Chapter 987 - The Great Chinese Chef (2/2)

“What in the world?” Ma Zhida was usually a polite and clean person. But he had a bad habit. When he was unhappy, he would spit at the source of his frustration.

Thus, he faced the sky and spat into the air.

Then…

“Shit, shit!” Ma Zhida left while angrily wiping the spit off his face with a paper napkin.

But when he was about to leave Taoxi Road, he recalled something and stopped his steps.

He recalled something important. As a new dish expert of Yuan Zhou’s restaurant, Ma Zhida still knew something.

For example, he noticed that the ingredients used during BBQ were ingredients present in the dishes of the restaurant. Thus, if he found new ingredients during BBQ, he would visit the restaurant the next day to confirm if there were new dishes.

“During lunch today, I ordered fried rice and found no new dishes,” said Ma Zhida as he contemplated with a frown. He decided to come again tomorrow night.

Since Shen Min was there to take care of the pub, Yuan Zhou stayed in the restaurant to research about food. But to be precise, he was researching imaginary dishes in the books.

He had spent the past two days reading many novels. But only the Dream of the Red Chamber was able to fulfill his requirements.

That’s right. It was the Dream of the Red Chamber, one of the Four Classics of Chinese Literature. That was a wide-ranging and profound book and there was even an academic field devoted to the study of this book, Redology.

One special part about the Dream of the Red Chamber was the way in which the scenes and outfits in the book were depicted. But the depiction of food within the book was very special as well.

Yuan Zhou suggested three dishes in a row to the system, such as Pheasant Soup, Dredged Quail, Melon Red Pine Mooncake, and Rouge Dried Swan.

Without exception, all of them were rejected by the system as someone had already recreated these dishes.

Through this, Yuan Zhou found out that there was a cuisine known as Red Chamber Cuisine, specializing in the delicacies mentioned in the book. Although these dishes were not exactly common, they weren’t rare as well.

Even the dried fish depicted in the book, the one with the most complicated preparation method, had been recreated many times with seven or eight different preparation methods for this dish existing presently.

Yuan Zhou was left stunned for a long time before he said, “Sure. Excellent. Amazing.”

This did not apply to only Dream of the Red Chamber. Yuan Zhou found that any novel that was popular would have the dishes within the book recreated.

Thus, he found with despair that both Wuxia novels and classical novels already had their dishes recreated.

The various books like Water Margin or even Dream of the Red Chamber with its own set of cuisines were all no longer available for him to recreate the dishes within.

One could say that the pursuit for delicacies in China was extremely intense. Even the delicacies of some foreign books had been recreated as well.

For example, the Treacle Pudding, Steak and Kidney Pie, Rock Cake, Treacle Tart, and the more common Butterbeer from Harry Potter had all been recreated and were available in various restaurants in China.

“Am I being pushed to a dead end?” Yuan Zhou muttered to himself.

Nobody answered his question. But since he had accepted this mission, he had to complete it no matter what. Thus, Yuan Zhou continued reading novels.

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