border cook

The next day, Jiang Yanyi slept until the sun was high before getting up.

She hasn't slept so comfortably since she came here.

As soon as she was fully dressed and stepped out of the room, she saw Okra squatting by the courtyard wall, not knowing what she was doing.

The rising sun was slightly dazzling, Jiang Yanyi squinted her eyes and stretched her waist: "When did you get up, Okra?"

When Qiukui heard the voice and turned around, his face couldn't hide his excitement: "Huahua, pomegranates are falling from the sky!"

Jiang Yanyi was taken aback when he heard that, and walked over to have a look, only to find that three pomegranates fell into the yard at some point, one of them was smashed, and the other two big and red ones probably fell on the soil of the flowerbed. The peel was not scratched.

The pedicle of the fruit that was smashed was brown, and it probably fell off by itself when it was too ripe, but the other two pedicles were fresh green, and it didn't look like they would fall off by themselves.

Jiang Yanyi looked up at the half pomegranate tree exposed on the other side of the courtyard wall, and asked doubtfully, "Could it be that the wind blown last night and these two pomegranates were blown down?"

Otherwise, I can't explain it.

Okra looked at Jiang Yanyi anxiously: "Huahua, can I eat it?"

Although she is greedy, she also knows that this thing is not from their yard, and she is afraid of being scolded by the owner if she eats it.

Jiang Yanyi stared at the two pomegranates with a little worry. In theory, they should be sent back to others, but in terms of operation, it would look very artificial.

It's fine if you're an ordinary neighbor. I left the things in your yard with me, and I'll bring them back to you. Neighbors can use this to get closer.

But the rich family next door, not to mention the master of the house, even the servants would not care if two pomegranates were blown away from the tree by the wind. I want to take the opportunity to play the autumn wind.

Jiang Yanyi struggled for a while and said, "Eat it, I'll make some cakes and send them to the neighbors, and then I'll just tell the porter of the Governor's Mansion about the pomegranate."

This is also a courtesy.

Before opening the store, give a gift to the neighbors in the surrounding area, so as to build up a good relationship, and the neighbors will not see each other when they look up and down. It is always better to be harmonious.

After all, there is an old saying that "a distant relative is not as good as a close neighbor". She and Qiu Kui, two weak girls, were here.

Okra heard that Jiang Yanyi said it was edible, so he happily picked up two pomegranates.

Jiang Yanyi strolled to the corner of the courtyard, looked at the peppers he had planted in the flower garden, took a small ladle of water from the water tank in the courtyard, and carefully poured it into the soil at the roots.

She went to the market with Okra yesterday to find out that chili peppers are called peppers here. I heard that they were brought back by caravans from outside the customs.

Isn't this just turning peppers into famous flowers and herbs?

Jiang Yanyi didn't know the value of this pot of peppers before, but now that he knows it, he always feels ashamed of receiving it.

Although Feng Shuo obviously didn't take this pot of peppers seriously in the military tent that day, but no matter how he didn't take it seriously, the value of peppers in the market also depends on this.

It's like someone treats money like dung and gives you a piece of gold. You can't say that the other party didn't take this little money seriously anyway, so you should give it to yourself for granted, right?

Jiang Yanyi felt that if Feng Shuo came to eat again in the future, he couldn't charge him for the meal!

The hot pot restaurant implements a lifetime free system for this boss.

After returning from the market yesterday, she also had an idea: given the current rarity of peppers, she will take good care of this pot of peppers, plant and cultivate them in the future, and sell peppers as potted plants before the pepper market is saturated. It is more profitable than her making hot pot with chili peppers.

When my hot pot restaurant opens, it sells clear soup pots first. Although people in this era also eat spicy food, the spiciness of dogwood is compared with that of chili peppers. It is the difference between bronze and king.

It will take a process for the ancients who have never experienced the overbearing taste of chili to adapt to spicy food.

When I first came up, I mainly focused on red soup pots. Once the peppers in the market were not enough and the price was expensive, what should I do if I made a loss-making business?Second, I'm afraid that people's acceptance will not be high, but there are not many people who open the door to do business, that's not the end!

After thinking about it, Jiang Yanyi felt that the red soup hot pot had to be figured out slowly.

When her hot pot restaurant becomes famous, she will gradually introduce red soup hot pot. Regular customers will definitely be willing to try it out of trust.

The future is bright!

The more she thought about it, the more she felt that the potted plants given by the general were nothing but a cornucopia!

If his pepper cultivation plan is successful, then he will have to send a big gift to his house. One is to thank the gift of pepper, and the other is to lean against the big tree to enjoy the shade.

