AGN -Chapter 167 Gong Liang’s Touching Moment

After yesterday’s major failure, Qin Huai went back and carefully reviewed everything.

He felt the main problem was unfamiliarity.

He wasn’t familiar with the ingredients, nor with crab roe shumai, and he wasn’t even very familiar with simple seasoning that relies on very basic ingredients.

He had used his previous experience in making pastries to season the crab roe shumai, while also following Zheng Da’s demonstrated procedures. Combining the two, he took the dross and discarded the essence, which ultimately resulted in shumai that were inedible.

After reflecting all night, Qin Huai decided to adopt the “forget everything” method—forget his prior experience and, as a complete beginner, follow Zheng Da’s methods exactly once.

This idea was good.

Unfortunately, ideals are full, but reality is skinny.

He couldn’t do it at all. Not at all.

After another round of intense seasoning, Qin Huai ended up with a failure comparable to yesterday’s.

The good news: this time there were only 9 minor mistakes and 6 major ones.

The bad news: some of the mistakes were different.

And missing one minor mistake didn’t really improve the taste much.

There was already very little room for improvement. Qin Huai’s fundamental level was what it was—no matter how much he failed, he couldn’t regress to the level of Chen Huihong’s culinary skills.

Qin Huai’s latest “masterpiece” of failure was delivered to every tasting staff member at Huang Ji Restaurant.

Most of the time, tasting dishes isn’t an enviable job.

If a dish needs to be tested, it means it isn’t a finished product yet—there are issues that need improvement. The process of refining it requires extensive trial and error and is long and tedious. A professional taster must carefully sample each dish, identify problems, and offer suggestions for improvement. Not only must they eat—it must be done seriously and attentively.

Gong Liang only took one bite before realizing this job was not easy.

Too risky.

It wasn’t like he had never done tasting before, and his memories of it were actually quite pleasant.

He vaguely remembered that when he was a young student, the chef next door, Master Jing, would sometimes experiment with new dishes at home.

Strictly speaking, they weren’t exactly new dishes. Master Jing was highly skilled, and some foreign clients specifically requested his cooking when hosting events. Everyone had different tastes and requested different dishes. Whenever that happened, Master Jing would prepare and test dishes at home.

As a neighbor, Gong Liang—then a teenage high school student—would occasionally get to taste some. A single bite would bring him joy for days, something he’d cherish in memory for years.

Back then, Gong Liang even thought that if he ever became as wealthy as those foreign clients, he would specifically request Master Jing to cook for him. No, not even request—he’d want him to cook every day. As long as Master Jing was willing to cook, he would be willing to eat!

Now, Gong Liang’s beautiful image of tasting dishes was shattered by the crab roe shumai in front of him.

He could hardly believe this was something Qin Huai had made.

Although he had already tasted Qin Huai’s astragalus stewed pigeon a couple of days ago and knew his “beloved Little Qin chef” wasn’t omnipotent, that was a stewed dish. Crab roe shumai, however, is pastry!

This was pastry!

Gong Liang was completely inexperienced in cooking. He was even more of an outsider than someone like Huang Anyao, who had theoretical knowledge but almost zero practical skill. So even though he knew crab roe shumai was difficult—and that unless Zheng Da personally made it, it would be hard to find a comparable version elsewhere—he didn’t have a concrete understanding of its difficulty.

In Gong Liang’s mind, crab roe shumai was indeed difficult, but Qin Huai’s pastry skills were also very good. Qin Huai’s fermented rice buns were almost on par with Zheng Da’s, especially the first batch each day—Gong Liang could even feel nostalgic for the days when he used to rush to state-run restaurants after work just to grab buns.

Thus, in Gong Liang’s perception, Qin Huai and Zheng Da were roughly equal in skill.

At most, Qin Huai was just slightly behind—after all, Zheng Da had been constantly saying he wanted to take Qin Huai as his closed-door disciple.

Although Zheng Da was a bit lazy and not very willing to cook pastries, he was generally reliable. He wouldn’t forcefully take on a young pastry chef of equal level as his disciple.

But the crab roe shumai in front of him shattered Gong Liang’s 18 layers of “filter” for Qin Huai.

Even the all-capable Little Qin chef had his Waterloo.

Gong Liang sniffed, almost tearing up.

The feeling of an idol collapsing.

He looked at the other testers in the kitchen and found their reactions very calm.

However, everyone calmly finished the shumai and then gathered to discuss them—comparing today’s version with yesterday’s, analyzing whether the issue lay in seasoning ratios or the balance between shrimp and crab meat.

Some even optimistically claimed there had been significant improvement, noting that one of the most obvious problems from yesterday was no longer present.

Gong Liang was completely bewildered.

After thinking for a moment, he stood up from his small stool, grabbed Dong Shi—the one leading the most intense discussion—and pulled him to a corner outside to ask:

“Is it normal for Little Qin chef’s crab roe shumai to turn out like this?”

