Stop pretending, I am the God of Cooking and I am showing off my cards! - Chapter 823 What is Wang Gua? A lifelike high-end dish called peacock shark's fin! 【Please subs

Chapter 823 What is Wang Gua? A unique high-end dish – peacock shark’s fin! 【Please subscribe】

“Senior brother, what ingredients are needed to make peacock fins?”

Since you want to learn this dish, you have to prepare the ingredients first. Fortunately, there are ready-made shark fins in the store, ready for use at any time.

Xie Baomin said:

“There are quite a lot of ingredients. In addition to shark fin, we also need sea cucumber, shredded chicken, eggs, egg whites, minced chicken, fresh bamboo shoots, rapeseed, Jinhua ham, chicken fat, stock, king melon slices and various condiments… …”

Wang Guapian?

Lin Xu asked curiously:

“What the hell is Wang Gua?”

“It’s just cucumber, but in high-end dishes, it’s usually called king melon.”

More than a hundred years ago, if you asked a vegetable vendor for two cucumbers, he would probably be confused, but if you asked for two king melons, the vendor would immediately understand.

Before the Republic of China, the official name of cucumber was Wang Gua, but cucumber was a niche and unpopular name.

The reason why it is called “king melon” is because cucumbers “are born before other melons, so they are king”, which means that cucumbers grow the earliest. During the Qing Dynasty, greenhouse technology was mature, and the first cucumbers were on the market every February of the lunar calendar.

However, cucumbers at that time were extremely expensive and not within the reach of ordinary people.

There is such a poem in “Kyoto Bamboo Branch Poems” criticizing the preciousness of the first crop of cucumbers:

“At first glance, cucumbers are as small as ginseng, as small as a hairpin, and are worth several gold. If a small thing can’t increase your life span, what’s the use of eating it for ten thousand dollars?”

Xie Baomin said with a smile:

“It is said that in the late Qing Dynasty, there was a famous scholar named Pan Bingnian in the capital. He once invited his new foreign friends to dinner at Guangheju in Badaju. After sitting at the table, he asked the guests to order. The guest felt that the meat dishes were too expensive, so he ordered a plate of cucumbers. , I felt good after eating it, so I ordered another plate, three plates in a row… Pan Bingnian’s face was almost green, because a plate of cucumbers cost six taels of silver, and ordering a table of meat and vegetables didn’t cost that much, so after checking out , he immediately wrote a letter and broke up with that friend.”

The car boy who was recording the purchase order asked curiously:

“Why don’t you just say it? Such an expensive cucumber is so unfair.”

Lin Xu smiled:

“If you are inviting an acquaintance to dinner, you can tell them in advance that cucumbers are more expensive and you should try something new. However, it is not appropriate to say this to someone you have just met. For example, if a businessman invites a customer to dinner, he will say this before he starts ordering. Those cucumbers are expensive, so we must not order them. What do you think people will do?”

In fact, this is also related to the cultural traditions of the Chinese people. If something is not said directly, it has to be roundabout. For example, Pan Bingnian, who spent eighteen taels of silver, still did not fall out on the spot, but chose to write a letter to break off the relationship. This is the reserve and stubbornness of cultural people.

However, this kind of thing happened during that period, the menu did not clearly indicate prices, and cucumbers were extremely valuable.

Now, if you eat a bowl of cucumbers one after another, the person who is treating you will not choose to break up the friendship. He will only think that the green cucumbers are some kind of hint from your friend to you.

After chatting about cucumbers, Xie Baomin rolled up his sleeves and began to teach Lin Xu how to make peacock shark fins.

Shen Jiayue also wanted to see:

“Senior brother, can you guys go to the small kitchen to cook? I also want to see it.”

Xie Baomin said with a smile:

“Then just film it. It just so happens that I haven’t shown off my cooking skills recently, so I don’t want netizens to think that my skills have deteriorated.”

Upon hearing this, Shen Jiayue quickly went to the small kitchen to prepare a camera and fill light, while Lin Xu prepared the ingredients and ingredients needed to make peacock shark fins.

All ingredients and seasonings are ready, let’s start making.

“Hello everyone, I’m Lin Xu. I’m not busy today, so I asked my senior brother to teach me how to make a more time-consuming main dish for the banquet – peacock fin.”

At high-end banquets, elegant high-end dishes like peacock fin are always the main course.

