AGN -Chapter 264 The Spotlight Moment for the Fresh Meat Filling

Qin Luo wasn’t sure whether her only duty during the New Year was eating, but she knew exactly what her task was right now:

Wrapping.

Specifically, wrapping buns.

Making tangyuan wasn’t particularly difficult, but the Qin family’s breakfast shop had never sold them before. No one in the family had any experience with this kind of work. They didn’t know how much filling to use, nor what the four different styles of tangyuan should look like when properly shaped. All they could do was stand by and watch helplessly.

So Qin Huai assigned everyone else to wrapping buns while he handled all the tangyuan himself.

Fortunately, he was already a seasoned pro. He’d made more than enough tangyuan over the past few weeks.

Once the first batch was finished, Director Qin cooked a pot based on the number of people present—four tangyuan per person. Under normal circumstances, Qin Luo would never stop at just four, but considering she’d been snacking nonstop on the way home, they decided to count her as a standard one-person serving for today.

Even while the tangyuan were boiling, Qin Huai couldn’t fully relax. He kept glancing at the pot and reminding Director Qin to lower the heat.

Director Qin had a history, after all. Those pots and pots of sesame glutinous rice “soup” she’d once created were proof enough. As the director of a children’s welfare home, her skill points had clearly all been invested in caring for children—none whatsoever in cooking.

“The piping hot tangyuan are ready! Come on, everyone, stop what you’re doing and have some first. Huaihuai, stop wrapping for now. It doesn’t matter if we don’t finish—eat while they’re hot.”

Director Qin skillfully ladled the tangyuan into bowls. When she handed one to Qin Luo, she almost instinctively picked up a spoon to feed her.

Qin Luo took the bowl and immediately scooped up a tangyuan, ready to eat.

“Luo Luo, three minutes and fifty seconds,” Qin Huai reminded her.

He wasn’t too worried about her burning herself. Qin Luo had both an iron mouth and an iron stomach, and she was well aware of her own limits. If something was too hot, she’d spit it right out.

What he was worried about was everyone else copying her and ending up in the hospital that night.

Most of the people present were older. A burned esophagus was no trivial matter.

Hearing this, Qin Luo quickly stopped. She pulled out her phone and started a stopwatch.

“Brother, since Director Qin took some time serving them, I’ll just count down from three minutes.”

Qin Huai nodded.

Old Master Qin, hard of hearing, hadn’t caught their conversation. One of the volunteers, whose name no one ever seemed to know, asked curiously, “Is there some special rule for eating these big tangyuan?”

Qin Luo nodded solemnly.

“After repeated testing and precise calculations, my brother determined that these Four-Joy Tangyuan taste best exactly three minutes and fifty seconds after being served.”

Everyone suddenly understood. Desserts from the big city really were different—precise down to the second. Impressive, truly impressive.

So they all put down their bowls and stared at Qin Luo’s phone, waiting for the countdown to finish.

Old Master Qin, having missed every word, still had no idea what was going on. After loudly asking Director Qin for an explanation, he suddenly nodded in realization.

“I know! I’ve seen this on TV. When imperial chefs serve a dish to the emperor, they pour something over it at the table, and only after a few seconds is it considered complete.”

Qin Huai: …

That was… not quite it.

The three minutes and fifty seconds was actually…

Ou Yang’s greatest contribution to the Four-Joy Tangyuan.

Three minutes later, when the phone vibrated, everyone picked up their bowls and began eating.

Qin Luo, being experienced, chose the red bean filling first. Seeing this, everyone assumed she knew what she was doing and followed suit.

One bite.

No one had much of a reaction, though Qin Luo looked slightly disappointed.

This batch used the most ordinary commercially available red bean paste. It was decent but unremarkable—certainly not as good as the homemade fillings used by some breakfast shops, and nowhere near comparable to the red bean paste Qin Huai made himself.

“These big tangyuan taste exactly like small tangyuan. Do people in Suzhou just not like small ones, so they make them this big?” Old Master Qin whispered—or what he thought was a whisper—to Director Qin. In reality, everyone in the kitchen heard him.

Director Qin shouted back just as loudly, “Maybe. But the glutinous rice skin Huaihuai made is really delicious.”

See? Director Qin’s affection for Qin Huai was on full display.

For her second one, Qin Luo picked the black sesame sugar filling. One bite, and she was even more disappointed. It tasted exactly like the most ordinary frozen tangyuan you could buy at any supermarket.

Of course, the glutinous rice skin was better.

Old Master Qin reached a firm conclusion.

“People in Suzhou really do love giant tangyuan!”

The third one was the fresh meat filling.

Qin Huai and Qin Luo bit into theirs at almost exactly the same moment, and both were stunned.

How to put it…

When the red bean and black sesame fillings are exceptional, the fresh meat tangyuan can seem rather ordinary—pleasant enough, but not especially memorable. Just a savory tangyuan passing by, there to balance out the sweetness.

