AGN -Chapter 318 Sea Cucumber

Since they were going to eat Zheng Siyuan’s double-crab buns in the afternoon and also practice making crab roe sauce, Qin Huai moved his knife skills practice to midday.

Midday was the time Cao Guixiang usually watched TV. As an elderly woman who didn’t need much sleep, she didn’t have the habit of taking naps. Her online classes at noon didn’t interfere with her TV time either. Zhang Chu even made her a wooden phone stand, so she could watch TV while catching a glimpse of the phone screen from the corner of her eye—entertainment and learning at the same time.

Because of the camera angle, Cao Guixiang was shown in side profile, and beside her, Zhang Chu could also be seen cracking sunflower seeds while watching TV.

Qin Huai was still cutting radishes.

Radish was an ideal ingredient for practicing knife skills—cheap and low-cost. In Cao Guixiang’s words, every beginner who learned knife skills would go through a period of cutting radishes until they were sick of it. When they no longer needed to cut radishes and started working with other ingredients, they would actually feel a bit reluctant, because they had developed feelings for radishes through all that cutting.

Qin Huai, however, had not developed any feelings for radishes yet.

On the other hand, An Youyou had developed deep feelings for radish cake. At this point, aside from money, what she couldn’t lose most was her title as “Sister Radish Cake.”

Zheng Siyuan was kneading dough.

Not the dough for double-crab buns, but for three-delicacy buns and fermented rice buns.

Ever since the “Little Zheng Chef” made his dazzling debut, the three-delicacy buns and fermented rice buns at Cloud Restaurant had basically been handed over to Zheng Siyuan. The ever-changing Qin chef had too many pastries to handle and didn’t have much time for these old favorites.

The “Little Zheng Chef” liked it.

Zheng Siyuan actually preferred focusing on just a few items over long periods. Previously, his main products were crisp pastries, “ding sheng” cakes, and fresh pork mooncakes—these were the signature items of his pastry shop. Now, his three main items had become three-delicacy buns, fermented rice buns, and fresh pork mooncakes, while crisp pastries and “ding sheng” cakes had moved down the list.

“Xiao Qin,” Cao Guixiang suddenly said while watching TV, out of nowhere, “I’ve thought about that double-crab bun you mentioned yesterday for the whole day, and I still can’t figure it out.”

Qin Huai didn’t expect her to bring up “principles” and looked up in surprise. “What do you mean?”

“It’s the ingredient pairing,” she said. “To use a line from Suiyuan Food List: when cooking any ingredient, it must be supported by accompaniments. I don’t remember the rest clearly, but the general idea is that light dishes should use light ingredients, rich dishes should use rich ingredients, and mild dishes should use mild ingredients.”

“Before, you said Chef Huang made you understand ingredients for several days before teaching you crab roe shumai. That’s the normal process for chefs. You must first become familiar with ingredients, know what pairs with what, then you can form culinary concepts, direction, and seasoning logic—and only then can you make good dishes.”

“Strong-flavored foods are usually best eaten on their own. It’s not that beef or lamb can’t be combined with other things, but as Yuan Mei said, strong-flavored ingredients have both strengths and weaknesses. They require careful balancing of flavors to preserve their strengths while eliminating flaws. In such cases, there’s no leisure to think about pairing—pairing means giving something up.”

“Of course, that’s just Yuan Mei’s view. He disliked sea cucumber with soft-shell turtle, or crab roe with shark fin. But crab roe shark fin is a famous dish in itself, loved by countless people. So there’s no absolute rule in ingredient pairing—it depends on how the chef handles it.”

“But crab roe paired with sea cucumber, and used as bun filling—I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

“I consider myself quite skilled in cooking sea cucumber dishes. Sea cucumber is very difficult to handle. It has no taste of its own, is sandy and fishy, and cannot be simply simmered in clear broth as a standalone dish. The preparation is extremely troublesome.”

“You need to soak it in clean water to remove sand, and to eliminate its fishy smell you usually have to go to great lengths—for example, blanching it three times in boiling meat broth, then simmering it in chicken and meat stock until it softens completely. Even then, it’s hard to cook through. When I used to cook sea cucumber dishes during festivals, I had to start a day in advance. Even for cold dishes, you still need strong-flavored sauces.”

“So a difficult ingredient like this, paired with fresh crab roe… I really can’t imagine what kind of combination that would be.”

“The chef who created this recipe must be a true master of seasoning. Ordinary chefs would already struggle handling just one of these ingredients, let alone achieving a result where 1+1>2.”

“Xiao Qin, have you ever cooked sea cucumber dishes?” she asked.

Qin Huai knew the double-crab bun was extremely difficult to season. He had already heard this from many people—Huang Shengli, Zheng Da, and Zheng Siyuan had all emphasized that it was extremely difficult, where even the slightest mistake could ruin everything.