Xie Baomin waved to the camera, said hello to netizens, briefly introduced peacock shark fin, and said at the same time:

“In fact, there is another way to make peacock shark’s fin, which is to stuff the shark’s fin into the peacock’s belly and stew it. Stewing the shark’s fin with a real peacock feels very explosive.”

Lin Xu asked curiously:

“Can peacocks be eaten?”

“It’s okay to breed peacock meat. It’s available at some banquets in the south. But overall, it’s not as delicious as chicken. It just looks novel. Some restaurants that sell peacock meat also come with peacock feathers, which is more attractive.”

Lin Xu was really eye-opening, but when he thought about it, before the Animal Protection Law came out, the golden pheasant was almost extinct, the flying dragon was eaten at a sky-high price, and all kinds of rare animals became food.

After Xie Baomin finished speaking, he cracked a dozen eggs into a small basin, added a little salt, stirred the eggs with chopsticks, and used a sieve to remove the air bubbles inside.

Then take some cornstarch, pour it into the egg liquid, and stir slowly.

He stirred and said:

“For the dish of peacock and shark fin, you need to use starch-steamed chicken cake to carve the head and body of the peacock. At the same time, this is also the staple food of the whole dish. You can eat it with the shark fin…”

Stir the dry starch and egg liquid into a paste, filter it through a tight filter to sift out the unstirred starch granules, then cover the mouth of the basin with plastic wrap and put it in a steamer to start steaming.

Xie Baomin reminded:

“This starch chicken cake needs to be steamed more. In addition to the body and head of the peacock, the decoration on the peacock feathers will also be used.”

Steam the starch chicken cake and bring the shark fin over.

The cooked shark fin is soaked in water, which is very similar to vermicelli. Xie Baomin uses tweezers to pick out the impurities and bone fragments in the shark fin, then drains the water and prepares for processing.

Making peacock shark fins requires the use of large pieces of high-end shark fins, because the shark fins are used to make peacock feathers when putting them on the plate. The longer the shark fins, the more realistic and beautiful the peacock will be.

Take out the shark fins, set them aside to control the water, and then start making the onion and ginger stock.

Place the wok on the stove, add chicken oil, heat the oil, add the onion and ginger segments, fry until the surface is golden brown, pour in the broth, simmer for a few more minutes, take out the onion and ginger and throw them away, the broth in the pot will be filled with The chicken fat-flavored onion and ginger stock is the key to making shark fin and the final sauce.

Then he took the chicken breast and chopped some minced chicken.

Chop it well and add egg white, dry starch, salt, pepper and other condiments, stir it into a thick paste, filter it again, and set it aside for later use.

At this time, the chicken cake had also been steamed. Lin Xu helped take it out of the steamer, put the basin into cold water, and cooled it with water.

When it is no longer hot to your hands, place a larger plate over the mouth of the basin, turn it over, and place the egg cake in the basin upside down on the plate.

The egg cake is very beautiful, with a warm yellow color, fine texture, and a rich egg fragrance.

Xie Baomin drew the outline of the peacock with the tip of a knife, but instead of carving, he cut off the excess corners, which were about two fist-sized pieces of cake.

He cut off the excess corners of the cake and shaped it into a drop shape with a pointed end and a rounded end.

Lin Xu was a little surprised:

“Brother, what are you doing?”

“Decorate the peacock’s feathers. Only by adding these decorations will the whole dish look more like a peacock.”

After the water drop shape is ready, turn the cake over and cut the water drop shape into slices horizontally. Each slice is about two to three millimeters thick. After cutting, it will become a piece of water drop.

Lin Xu counted, there were more than a dozen pieces in total.

After doing this, Xie Baomin took a thicker cucumber and cut it into slices with a diagonal knife. He cut it and trimmed it, and also made it into a water drop shape.

Compared with the water droplets made from yellow cake, the cucumber slices are a bit bigger.

Finally, take out the Jinhua ham, take the best upper part, and make it into an oval with one end larger and one smaller. The area is two circles smaller than the drop-shaped egg cake.

After everything was done, Xie Baomin brought over the minced chicken that had just been smashed and began to decorate the feathers.

Bring the cucumber slices over. When you cut them with a slanted knife, there is more green on one side. Place this side up.

Spread a little chicken mince on top, then place the yellow cake slices on top, with the tips of the water droplets overlapping, so that the green cucumber skin and the yellow cake are exactly staggered in a step-like manner.