At that time, if the business grows bigger and bigger, there will definitely be unrest, and the road must be paved as soon as possible.

Jiang Yanyi stared at the pepper plant with loving eyes like an old mother's.

"Huahua, eat pomegranates!" Okra peeled off a handful of pomegranates and handed them to Jiang Yanyi.

Jiang Yanyi came back to her senses, put away her old mother's gaze, threw the pomegranate pulp into her mouth, and burst out a mouthful of sweet and sour juice after chewing. one day!!"

Although Qiukui didn't know why Jiang Yanyi was so excited all of a sudden, she was also very happy and shouted after her, "Open a shop!"

The two laughed together in the yard.

Jiang Yanyi is going to give osmanthus cakes to her neighbors. Although she thinks pumpkin cakes are delicious, osmanthus cakes are better as gifts.

She doesn't know much about the white case. The reason why she knows how to make sweet-scented osmanthus cakes is because when she was reading novels, sweet-scented osmanthus cakes appeared too frequently in all novels.

She was curious for a while, so she found a tutorial on the Internet and fiddled with it, and it seemed to be the same thing when she made it.

Jiang Yanyi went into the kitchen, poured the indica rice flour and glutinous rice flour into the basin and mixed them well.

Indica rice flour is mainly used to make sweet-scented osmanthus cake, so that the taste is not sticky.Adding some glutinous rice flour is just to increase the stickiness, so that the pastry will not fall apart when touched.

The sweet-scented osmanthus cake is made carefully, and the water is also particular about it.It is best to use cow's milk. If there is no cow's milk, you can use soy milk instead. If you use water directly, the taste will be a little less.

Jiang Yanyi is new here, and she doesn’t know where to buy fresh milk. In order to make a pastry, she finds it troublesome to use graphite to grind soybeans to cook milk, so she asks Okra to go outside to see if there is a stall that sells Chaoshi and soy milk. Yes, buy some back.

Not long after Okra went out, she brought back two large bowls of soy milk. Jiang Yanyi only used some of the soy milk. She planned to fry two deep-fried dough sticks for breakfast with the rest of the soy milk.

To make sweet-scented osmanthus cake, the degree of "tide" of the rice noodles is very particular. If there is too much water, the sweet-scented osmanthus cake will become sticky when steamed, and will not form.It has to reach the tide level that the rice noodles will clump together when you pinch them with your hands, and they can all disperse when you break them.

After finishing this step, Jiang Yanyi sifted the rice noodles with a noodle basket, so that the taste was soft.After sifting, cover it with a wet handkerchief for a while.

She lit the okra on fire, and fried the stuffing in a hot pan. Jiang Yanyi planned to make both stuffed and solid osmanthus cakes.The stuffed stuffing uses peanut powder and red bean paste.

Why use red bean paste?Because the sugar was too expensive, Jiang Yan felt his flesh hurt.

She put the peanut powder into the pan and sautéed it until fragrant. After scooping it up, she immediately mixed it with dried osmanthus and red bean paste, and the sweet-scented osmanthus was wrapped in the fried peanut powder, and the fragrance burst out instantly.Jiang Yanyi added a little oil to enhance the fragrance and color. It is said that this kind of traditional dim sum will not have that taste without adding oil.

The okra lay on the edge of the stove and sniffed: "I now think that the sweet-scented osmanthus cake is the most delicious cake in the world, and the pumpkin cake can only be ranked second."

Jiang Yanyi smiled and said, "I'll make jujube cake for you another day."

Qiu Kui was so hungry that she was about to cry: "Hua Hua, let's open a pastry shop!"

Jiang Yanyi was amused by her.

She spread the rice noodles in a shallow layer in the mold, sprinkled with dried osmanthus, and then spread a layer of flour, then spread the stuffing on top, with another layer of rice noodles and a layer of dried osmanthus, flattened with a shovel and put on the steamer Steam.

Can be regarded as finished!

Jiang Yanyi kneaded noodles and fried two fritters by the way, and each of them ate soy milk with okra, which was considered breakfast.

*

When the sweet-scented osmanthus cake was out of the pan, Jiang Yanyi took off the mold, cut it into pieces and put it on a plate, and sent a plate to each of the nearby houses.

Neighbors in the neighborhood had heard that Zhao Dabao's rouge shop had been taken down, but they had never seen the new tenant who lived in seclusion.

Today, I saw a young woman with a good-looking appearance and capable workmanship. She gave them pastries when they first met. Not to mention, she was really thoughtful in her conduct, and she immediately had a good impression of Jiang Yanyi.

When Jiang Yanyi went back, the food box was full of gifts from neighbors.

