Chapter 212: Steamed Milk Pudding After Chilling
Ten minutes later.
When the kitchen AI pushed the nearly one-story-high dining cart to the first year high school student dining area, the impatient crowd couldn’t help but let out a huge cheer, startling the escort ship employees who had finished eating at the canteen entrance and were preparing to go home or back to the dormitory to rest; they all came running over.
They saw the students who were arranged to eat at the newly decorated dining tables outside the canteen, each with a small bowl and a large bowl containing lettuce and cucumber, which puzzled the employees of the Fourth Production Escort Ship greatly: What were these students doing? Wasn’t this lettuce not very popular at noon? How come everyone has a portion now?
At this moment, some sharp-eyed employees noticed: The students holding the large bowls of lettuce and cucumber picked up another small bowl of a different color and placed it next to the large bowl, then carried the three bowls—two small and one large—back to their seats.
Thinking of that rumored girl among these students, many employees’ breathing rates involuntarily quickened. The birth of white rice allowed the Staple Food Crop Production Department to make a comeback, and Manager Hill of the Vegetable Crops Department “enthusiastically” hosting that rumored contactee girl today was also a hot topic among the three major departments right now. The other two departments had harshly mocked the Vegetable Crops Department for their blunder when the “plain lettuce” was served at noon, but they never expected there might be a reversal in the evening!—
Now the students had no time or energy to pay attention to the employees standing around the dining area watching; their eyes were only on two things: salad dressing and steamed milk pudding!
Before the kitchen AI pushed the dining cart over, Xiang Chuan had already given them a heads-up:
“Steamed milk pudding is a dessert, that is, a sweet food, while mayonnaise has a tangy flavor. If there’s a preference in terms of palatability, you can decide later which one to take.”
And the students made their decision the instant the dining cart arrived: Only kids make choices; I want them all!
Xiang Chuan: No, whether by 21st Century law or modern law, you are all bona fide minors.
Fortunately, the kitchen AI had prepared enough salad and steamed milk pudding for all the students this time. After taking the serving plate that Ainuo helped fetch, Xiang Chuan also glanced at the kitchen AI’s dining cart—it was spotlessly clean—and right in front of every first year high school student in the dining area were exactly three bowls.
At the same time, Xiang Chuan noticed that some employees who had come to the student dining area to watch, after seeing what was in the three bowls, unhesitatingly rushed back toward the canteen.
Hopefully they could grab some of the remaining steamed milk pudding and salad; if they missed it, they’d probably have to wait an hour. Xiang Chuan tossed a tomato into her mouth, thinking somewhat mischievously.
——
“So delicious! This steamed milk pudding, this texture, it’s amazing!”
“This cool, silky texture is great. I can’t imagine how happy I’d be if I could have a bite in the summer~!”
“I heard from Class Eight people that this thing’s texture is like the rumored tofu. Rounding it off, I’ve eaten tofu imitation too. I can show off to my parents when I get back, hehe.”
……
Compared to the lettuce that brought a somewhat poor dining experience to everyone at noon, the vast majority of students naturally first chose the milk dessert they had a natural fondness for.
Steamed milk pudding unsurprisingly won unanimous praise from everyone with its fresh, sweet, and silky texture, even some students who didn’t love hot milk said that if it was steamed milk pudding, they wouldn’t mind having two or three bowls every day.
The three A Bite of China Club members also widened their eyes after tasting the chilled steamed milk pudding.
“Just chilled for one hour, and the texture changes this much?” Ainuo looked incredulously at the steamed milk pudding in the bowl. “I feel like the steamed milk pudding I’m eating now is not the same as the one I just ate in the kitchen.”
“The difference between hot dessert and cold dessert, magical, right?” Xiang Chuan chuckled. “But actually, there’s not much difference between the two; it’s purely because of the season you’re eating in. Cold dessert in summer, hot dessert in winter—that’s called balance. We’re now on the Fourth Production Escort Ship in the autumn season. We visited the fields in the morning and afternoon, and the climate is quite dry, so naturally everyone wants to eat something that moistens the throat, so everyone thinks the chilled steamed milk pudding is tastier.”
“When the main ship’s season reaches winter, hot steamed milk pudding will become the highlight, and then sprinkle some red beans or something—that taste will be heavenly.”
“But by the time winter really comes, Xiang Chuan, you might make some other food even more suitable for winter.” Nancy joked.
Xiang Chuan admitted this was irrefutable because she had just been thinking in her mind about red bean eight treasure porridge—red bean porridge in the dead of winter sounds so tempting. When winter comes, with magical modern agriculture technology, they should be able to harvest a crop of beans, right? Then she could use her special status as an information turbulence contactee to grab a few boxes home in advance to stock up.
Unfortunately, mung bean porridge for this summer was out of the question.
——
Because it was an after-meal dessert, Xiang Chuan had set the kitchen AI to make each portion of steamed milk pudding at most 400 milliliters of milk + two egg whites; the final product per portion wasn’t very large, just enough for a normal adult to savor after a meal.
The ravenous first year high school students devoured their bowls of steamed milk pudding at a speed that deterred onlookers.
Their gazes finally turned to the cut lettuce and mayonnaise.
Looking at the fresh, watery lettuce and mayonnaise in the bowl, everyone nervously swallowed. To be honest, this lettuce lived up to being freshly picked local vegetables from the Fourth Production Escort Ship; even eaten directly, you could taste the fresh sweetness and crispness of the vegetable leaves.
But the problem was, it was too bland!
Modern people’s tastes aligned with 21st Century people, so the students’ tastes naturally leaned more toward those 21st Century students who preferred spicy hot pot skewers and other heavy-flavored foods over white rice. Without any seasoning, eating one or two pieces of raw lettuce leaves was already the greatest effort for these students whose palates had been spoiled by Yue Xiang Restaurant and A Bite of China Club Small Restaurant.
Even Xiang Chuan herself couldn’t accept constantly munching raw vegetable leaves.
To make her constantly munch raw lettuce, you’d need to serve a big handful of grilled pork belly! It had to be pork belly; beef belly was tasty too, but that fat flavor always felt off.
While silently reminiscing in her heart about 21st Century lettuce-wrapped pork belly, Xiang Chuan picked up the small bowl of mayonnaise, scraped all the mayonnaise directly into the vegetable bowl with a spoon, then picked up chopsticks and stirred the lettuce, tomatoes, and cucumber in the vegetable bowl.
This rather aggressive operation made some students who were about to pick up lettuce leaves to dip in mayonnaise pause, and after hesitating several times, they tremblingly followed Xiang Chuan’s lead.
As the mayonnaise continuously mixed and contacted the various vegetables in the bowl during stirring, the rich aroma of the mayonnaise gradually wafted into the students’ noses. This actually allowed some uneasy students to slightly relax their suspended hearts about the salad in front of them that now looked somewhat like an indescribable thing.
After all, if they stepped on a mine, the good mood from just eating the steamed milk pudding would be overshadowed, not worth it, not worth it—it would take how much steamed milk pudding to make up for it!
Xiang Chuan: That depends on whether you can go to the canteen and compete head-to-head with those Fourth Fleet employees queuing to grab the steamed milk pudding and vegetable salad.
