Xing Junman was stung by these words until her face turned red and her ears burned. She lowered her head deeply, unconsciously wringing her dress sash with both hands, so nervous she didn’t know what to do.
Food Service Officer Qin withdrew her sharp gaze, slowly picked up chopsticks, and tasted some of the Quail Crystal Aspic and Flower-Steamed Quail. After a moment, she gave her evaluation: “These two dishes are acceptable, with six or seven parts resembling the taste made by imperial chefs.”
The affirmation in her words gave Xing Junman some comfort and rekindled hope. She glanced down at the other two pufferfish dishes, secretly hoping Food Service Officer Qin would look at her with new respect after tasting them.
However, Food Service Officer Qin stopped her chopsticks there and said directly: “I won’t taste the dishes made with pufferfish. This ingredient contains deadly poison – the slightest improper handling could endanger the diner’s life. You and I are complete strangers. I know nothing about your training situation and am unclear whether you possess the ability to cook with pufferfish. So I’m sorry, but I cannot risk my life to taste these two dishes of yours.”
Xing Junman was stunned and stammered, mustering courage to ask: “But pufferfish was among the alternative ingredients. These alternative ingredients should have been personally selected by Food Service Madam, shouldn’t they? Since we could choose it, why won’t Food Service Madam taste it after it’s prepared?”
“That’s correct – pufferfish was among the alternative ingredients,” Food Service Officer Qin looked directly at Xing Junman and said frankly. “However, alternative doesn’t mean mandatory – you could have declined. To impress everyone, when other meats and vegetables were available for selection, you still chose to use poisonous ingredients, not hesitating to put those of high rank in danger. For Royal Kitchen internal members, this is a great taboo. Folk chefs may focus primarily on pursuing delicious flavors when preparing meals, but for those of us serving nobles, we must first ensure safety, and only secondly, flavor. You must understand that at no time should you choose ingredients that might harm nobles.”
Xing Junman’s face turned paper-white. She immediately raised her hands to her forehead, performed a great bow to Food Service Officer Qin, and shamefully confessed her fault. Food Service Officer Qin coldly ordered her to withdraw and continue preparing for the subsequent competition.
After the ten girls’ self-selected dishes were evaluated, the final round required each to make one dish using uniform main ingredients. Food Service Officer Qin told everyone: “I came from the capital, and all along the way I saw spring vegetables piled green, rapeseed flowers golden yellow, oil seed rape flowers covering mountains and plains, brilliant and splendid, as if they would bloom into summer. So for today’s final dish, let’s use oil seed rape that every household commonly keeps. Use oil seed rape as the main ingredient, select your own side ingredients, choose your own cooking method. When finished, County Magistrate Shen and I will taste them as before.”
The girls looked at each other. The final round determined victory or defeat. Everyone had been guessing how rare the final ingredient would be and how difficult the cooking would be. No one expected Food Service Officer Qin to select such a common household ingredient.
After receiving orders, the women dispersed to prepare separately. Zhenzhen selected some dill, fennel, ginger, and pepper, slowly roasted them over low heat until dry, then mixed and ground them into fine powder, setting it aside for use. She then took out the iron wok she had brought, washed it clean and heated it, added a little sesame oil, and after a moment, mixed in sauce and the ground seasoning powder, stir-frying into a sauce. After removing it, she washed the iron wok clean again, added cooked vegetable oil and heated it, then immediately poured in the washed and cleaned oil seed rape, stir-fried briefly until the vegetables were just cooked and released their juices, then poured the prepared sauce into the wok to mix with the oil seed rape.
When the sauce touched the hot oil seed rape, the room immediately filled with fragrance, causing the other girls cooking to pause their actions and look toward Zhenzhen. Food Service Officer Qin also walked behind Zhenzhen to observe her actions.
The iron wok Zhenzhen used was the new one improved after discussion with Lin Hong – shaped like an inverted dome, with a thin wok body and a convenient wooden handle. Zhenzhen held the handle with her left hand and the spatula with her right, scooping along the iron wok’s arc in one motion, turning the oil seed rape with extreme smoothness. The wok wasn’t large. She gauged the heat in the stove, and when a cluster of flames leaped up, she suddenly lifted the entire wok, her wrist rising and falling, using rhythmic shaking to guide the flames to lick the depth of the wok bottom. The oil seed rape in the wok also danced in the firelight, with every leaf receiving the embrace of sauce fragrance through repeated rising and falling.
The oil seed rape finally plated had a lustrous, moist appearance. Because the heat was well controlled, it still looked fresh and lovely green. The sauce merged with oil and vegetable juices, plus a trace of light oil smoke clinging to it, actually making this vegetable dish emit a rich, savory flavor similar to premium meat.
After tasting, Food Service Officer Qin pondered silently, her gaze repeatedly moving over the iron wok Zhenzhen had used, even personally grasping it to examine inside and out. County Magistrate Shen tasted bite after bite, praising: “I never expected this bland vegetable, after experiencing such worldly fire, could become so full of character.”