“Normal,” Dong Shi replied. Seeing Gong Liang’s even more confused expression, he explained, “Yesterday’s was even worse.”

Gong Liang: ?

“Mr. Gong, don’t worry. We all know you wanted to eat crab roe shumai, which is why Qin Huai started learning it. But he’s never made crab or crab-roe-based pastries before. He barely even makes shrimp-filled pastries.”

“Let me put it this way—Qin Huai is from Guangdong. It’s like a Cantonese chef who’s very good at Shandong cuisine. Can I explain it like that… yes, exactly. He’s good at palace-style pastries.”

“He currently excels in two regional cuisines, north and south, but here in our place, we mainly focus on Huaiyang cuisine. Asking a chef experienced in other cuisines to suddenly switch without any foundation is like forcing them to change specialties—it will definitely be difficult at the beginning.”

“This is only his second attempt at crab roe shumai. It’s normal that it tastes bad. So don’t worry, Mr. Gong. Give Qin Huai one or two months—I believe with his ability, he’ll be fine.”

“Don’t think two months is too long. For a normal chef, especially a pastry chef, mastering a dish like crab roe shumai within two months is already very impressive. Even if Qin Huai doesn’t fully master it in two months, that’s still normal. As long as he agreed, he will definitely make it for you.”

Gong Liang was even more confused.

Seeing that Gong Liang still didn’t understand, Dong Shi was thinking about how to further explain the difficulty of switching tracks to make crab roe shumai when Gong Liang suddenly spoke.

“When did I ask Qin Huai to make crab roe shumai?” Gong Liang asked.

At this point, he no longer cared about Qin Huai’s failure.

He felt someone must be framing him.

He swore—when had he ever been someone so lacking in self-awareness?

Although he liked to push his luck and be persistent, it depended on the situation and timing. His relationship with Qin Huai was still in the development stage—he was the one investing in Qin Huai, using incentives to build a relationship with this promising young chef.

He was an angel investor—the first round of funding hadn’t even been put in yet.

Who was spreading rumors that he was trying to “kill the goose that lays the golden eggs”?

If this got back to Little Qin chef, how would he ever have the face to keep enjoying pastries?

Gong Liang even felt like rushing back to the kitchen entrance to eat another shumai to prove his innocence.

Although Little Qin chef’s astragalus stewed pigeon and crab roe shumai had both failed, his five-ingredient buns, fermented rice buns, round dream pancakes, pastries, crab-shell yellow pastries, chicken noodle soup, and locust blossom buns were all undeniably excellent.

Just because one or two items failed didn’t matter. At worst, Gong Liang wouldn’t eat those—but the others were still worth enjoying.

“Wasn’t it you who asked?” Dong Shi was also shocked.

“Who said I asked? Who?” Gong Liang gritted his teeth.

“Everyone’s been saying that,” Dong Shi replied. “Qin Huai invited you to breakfast this morning, and in the afternoon he started learning crab roe shumai. I heard Zheng Shibo gave him two methods to learn—one like the current one, and a slightly simpler one.”

“Qin Huai knew that you had once eaten Master Jing’s crab roe shumai for a whole month, so he specifically asked which method you had eaten back then, and chose to learn that one. He also said that once he succeeded, he would invite you to taste it to see if it matched your memory.”

“We all thought you had requested it, which is why Qin Huai learned it specially.”

Gong Liang was stunned.

After the shock came deep emotion.

Gong Liang came from a sales background. Since he was young, he had been someone who could talk differently depending on the person, and even he himself often forgot what he had said. He never expected anyone to take his words to heart.

He didn’t even remember whether he had told Qin Huai about eating crab roe shumai for a whole month back then.

But crab roe shumai was indeed very special to him.

It was the closest he had ever come to realizing a dream.

He had once spent a great deal of money inviting famous pastry chefs from elsewhere to recreate the crab roe shumai he remembered, but none succeeded. Later, Zheng Da told him directly that the recipe was, in a sense, a proprietary secret. Even if he shared it, most pastry chefs still wouldn’t be able to replicate it.

And that proved true—some highly skilled pastry chefs made delicious shumai, but Gong Liang could never taste that original feeling.

Only Zheng Da, a direct disciple trained by Master Jing himself, could reproduce something close to that flavor.

Gong Liang felt his eyes moisten, though his acting skills were good enough that no one could tell.

He said, “Is that so? I didn’t know that. I might have mentioned it to Little Qin chef, but I didn’t specifically ask him to do it.”

“However, I do have some understanding of crab roe shumai. I can tell where the problems are with a single bite! I didn’t eat carefully just now—I’ll go back and have another one.”

Gong Liang returned to tasting with renewed enthusiasm.

Dong Shi: …

Even though it tasted that bad, Mr. Gong was willing to eat two servings.

The rumors were true—this year’s biggest New Year bonus given by Mr. Gong to Qin Huai would definitely be the largest.

