Gathering

Jiang Feng tinkered around in the kitchen all afternoon, watching Jiang Huiqin's cooking video three or four times. He swapped in better ingredients, added more seasonings, and followed Jiang Huiqin's original steps to make Clear Soup with Bird's Nest Slices.

Looking at the F-rank Improved rating the game had given it, Jiang Feng stared at the dish before him with a complicated expression.

The plating was beautiful. He had even added a few vegetable leaves for more color.

But the taste...

It deserved the game's F-rank rating.

Mushroom Soup, Quail Eggs, Tremella, and Luncheon Meat—what a deadly combination!

For Jiang Huiqin to make such a deadly combination earn an E-rank rating was proof enough of her excellent cooking skills.

Jiang Feng silently poured the failed dish in front of him into the Slop Bucket.

He was not an exceptionally gifted cook. The game had only given his Dish Tasting skill a beginner rating. It was just that Jiang Weiguo and Jiang Jiankang's cooking had spoiled his palate since childhood, so he could comment on a dish's flavor when he was around people who knew nothing about cooking and bluff the amateurs.

As for the kind of genius described in novels, someone born with an incredibly sensitive palate who could tell whether ingredients were fresh with one glance, identify every ingredient and seasoning with one bite, and figure out how a dish was made after eating it once—Jiang Feng had never even heard of such a person.

Nor did he believe such people existed.

Cooks could make up for a lack of natural talent through hard work. Those born to do this job were far too rare.

Since Jiang Feng could not figure it out himself, he went to ask Jiang Jiankang.

"Mushrooms, tremella, quail eggs, luncheon meat?" Jiang Jiankang's brows furrowed tighter with every ingredient he named. After a long while, he looked at Jiang Feng with a complicated expression. "Son, let's just cook properly. Don't learn those so-called innovative dishes from the internet."

Clearly, yesterday's Pure Meat Wontons had left a lingering trauma.

Jiang Feng: ...

Dad, you should be saying that to Great-Aunt Grandma...

After Jiang Feng pestered him relentlessly, Jiang Jiankang finally compromised. He left behind a "Let me look into it," then slipped into the back kitchen to chop vegetables.

Jiang Feng went back to his dorm to change clothes.

He still had a gathering to attend.

It was the Chess Club's first gathering of the semester, as well as its most formal, largest-scale, and most lavish gathering in the past four years!

Jiang Feng vaguely remembered that last year's gathering had involved pooling their remaining funds. Ji Yue had even contributed her treasured Butter Hot Pot Base and the pot she had hidden in her dorm. They bought a pile of noodles, vermicelli, rice cakes, vegetables, enoki mushrooms, and other ingredients and staples. Each person got one fish ball, with no extras. The eight of them had snuck electricity from a classroom and held a unique meal like a group of thieves.

This year was different. This year, the Chess Club not only had more than thirty members, but they could even have their gathering at a restaurant!

It was practically an unprecedented breakthrough in Chess Club history. After all, Ji Yue had never enjoyed the privilege of a restaurant gathering during her three years as president.

For this, Ji Yue had even specifically taken leave and paid her own way to join the gathering.

This made things hard on Wang Hao, since he was the only one helping out at the restaurant today.

More than thirty people marched along in a grand procession, nearly filling an entire bus.

The gathering was at an all-you-can-eat barbecue and hot pot restaurant not far from campus. It cost sixty-nine yuan per person, and student IDs got them a fifteen-percent discount, making it very affordable. Since there were so many of them, Jiang Feng had reserved the seats in advance: two rows, one with four tables and one with five, all pushed together so everyone could chat while eating.

Though the ingredients were not particularly fresh and were obviously processed and frozen meat, there was a wide variety. Those who could not grill could simply boil their food instead, and the individual hot pots meant they had an abundance of seasonings: oil, salt, soy sauce, vinegar, minced garlic, chopped chili, and all kinds of dipping sauces.

Jiang Feng sat with Ji Yue, Liu Qian, Liu Zixuan, and Wu Minqi, Liu Qian's fellow townsman and the Chess Club's future hope.

Liu Qian came back carrying two large plates of cooked food. After sitting down, she propped up her phone facing herself and began speaking to the camera. "Hello, everyone. I'm Qianqian. Today is our club gathering, and we're having all-you-can-eat barbecue. This..."

