Smashed Cucumber Salad

Having discovered a way to gain experience points, Jiang Feng began to feel restless about taking the head chef's position.

Unfortunately, the kitchen was Comrade Jiang Jiankang's territory. He was the king of the back kitchen. From peelers, boning knives, and fruit knives to woks, chopping boards, and gas stoves, they were all his subjects. Jiang Feng's chances of staging a rebellion under his nose were practically zero.

It took Jiang Feng an entire day to find an opportunity to go into the back kitchen and make a bowl of Seaweed Egg Soup. That was only because Comrade Jiang Jiankang had been swamped; otherwise, Jiang Feng would not even have been able to touch a pot.

At ten that night, the shop closed. Jiang Jiankang and Comrade Wang Xiulian cleaned up the back kitchen and, as usual, chased Jiang Feng home early.

Before leaving, Jiang Feng swiped two cucumbers from the back kitchen.

A perfectly ordinary plate of Smashed Cucumber Salad—that description was a little too mediocre. Jiang Feng felt that he had been making Smashed Cucumber Salad for Chen Xiuxiu since childhood and had honed this dish for decades. At the very least, it should have been described as having perfect color, aroma, and flavor, or being one in ten thousand.

The amount of Smashed Cucumber Salad Chen Xiuxiu had eaten in the past was enough to wipe out an entire orchard's cucumber family.

After returning home, Jiang Feng stood in the kitchen and carefully examined the two cucumbers he had swiped from Wang Xiulian.

One was fat and one was skinny, one was tall and one was short. Their surfaces were rough, and their yellowish-green skins bore countless wounds from Comrade Wang Xiulian's violent washing.

Smashed Cucumber Salad... how exactly was he supposed to smash it?

Jiang Feng, who had smashed countless cucumbers and seen every shape and size imaginable, fell into confusion.

How else could Smashed Cucumber Salad be made? Was he supposed to imitate a wuxia novel, sink his qi into his dantian, use his inner energy to inspect the cucumber's internal structure, then take out a legendary kitchen knife and apply a little clever force, rotating the flat of the blade as he smashed it...

Forget it. He could not keep making things up.

He took out a kitchen knife, placed the cucumbers on the chopping board, and went smack, smack, smack.

There was no refreshing fragrance, no enticing color, and certainly no glow.

The cucumbers were still cucumbers. They had merely been smashed.

He poured in vinegar, dripped in Chili Oil, and two plates of Smashed Cucumber Salad were complete.

The vinegar had been brewed by Old Comrade Jiang Weiguo himself, while the Chili Oil had been made by Comrade Jiang Jiankang.

An unremarkable plate of Smashed Cucumber Salad

A plate of Smashed Cucumber Salad with too much vinegar

Jiang Feng: ...

Although he had no idea why he could see notes even at home, these two notes were clearly unpleasant.

Ten minutes later, Jiang Feng carried the plate of overly vinegary Smashed Cucumber Salad to knock on the neighboring door.

Five minutes earlier, Comrade Wang Xiulian, who had returned after cleaning the back kitchen, had strongly condemned Jiang Feng's wasteful behavior of making Smashed Cucumber Salad late at night. With an eye for talent, she finished the unremarkable plate of cucumbers and ordered Jiang Feng to take the other plate next door for Chen Xiuxiu.

"Doesn't that girl Xiuxiu love Smashed Cucumber Salad the most? When you were little, she cleaned her plate even when you put so much vinegar in it!"

Jiang Feng suspected that with Comrade Wang Xiulian's booming voice, Chen Xiuxiu next door had already heard every word.

When Chen Xiuxiu opened the door and saw Jiang Feng holding a plate of Smashed Cucumber Salad, she was visibly stunned.

"Want some?" That sentence had appeared in countless conversations between them.

"Yes." Chen Xiuxiu answered reflexively.

Chen Duxiu was not home, but that was nothing unusual. Ever since Jiang Feng could remember, he had gone on business trips every other day.

Jiang Feng placed the Smashed Cucumber Salad on the dining table. Under the fly cover on the table sat a bowl of porridge that had already gone completely cold, with no side dishes.

And it was a very unappetizing bowl of porridge, looking like paste, seemingly even a little burnt.

Jiang Feng frowned and asked, "You haven't eaten dinner?"

"I can't eat." Chen Xiuxiu looked listless.

Seeing her like this, Jiang Feng said nothing and walked straight into the kitchen.

