A Real Pro!
“If you want to know if a hulatang is delicious, you only need four steps. First, the first step is to observe the color.” Lizi lifted the bowl of hulatang, faced it toward the camera, tilted it slightly, and continued speaking, “The color of hulatang must be a rich, soy-sauce red. You should be able to tell just by looking that the soup is thick, but at the same time, it must be glossy. If it’s a kind of dull, dark soy-sauce red, then it’s most likely gone cold, and the soup has congealed in the bowl. It definitely won’t be good.”
“A delicious hulatang must look like a meat broth that has been stewing for a long time, making you build up an appetite with a single glance. Look, just like this one.”
“The soup is thick, savory, and glossy, and you can still see the threads of various ingredients inside, all while steam rises from it. It looks exceptionally beautiful at a glance. For this bowl of hulatang, Lizi doesn’t even need to eat it to know it’s definitely delicious.”
Just from the color alone, Lizi had already said so much. Not far away, Sun Miao pricked up her ears while continuing to make youmoutou. Her current culinary skill was already at a level where she could perform one heart, two uses1. In her kitchen at home, she could even have two stoves going at the same time and the food she made would still be tasty and delicious.
She took all of Lizi’s words in and couldn’t help but sigh with emotion: A real pro!
“The second point is the smell.”
Lizi brought her nose closer and, wrinkling it, took a sniff. “Little Boss Sun’s hulatang should be a revised version of the Xiaoyao Town style. If you come closer and focus on smelling it, you can actually detect the aroma of zhongyao2, but it’s not very strong and gets covered up by the smell of white pepper. But I have to admit, the fragrance of the white pepper is also rich; it’s bound to be delicious.”
Yesterday in the group chat, someone had already brought up the matter of the zhongyao smell, but for some people not from Yu Province, the idea of zhongyao in hulatang was simply tales from the Arabian Nights3. Besides, when they were eating, they only remembered how delicious it was and somewhat forgot the specific flavors.
Now that Lizi was bringing up an old matter again4, the surrounding customers happened to have hulatang right in front of them. Even those who were halfway through paused their eating, brought their noses closer, and took a careful sniff.
“It’s true, there is a zhongyao smell.”
“I just smelled it! There’s nutmeg. I used to have diarrhea all the time, and when I went to the TCM clinic for a prescription, this was in it. I definitely wouldn’t mistake the smell!”
“There’s definitely fennel, it’s especially obvious!”
Everyone was talking about the zhongyao they could sense. For a moment, Sun Miao felt that if given more time, these customers would surely be able to identify all of her medicinal spices.
“The common ones like cinnamon, dried ginger, galangal, and angelica root are definitely in there. As for the others, Lizi can’t taste them, so we’ll leave it to the vast number of food lovers to distinguish them.” Lizi gave a summary of sorts, then picked up a spoon and gently stirred the hulatang. “The third point might be different from what everyone thinks. To judge whether a hulatang is good, you also have to look at the stir.”
“As the common saying goes, color, aroma, and taste all complete5. We already have the color and aroma. How the taste truly is, we still need to see from the stir.”
“There are many ingredients in hulatang, and with the addition of wheat gluten and thickening with starch6, it becomes especially viscous. But with a good hulatang, when you stir it with a spoon, you can feel the thickness, yet you won’t feel like the spoon is caught and completely unable to move. On the contrary, you don’t need to use much strength. As long as you stir in one direction, you can feel what is called moving clouds and flowing water7.”
In front of the camera, following Lizi’s movements, the entire bowl of hulatang seemed to come alive. As she stirred, the thick soup base seemed to split into the two sides of a Taiji8 symbol, and the ingredients like the threads of wood ear mushrooms followed her movements like fish, or like the waves around a whirlpool, or even like the clouds in the sky melting into a single mass—that fluid and beautiful.
If the originally still hulatang was already surprising enough, its soy-sauce red and glossy appearance enough to capture everyone’s hearts, then the stirred hulatang gained an extra sense of being “alive.”
Lizi’s actions once again prompted everyone to imitate her. “It’s true! It doesn’t feel the least bit sluggish when I stir it with a spoon, but I can still feel that it’s thick. It’s so magical!”
“Achieving this is not simple. You have to stir it constantly during preparation, without destroying the ingredients inside. Like this sliced beef, Little Boss Sun made it very tender, so it could be broken apart easily by stirring. Let me whisper something: Lizi has seen some tutorials that say you can only use a wooden spatula to stir, precisely because a metal spoon is too sharp.”
——A true pro.
Sun Miao sighed with emotion in her heart once again. Having someone discover the care she put into her work truly made Sun Miao feel a little bit proud.
After all this peripheral stuff was said, it was time for the most crucial part——eating, which was also the most fundamental aspect: the taste.
Lizi didn’t rush to scoop up a mouthful of soup with her spoon. Instead, she first used her chopsticks to pick out a slice of beef. “This is it, this is what Lizi wanted to eat! Many places don’t put sliced beef in their hulatang, because adding it would definitely make the price more expensive, so everyone chooses to just use minced pork instead. Especially the small food stalls on the roadside; being able to have a bit of minced meat is already considered very good.”
She picked it up with her chopsticks. The beef slice rested on them, the soup clinging to its surface, on the verge of dripping but not quite falling. Then, she opened her mouth wide and ate the beef slice in one bite.
This time, Lizi didn’t forget her commentary, but she only said one thing: “Mmm~” That kind of deep satisfaction that radiates from the inside out from eating delicious food is something that can’t be faked. The reason Lizi came to Sun Miao’s stall so many times was one, because Sun Miao’s food was truly exceptionally delicious, and two, because her audience particularly loved the expression she made when eating good food.