"Streaming?" Jiang Feng came back with a plate of raw meat for grilling and saw Liu Qian talking to her phone.

"She's been doing it for a week or two now. She puts her phone in front of her every time she eats. Haven't you noticed?" Ji Yue looked entirely unsurprised as she placed chicken wings on the Grill Paper.

Jiang Feng: ...

He had thought Liu Qian was watching TV dramas.

"Oil the grill. How are you going to cook without oil?" Jiang Feng reminded her.

"Their oil doesn't taste good." Ji Yue placed fatty pork belly from her plate beside the chicken wings. "The oil from grilled pork belly tastes good!"

Jiang Feng: ...

"Their chicken wings are marinated and really tasty. The lamb barely tastes like lamb, and the pork loin is just so-so. Oh, and their Finger Rice Cakes are good too. They're especially chewy when boiled in the hot pot. Hey, Qianqian, why didn't you get anything to grill?" Ji Yue knew this restaurant's ingredients like the back of her hand. Seeing Liu Qian only eating braised duck neck bones, with pastries on her other plate, she could not help asking.

"I can't grill. Whenever I used to go to all-you-can-eat barbecue with other people, it was either undercooked or burnt. Even when I grilled it, it didn't taste good. I'll just wait for the pot to boil and eat boiled food," Liu Qian said.

"Liu Qian, where are you streaming? I'll go follow you." Jiang Feng felt that since one of his club members was streaming, he ought to offer some small support as president.

"Certain Point Live. My stream is called A University Foodie Daily." Liu Qian was naturally happy to have Jiang Feng follow her.

Jiang Feng downloaded the streaming app and entered Liu Qian's stream. The first thing he saw was her prominent nostrils.

There were only forty-seven viewers, including Jiang Feng.

Jiang Feng: ...

With such a bizarre camera angle, the other forty-six viewers had to be true fans.

The stream was quiet too. No one was talking. Liu Qian was completely laid-back about it. Aside from saying a few words when she started the stream, she focused entirely on eating and ignored the broadcast. Every now and then, she would chat with Ji Yue, as though she had forgotten she was streaming at all.

Jiang Feng followed her, quietly left the stream, and began focusing on grilling the meat.

Ji Yue was an experienced griller, choosing only marinated fish and meat. With the oil from the pork belly sizzling away, it really did look appetizing. Liu Qian stared eagerly at the chicken wings. Ji Yue grilled four at once and gave everyone one.

For someone who normally could not even cook, Ji Yue's chicken wings were already a great success.

"Senior Ji Yue, you're amazing!" Liu Qian, someone hopeless at grilling, looked at her with admiration.

Once the chicken wings and pork belly were removed, the grill was empty again.

Liu Zixuan put the enoki mushrooms he had taken onto the grill. As he grilled them, he bragged, "I'm not exaggerating, but my enoki mushrooms taste amazing when grilled. They're no worse than Brother Feng's cooking."

As he spoke, he sprinkled cumin and chili powder from the jars over the enoki mushrooms.

But because the jars had not been cleaned in ages, all the holes were clogged. He shook them for a long time without getting out a single grain. Liu Zixuan panicked, smacked the jar hard against the edge of the table, then gave it a vigorous shake.

A huge clump of bright red chili powder landed on the perfectly pale and tender enoki mushrooms.

After that suffocating sequence of actions, Liu Zixuan unsurprisingly botched it.

The enoki mushrooms were spicy, salty, and burnt.

He had even scorched the Grill Paper.

Ji Yue came back carrying half a plate of Finger Rice Cakes, intending to add them to the pot once the previous batch of meatballs had finished cooking.

"Ah, I really want Spicy Stir-fried Rice Cakes." Liu Qian looked at the Finger Rice Cakes on the plate and sighed. "The spicy rice cakes at school are awful. They're neither spicy nor salty, and the restaurant owned by our president's family doesn't sell them."

Her tone was full of resentment.

Looking at the freshly replaced Grill Paper, Jiang Feng's mind stirred.

"Want me to make some for you?"

The seasonings at this restaurant were more than enough to make Spicy Stir-fried Rice Cakes.