When the deliveryman lifted the wooden lid, Uncle Zhou reached out first to stop the worker who was about to carry the meat into the kitchen.
"Let Chen An take a look."
Uncle Zhou remembered clearly how, yesterday, he had complained that the meat on the rack was fatty at one end and lean at the other. Today's delivery was a whole slab of skin-on pork belly. The skin had been cleaned thoroughly, and beneath it, the fat and lean were evenly layered. Chen An pressed lightly at the edge of the meat, then checked the other end before letting them carry it inside.
The delivery worker was puzzled. "The day before yesterday, you checked the tenderloin for sinew. Today you're buying pork belly, and you're still looking it over this carefully?"
"You can use it for other dishes too," Chen An said. "But for today's dish, I first need to be able to cut slices of even thickness."
The delivery worker wanted to ask more, but Uncle Zhou had already paid and told him to go on to his next delivery. Fang Ming had arrived early. Seeing such a large slab of meat on the chopping board, he finally understood that the new dish had something to do with yesterday's bowl of pork belly soup. The strip left over yesterday had been too narrow; it made good soup, but today's slab was wide enough, with an even edge of skin.
"Are you boiling the meat or stir-frying it?" he asked.
"Both."
"Doesn't that mean cooking it twice?"
"That's why it's called Twice-Cooked Pork."
Fang Ming glanced at the firewood just added to the stove and decided to fill the water vat for Chen Chuan first. If Chen An really was going to go through two rounds today, standing beside