Compared with the Jiang Family's kitchen, which rivaled a hotel's back kitchen, Chen Xiuxiu's kitchen was far more rudimentary. Two kitchen knives, a chopping board that was damp and cracked, one pot, a jar of salt, and a small bottle of oil—there were no other seasonings to be found.

"You're going to cook?" Chen Xiuxiu did not stop him. She gave a mocking smile. "There's nothing in my house. Just one pot, a bag of rice, and meal replacement powder."

Sure enough, when he opened the refrigerator, it was empty except for beer.

"Oh, right, there's also the old man's beer." Chen Xiuxiu looked at him. "Your family's ingredients should all be at the restaurant. If I'm going to eat, just heat up this bowl of porridge."

If those words had come from Chen Xiuxiu in the past, they would have shocked every small stall owner she had ever patronized.

With the palate Comrade Jiang Jiankang had spoiled her with since childhood, how could she possibly eat a failed bowl of thick, slightly burnt porridge?

"I'll make you some Plain Congee." Jiang Feng knew cooking anything else was impossible, so he turned his gaze toward the rice, the only edible thing in the kitchen.

Chen Xiuxiu sat in her chair, quietly watching Jiang Feng cook the congee.

The Jiang Family did not like drinking congee. Even when they did, they would not drink Plain Congee. At the very least, it had to be something like Shrimp Congee or Beef Congee, congee that let people appreciate the wonder of meat. Bland, tasteless Plain Congee would never appear on the Jiang Family's dining table.

The key to cooking congee was getting the rice-to-water ratio right, mastering the timing of Heat Control changes, and stirring evenly so every grain became plump, soft, and thick.

Of course, Jiang Feng could do none of that.

He could only cook a bowl of bland, tasteless Plain Congee that seemed barely drinkable and would not kill anyone.

"We haven't seen each other in a long time, have we?" Chen Xiuxiu suddenly said.

"Yeah, almost a year. We haven't met since you started college." Jiang Feng thought about it carefully.

"When you saw me at noon today, you almost didn't recognize me, did you? I used to be so fat... I barely looked human, like a meatball." As Chen Xiuxiu spoke, she glanced at her arm.

"You weren't fat before." Jiang Feng stirred the pot as he spoke. "At least, in my parents' eyes, you weren't fat at all."

The Jiang Family's definition of fat was that anyone under two hundred jin did not count as fat, only sturdy.

Chen Xiuxiu burst out laughing. "True. Only you people never thought I was fat."

"Dieting to lose weight harms your body. You said that yourself," Jiang Feng said.

Back in high school, whenever Chen Xiuxiu went to Jiang Feng's family restaurant after school, she would eat meat while smiling and saying, "I know eating too much meat makes you gain weight, but my appetite is just this big. Dieting to lose weight is so harmful to your body!"

"I know."

"At first, I wanted to lose weight through exercise too, but it was really too hard. You can't imagine how difficult it is for a one-hundred-and-seventy-jin fat person to run one lap around a track. Dieting was so much easier. All I had to do was buy emetics. The more I threw up, the thinner I got."

"I no longer had to buy clothes from specialty stores, and people no longer looked at me strangely when I walked down the street. Later, I didn't even need emetics anymore. Just seeing greasy meat would naturally make me want to throw up. Isn't that great?"

Jiang Feng had no way to comment. The Jiang Family had never lacked fat people, and every one of them was broad-shouldered, thick-waisted, capable of taking on ten people alone. No one would be foolish enough to gossip about them, much less stare at them strangely on the street. Most people would take one look at the burly men with fierce faces and give them a wide berth.

Jiang Feng could only continue cooking the congee in silence.

Soon, a pot of unremarkable Plain Congee was ready.

A bowl of passable Plain Congee

This was the highest praise the game had given any dish Jiang Feng had made so far.

When he placed the Plain Congee before Chen Xiuxiu, her face was full of refusal.

She did not want to eat anything. She would have been willing never to eat anything again.

But she could not refuse Jiang Feng's kindness.

The Plain Congee was still steaming. Chen Xiuxiu picked up her chopsticks and took the smallest piece of cucumber.

Crunch.

"Ding, gained 10 experience points."

"Delicious," Chen Xiuxiu said softly.

Jiang Feng: ???

If he remembered correctly, this Smashed Cucumber Salad had too much vinegar in it, right?