Spread a layer of chicken mince on the cake slices, place the red ham slices in the middle, and align the tip of the ham with the tip of the water droplets, so as to show a sense of consistency in direction.

After placing it, the three colors of red, yellow and green really look like the feathers on a peacock’s tail.

Xie Baomin held the cucumber slices and carefully placed them on the grid-shaped steaming plate. All the feather decorations were done and placed in the steamer for steaming.

This step not only allows the three ingredients to be completely bonded together, but also makes the cucumbers darker in color after being chopped raw, and the color of the ham after being steamed is more delicious. Both the vision and taste will be improved to a new level.

While Yu Ling was steaming, Lin Xu took out the shark’s fin, blanched it twice with green onion and ginger to remove the peculiar smell from the shark’s fin, then carefully took it out, drained the water and put it into the pot, then added half of the chicken oil and simmered it. Simmer the prepared onion and ginger stock over low heat to simmer the flavor of the stock into the shark fin.

This step took at least ten minutes. Xie Baomin asked Lin Xu to watch the fire while he cut the chicken breast into shreds, the bamboo shoots into shreds, and the soaked sea cucumbers into shreds as well.

Put the wok back on, add chicken oil to the pot, heat it up, pour in the chicken breasts and stir-fry, then add shredded bamboo shoots and sea cucumbers, add salt and pepper, cut them raw and serve them out.

These ingredients are used as the base to set off the shark fin.

But you can’t mess around just because it’s at the bottom. In fact, these ingredients should be arranged as silk as possible later, because the shark fin is translucent, and the ingredients below are arranged too messily, which will give people a very messy feeling.

Put these ingredients into a large bowl first. The steamed feathers are now decorated. Xie Baomin took them out of the steamer and set them aside to dry.

Shen Jiayue couldn’t help but exclaimed after seeing it:

“Wow! So beautiful!”

At this time, the feather decoration shows four colors, one is the dark green of cucumber, the second is the yellow cake slice, then the white meat paste and the fiery red ham slice. The four colors look very beautiful, and then In addition, there is also a faint white color between the cucumber slices and cake slices, and the color levels are very clear.

Shen Jiayue felt that even without the shark fin, the look would look very beautiful.

The temperature is too high at this time, and the cucumbers will rot easily, so they need to dry before turning.

When the shark’s fin is simmered, use a slotted spoon to carefully fish it out. When fishing out, the integrity of the shark’s fin should not be damaged. It should be in the shape of uniform filaments, so that the shape of the dish can be more beautiful.

After the shark fins were taken out, there was still a little broth left in the pot. Xie Baomin didn’t waste it. He poured the selected and washed rapeseed into it, briefly blanched it until it was raw, and took it out.

After all these preparations are done, it’s time to carve the peacock’s body.

Lin Xu watched for a long time, and when he saw that there was finally a step that he could take part in, he immediately said:

“Let me do this step. I just carved a radish a few days ago. Today I will also try pastry carving.”

In the field of food carving, there has always been a saying that hard carving is easy and soft carving is difficult.

The so-called hard carving refers to the carving of radish, lettuce, winter melon, pumpkin and other ingredients. Such ingredients are easier to shape and relatively easy to get started with.

Tofu, cake, hawthorn cake, dough and other soft ingredients are troublesome to carve.

This is why the whole audience was in an uproar when Lin Xu used lactone tofu to carve the shape of a pair of fishes in the food competition. After all, this thing is too difficult, let alone a newcomer, even a long-established master chef can do it. Roll over.

Xie Baomin did not doubt Lin Xu’s knife skills, but just reminded:

“You can use a kitchen knife to carve it backwards to create the shape of a peacock’s curls.”

Curly hair?

Lin Xu figured it out after thinking for a while.

He took out the slightly warm egg cake on the plate. The outline had already been drawn, and now he only needed to follow the process of carving it.

First, cut the bottom flat with a knife so that the cake can stand up stably.

Then start carving from the head.

While he was busy, Xie Baomin was not idle either. Instead, he took a piece of carrot and deftly carved it into a shape similar to a fan.

There was a small hole specially left on the top of the fan, which could just fit a rapeseed. When everything was done, Shen Jiayue realized that it was actually a peacock crown.

She asked curiously:

“Senior brother, Xu Bao hasn’t finished carving the peacock yet. If you make the peacock crown so early, aren’t you afraid that the size won’t be right?”

