Obsessed

"Add... add daylily!" Liu Qian said hesitantly.

"Daylily?" Daylily was indeed delicious, and adding it to soup would be a good seasoning.

"When my family makes soup, like chicken soup, pork rib soup, or kelp soup, we always add daylily. What, Club President, are you making soup?" Liu Qian's eyes lit up, and she chuckled, "Remember to call me when it's ready!"

Jiang Feng nodded in agreement.

He decided to make two pots of soup later, one with daylily and one without, and then taste them to determine which one to use.

After tinkering in the back kitchen for an entire afternoon, Jiang Feng finally chose the pot of soup with daylily, although it wasn't particularly well-made.

[A pot of soup with overcooked time, unevenly cut radishes, and unremoved mushroom odor]

Following Jiang Huiqin's steps, Jiang Feng made the Clear Soup with Bird's Nest Slices again, and the evaluation was still F-rank.

He took a sip. As expected, it was F-rank bad. Jiang Feng silently poured it into the slop bucket.

Could it be... that his soup-making skills were just not good enough?

Even with white radish and daylily added, the mushroom flavor was still very prominent. Jiang Feng felt something was still missing.

What was missing?

Add some corn?

Add some winter melon?

Add some potatoes?

But adding so many ingredients would turn it into a mixed vegetable soup, essentially deviating from the realm of mushroom soup.

What should he add?

For the next few days, these five words kept echoing in Jiang Feng's mind. He spent all his time pondering what to add to the soup to mask the mushroom flavor. He stopped cutting vegetables, just boiling pot after pot of soup, staring at the soup pot on the stove all day.

He had become convinced that the essence of Jiang Huiqin's Clear Soup with Bird's Nest Slices lay within the mushroom soup. Once he perfected the mushroom soup, the improvement of this dish would be complete.

He had even become a bit obsessed.

Two weeks passed. Jiang Feng's soup-making skills had improved considerably, but the soup he made was still hard to describe.

He tried oyster mushrooms, enoki mushrooms, crab mushrooms, king oyster mushrooms, white jade mushrooms, button mushrooms, tea tree mushrooms, button mushrooms, shiitake mushrooms, enoki mushrooms, button mushrooms, lion's mane mushrooms, white mushrooms, beech mushrooms, flower mushrooms, and straw mushrooms, one by one. As a result, the back kitchen was constantly filled with the smell of mushrooms, and even the dishes Jiang Jiankang stir-fried carried a faint, almost imperceptible mushroom aroma. The soups he had made were then reused by Comrade Wang Xiulian to serve to customers, and quite a few customers had already complained to Ji Yue that the soups they had been receiving recently were very unpalatable.

Jiang Feng was washing enoki mushrooms.

He washed them very carefully, soaking them repeatedly in clean water, rubbing each one meticulously.

Jiang Jiankang, absentmindedly cutting vegetables, observed Jiang Feng cautiously.

He felt his son had been acting a bit strange lately.

It was as if he had declared war on mushrooms, boiling mushroom soup from morning till night, and then using a pot of that mushroom soup to make that strange dish of tremella, quail eggs, and luncheon meat at night.

Should he go to the temple and get a talisman for his son to ward off evil spirits?

Wang Xiulian walked over to Jiang Jiankang with a basin of roughly washed vegetables and placed it heavily on the table, causing the sturdy wooden table to shake.

"What's wrong with our son lately?" Wang Xiulian asked in a low voice.

Jiang Jiankang shook his head. "I heard that the talismans from a nearby temple are very effective. Should we go tomorrow and ask for one for Xiao Feng to ward off evil?"

"What nonsense are you talking about? You're the one who's possessed!" Wang Xiulian shot Jiang Jiankang a look, then glanced at Jiang Feng cautiously. "I think we should call Grandpa over to take a look."

"What's the use of calling Grandpa?" Jiang Jiankang still thought Jiang Feng might be possessed.