There weren’t that many delicious things, especially after becoming an eating broadcaster, Lizi often had to put on a business smile. As she ate more and more things, the foods that could make her feel satisfied and that she loved from the bottom of her heart became fewer and fewer. Occasions where she showed a genuine, satisfied expression on stream had also become rare.
But after she encountered Sun Miao’s stall, she was able to smile genuinely from her heart.
She gave Sun Miao a thumbs-up. “Delicious! So delicious!” After saying this, she began to bury her head in her food and eat. Only after finishing one bowl did she continue speaking to the camera, “Mmm, the most crucial things for judging a bowl of hulatang are actually: the color is vibrant and beautiful, the seasoning is appropriate, the flavor is savory and pure, and there’s no gamy or pungent smell. If you can do all these things, it’s actually already considered a pretty good hulatang. But what Little Boss Sun has achieved, I feel, is the absolute pinnacle!”
Lizi finished speaking and then continued to eat. This time, she never lifted her head again, only occasionally letting out sounds like: “Mmm~,” “Mmm!,” and “Wow!” to express her love for the hulatang, as well as her protest that “I really am commentating while I eat.”
Lizi’s eating speed was fast. Six bowls of hulatang plus four youmoutou were devoured in minutes. After she finished, she said goodbye to Sun Miao and left.
Today, because the student crowd was there, Sun Miao sold out early. She pedaled her food cart back home and went about her daily routine, which didn’t differ much from day to day. But when Su Ruixi came home that evening, she gave Sun Miao a blow to the head9.
“By the way, my mom said my dad wants to go with her to eat hulatang early tomorrow morning.”
A cold sweat instantly trickled down Sun Miao’s forehead. Ever since the day she was on the show, she knew her vest10 would definitely be torn off by Father Su, but she hadn’t expected it to be so soon. Sun Miao couldn’t help but ask, “Ah… then, what’s, um, uncle’s attitude?”
In Sun Miao’s heart, the most difficult hurdle to cross was Father Su. She had met Mother Su, Shen Yiqiu, before; she was beautiful and gentle, spoke softly, and as a woman, she was clearly more able to understand and tolerate them. But Father Su, in Sun Miao’s mind, was not that kind of figure.
The first time they met, when they just saw each other and nodded, he seemed quite easy to talk to. But after seeing him more, it was inevitable to feel that Father Su looked like he possessed some of the authority of a feudal patriarch11. Especially in front of his assistant, he was truly someone who would say one, not two12.
When she was running her stall outside the Su Corporation industrial park, the HR director of Su Corporation had chatted with her once or twice and secretly gossiped about Father Su, saying he was a stern and particularly serious person who rarely smiled. Given this situation, no matter how Sun Miao thought about it: this hurdle will be hard to cross.
So when she asked about Father Su’s attitude, Sun Miao was quite nervous.
Su Ruixi, however, didn’t think it was a big deal, especially since she had already called Shen Yiqiu and they were on the same page. So she said nonchalantly, “What attitude could he have? Just relax and treat him like a normal customer.”
How could this let Sun Miao relax? She was about to die from nervousness. “Huh? Susu-jie, will uncle not let you inherit the family business because we’re lesbians? He won’t make you go abroad to choose a sperm donor and get pregnant to inherit the family business, will he? That’s not okay, Susu-jie, that kind of thing is very harmful to your body, and, and I don’t want a… child… stuck between us.”
Sun Miao had been so stunned by the old folks’13 surprise visit to the stall that the words she spoke were like a donkey’s head that doesn’t match a horse’s mouth14. This was also related to her being too relaxed in front of Su Ruixi; otherwise, these words wouldn’t have just tumbled out15.
Only after she finished speaking did she realize how impulsive she had been. She could only turn her head away and pretend not to look at Su Ruixi.
Today, she had made sunding xianggu roubao16, which Su Ruixi particularly liked. While tearing the baozi into smaller pieces to eat, she also found what Sun Miao said to be unusually cola17. See? Her lover was this much fun, how could she not tease her?
“So, you have to treat my parents well tomorrow, but don’t overdo it. If you overdo it, it’ll make them notice something is up. You, just act like you normally do.”
But even if she wanted to tease Sun Miao, Su Ruixi would absolutely not say something like, “Well, what if my dad really does ask me to get IVF?” That kind of talk would be detrimental to their relationship. Su Ruixi was an aojiao18, not an idiot; she knew perfectly well19 what should and shouldn’t be said.
After dinner, Sun Miao was still thinking about that matter. Later that evening, after they finished watching TV on the sofa, Su Ruixi suddenly leaned over, took her hand, and placed it on her own stomach. “I won’t get pregnant, and I won’t go have a child. If I could have one, it would be yours.”
“We can’t have children,” Sun Miao said, her face bright red.
“I don’t care. You try again, maybe you really can.”
“Hooligan.”
Su Ruixi smiled.
The author has something to say:
Today I’ve swollen up into a bee-puppy20!
p.s. The system’s departure is inevitable; Little Boss Sun will continue to grow on her own. But in the book after next, the system will see everyone again. The next book I’m writing is 《She Said I’m Super Strong as a Ghost》, and the one after that will be 《Late Night Ghost Stall》. It’s a food + supernatural theme that I love. The gong21 is an ordinary human, and the shou22 is an investigator from the Paranormal Investigation Bureau, hehe (rubs handsies23).
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