Oil-Braised Prawns

"Su Tingbai? Su Tingbai!" Shen Rui'an waved a hand. "Why were you spacing out?"

"Huh? Oh, I got distracted. Bring me the flowers—I'll trim them and put them in the vase for you."

Shen Rui'an obediently handed him all the flowers he was holding. Su Tingbai picked up a pair of scissors and trimmed them before carefully arranging them in the vase. The pale pink, white, purple, and blue complemented one another, but Su Tingbai felt something was missing. After thinking for a moment, he suddenly understood. He clipped a few sprigs of Little Pan Grass from outside and added them, then nodded in satisfaction, looking rather pleased with himself. "Look. What do you think?"

Su Tingbai had a real eye for flower arranging, and it suited the interior decor of the entire estate perfectly.

Judging by his cool, handsome looks alone, he seemed like the sort of CEO who only lived in a modern minimalist home done in black, white, and gray. In reality, that was not the case.

What he liked was a natural style. The entire villa on the estate followed that style, including the bedroom he currently used. Green plants were the one thing the villa never lacked.

Even Shen Rui'an's room had them, and its lighting was especially good. A huge floor-to-ceiling window faced the bed; all he had to do was pull open the curtains, and sunlight would spill across half the bed. Trees had been planted outside, and when the wind blew, he could occasionally see the leaves swaying and hear their soft rustling. There was a small bookshelf beside the head of the bed, while several vases in the bedroom held green plants such as Bird of Paradise. When sunlight poured into the room, it was brimming with life, soothing to the very sight.

Now, this vase would look quite nice on the bookshelf too. Su Tingbai could imagine how beautiful that pale green glass vase would be when sunlight streamed indoors and shone through it.

"It's beautiful!" Shen Rui'an never forced himself to say things he did not mean. He spoke whatever was on his mind—beautiful meant beautiful, ugly meant ugly. Although he did not know much about flower arranging, his sense of aesthetics told him that the bouquet before him was exceptionally lovely.

"I'm glad you like it. Do you need me to carry it upstairs for you? Put it on the bookshelf?" Before he had even finished speaking, Su Tingbai picked up the vase and prepared to head upstairs.

"Okay!" Shen Rui'an nodded and followed him up. When he saw the flowers settled into their new home on the bookshelf, he could not help smiling contentedly.

Su Tingbai looked down at him. After a while, noticing a trace of fatigue between his brows, he suggested, "Tired? Then take a nap. I'll call you when dinner's ready."

Shen Rui'an nodded emphatically. After seeing Su Tingbai out, he took a small blanket, covered his belly button, and lay down on a little sofa in the bedroom for a nap.

Baisui stayed with him for a while. Once he sensed that Shen Rui'an had fallen asleep, he followed Su Tingbai's scent downstairs and circled around his feet.

In a particularly good mood, Su Tingbai rubbed Baisui's little head. Then he washed his hands and began preparing the ingredients.

While Shen Rui'an was enjoying his nap, Su Tingbai got busy with his team.

When he and Shen Rui'an had gone into the mountains to pick wild vegetables and gather mushrooms, they had also filmed some footage along the way.

Now Little Zhu and A-Ming worked together, dividing up the filming duties.

Ya-ya and the others had already picked and sorted the wild vegetables, so Su Tingbai only needed to shoot a few additional clips. That counted as his participation too.

Back when he had not had a team, he rarely filmed this much. He had always just gone with the flow.

With a professional team, there were naturally more shots to film.

He used to do everything himself, but after most of the team members started appearing on camera, things became much easier for him.

For things like washing and picking vegetables, unless the ingredients required special handling, the team would usually wash them together before filming a few shots. The focus was still on Su Tingbai cooking. At present, the main draw of his account was him and his cooking.

He was over six feet three, with a figure comparable to that of a supermodel. Even fully clothed and wearing an apron, without showing off his abs, he still gave off an intensely masculine visual appeal—perfect for the horny internet crowd these days.

