AGN -Chapter 368 Crab Roe Pork Bun (A Grade)

While eating the siu mai, Qin Huai casually scooped a spoonful of the stir-fried filling he had just finished into Pei Xing’s bowl and asked how it tasted.

“It’s absolutely delicious!”

Pei Xing said so.

A pure flattery answer, with no reference value whatsoever.

Qin Huai pointed out a few of Pei Xing’s lingering issues with siu mai, habitually dangled an unrealistic promise to encourage him, and told him to keep working hard and strive to become a better pastry chef soon. Then he returned to making buns.

The filling was done. All that was left was wrapping.

Before wrapping the buns, Qin Huai hesitated a little.

Even though Xu Nuo’s memory had made it very clear—when skill is sufficient, fusion is possible; when skill is lacking, ignoring it can also become a style—Qin Huai still had doubts.

Really ignore everything? Ignore even what the final bun would turn out like?

Shi Dadan had said Xu Nuo’s first batch of buns was especially delicious. He ate a lot of them, but at that time Shi Dadan had not been very demanding about food, especially staple foods. He could eat twenty or thirty plain steamed buns, let alone large pork buns.

After hesitating for two minutes, Qin Huai walked out of the kitchen and found Shi Dadan sitting by the window happily using his phone.

“Old Shi, I want to ask you something,” Qin Huai said, glancing at Shi Dadan’s phone.

Shi Dadan’s phone didn’t have a privacy screen, and the brightness was turned up high. The interface was visible at a glance.

It looked like a real estate page.

He was buying a house.

“You’re buying a house?” Qin Huai asked in surprise.

“Is that what you wanted to ask, Xiao Qin? Yeah. Old Luo doesn’t like me living at his place. Might as well just buy one. Anyway, houses in your neighborhood aren’t that expensive.”

“Not that expensive.”

As expected of a wealthy being with financial freedom.

“I wasn’t asking about that. I just saw it by accident,” Qin Huai quickly explained. “On the way here, I suddenly remembered something. You should’ve eaten Xu Nuo’s crab roe pork buns quite a few times, right?”

Shi Dadan nodded. “Back then Xu Nuo was pretty well-off. He liked making pastries, and Factory Director Xu knew about it and didn’t object. I’ve eaten them quite a few times.”

“Probably around 160 buns.”

Just look at Shi Dadan’s way of calculating—normal people remember how many times they ate something; he remembered how many pieces he ate.

Based on about twenty buns per session, Xu Nuo must have made crab roe pork buns at least six or seven times.

“So were all those batches the same in taste, or did they get better and better? Or was the first batch the best?” Qin Huai continued.

Shi Dadan couldn’t help laughing at the question. He looked at Qin Huai as if wondering if he had been influenced into becoming less smart.

“Of course the later ones were better.”

“The last batch Xu Nuo made was especially good. He even said he ‘understood’ something. After that he made crab roe fish buns, crab roe chicken buns, crab roe duck buns—but none of them were as good as the pork ones.”

“I think he was trying to research the double-crab bun idea himself, but he only heard the recipe roughly. He couldn’t figure it out, so in the end he had no choice but to buy the formula. A thousand yuan was a lot back then—my yearly salary plus bonus might not even be that much. If he could’ve figured it out himself, he wouldn’t have spent that money.”

Qin Huai understood and went back to continue making buns.

So that was it.

Although the memory made Xu Nuo’s words sound very convincing, something had always felt off.

Xu Nuo’s first filling being Grade A didn’t mean his final buns were Grade A.

Qin Huai believed the shock of that first bite of filling was definitely stronger than what Shi Dadan experienced later with the finished buns.

Otherwise, if it was only a short time gap, why did the memory only show the filling—and not the finished buns or Shi Dadan’s reaction?

The final recipe was the filling, not the bun.

Although the filling could be used in many pastries, it was ultimately still just a bun filling. It would likely clash when used in siu mai or tangyuan.

Of course, if this was the game system deliberately messing with him, that was another matter.

So even though Qin Huai agreed with Xu Nuo’s theory in memory and acknowledged his culinary skill—and even more so, his culinary philosophy—he still had doubts about this method.

His instincts told him something was missing. It wasn’t the best version.

There had to be something better.

Because he had not seen the steps after the filling in the memory.

