PFC Chapter 204: Half-Blood Northerner
Chapter 204: Half-Blood Northerner
"Tsk!" ** Ping wanted to curse, but she tried hard to keep a straight face and ended up laughing out loud.
"I'll make it tomorrow afternoon. I'll leave some dough and stuffing for you. Just call me ten minutes in advance and I'll wrap and steam it right away. Otherwise, if you make it in advance and put it in the refrigerator, it won't taste right." Zhao Xiaojing said after calculating the time.
It takes eight and a half minutes to steam the soup dumplings. If you steam them too far in advance, the dumplings will lose some of their taste when they are warm, cool, and then reheated. The best way is to keep the dough, roll out the dough and wrap the soup dumplings ten minutes in advance, and then steam them when the two arrive for the best taste.
"Why go to so much trouble! Your Uncle Wang has nothing to do tomorrow afternoon, so he doesn't have to go out. Just call me when you're done. We'll come over whenever you want to eat and join in the fun." ** Ping frowned, waved her hands, and rolled her eyes at Wang Jiandang.
"That's right! I'm lucky enough to have something to eat, how can I choose the time? Look at me, who do I think I am? I drink too much every day and only know how to trouble Xiao Zhao. Every day I have to eat mixed cabbage and soup dumplings. I'm the only one in the world who has a mouth!" Wang Jiandang received **ping's gaze and hurriedly swallowed the cabbage he was chewing in his mouth. While waving his chopsticks, he deliberately made a sullen face and imitated **ping's speech, and started to scold himself first.
**Ping was stunned for two seconds, her expression switching back and forth between anger and laughter, and finally she gave Wang Jiandang a loud but painless slap on the arm.
Zhao Xiaojing laughed like crazy.
"Hey, Xiao Zhao, although your dead buns and soup dumplings are similar, there is still a big difference when they are actually made. How did you come up with this idea?" Wang Jiandang pretended to beg for mercy for a while, then picked up the conversation again.
"There's a chef I know who runs a restaurant in Jiangliu District. I asked their chef for help. He told me some key points, and I tried it a few times according to what he said."
"Oh, I see." Wang Jiandang nodded, and quickly finished most of the plate of cabbage. "How big are the soup dumplings you made?"
"It's less than half the size of a fist, about the size of a steamed bun." Zhao Xiaojing stretched out her hand to compare.
"Oh, there are two kinds of soup dumplings in our hometown. The big one is as big as a fist!" Wang Jiandang also stretched out his fist.
Zhao Xiaojing was stunned and a little dumbfounded. She made the soup dumplings according to the size of the Jiangcheng soup dumplings ordered last time. She never expected that there would be a size issue when making soup dumplings. She wondered if the size would affect the progress of the task?
In order not to delay the mission, Zhao Xiaojing directly asked the target, "Uncle Wang, do you think it's better to make the water chestnut soup dumplings big or small?"
"Oh, they're all the same!" Wang Jiandang took two bites of the three fresh delicacies and put down his chopsticks and began to wave his hands. "It doesn't matter if it's big or small, or whether it has 8 or 28 folds. It all tastes the same!"
That's good. Zhao Xiaojing breathed a sigh of relief and cursed herself for being careless. She didn't even do a comprehensive research before making soup dumplings. She just heard Su Yuchen say water chestnut soup dumplings and started making them. If Uncle Wang was obsessed with the size, if he required 28 or 38 folds, then she would have failed the task.
"But there is one thing," Wang Jiandang continued to wave his hands, and Zhao Xiaojing's eyes widened. "The skin of our soup dumplings must be chewy.
It is different from Jinling soup dumplings. Jinling is in the south, and the southerners do not pursue chewiness when eating noodles. People in Jiangsu and Zhejiang like to eat very thin noodles and pay attention to a soft taste. Therefore, there is a saying about Jinling soup dumplings: lift gently and move slowly. Because it is not chewy, if you don't move it slowly, the soup will leak out!
But we northerners like to eat noodles with a bit of chewiness, even the soup dumpling skin has to be chewy and strong enough!"
Zhao Xiaojing nodded thoughtfully, feeling a little worried.
In order to roll out tender soup dumpling skins, she adjusted the ratio of boiling water, cold water and flour in the virtual space for dozens of times before she made the last successful dough. The skin was indeed tough enough and the finished product was thin enough, but she didn't know if she could achieve the strength that Wang Jiandang was looking for.
"You're talking nonsense all day long!" ** Ping saw Zhao Xiaojing's embarrassment and slapped Wang Jiandang's arm again. This time there was no sound, but Wang Jiandang cried out and almost dropped his chopsticks.
"Don't pay attention to him, Xiao Zhao. How dare you call yourself a northerner? How many authentic northerners eat sweet soup dumplings? He is at most half a northerner, and he is a mixed-blood! Guess why the water chestnut soup dumpling shop he liked went bankrupt? Because except for him, a mixed-blood northerner, native northerners don't eat it at all!"
"Ah? What's the reason?" Zhao Xiaojing didn't expect this to happen and asked curiously.
“Because the boss of that shop learned how to make soup dumplings from Jinling, the taste of soup dumplings is sweeter, and northerners mostly like fresh and salty taste, so the water chestnut soup dumplings from that shop can’t be sold at all. Only mixed-blood northerners like you, Uncle Wang, who have different tastes from others, prefer that shop!
So after the bankruptcies, the boss never opened a shop there again and just packed up and went back to his hometown. That’s why your uncle Wang can never eat it again!
Otherwise, given his habit of knocking on the door of a Guangdong restaurant in the middle of the night, he would have knocked the door of the soup dumpling owner down long ago!" ** Ping crossed her arms and glanced at Wang Jiandang and complained.
"So that's how it is," Zhao Xiaojing nodded, but after thinking about it carefully, she felt something was wrong. "But didn't Uncle Wang say that the dough must be chewy to be delicious, and that Jinling soup dumplings are not chewy? Then why are the Jinling soup dumplings from that restaurant so good?"
"Because the boss of that shop is also a bit of a jerk. The filling is sweet from the south, and the skin is chewy and strong from the north. This is exactly what your half-toned uncle Wang likes!"
"Then why is the boss half-hearted? That's because when the boss came to us, he naturally used flour from Henan Province. The wheat in our Henan Province is good, and the flour produced is also good. As long as it is used correctly, the dough will be chewy." Wang Jiandang looked quite proud when he mentioned this.
Flour! Zhao Xiaojing suddenly realized that if she also used flour from Henan Province, wouldn’t that solve the skin problem?
"Uncle Wang, do we have Henan flour here? What kind should I buy?"
"Buy Chunyu's! It's available in the Yonghui Supermarket in front of us. I don't know why not many people buy it here, but the flour is really good! I carried a big bag home last time, and your aunt said I was wasting money. But the steamed buns made from it were full of wheat aroma, and each layer was so chewy. Our whole family loves it!" The two plates in front of Wang Jiandang were empty. Dun Dun took two sips of soda and sat there dancing while talking.
"That flour is indeed okay." ** Ping glared at Wang Jiandang speechlessly. "Xiao Zhao, if you want to try it yourself, you can buy some, but you must not spend money on us. Your uncle Wang will ask for a lot of things when he drinks too much. Just ignore him. He will be fine tomorrow when he sobers up."