"Isn't Dad's cooking skill better than yours? Xiao Feng boils this mushroom soup every day. When Dad comes, he can help him perfect the soup, right?" Wang Xiulian poured out the vegetables, picked up the large empty basin, and went back to wash more vegetables. "Remember to make the call!"

Although Jiang Jiankang felt that getting a talisman from the temple would be more effective, he couldn't disobey his wife. He obediently put down his cleaver and went outside to call Old Master Jiang.

After hearing Jiang Jiankang's description of Jiang Feng's situation, Old Master Jiang was silent for a long time before agreeing to find time to visit A City.

After hanging up the phone, Old Master Jiang called out to Old Madam Jiang with full vigor, "Old woman, get me that bottle of wine I hid on the cabinet!"

"What wine? It's daytime, drinking and drinking! Have you cooked your pig slop? Have you washed the vegetables? Have you swept the yard?" Old Madam Jiang, who was listening to Huangmei Opera in the room, shouted back in a loud voice.

Old Master Jiang wasn't angry at being yelled at. He happily went to get the wine, poured a small cup, and sat by the table, sipping it slowly.

Closing his eyes, Old Master Jiang began to hum an out-of-tune song.

Old Madam Jiang came out of the room to get the wine for Old Master Jiang. Seeing that he was already drinking and humming a tune, she knew he was in a good mood and asked, "Who called just now? You're so happy?"

As she spoke, Old Madam Jiang went to the kitchen to get him a small plate of peanuts.

"Xiao Feng has made something of himself! My Jiang family has a successor!"

Old Master Jiang opened his eyes and smiled.

His five sons all had the talent of copying what they were taught. He taught them however he could, and they learned however he taught them. But why were chefs so rigid and unadaptable?

He had thought that his life would just be like this, and the Jiang family cuisine would end with him.

He never expected, never expected that his grandson, who had average talent, would have such good fortune at the age of twenty.

Jiang Feng had become obsessed with researching cuisine!

Obsessed is good, it's really good!

Jiang Weiguo remembered that when his father, Jiang Chengde, used to research dishes when he was young, he would go for ten days to half a month without eating or sleeping, spending all his time in the kitchen making the same dish as if he were possessed.

Jiang Weiguo grew more excited the more he thought about it. He said to Old Madam Jiang, "Contact Old Man Wang tomorrow and have his son come over to slaughter Big Flower."

"Slaughter Big Flower?" Old Madam Jiang was taken aback. "Didn't you say when Big Flower weighed 260 jin a few days ago that we should wait until it reached 280 jin before slaughtering it?"

"No more waiting, no more waiting. Who knows when it'll reach 280 jin? We'll slaughter it tomorrow! Big Flower has grown well, its meat is evenly distributed, and it loves to move around. We'll slaughter it and take it to A City to help Xiao Feng get stronger." Jiang Weiguo said.

This time, Old Madam Jiang agreed. "Yes, Xiao Feng really needs to get stronger. He's so thin, he doesn't even look like someone from our Jiang family. It's a shame Jiankang is a chef, and he raised our grandson like this."

"He is too thin. He needs to gain at least another 40 jin. He needs some meat on his arms, otherwise, he won't even be able to toss a wok." Old Master Jiang was also contemplating how to fatten Jiang Feng up by 40 jin to become a tall and stout young man who fit the Jiang family's aesthetic.

"Should I bring the two old hens I've been raising?"

"Bring them, bring them. Bring the preserved wild game and the wild tea tree mushrooms we collected. Oh, didn't mushrooms grow on the warehouse beams before? They were quite plump. I'll go pick them later and bring them too. Jiankang said Xiao Feng has been making mushroom soup recently, so let's bring them for him to cook soup with!"

The Old Master made the final decision.

After finishing this chapter, I'm going to take the CET-6 exam. After the exam, I'll make up for the chapters I owe from the past two days, writing as much as I owe.