But seasoning was his strongest skill. It was also the skill that allowed him to reach master level the fastest. After reaching that level, he had gained many new insights, and with his naturally refined palate, he had actually been quite confident.

Although he had never eaten or made double-crab buns—only seen the recipe from Old Wang—he believed he could do it.

Simply put: confidence.

But after hearing Cao Guixiang, his confidence weakened slightly.

“Does Five-Delicacy Bun count?” Qin Huai asked.

Cao Guixiang shook her head. “That’s not a sea cucumber dish. That’s just a dish that uses sea cucumber as a supporting ingredient.”

Qin Huai: “…”

Cao Guixiang studied him curiously through the phone screen. “Scared?”

Qin Huai shook his head. “Everyone has made it sound difficult, but I haven’t even tried yet. If I’m already scared now, that would be embarrassing.”

“At least I should try it once first, understand how difficult it really is, and then decide whether I can handle it.”

Cao Guixiang laughed until the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes deepened. “What a pity I retired decades ago. If I had met you earlier, I would have taken you as my disciple and taught you both red and white cuisine. You’re exactly my type! Even my junior brother would have wanted to take you in!”

Qin Huai treated this as the highest compliment and just smiled without replying.

“Alright, since you’re a white-case chef, and you’ve already practiced knife skills for an hour today, that’s enough.” She turned off the TV immediately, shocking Zhang Chu beside her, whose expression clearly said, I still want to watch.

Qin Huai: ?

“You’ve bought sea cucumber for the double-crab buns, right?” she asked.

“Yes, quite a lot. Not the highest quality, though. Zheng Siyuan said it doesn’t require top-grade sea cucumber.”

“Normal. Sea cucumber doesn’t have much flavor anyway—it’s mainly for texture. The real focus of double-crab buns is the crab roe.”

“From now on, we won’t practice knife skills anymore. I’ll teach you about sea cucumber.”

“I retired decades ago, but when I was still cooking, I made the most sea cucumber and shark fin dishes every day. Honestly, I never understood what people liked about them. The flavor came entirely from stock I made. They were expensive and troublesome, but customers loved them—the more expensive, the more they wanted. There was nothing I could do.”

“Back then, big dishes had to be reserved in advance. When I looked at the reservation list, it was all braised shark fin, crab roe shark fin, shredded shark fin, claypot shark fin, clear-braised shark fin, rich soup shark fin, seafood shark fin, scallion-braised sea cucumber, cold sea cucumber, braised sea cucumber, sea cucumber and chicken soup… I was overwhelmed. I was also good at chicken, duck, and pork dishes—my straw-braised duck and ‘ten-thousand-blessing meat’ were excellent—but no one ordered them.”

Her long list of dishes left Qin Huai stunned. Only one thought remained:

As expected, high-end “humblebragging” is just simple menu recitation.

These dishes sounded expensive.

Even Zhang Chu felt hungry listening. Without TV to distract him, he suggested, “Cao Guixiang, are you free these days? If you are, make some shredded sea cucumber soup. It’s been a long time. Since Xiao Qin is also learning sea cucumber dishes, you can teach him while you’re at it.”

Zhang Chu was quite quick-witted when it came to food.

Cao Guixiang didn’t mind. She nodded. “Alright, let’s call the kids over this weekend. I’ll cook a proper meal.”

Qin Huai even felt like going back to Quxian for the weekend.

After finishing his last radish, Qin Huai stopped knife practice and went to fetch the sea cucumber.

Some of the sea cucumber had already been pre-processed by Zheng Siyuan the day before. As Cao Guixiang had said, sea cucumber is extremely difficult to handle—it requires long soaking to remove sand, various methods to eliminate fishiness, and slow cooking to achieve softness. In the end, it becomes something without much flavor, only notable for its uniquely soft texture.

Sea cucumber is never a home-cooking ingredient, because it is simply too troublesome.

Cao Guixiang first had Qin Huai compare unprocessed sea cucumber with the prepared ones, then carefully explained its characteristics, typical ingredient pairings, and cooking methods in detail.

Simply put, it all comes down to piling in ingredients and spending time—only then can one chew through such a hard nut.

Cao Guixiang spent over 20 minutes just explaining, breaking everything down step by step in great detail, allowing Qin Huai to fully understand how creatively bold it was to use sea cucumber as the main filling of a bun.

She then praised Zheng Siyuan’s preparation, saying the sea cucumbers he processed were very clean, neat, and “proper-looking.”

Zheng Siyuan, who was kneading dough, unconsciously straightened his back.

Finally, Cao Guixiang let Qin Huai try it himself.