Nor had he seen the final feedback of the finished product.

Qin Huai returned to the cooking station and stared at the filling in thought. After a while, he scooped another spoonful and ate it.

Freshly cooked food could hide many flaws.

People always say food should be eaten hot, because everyone knows that’s when it tastes best—most fragrant, most crispy, most fresh, most flavorful.

But once that peak moment passes, hidden flaws that were previously ignored—or even nonexistent and only perceived due to temperature drop—begin to emerge.

Qin Huai wanted to taste those flaws.

He wanted to know whether, in this recipe based on Xu Nuo’s theory, those flaws that appeared after cooling would become advantages after being wrapped into buns and steamed again.

He ate one spoon.

Two spoons.

Three spoons.

He knew he had a good palate. Especially after his “filling-mixing” skill had reached master level, his taste and technique complemented each other, allowing him to identify strengths and weaknesses in a single bite.

He found many issues. At his current level in savory cooking, there were definitely flaws in this filling.

But none of them were the kind he was looking for.

He needed the kind of flaw that would trigger inspiration—the kind that would make him suddenly see the light and change the situation.

Like a stone dropped into a calm lake, rippling outward in perfect circles, breaking balance yet still pleasing to the eye.

Like a white trail left by a plane across a blue sky—obvious, yet naturally integrated into it.

He knew it was hard to find such a problem, but he believed he could.

Because Xu Nuo must have found it before.

He had made so many batches of crab roe pork buns. The fact that his final success led him to explore the double-crab theory meant such a problem must exist.

Spoon after spoon, Qin Huai kept eating.

Pei Xing, who had originally returned to the cooking station and was seriously kneading dough, couldn’t help glancing over again. His expression became even more puzzled than before.

“Is Qin Huai still not full?” he asked Li Hua in confusion.

“Did he skip breakfast?”

“But he only ate one siu mai from what I made… Did he not like it? Is my siu mai that bad? But it’s clearly much better than before.”

Li Hua said nothing. He simply stared at the steaming basket in the distance, lost in thought, silently calculating the time.

His steamed dumplings would be ready in three minutes.

After two minutes of cooling, in about five minutes, they could be brought to Qin Huai.

Li Hua knew Qin Huai occasionally liked steamed dumplings.

Because once, when Qin Huai went to the hospital to deliver something to Qu Jing, he ate a basket of steamed dumplings at a Shaxian snack shop nearby. Elderly residents from the Yunzhong community who happened to be there saw it and took photos.

Later, many of them went to that same shop to try the “same dumplings” to see how good they were—only to find them average.

And so a rumor spread in the Yunzhong cafeteria community:

Little Chef Qin occasionally likes steamed dumplings too.

Little Chef Qin, who also occasionally likes steamed dumplings, was still tasting the meat filling.

Shi Dadan, who had originally been sitting by the window, had already finished browsing the listings. He changed seats and moved to a spot near the window where he could see Qin Huai at the cooking station through the glass.

That seat had originally been occupied, but the old man sitting there had gone home to fetch something. Shi Dadan, unaware of this, simply sat down and ended up sharing the table with other elderly patrons.

The elderly diners had noticed Qin Huai talking to Shi Dadan earlier and, realizing he was likely Qin Huai’s friend, decided to strike up a conversation to get more information. They even took the initiative to give him the seat.

The one probing for information was Old Man Qian.

In front of Old Man Qian’s subtle questioning, Shi Dadan answered almost everything—of course, only the public version of the truth.

After learning that Shi Dadan was a friend of Chen Huihong and also a supplier to Qin Huai, Old Man Qian immediately became much warmer toward him, and began introducing him to the “must-eat list” of Yunzhong Cafeteria.

Which chefs besides Qin Huai had pastries worth checking out, how to best secure Little Chef Qin’s limited daily items, and the best pairings for Four Happiness Tangyuan at noon.

He completely treated Shi Dadan as “one of their own.”

The elderly regulars at Yunzhong Cafeteria were always this enthusiastic when it came to anyone who might be connected to the kitchen.

Shi Dadan just nodded along, not particularly interested in the advice, and casually asked while watching Qin Huai eat the meat filling: “Is Little Chef Qin hungry?”

Old Man Qian glanced over and wasn’t sure.

