Chapter 5: Making Egg Pancakes
“Sister! Come down for dinner!”
Xiang Chuan woke up to her sister’s call. She looked around in a daze at the flowing starry sky wallpaper and the roses in the vase that kept repeatedly blooming and closing their buds, realizing she was in the world 30,000 years later.
It seemed she had fallen asleep in the sentimental longing for relatives and friends that was unattainable.
“Coming!”
After simply combing her hair and washing her face, she patted her cheeks and stepped out of the room.
Since she had come to this era, she should live well!
When she went downstairs to the restaurant, she heard the sound of boiling water and stir-frying coming from the kitchen.
“Lunch is still dough drops?” Xiang Chuan asked.
“The original plan was vegetable carrot cubes, but Brother and I didn’t want to gnaw on that thing, so we changed it to tomato egg dough drops.”
Xiang Chuan felt embarrassed. Looking at Brother and Sister gazing expectantly toward the kitchen, she understood how much attraction 21st-century food had for modern people.
It was no wonder that the fresh fish noodle soup, which she regarded as a flood and fierce beast in her memory, was staple food level in all fleets. That morning’s sour and sweet flavored dough drops with pepper were truly a dimensional strike.
It was more like their tongues, adapted to fresh fish noodle soup type foods, could surprisingly taste the deliciousness of dough drops.
Gurgle…
The hunger in her stomach interrupted her thinking. Watching the activity from the kitchen side, she became entangled.
It wasn’t that she didn’t want to eat dough drops, but just dough drops alone felt a bit…
“Kitchen AI, send me the ingredient list from the warehouse.”
Hearing Xiang Chuan speak, Xiang Qi and Xiang Xue’s eyes lit up instantly: Could there be new things?
[Beep—Sent to your terminal]
Xiang Chuan opened the ingredient list. Meat was quite complete, with chickens and ducks, geese, pigs, and cattle all available. Seafood also had squid and some freshwater fish and sea fish (thank goodness these fish hadn’t been renamed; she could still recognize them). Fungi were mainly common 21st-century edible shiitake mushrooms like shiitake mushroom, button mushroom, enoki mushroom, oyster mushroom, etc. But vegetables, especially green vegetables, were simply horrific. “Golden Flower Green Vegetable”… probably cauliflower? “Mushroom green vegetable” and “White Mushroom Green Vegetable” should be broccoli and cauliflower, right? What were this “Thin Long Vegetable” and “Thick Long Vegetable”? And what were “Round Vegetable” and “Oval Vegetable”??
Xiang Chuan recalled that Xiang Xue had just directly said “vegetable carrot cubes,” meaning all green vegetables in this world were lumped together under vegetables?
What kind of northern-style classification is this! It’s way too imprecise!
Xiang Chuan suppressed the urge to complain and began staring at the ingredient list, thinking about lunch contents.
She set meat and seafood aside for now. Based on her experience with pepper, Xiang Chuan figured modern people probably treated ginger as medicinal materials too. It would take too much time to have the servant fetch it, and without soy sauce, oyster sauce, and other seasonings to assist, she couldn’t properly prepare meat or seafood dishes yet. Although she could search Geegle for other methods, she wasn’t bold enough to open those “ancient websites” in front of her brother and sister.
So she could only start with vegetables and eggs.
Since there was no oven, baked rice or lasagna and such could only be passed.
Stir-fried tomatoes and eggs—but tomato egg dough drops were already being made, and eating things with the same taste would get boring.
Then everything would be kept simple.
“Kitchen AI, prepare two portions of 500 grams of flour, 1.5 kilograms of water, and 1.5 kilograms of milk. Prepare salt and sugar as seasonings.”
[Beep—Understood]
Amid her sister’s cheers and her brother’s expectant gaze, Xiang Chuan rolled up her sleeves and headed to the kitchen.
At this moment, she thought: She really wanted an apron.
“Kids, we’re back!”
When Lin Minzhi and Xiang Weiguo finished their morning work early and returned home, the living room was unexpectedly empty with no one there. The couple exchanged glances. They had confirmed the children’s schedules with the servant that morning—none of them had plans to go out. If something came up suddenly, the servant would notify them, right?
Normally at this time, weren’t all three supposed to be in the living room doing their own things?
[Beep—Master, Madam, welcome back]
The starfish-shaped servant stepped forward to take their coats and the local specialties from the fleet carried by the subordinates behind them—gifts from the representative delegation.
“Servant, where did the kids go? Why aren’t they in the living room?”