Gong Liang returned to his stool, once again dedicating himself to the tasting cause, while Qin Huai’s two main mentors were arguing fiercely about how to teach him next.

Qin Huai was a chef who was very good at keeping a “mistake notebook.”

He admitted that he might not be especially good at learning, but he was extremely good at reflection.

With a reference point, he could quickly identify what went wrong in his pastries, then repeatedly adjust, repeatedly fail, and constantly revise his “notebook” until he achieved the result he wanted.

Both Zheng Da and Huang Shengli strongly approved of this learning method.

However, they had a major disagreement about how to add, remove, and modify the “mistakes” in that notebook.

The crab roe shumai Qin Huai made was widely agreed to be terrible.

But how exactly it was terrible, what specifically caused it to fail, and how Qin Huai should adjust to improve it—all became points of contention.

Zheng Da believed the issue was simply insufficient practice.

His teaching method, combined with Qin Huai’s learning style, was a perfect match. As long as they followed this approach—Zheng Da making it once, Qin Huai making it once, repeating this cycle for one or two months—it would be enough.

In short:

Practice more.

Huang Shengli believed Zheng Da didn’t understand how to teach.

Qin Huai’s issue wasn’t just lack of practice.

It was clear he wasn’t familiar with the ingredients used in crab roe shumai.

Whether shrimp, crab meat, or crab roe—none of these were ingredients Qin Huai was experienced with.

Huang Shengli felt that Qin Huai should first familiarize himself with the ingredients, with a teacher guiding him step by step on how to select, prepare, and taste them.

As for that teacher—it was right in front of them.

Zheng Da felt Huang Shengli was overcomplicating things.

Huang Shengli felt Zheng Da didn’t understand teaching apprentices.

“When Master taught me, it was like this!” Zheng Da said loudly.

He looked at Huang Shengli, his expression saying: you can question my teaching ability, but how can you question the Master’s?

“Are your situation and Qin Huai’s the same?” Huang Shengli retorted, unwilling to back down.

“When Master taught us, we had no foundation at all. We were apprentices working in a state-run restaurant, no salary but plenty of work. We handled all the dirty and tiring jobs—cutting, preparing ingredients, dealing with fish, shrimp, and crabs. When we were on the water station, we even slept smelling of seafood.”

“That was then, this is now. Conditions are different.”

“I know. My disciples weren’t taught like that either. Qin Huai is different from us—he doesn’t have that foundation.”

“We grew up here, eating fish, shrimp, and crabs since childhood. Back then there were no seasonings—just boiling and steaming. The fishy smell is ingrained in us.”

“When Master taught crab roe shumai, we already knew how to remove fishy odors and season properly because we were familiar with the ingredients.”

“But Qin Huai isn’t. Ask him—he probably hasn’t eaten crab as many times as you’ve eaten it.”

“His family isn’t that poor…”

“I’m saying he simply doesn’t like eating crab! If you talk to him more, you’ll know his younger sister Luo Luo once got sick of eating steamed crab as a child and couldn’t stand the smell for years. Their family doesn’t steam crab at all.”

Zheng Da was shocked: “How did that child get tired of eating everything?”

Huang Shengli: …

“So that’s why I’m saying the situations are different. Qin Huai lacks exposure to these ingredients. You’re asking someone who hasn’t even learned how to read to write an essay—that’s unreasonable. Is that how you teach? And you still want to take him as a disciple? Having skills alone doesn’t make a good teacher!”

Zheng Da was completely silenced.

“I’ll handle this,” Huang Shengli continued. “I’ll build his foundation first. Once that’s done, you can teach him. And stop boasting about your ‘great teaching method’ you’ve been researching for days—you haven’t come up with anything useful at all.”

Huang Shengli emerged victorious.

Qin Huai stood nearby, completely stunned.

Because the two were arguing right in front of him.

This was his first time witnessing such a scene.

Since starting to work on the locust blossom buns, he had been taught by both Zheng Da and Huang Shengli, but never by both at the same time. When they appeared together, it was usually over the phone. He hadn’t expected that when they taught together in person…

They didn’t look like fellow disciples at all.

Huang Shengli turned to Qin Huai with a warm smile: “Little Qin, don’t listen to your Zheng master. He doesn’t understand the basics. Come, I’ll take you to the seafood section and teach you how to select live shrimp from the beginning.”

Qin Huai looked to Zheng Siyuan for help.

Yes, Zheng Siyuan was also there today.

Although he hadn’t said a word and seemed invisible, he had been in the kitchen the whole time as a taster.

Zheng Siyuan nodded firmly.

“Get used to it,” he said. “My father and uncle have had conflicting teaching philosophies for years. When they taught me as a child, they argued like this all the time.”

“You don’t need to worry about what they argue about—just learn from whoever wins.”

“The winner is always right.”

Qin Huai: …

Your sect’s teaching style is truly unique.

Argument-based teaching—whoever wins teaches.