But when the red bean and black sesame fillings are merely average, the fresh meat tangyuan becomes astonishingly delicious.

One bite was nothing short of amazing.

The rich, comforting flavor of pork, the firm, satisfying texture, the abundance of savory juices, the perfectly seasoned filling—

After two sweet tangyuan, their taste buds were already beginning to tire. Then, the moment the meat filling touched their tongues…

“Oh, glorious meat-filled tangyuan, conqueror of taste buds!”

“Mmm!” Qin Luo made a sound of pure appreciation. She chewed eagerly, swallowed in a hurry, and exclaimed excitedly, “Brother, you did it! Today’s meat-filled tangyuan are absolutely delicious!”

Qin Huai: …

Silly girl, this didn’t exactly count as success. At best, it was a case of “everything looks better by comparison.”

If you first had a bowl of Director Qin’s infamous sesame glutinous rice skin soup, then ate an utterly ordinary sesame-filled tangyuan, you’d think the latter was amazing too.

Qin Luo practically wolfed down the meat-filled tangyuan, then immediately scooped up the mixed-nut filling one and popped it into her mouth.

“Mmm!” she exclaimed again in delight.

Even louder than Qin Luo’s praise was Old Master Qin’s enthusiastic declaration.

“These last two flavors are really good! Big-city giant tangyuan really do have something special!”

After experiencing the flavors in this deliberately “hold back first, then impress” order, Director Qin and the others all agreed that Four-Joy Tangyuan was absolutely worth trying.

Qin Congwen even felt like he had uncovered its secret: the trick was to eat the ordinary red bean and sesame fillings first, then follow them with the delicious meat and mixed-nut fillings, making the latter seem even more outstanding.

Wasn’t that exactly the same philosophy behind the Qin family breakfast shop’s buns? The first batch sold was always his, and only from the second batch onward were Qin Huai’s mixed in.

If customers didn’t eat the first batch, how would they ever realize how precious the second batch was?

Qin Congwen had achieved enlightenment.

The big city really was full of deep strategies!

After everyone finished eating, Qin Huai went back to wrapping tangyuan.

The others had already finished wrapping buns, but Qin Huai was still hard at work on the tangyuan.

Seeing that they couldn’t really help, Director Qin adhered to her principle that staying out of the kitchen was the greatest form of assistance. She led everyone to her office to admire the children’s artwork from the past year.

Mainly, she was leading Qin Congwen, Qin Luo, and Zhao Rong.

Ever since the orphanage had gotten a full set of watercolor markers, the children’s artistic abilities had improved by leaps and bounds. Their artwork had finally become something people could actually appreciate.

Qin Huai strongly suspected that Director Qin would use this art-viewing session to slip in a little personal agenda.

But he was busy wrapping tangyuan and couldn’t stop her.

Even if he had been free, he probably couldn’t have stopped her anyway. Every New Year, the artwork viewing was a tradition. Graduates returning to visit Director Qin and volunteers coming to help at the orphanage would all be treated to a tour. Her office was practically an art gallery by now.

So Qin Huai could only continue wrapping tangyuan in silence, secretly resolving to let Director Qin eat more of the mediocre ones today and fewer of the really delicious ones after the New Year, as his quiet expression of dissatisfaction.

At 10:30, Qin Huai finally finished.

Qin Luo, who had spent the last hour happily playing on her phone, was stunned when she realized Qin Huai had wrapped every single tangyuan. She exclaimed in amazement, wondering what kind of training camp he had attended in Suzhou to become so incredibly efficient.

Qin Huai could only say that they truly had no idea what the customer volume at Huang Ji was like.

At 10:36, Qin Congwen packed up the tangyuan that were to be distributed to neighbors and drove the family home.

At 10:58, the Qin family arrived at their apartment building.

The entrance was packed.

Familiar neighbors had formed a long line, each one cheerful and excited. Anyone who didn’t know better would think they were lining up at dawn outside a supermarket for free eggs, rather than waiting late at night for tangyuan.

The moment Qin Huai stepped out of the car and saw the long queue, he had a brief flashback—he almost thought he was back outside Huang Ji.

His exchange program at Huang Ji might have ended, but apparently, not completely.

As soon as the neighbors saw them return, they all greeted them warmly.

“Huaihuai, you’re back! Is your family’s breakfast shop still open?”

“Huaihuai, was life over in Suzhou fun? When are you coming back for good?”

“Huaihuai, what exactly is Four-Joy Tangyuan? I looked it up online—it seems to be giant tangyuan with four different fillings. Is that what people in Suzhou eat for New Year? And are you still making Four-Joy Dumplings this year?”

“Huaihuai, you’ve lost weight! Worked too hard, huh? Big cities are exhausting. Our little county is much better!”

“Luo Luo, you’ve grown taller!”

“Huaihuai…”