On top of that, he had money. He could cook relatively expensive ingredients, and some were both rare and costly. Whenever the mood struck him, he would even take his team to the place of origin to pick or catch them. That was another selling point: it fulfilled some people's fantasies about the rich while broadening others' horizons. People curious about that sort of thing loved it.

The final point was that Su Tingbai genuinely knew how to cook. His years in the army kitchen had not been for nothing. He knew cuisines from all over the country, and after leaving the military, he kept up with trends and learned how to make popular online foods as well, such as the currently famous Snail Rice Noodles, Spicy Hot Pot, Xinjiang Fried Rice Noodles, and so on.

These were common foods among eating-streamers. Whenever Su Tingbai was curious, he would make them too. To avoid any mistakes in his own versions, he would go to their places of origin to learn.

Fortunately, perhaps he had been born with a Food Spirit Root. After watching a few times and trying his hand at it a few times, whatever he made came out looking and tasting the part.

Today, having promised Shen Rui'an that he would make Oil-Braised Prawns, he grabbed the Giant River Prawns that were still lively and wriggling and began preparing them.

Oil-Braised Prawns was a classic Shandong Cuisine dish. Traditionally, it was best made with local prawns, but times had changed. The economy had developed, and Hua Nation had recovered from the era when simply having enough to eat was its greatest concern, moving on to an age that pursued nutrition.

The coarse grains people had been least willing to eat in the seventies and eighties were now more expensive than polished rice. Even the fatty pork everyone used to love had become tiresome. Ingredients online now came in endless varieties. Classic cuisines were all well and good, but the ingredients used in them had already begun to be updated and replaced.

Nowadays, many classic dishes from Hua Nation's eight great cuisines had been developed by Hua Nation's people into countless different variations.

Among them, online food bloggers were the group that loved exercising their creativity the most.

Su Tingbai was no exception, but he was still fairly "traditional." He would not just throw everything into one pot and call it innovation.

He mainly felt that regular prawns were a little too small, and the finished plating would not be as eye-catching, so he chose the larger Giant River Prawns instead.

Black Tiger Prawns could also have been used, but Su Tingbai felt that with seafood, bigger did not necessarily mean better texture. Take Black Tiger Prawns, for example. If used for White-Boiled Prawns, they did not taste as good as Kuruma Prawns, because their flesh was thick and too firm. They were somewhat chewy—commonly known as hard to chew.

White-Boiled Prawns was a Cantonese Cuisine dish. Cantonese cooking placed great emphasis on the natural freshness of the ingredients, and White-Boiled Prawns were no exception. The method was also simple: just cook the Kuruma Prawns through and serve them with a dipping sauce. The only thing to watch was not to cook the prawns for too long, as that would affect the texture. White-Boiled Prawns had a fresh, sweet taste.

It was not impossible to make this dish with Black Tiger Prawns, but their texture was not as good as Kuruma Prawns or Chinese White Prawns.

Personally, Su Tingbai liked White-Boiled Prawns made with Chinese White Prawns best. The flavor was truly incredible. Chinese White Prawns had once had much stricter living requirements than Kuruma Prawns, so they also cost more on the market, but that was not a problem for Su Tingbai.

While his thoughts wandered, he cleaned the prawns and braised the Giant River Prawns in oil according to the Shandong Cuisine method for Oil-Braised Prawns.

After finishing one dish, he stood in front of a fan for quite a while. Once he felt the cooking smoke smell had faded somewhat, he went upstairs to check on Shen Rui'an.

He was afraid Shen Rui'an would sleep too deeply. The Shen Household had specifically reminded him to keep an eye on Shen Rui'an's sleep duration. If he slept at night, he would sleep several hours longer than the average person, but for midday naps and the like, under two hours was best.

He went upstairs as quietly as possible. Shen Rui'an was sleeping soundly, and the sunlight outside fell on his hand, making it so pale it seemed to reflect light. Su Tingbai stepped forward to tuck the little blanket around him, then checked the air conditioner temperature. Only after confirming that it was not particularly cold did he tiptoe downstairs to continue making the second dish.