“Not sure. Maybe he’s hungry, or maybe he’s tasting the flavor. He does taste his dishes sometimes, but usually only a few bites—he doesn’t eat like this.”

“Recently, though, his bun project hasn’t been going very smoothly. I keep seeing him looking serious, even a bit worried. The quantity he makes every day is also quite small. Normally, when things go well, he makes a lot.”

Shi Dadan nodded in understanding.

In the kitchen, Qin Huai felt he was almost full.

How should he put it—he did have a good tongue, but it didn’t seem as useful as he expected.

He still couldn’t find the ripple he was looking for, nor could he draw that white streak across the sky in his mind.

He even felt like talking to himself.

Saying some nonsense that might hint at the game system, like:

“Ah, why didn’t Xu Nuo’s memory continue? You already gave me the filling, can you trigger another task so I can see how the full bun is made?”

He thought it—and actually said it.

But it didn’t help at all.

Qin Huai felt like he might be going crazy.

The filling was already getting cold. Cold crab roe stir-fried meat was not good at all—crab roe simply couldn’t be eaten cold.

He chewed slowly, the half-cooled filling lingering in his mouth. He was already too full to take another bite, so he could only chew longer, hoping to extract something from it.

Maybe because he had eaten too much, he felt a bit dry. Even though the filling had been thickened with starch, it still felt somewhat dry now.

He wanted to drink water, but feared that even a couple of sips would make him burp from fullness.

If only he could crack two eggs into it and—

Wait. Crack two eggs in.

Qin Huai seemed to see the ripple he had been searching for.

Without hesitation, he swallowed the meat filling he had been chewing for who knows how long and immediately got to work.

After eating so much, he already knew exactly what was wrong with the filling and what needed improvement.

He started cracking eggs.

Reworking the filling.

Rolling dough for buns.

Wrapping them.

Qin Huai didn’t make too many buns—he couldn’t. He had only stir-fried a small pot of filling, and he had already eaten half of it. There simply weren’t enough ingredients.

In total, he made 28 buns.

They were placed into the steamer.

Qin Huai stood by the steamer waiting for them to finish, while casually giving a nearby apprentice a look that clearly meant: “I want tea.”

The apprentice immediately understood and went to pour tea.

Qin Huai finally got to drink the tea he had wanted for a long time but had avoided because he was afraid of getting too full.

Li Hua seized the moment and brought over the steamed dumplings at the right temperature, saying:

“Chef Qin, would you be interested in trying—”

“Burp.”

Qin Huai hadn’t intended to burp, but seeing the dumplings, he couldn’t help it.

Li Hua: …

Qin Huai smiled awkwardly. “I’m a bit full right now. I can’t do a tasting. Tomorrow.”

Li Hua nodded and left with the dumplings.

Qin Huai continued guarding the buns. Just as they were about to be ready, he went outside and called Shi Dadan into the kitchen.

Tasting like this wasn’t convenient outside—the kitchen was better.

Old Man Qian was stunned to see Shi Dadan actually being allowed into the kitchen. His expression clearly said: “You say you’re not close with Little Chef Qin? You’re clearly a VIP guest!”

Shi Dadan followed Qin Huai into the kitchen and curiously looked around. It was obvious he hadn’t been in a kitchen for a long time since leaving the restaurant business. Back when he ran a restaurant, kitchens weren’t this modern.

Qin Huai brought him to the seat usually used by Ou Yang. It was spacious, with a table and a small stool. Since Ou Yang ate there every day, it was stocked with tissues, wet wipes, and other “dining companions,” turning it into a dedicated VIP dining spot.

The buns were ready.

Qin Huai returned to the steamer and paused slightly. The nearby apprentice thought he didn’t want to personally retrieve them, so he quickly stepped forward, lifted the lid, and neatly took them out.

Qin Huai knew the buns should be good.

The filling he had just cooked was B-grade—a pure savory filling. His skill in savory cooking had improved significantly.

With that kind of filling, after being refined by that moment of inspiration, the buns should not be lower than B or even B+.

But the result still surprised him.

【Crab Roe Pork Bun — Grade A】

He had, entirely on his own, created another A-grade flour-based pastry after the Four Happiness Tangyuan.

At that moment, Qin Huai deeply felt that awareness and insight were just as important as cooking skill.