she possibly not see what she was thinking? But she really didn’t think Su Ruixi could eat this, because she had put in a huge amount of chili. When eating chili fish head, how could it work without chili?

It wasn’t that Sun Miao looked down on Su Ruixi… alright, when it came to eating chili, there was really no need to think too highly of Su Ruixi. She just couldn’t handle chili. For that beef chili sauce before, she had used non-spicy chilies, and even that made Su Ruixi’s eyes red and watery.

Given that, this large basin of fish head, made to suit Sun Miao’s taste, would definitely be unbearably spicy for Su Ruixi no matter how you looked at it. Even the fish meat wouldn’t be okay. Sun Miao’s culinary skills were there for all to see; the fish head was marinated before being steamed, so the meat had already absorbed the flavor.

For someone who can eat spicy food, the fish meat was certainly not very spicy, just savory with a hint of spice. But for Su Ruixi, that really was a ‘dame dame’¹⁰.

So Sun Miao opened her mouth and persuaded her, “Susu-jie, if you want to eat fish, next time I’ll make you clear-steamed fish¹¹ again, with a little chili for garnish. This is too spicy, you can’t eat it.”

Facts proved that sometimes, being overconfident is really not a good thing. No matter what Sun Miao said, Su Ruixi just wouldn’t listen. Su Ruixi frowned, and her little expression made Sun Miao feel like she was such a bad and stingy person, not even giving Su Ruixi a bite of fish.

She put on a particularly pitiful little expression, her voice carrying a hint of wheedling, “Miaomiao, I’ll just have one bite of fish meat. Can you help me push the chili to the side?”

Suddenly calling her “Miaomiao” at this moment was too much of a foul.

Not only did Sun Miao think so, but Su Ruixi herself also thought so. After calling out this nickname, her cheeks flushed a little, but she quickly became righteously confident¹²: I’ve already called her that, she can’t possibly still not let me eat the fish, right?

Sun Miao indeed found it hard to resist, especially at this moment when the cotton doll secretly ran out again, making the same expression next to Su Ruixi. This 1+1 effect, which was far greater than 2, made it impossible for Sun Miao to parry. However, Sun Miao still gave a vaccination shot¹³ beforehand, “Then you can only eat the fish meat. Take one bite first, only a small bite is allowed. I have to tell you, even the fish meat is very spicy.”

In her heart, she also had a small sliver of wishful thinking: It’s just a little fish meat. Even if it’s spicy, it can’t be that spicy, right?

Upon getting Sun Miao’s consent, Su Ruixi immediately became happy. She extended her chopsticks and poked at the fish head. The cross-section of the fish head revealed white fish meat, tinged with a faint pink from being steeped in chili. Su Ruixi originally wanted to just grab a piece directly but was stopped by Sun Miao.

“Wait, eat the meat from the inside. The outside is spicier than the inside.”

Sun Miao simply did it herself, pulling the fish meat apart and picking a small, less spicy piece from the inside, placing it in Su Ruixi’s bowl.

Su Ruixi looked at the small piece of fish meat in her bowl and couldn’t help but mutter, “Stingy.”

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