It didn’t matter if he messed it up. The sea cucumbers weren’t expensive anyway. If it really didn’t work, they could still be turned into cold sea cucumber with mustard and chicken essence—still edible.

Cao Guixiang had plenty of recipes.

Qin Huai felt like he had returned to the time when he first learned crab roe shumai.

Because he didn’t understand the ingredients, he couldn’t jump straight into making pastries. Instead, he had to start from the most basic step—familiarizing himself with and handling the ingredients.

Just like back then, there was a very patient and meticulous teacher beside him, correcting him whenever problems appeared, without any blame at all.

Even if the issue was extremely basic, in that teacher’s words it would become: anyone would make this mistake, it’s normal. If it happens once, just fix it; if it happens twice, remember it; if it happens three times, it means we’ve correctly identified the weakness—you’re just not good at this area, so we’ll practice more.

Although Cao Guixiang often said she had never taken on apprentices and didn’t dare to, afraid of misleading others, Qin Huai felt that if she ever became a master, she would be an excellent one.

Just like Huang Shengli—an equally good master.

By the time Qin Huai finished learning about sea cucumber, it was already 2:46 PM.

It wasn’t that he had fully mastered it—it was simply that Cao Guixiang had to go out to the park to chat with her friends.

“Xiao Qin, when you finish practicing your radishes, come to Quxian. Don’t forget to make me and Grandpa Zhang a meal of double-crab buns. I’m really curious what that bun tastes like,” Cao Guixiang said as she picked up her canvas bag.

“Definitely. Though at my current pace, I might not even have learned it by then,” Qin Huai said with a wry smile.

“Even better if you haven’t learned it. Then make extra for Grandpa Zhang—if he buys groceries wrong again, he can eat your double-crab buns every morning.”

“If I haven’t learned it properly, it’ll probably taste terrible.”

Qin Huai couldn’t help laughing, unsure how to respond.

“All right then, I’ll make plenty—half a month’s worth!” he said.

“Good, work hard. If you have seasoning questions, just message me anytime on WeChat. Even though I don’t cook anymore, I still know seasoning. I might even help you come up with ideas.”

With that, Cao Guixiang ended the video call and went out for her park stroll.

Qin Huai stored away the sea cucumbers he had just processed, planning to later make cold sea cucumber using her recipe, while watching Zheng Siyuan make the double-crab buns.

Zheng Siyuan had already finished kneading the dough and was now handling the sea cucumber.

He was frying it.

This strange method stunned Qin Huai. Although he didn’t fully understand sea cucumber, he had just spent over an hour learning about it.

Cao Guixiang never mentioned this step.

Her methods were either braising, stewing in stock, or making cold dishes—mainly braised, stewed, or simmered.

Frying? What kind of new technique was this?

Was this bun really that innovative?

Most importantly, Old Wang’s recipe didn’t say anything about frying sea cucumber.

Was Zheng Siyuan about to make a rebellious move against tradition?

Shocked, Qin Huai stepped closer. “W-why are you frying sea cucumber?”

Even though it was only quickly passed through oil for a few seconds, it still felt like breaking tradition. Could sea cucumber even be fried?

“Won’t it just turn into a puddle of water when fried?” Qin Huai asked cautiously.

“I’m only flash-frying it,” Zheng Siyuan said. “If you use fresh crab roe, you don’t need this step. But if you’re using crab roe paste, you do.”

“I know you have the recipe. I’ve seen it too—it doesn’t mention this step. But this flash-frying method was actually discovered accidentally by my master’s master. It changes the texture and pairs better with crab roe paste.”

“You’ll understand after you taste it.”

Qin Huai still didn’t understand how Master Jing had discovered that frying sea cucumber improved the taste of double-crab buns.

“How did Master Jing discover it?” he asked curiously.

Zheng Siyuan fell silent.

“It was my father.”

“It’s said that a batch of old customers once sent a lot of sea cucumbers. Back then, it was very rare to see sea cucumber outside coastal regions. My father, being a pastry chef, had very little experience with it.”

“He was young and fearless, and liked challenging authority.”

“It was common knowledge that sea cucumber couldn’t be fried—no chef would serve fried sea cucumber. But he didn’t believe it. He thought, if you only fry it for a few seconds, just enough to crisp the surface, why not? He even tried coating it in starch before frying.”

“And that’s… how he discovered it.”

Qin Huai: “…”

As expected of you, Chef Zheng.

“So my father always says I’m too rigid and don’t innovate, but I never listen to him.”

“He’s the one who innovated too much and ended up like this.”

“Sometimes I don’t even know how he comes up with things. He didn’t just fry sea cucumber—he fried bird’s nest, and even battered shark fin before frying it.”

“My mother said he probably just got obsessed with fried chicken back then, so he wanted to throw everything into the oil pan.”

Qin Huai: “…”

Six.