Xie Baomin smiled and continued carving the peacock earlobe:

“The outline of the peacock has been drawn. Junior brother can only carve it into a size that matches the crown. If it is smaller, it means that junior brother made a mistake and made some modifications.”

He believed that Lin Xu would not make any mistakes, so he made the peacock crown in advance.

In fact, there was really no mistake. After Lin Xu finished carving the peacock’s head and neck, Xie Baomin took the peacock crown and inserted it into his head. It was just the right size and even looked a little more impressive.

Lin Xu’s carving work didn’t come to an end until the peacock’s breast was carved.

However, he remembered the curly hair that his senior brother reminded him, so he changed a knife, sliced ​​a piece of cake from his neck and pushed it upwards, and a piece of curly hair immediately appeared.

Then I pushed it a few times in other places and made some curls on the neck. Not only did it look more like a peacock, but it even looked like it had just finished exercising and hadn’t bothered to groom it, making it even more similar to a real peacock.

Finally, Lin Xu glued the carrot-carved earlobes on, then glued two star anise seeds to the eyes, and hung two coriander leaves on the mouth, which looked a bit like a peacock holding grass.

Once the peacock is finished, it’s time to place it on the plate.

Xie Baomin placed the peacock’s body on the side of the plate, then arranged the fried shredded chicken, bamboo shoots and sea cucumber with chopsticks to make it as silky as possible, and then began to place it facing the peacock’s head.

Arrange it into a large radial arched pile, then take the blanched rape leaves and place them at intervals at the back. The leaves should completely extend beyond the head of the pile and even push against the inner edge of the plate.

The green part of peacock feathers accounts for a large proportion, so cucumber slices alone are not enough. Rapeseed leaves must be used as decoration.

Arrange the leaves and cover the peacock with a whole piece of shark fin. The tail shark fin can be spread out a little, so that it can better show the effect of the peacock’s tail.

After placing the shark’s fins, Xie Baomin adjusted them, then picked up small pieces of rape leaves and wrapped them around the peacock’s neck.

Finally, take the cucumber slices and sprinkle them evenly on the peacock’s back.

Once everything is done, the whole peacock will become lifelike, especially the rape leaves around the neck and the shadowy green leaves at the tail, which look exactly like a real peacock.

“Is this okay, senior brother?”

Shen Jiayue couldn’t help but swallow her saliva. The beautiful and delicious dishes made people greedy!

“It’s not healed yet, it needs to be polished again.”

Xie Baomin poured the remaining stock into the pot, added sugar and boiled it for a while, then added a little water starch to turn the stock into a golden consistency.

Then pour in some chicken oil and push it gently with the back of a spoon a few times so that the soup becomes brighter.

Taking advantage of this time, Xie Baomin picked up the pot and carefully poured the prepared soup on the peacock. The whole peacock suddenly became shiny under the light, making it look even more appetizing.

Only then did Shen Jiayue discover that glowing food really existed.

Even with its shiny shape under the light, it definitely won’t taste bad.

“So beautiful, so beautiful!”

Lin Xu held the plate and showed it to the camera, then placed it on the automatically rotating plate holder and started taking close-ups.

With this lifelike peacock shape, anyone who sees it will probably exclaim.

While Shen Jiayue was taking a close-up, Lin Xu looked at Xie Baomin and asked:

“Senior brother, why can’t we see such high-end dishes at banquets now?”

Xie Baomin smiled and said:

“After the exaggeration ended, these kinds of dishes were withdrawn from banquets. They can’t be extravagant and wasteful. Ordinary rich people can’t afford such dishes, and they might still find it troublesome to eat them. In addition, chefs are unwilling to cook it, so it is just like high-end Huaiyang cuisine, which only exists in legends. It has not been lost, but it is not available to eat.”

Lin Xu smiled bitterly:

“It’s a pity for such a good dish. Fortunately, it was photographed today. At least everyone knows how to make it and knows that there is such a high-end dish that sells well.”

From this perspective, this video is quite valuable.

As for whether those netizens will try to reproduce it, there is a high probability that it will not happen.

After all, everyone believes that “when a person lies in bed, his cooking skills will improve.” The most likely way of action is to buy the groceries and then shout:

“mom!!!!”

After Shen Jiayue took the close-up, she couldn’t help but rub her white palms:

“Now that it’s done, shouldn’t it be time to try it?”

Hoho, little peacock, this baby is going to eat you!

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