Gourmet Style Beast Taming - Chapter 81
Chapter 81: Chapter 81: The Ranking Competition Begins
Translator: 549690339
Three days – neither long nor short.
For the four advancing contestants immersed in their closed-door preparations, the time seemed to pass in a blink of an eye.
But for the countless people following the ranking match, these three days felt incredibly long.
During these three days, the situations of the four elimination competitions became hot topics for countless people over tea and mealtime.
However, unlike the controversy that followed the conclusion of the scoring contest, the most discussed this time was not the champion of the Danju City Cooking Competition, Contestant Lei Ke, and his innovative dish, “Mountains and Clouds,” but rather Qin Lang’s Wen Si Tofu.
Having tofu cut into thin threads was something that almost no chef had thought of doing before.
But when Qin Lang showcased such fantastic knifework in the competition, other Spirit Chefs became curious and couldn’t help but start experimenting themselves.
Fact proved that Dongxia City still had some talented people.
In just two days, a few Spirit Chefs who are known for their knifework managed to do similar tricks.
But most posts were Spirit Chefs sharing their failed attempts on social platforms.
Their failures prompted even more Spirit Chefs to begin experimenting.
A bizarre Tofu Thread Cutting Challenge swept through Dongxia City, even showing trends of expanding to neighboring cities.
Normally, a city-level cooking competition would not attract attention from other cities, as every city has its own city-level cooking contest.
Only a higher level, provincial-level cooking competition would attract the attention of all cities in the province.
However, due to the Tofu Thread Cutting Challenge, Qin Lang started gaining some cross-border popularity.
“Ladies and Gentlemen!
In Dongxia Arena, the host’s mood was as high as ever.
“After the two thrilling rounds of scoring and elimination competitions, there are only four contestants left in this Dongxia City Cooking Competition!”
“They are:
“From Danju City, contestant Lei Ke, who aims to earn his second
Second-Level Food Recommender Badge!”
“From Dongxia City, the dark horse of this Cooking Competition, contestant Qin Lang!”
“From Dongxia City, contestant Tang Xie, the Food Fight Devil with a hundred Food Fight experiences!”
“From Dongxia City, the new generation Spirit Chef from a renowned Spirit Chef family, contestant Zhu Ming!”
“At this moment, they are going to compete in a two-day top-four ranking match!”
“Today, we are going to witness the birth of the winners’ and losers’ groups!”
“First up is the duel between two contestants!”
“Their competition project involves a fixed ingredient, detailed as chicken breast.”
“Let’s give our warmest applause to contestant Qin Lang and contestant Tang Xie, anticipating a fantastic collision of their culinary arts!”
Amid a resounding applause and cheer from the entire arena, Lei Ke and Zhu Ming temporarily left to prepare at the Players’ Spectator Seats. Qin Lang and Tang Xie, under the watchful eyes of countless spectators, stepped into the two competitive standard kitchens at the center of the arena.
“Ding— ”
With the electric bell ringing, the outer walls of the two competitive standard kitchens instantly turned opaque.
The first round of the ranking match began!
After the ringing of the electric bell, a prearranged warm-up performance by the competition’s organizing center started immediately.
This time, the performer was Zhang Xi Yue, a famous Food Spirit performer from Tianhua State invited by the competition organizing center. As a Spirit Chef with three Food Spirits, Zhang can command her Food Spirits to cooperate and create mind-blowing special effects through Combat Skills.
When she appeared in the middle of the stage via the rising platform, directing her three Food Spirits to embark on a wonderful performance prepared in advance to the rhythm of beautiful music, the cheers and applause from the audience were non-stop, making the warm-up effect unparalleled.
In the competition standard kitchen, unaffected by the outside world, Qin Lang and Dan Bao started cooking for the day.
After finishing all the preparations, both Spirit Chef and Food Spirit came to the workbench.
On the chopping board, there lay a piece of chicken breast, larger and seemingly more resilient than the average piece.
Typical chicken breasts only weigh around two to three ounces, but this one weighed a hefty five ounces.
In a cooking competition, there’s no need for excessively large serving sizes; just this piece of chicken breast alone, if cooked and divided into twelve portions, would be more than enough.
It was taken from the Phoenix Tail Chicken King that Qin Lang and Dan Bao had brought back from the Wuhe breeding base and was the main ingredient for today.
After simply cutting off the fascia on the surface of the chicken breast, Qin Lang took a deep breath and pulled out a second kitchen knife from the knife rack beside him.
Qin Lang gripped the two identical kitchen knives in his hands, with the blades facing upwards and the backs downwards, and began to quickly and continuously beat the chicken breast in front of him.
There are three marvelous dishes in Sichuan cuisine that have earned the reputation of “eating chicken without seeing chicken.”
These three dishes are Chicken Tofu, Furong Chicken Slices, and Snowflake Chicken.
What Qin Lang is preparing today is the lattermost, known as the “Souffle of the Chicken World,” the Snowflake Chicken.
Its ingredients are simple, but the preparation process is very complicated.
The hardest part is beating the chicken breast into minced meat.
You must use the back of a knife to “beat”, and not use the blade to “chop”, because it requires patience to remove the tendons inside the meat. Using the blade would cut off the tendons along with the meat, making them inseparable.
Even using two cooking knives, this process still takes over twenty minutes.
Ordinary people would feel their hands sore from beating for so long, but luckily, the spiritual power in a chef’s star veins has a nourishing effect on the body.
This is the key reason why he could steadily proceed with the preparation of the chicken balls after two consecutive days of training.
With one hand he beat with the back of the knife, and with the other, he removed the tendons from the minced meat with the tip of the knife.
Twenty minutes later, all that remained on the chopping board was a pile of delicate light pink chicken breast paste.
Qin Lang transferred the meat paste to a large bowl and walked to the stove by his side.
The green onion sections and ginger slices had been boiled in water and cooled down to room temperature after such a long time.
After straining out the onions and ginger to leave just the ginger scallion water, he poured a little bit into the chicken breast paste in the bowl repeatedly, stirring it up and down to let the meat paste fully absorb the water. “Glug!”
With its big fluffy tail, Dan Bao nudged a small bowl full of eggs beside it, indicating that they had been adequately freshened.
I am Dan Bao, your best helper in the kitchen!
“Very well done.”
Qin Lang complimented with a smile, set the freshly whipped chicken breast paste aside, and began to separate egg whites from the eggs.
Add the egg white to the bowl, dip your hand into the egg white and squeeze firmly, cut off the connecting tissue in the egg white, add it to the chicken breast paste, and then stir again.
After the paste has been stirred evenly again, add in the water starch mixed with pea starch for the third round of stirring.
With each addition of water, the chicken breast paste absorbed a large amount of water in every nook and cranny, and its texture started to become pasty.
Lastly, add a spoonful of chicken soup made from other parts of the Phoenix Tail Chicken King, seasoned with salt and pepper, and stir well until evenly mixed.
After the lengthy process of preparing the chicken mixture, Qin Lang shook his somewhat sore arms and re-adjusted his state.
“Gurgle!”
Cheer up!
With a nudge of Qin Lang’s cheek, Dan Bao’s big tail wagged with anticipation.
Only the final step remains!
The contents of the bonus chapter at the end of this chapter:
[Snowflake Chicken]
