Chapter 164: Soy Sauce Takes Shape
The processing plant’s efficiency was very good. After receiving Xiang Chuan’s reluctant payment, they immediately started making bricks without stopping. However, it would take at least another week for the brick stove to be completed, so the A Bite of China Club members temporarily shifted their attention from the brick stove to soy sauce.
A month’s time flew by in the preparation activities before and after the school anniversary. During that period, the A Bite of China Club members were also overwhelmed by the class’s preparation work. Little Star One and Little Star Two had to take on the task of helping everyone stir wheat bran soy sauce, until recently the group finally remembered this matter.
After entering May, the climate on the fleet mothership visibly became increasingly hot, and the rainy season was also about to arrive. These past few days, Xiang Chuan dragged the three of them to reinforce the rain shelter over the soy sauce jar on the top floor and equip it with a dehumidifier. After finishing, the four suddenly realized: the wheat bran soy sauce fermentation was complete, and it could proceed to the pressing process.
Little Star One stayed in the hall to entertain guests, while Little Star Two brought the press equipment that had been prepared in the warehouse for a long time to the rooftop. The four were nervously watching the glass jar at this moment.
Although they opened the jar mouth every one or two days to provide oxygen to the fermenting lactic acid bacteria and yeast, just thinking that the dark fermented mash inside was about to become a seasoning to be put in the mouth made Ouyang Yating and the other two suddenly tense up.
Xiang Chuan was also very nervous, because if this jar failed, she would have to endure two months without soy sauce. She wasn’t a salt-obsessed middle-aged or elderly person, but as a descendant of the dragon, how could she endure every day without the delicious soy aroma.
Little Star Two placed the press on the prepared empty glass jar, then under Ainuo’s command lifted the glass jar of wheat bran soy sauce and used a long-handled steel spoon to gradually send the fermented mash inside into the press.
Xiang Chuan curiously looked at this rectangular press placed on the glass jar. To make it convenient to place on the glass jar, Ainuo had specially asked someone to install a stand under the press. A tube from the bottom of the rectangular body pointed toward the empty glass jar, and below it there was another tube for discharging waste that led straight to the trash can nearby. After pressing the soy sauce, it would be taken downstairs to the kitchen’s trash can and sent to the mothership’s centralized waste processing plant.
As the fermented mash was continuously added, the rectangular press began to operate. Unlike the devices often seen in the 21st century that shook up and down when running, the press worked very quietly. If not for the dark liquid gradually dripping from the tube into the glass jar, Xiang Chuan would have thought the machine had no battery.
“Is this soy sauce…?” Ouyang Yating leaned in to smell it, frowning. “It doesn’t smell very good.”
“Soy sauce isn’t some good-smelling seasoning.” Xiang Chuan recalled the memory from childhood when she ran to the kitchen and deeply inhaled the soy sauce smell in a reckless act, her mouth twitching slightly. “The taste of soy sauce needs other methods to catalyze it, such as pickling food, or adding it like salt and sugar when heating food during cooking. Eating it directly isn’t that tasty.”
After all, in her previous life she had only heard of Shandong people drinking vinegar, but never of residents anywhere drinking soy sauce by the mouthful.
However, to confirm the quality, Xiang Chuan still had to lean in and smell it.
……
Ah, this familiar taste. Xiang Chuan stared blankly into the distance, her empty mind as if returned to that reckless dinnertime from childhood.
“Can this be used directly for cooking later?” Ainuo asked curiously, thinking of the steamed fish and stir-fried chicken that Xiang Chuan had once described with soy sauce added, and couldn’t help swallowing a few mouthfuls of saliva.
“Not yet, because we made it outdoors, so we still need to do heat sterilization.” Xiang Chuan looked toward the distant sports field. “Later, go ask the Agriculture Club if we can borrow it. If not, I’ll go back and ask Father.” After all, the Yue Xiang Group couldn’t possibly not have even a sterilization device.
Over the next few consecutive days, the regular customers of the A Bite of China Club small restaurant noticed that the A Bite of China Club members weren’t sitting in their usual corner seats, but everyone was too busy staring at the new beverage series launched by the A Bite of China Club—cold drinks—to ask.
Recently the weather had started to get hot. Following Xiang Chuan’s instructions, the A Bite of China Club’s beverages were now divided into room temperature, cold drinks, and hot drinks. If not considering that July and August would probably be even hotter and that modern people hadn’t endured the “torment” of 21st century cold drinks on their stomachs, Xiang Chuan would have even brought out big killers like fried ice and smoothies.
May only had a slight hint of heat, so Xiang Chuan didn’t prepare to use too many ice cubes. All cold drinks were made with truly light ice amounts, that is, three to four ice cubes in a large cup. Moreover, the ice cubes were made by her from various juices, and customers could choose which type of juice ice cubes to add. If modern people who spent ten or twenty yuan to drink a cup half-filled with ice cubes saw this, they would probably exclaim it was conscientious.
The first to try them were still the action-oriented vanguard: the Class Eight Grade One group. Especially the classmates led by Nancy from the Engineering and Construction Club and various sports clubs. If not held back by class president Lu Daiqing and Chou Manman and other Arts Department Club members, they would have bought out all the A Bite of China Club’s cold drinks.
After sweating it out in the hot weather, it was time to show off cold drinks—By the fearless 21st century young people
The boys and girls captured 30,000 years later by the delicious and refreshing taste of cold drinks also inherited their spirit of bravely facing diabetes for a sip of refreshment, wishing to drink more than ten cups every day.
Seeing the steeply rising cold drink sales, the sports club guys and gals each holding five or six cups, and the Arts Department Club students nearby gnashing their teeth at the sold-out signs, Xiang Chuan couldn’t even bother filtering the high-temperature sterilized soy sauce. She quickly issued a limit of three cups per person per day for cold drinks, finally calming the cold drink craze.
Xiang Chuan: How many years of drinking boiled water does it take to be so obsessed with mere iced juice?
She even saw student council president Wen Tao·Kai and their homeroom teacher sitting at the bar counter holding iced fruit milk and iced milk, chatting casually, while directing Little Star One to carry the soy sauce jar to the downstairs warehouse.
But it was good that the cold drinks attracted everyone’s attention, so the transfer of the soy sauce jar didn’t draw too much notice.
When Little Star One scooped out two seasoning bottles’ worth of soy sauce from the soy sauce jar as instructed, Xiang Chuan had already prepared scallion ginger garlic from the underground warehouse and chicken that had been plucked, cleaned, and had its internal organs washed.
The chicken was cut in half. One half was handed to the kitchen AI to make the no-soy-sauce version of stir-fried chicken that Xiang Chuan had disguised in the confrontation match before. The other would be personally made by Xiang Chuan into the soy sauce version.
No choice, tasting soy sauce on the rooftop had made Xiang Chuan’s tongue almost turn black, so she simply selected the portion whose aroma and taste were closest to the soy sauce in her memory and personally cooked to taste it.
Actually, eggs or noodles might have been more convenient, but the A Bite of China Club didn’t have equipment for making noodles. And for eggs, during the school anniversary preparations two weeks ago, the A Bite of China Club members had helped “process” quite a few failed egg dishes from their classmates. Not to mention Xiang Chuan who changed to a new way of eating every three days, even Ouyang Yating and the other two didn’t want to see egg dishes recently.