It was a good start, and she was so happy that she walked a lot more lightly.

The last big plate was given to the Duhufu.

Jiang Yanyi knocked on the red lacquered door with the lion's head ring in the Duhu Mansion, and handed over the plate of sweet-scented osmanthus cakes to explain his intentions.

It was also a coincidence that just as Jiang Yanyi had returned, Feng Shuo rode his horse to the door of the house.

He saw Jiang Yanyi leaving from the gate of his house at the intersection, and remembering that he not only failed to pick up the pomegranates that fell into her yard this morning, but also deliberately picked two for her, he felt inexplicably like a cat's paw Scratching, eager to know why she came here.

After entering the mansion, the first thing he did was to ask the concierge: "The cook from the shop next door just came?"

The concierge was taken aback by the question, and after returning to his senses, he hurriedly told about Jiang Yanyi's gift of osmanthus cake: "The girl said that the pomegranate tree on the side of our Xikua courtyard was blown down by the wind last night, so I made a deliberate order A plate of pastries is delivered."

Feng Shuo's dark eyes lit up slightly, and he asked, "Where's the pastry?"

As soon as the concierge entered the house, Feng Shuo drove his horse to the gate of the mansion, and the cakes hadn't been sent away yet.

When he opened the door for Feng Shuo, he put the cakes in the side room beside him, and when he heard Feng Shuo asked, he hurried to bring them out.

But he was slightly surprised in his heart, he thought it was enough to report this matter to the housekeeper and let the housekeeper know the favor, but Feng Shuo seemed to be quite concerned about this matter.

The concierge thought of the good looks of the little lady who delivered the pastry, and had a vague guess in his heart, secretly thinking that if he encounters the little lady in the future, he should be smarter.

***

Feng Shuo took the big plate of sweet-scented osmanthus cakes and strode towards the Xikua courtyard, the exhaustion from a sleepless night dissipated a little at this moment.

There is only one wall between Xikua courtyard and Jiang Yanyi's courtyard, and his sense of taste can recover about [-]% here.

He sat in the pavilion and ate the cakes. The sweet-scented osmanthus cakes on the plate were cut into beautiful diamond-shaped cubes, dotted with dried osmanthus flowers. It was soft in the mouth, and the filling in the middle was sweet and soft.

It was the osmanthus cake he had eaten before he lost his sense of taste.

Maybe sweets can make people relax. At this moment, the sharpness between his brows and eyes receded, and his expression was even a little bewildered.The delicate eyelashes are half-down, the broken hair on the forehead is gently floating by the wind, and the corner of the mouth is curved slightly bitterly.

The wound on his palm that day hadn't healed yet, but today's military training has torn the wound open again.There were blood stains on the sweet-scented osmanthus cake, and he swallowed it together, as if swallowing the past together.

It was fishy and sweet in the mouth, and he just realized that the blood that he had clenched his teeth and swallowed countless times over the years was full of rust.

Everything he owns now was snatched by him like a vicious dog.

Only the sense of taste, something he thought he would never have again, suddenly appeared.

He wanted to preserve his palate.

He could tell the ups and downs of the things he entered, and he felt that he was still alive.

But besides the sense of taste, he could vaguely feel something else from that cook, but it was too vague.

He had an intuition that if he got closer to her, he might be able to figure out what it was.

"Huahua, the sweet-scented osmanthus cake is delicious!"

The voice from the next yard interrupted Feng Shuo's thoughts.

Because of practicing martial arts, his hearing is much sharper than others, even if he didn't deliberately listen, the movement coming from there was very clear in his ears.

"The stuffing is so sweet!"

"Flower, try it!"

Chirping, chirping, it was all one person's voice, not the voice he wanted to hear.

As if God finally obeyed his wishes once, a beautiful female voice with a smile sounded from the courtyard wall: "I am eating pomegranate, the sweetness of this is more to my liking."

Feng Shuo couldn't help looking at the pomegranate tree in the corner of the courtyard.

She likes to eat pomegranates.

This plate of sweet-scented osmanthus cake was exchanged for two pomegranates.

If there were more pomegranates that fell, what would she do tomorrow?

*

That night, a black shadow avoided the patrolling guards in the mansion and entered the unused west courtyard. In a frenzy, he picked up half a tree of pomegranates, climbed over the wall and sneaked them into the courtyard next door.

Standing on the top of the wall, Xing Yao helped his master let the air out, and at the same time couldn't help reminding him: "Master... the tree is almost bald."

Under the moonlight, the corners of Feng Shuo's exquisite mouth were tightly pursed, he looked in the direction of Jiang Yanyi's room, and murmured: "I can't be the only one who gets upset."