Food Service Officer Qin picked up Zhenzhen’s spatula and slid it along the inner wall of the iron wok, feeling the completely smooth arc without any resistance during operation. Then she said to Zhenzhen: “The palace also does stir-frying, but we use copper pans – flat-bottomed and shallow-mouthed. We only occasionally use them to fry meat. Fluffy vegetables aren’t as quick and convenient to stir-fry as what you just did. It’s hard to control the heat, vegetables easily burn, so we don’t use them much. Your iron wok is quite novel. I’ve never seen this shape before. Where is it made?”
Zhenzhen said: “This wok was made after I followed the teacher who taught me cooking, trying stir-frying again and again, summarizing the advantages and disadvantages of wok bodies, repeatedly modifying drafts, then having blacksmiths forge according to the drawings.”
Food Service Officer Qin nodded: “To do good work, one must first sharpen one’s tools. With this excellent tool, you can research many dishes in stir-frying that predecessors never attempted.”
Regardless of what side ingredients the other girls chose, without exception they all chose to boil oil seed rape in water. Many made vegetable soup – some adding dried scallops and dried shrimp to the soup, some adding tofu and fish balls, others stewing with cured meat and sauced meat. Xing Junman also used soup, but she used superior broth slowly simmered and filtered from pork, quail meat, chicken bones, and pig bones. After cooking the oil seed rape, the soup remained very clear, appearing like ordinary vegetable soup with no visible ingredients, but diners immediately felt their mouths fill with delicious flavor upon tasting, quickly appreciating its subtlety. This also made County Magistrate Shen praise endlessly: “Miss is indeed one who returned after studying in Lin’an. I’ve only seen similar methods in the great taverns of Lin’an.”
The last to present her work was Feng Xian. Differently from the others, she used no meat or fish ingredients. Besides oil seed rape, she used two other vegetables: wormwood and reed shoots. The three vegetables appeared in roughly equal amounts. Feng Xian blanched each vegetable separately in boiling water, drained them, and arranged them neatly on a plate. She took a small cup, added sauce, soy sauce, and a little sugar, mixing evenly. In a small pan, she poured a little oil, added ginger strips to fry until fragrant over heat, then removed the ginger strips, poured the prepared sauce into the pan to mix with oil, then drizzled it all over the blanched vegetables.
The vegetables made this way retained the refreshing taste of boiling while also carrying the fragrance of oil and fat. The sauce was appropriately salty and sweet – truly a delicious dish.
Facing this dish, Food Service Officer Qin also had questions: “I said the ingredients should focus on oil seed rape. In your dish, oil seed rape, wormwood, and reed shoots are in equal amounts without distinguishing primary from secondary. What’s the reason?”
Feng Xian lowered her head and said: “I named this dish Three Friends of the Spring River. Since they are three friends, I thought there should be no favoritism, so I didn’t deliberately make oil seed rape primary.”
Food Service Officer Qin fixed her eyes on Feng Xian, temporarily not questioning further. County Magistrate Shen had already forgotten about his poor spleen and stomach, and while they were talking, he was already absorbed in tasting. Feng Xian saw he was only eating oil seed rape and couldn’t help softly reminding: “County Magistrate Shen, please also try the wormwood and reed shoots – it’s best to eat all three together.”
“Oh, what’s the benefit of eating all three together?” County Magistrate Shen asked while reaching chopsticks toward the Three Friends of the Spring River, picking up all three vegetables at once, putting them in his mouth to chew carefully, then smiled: “It seems more fragrant than eating any one alone.”
“Not only that,” Food Service Officer Qin slowly spoke at this time, revealing Feng Xian’s true intention: “It’s said that eating oil seed rape, wormwood, and reed shoots together can neutralize pufferfish poison. This girl probably saw that the county magistrate ate Xi Shi’s Milk earlier, feared there might be residual poison, so she specially made this dish to detoxify the county magistrate.”
County Magistrate Shen was startled and turned to look at Feng Xian: “Is this what you were thinking, Miss?”
Feng Xian didn’t answer, only lowered her head and curtsied to the county magistrate.
County Magistrate Shen couldn’t help sighing: “Miss not only has excellent culinary skills, but also has a kind heart and exceptional intelligence!”
Witnessing this scene, Xing Junman broke out in cold sweat on her forehead, her body swayed, and she nearly fainted. Realizing the probing gazes of the surrounding women, she gritted her teeth and barely managed to stand steady.
Food Service Officer Qin also said to Feng Xian: “This move of yours was quite risky. If I didn’t know about the detoxifying properties of these three vegetables and judged you defeated in this round for not distinguishing primary from secondary, wouldn’t you be wronged?”
Feng Xian answered: “Even so, I wouldn’t be wronged. If County Magistrate Shen is unharmed, naturally everyone is happy. If there’s any problem, knowing this remedy but not making it for the county magistrate to eat, I would surely feel guilty for life, so I boldly did this. Victory or defeat is certainly important, but compared to the diner’s safety, whether I’m selected or not is a small matter.”