[Beep—Young Master Xiang Qi and Miss Xiang Xue are watching Miss Xiang Chuan make lunch. All three young masters and misses are in the kitchen]
“Ah?”
Xiang Chuan?
Cooking lunch?
The couple exchanged a stunned glance: What on earth had gotten into this child?
In these sixteen years, Xiang Chuan had never even personally prepared instant food, let alone cooked.
“Then… today’s lunch won’t be changed…?”
[Beep—Yes, confirmed. Kitchen AI has changed lunch to Miss Xiang Chuan’s “Tomato Egg Dough Drops.”]
“This…”
Utter nonsense!
Xiang Weiguo’s and Lin Minzhi’s heads began to ache. Why do it today of all days, not earlier or later?
“Haha, it’s rare for the children to have this intention. Why not give it a taste?” The young man following closely behind the two said in an old-fashioned manner, magnanimously patting Xiang Weiguo’s back. “Take us to the kitchen to have a look. That’s lunch personally cooked by your daughter.”
“This… please forgive the plain food.”
Xiang Weiguo smiled wryly and shook his head, secretly giving Lin Minzhi a look. Lin Minzhi understood, and after the two had walked far away, she quietly instructed the servant to prepare a table of luxurious banquet at a high-end restaurant in the vicinity.
Xiang Weiguo had imagined hundreds of horrific scenes he might see in the kitchen, but after stepping into the kitchen, he was stunned. There was no exaggerated scene of ingredients flying everywhere or the kitchen exploding. Instead, his eldest daughter was holding a ladle and spreading white liquid on the iron plate—a bizarre sight. Beside her, the robotic arm operated by the kitchen AI poured a bowl of yellow liquid onto the surface of the white liquid, which had somewhat coagulated due to high temperature. His eldest daughter held an iron plate at the edge of the white liquid, took a breath, shoveled, flipped—and the white liquid flipped over perfectly intact, without sticking to the iron plate at all. She pressed it with the iron plate, then flipped it again. At this point, the yellow liquid had turned into an enticing golden color, emitting an incredible aroma.
Xiang Chuan quickly flipped it twice more, confirmed that both sides of the egg pancake were nearly done, shoveled it up, and placed it on the tray beside her.
“Phew… finally succeeded. Kitchen AI, remember that operation just now?”
[Beep—Recorded.]
“Good, then the rest here is up to you. I’ll make the sweet version over here… Huh, Father?”
Xiang Chuan looked up in fright. The young father she had seen in the photo that morning had somehow appeared behind Xiang Qi and Xiang Xue with a strange youth. The watching Xiang Qi and Xiang Xue turned around at the sound, startled, and quickly stood at attention nearby, as if caught doing something wrong.
“Father… you, why are you back so early?”
Xiang Xue asked softly.
“If I didn’t come back, would you turn the home kitchen upside down? What are you doing? Tomato Egg Dough Drops? Can that thing fill you up?”
Xiang Weiguo appeared stern on the surface but was curious inside as he had the kitchen AI bring over the tray with the egg pancake for him to examine closely. After leaning in, the aroma of the eggs and the scorched fragrance of the noodle cake simultaneously stimulated him and the youth beside him, causing both to involuntarily swallow their saliva.
“No, Xiao Chuan made the dough drops this morning, we tried them and found them delicious, so we had the kitchen AI record it and temporarily changed lunch to dough drops. The pot boiling beside Xiao Chuan right now is that one, however…” Xiang Qi looked somewhat embarrassed at the pot, “We didn’t know that Dad and Mom you would come back so soon, and even bring a guest, so we only made portions for us three.”
“What’s wrong? Does this thing take a lot of time?”
“It doesn’t take that long. This morning Xiao Xue and I had the AI try making some, and it was done in just ten minutes.”
“Mm… then have the kitchen AI make three more portions.”
“Eh… Dad, aren’t you eating the fresh fish noodle soup?”
Xiang Xue widened her eyes, originally thinking she couldn’t avoid a scolding from Dad.
Xiang Weiguo didn’t speak. He looked at the egg pancake on the tray in his hand, then at Xiang Chuan who had at some point started focusing on making egg pancakes again. The fear in his heart suddenly vanished without a trace. The aroma of eggs and scorched fragrance of the noodle cake from the tray inexplicably gave him some confidence.
So Lin Minzhi, who entered the dining hall a step later than the two, saw the two adults and Two children standing still in front of the kitchen. The eldest daughter, whom they had deemed as fooling around, was agilely flipping one pancake after another in the kitchen.
