Chapter 246: Kitchen Duties In Class Eight Grade One
As the Class Eight crowd in the kitchen began to get busy one after another, Xiang Chuan also started assigning tasks to Ouyang Yating and the other two. She sent them several pieces of information via light screen. After the three looked them over, their expressions gradually became complicated.
“You sure know how to boss people around, Club President.” Ainuo said through gritted teeth.
“Of course, after all, I’m the Club President.” Xiang Chuan chuckled with a hum, patted his shoulder, and leisurely began patrolling the kitchen.
The three let out a light sigh, deeply feeling the heavy responsibility this time, but since it was a task assigned by Xiang Chuan in her capacity as Club President, they could only obediently follow through.
Xiang Chuan’s steps didn’t stop as she began carefully observing the production processes of each group.
Class President Lu Daiqing’s group was responsible for handling the staple food.
With no rice available, Xiang Chuan could only prioritize noodles. Originally, she had planned to just make dough drops and egg pancakes, but during training, while she was slacking off, more than one person had “happened” to pass by and “casually” mentioned wanting to eat buns, noodles, dumplings, and so on.
Thus, the variety to prepare on the staple food group side increased.
Wheat flour mixed with water and salt was kneaded into dough, then divided into three portions by the kitchen AI’s robotic arms, and handed over to the staple food group to make into noodles, dumpling wrappers, and pancake wrappers respectively.
Of course, because the water and salt proportions for kneading the dough had been pre-adjusted by Xiang Chuan, it avoided the infinite loop of “too much water add more flour, too much flour add more water” they had encountered during field training.
The Class Eight students were still not proficient at rolling dough and cutting noodles (Xiang Chuan had forgotten to bring the portable noodle machine from home, so they could only cut by hand), so the cut noodles varied in thickness.
However, noodles weren’t that particular—at least that was Xiang Chuan’s attitude toward them. For the thin noodles, she had them coated with a thin layer of flour and rolled into fist-sized bundles, stacked neatly. For the wide noodles, she had them rolled directly into flat sheets with the rolling tool, cut to half the length of regular noodles, then also coated with a thin layer of flour and set aside.
Xiang Chuan had only seen this kind of noodle sheets at the old grandmother next door when she was little; she wasn’t too sure about the taste, because as a child Xiang Chuan didn’t like eating noodles much, and by the time she grew up and stopped being picky, she was too far from home with no chance to try this handmade noodle.
At least, judging from how the neighbor kids slurped them up nonstop, the texture of these noodles couldn’t be that bad.
Dumpling wrappers and pancake wrappers had been practiced by the Class Eight crowd during the school anniversary, and though everyone was a bit clumsy at first, after Xiang Chuan finished guiding the noodle side, the somewhat uneven thick and flat dumpling wrappers and pancake wrappers gradually became standardized.
Actually, as long as the skins for dumplings and pancakes weren’t made too thick, these noodles wouldn’t taste bad. Xiang Chuan thought, not being a fan of thick-skinned noodles herself.
——
Nancy’s group was responsible for meat.
Currently, the market on the military escort ship still circulated chicken and beef, and everyone was very familiar with handling both kinds of meat, especially chicken.
The meat group members shook their heads and clicked their tongues, saying: “It’d be great if what came up wasn’t pre-cleaned chicken but live chickens, so we could put on a chicken-killing show in front of the whole grade.”
Members of the other groups nodded in agreement upon hearing this.
Xiang Chuan: Possible, but no need.
The beef was divided into three portions by use, with two portions used respectively for pan-fried steak and minced into minced meat; the remaining portion Xiang Chuan didn’t have them do much knife work on, but instead directly put into soup already containing Chinese cabbage and ginger to stew.
The chicken was handled the usual way: whole ones for stewing soup, cut ones prepared for stir-fried chicken.
This time, though, Xiang Chuan had the kitchen AI leave some internal organs when processing the meat. The meat group members looked at these beef and chicken internal organs with eyes gleaming and fists itching, which scared Kenny and Li Wei outside the kitchen.
Kenny and Li Wei: Wh… what are they going to do with these inedible waste ingredients?
Actually, in this half month, the Agriculture Bureau had approved the edibility permit for beef and chicken internal organs. Yue Xiang Restaurant obtained authorization for Xiang Chuan’s new recipes at the fastest speed and put dishes featuring beef liver, beef heart, beef intestine, beef brain, chicken liver, chicken heart, chicken intestine, and other organ parts on the menu.
These internal organs had originally been listed as inedible waste ingredients, so when some diners saw these things added to the menu, they instantly panicked: Is Yue Xiang Restaurant trying to kill people?!
This caused a lot of skepticism. However, among Yue Xiang Restaurant’s loyal diners were many fierce eaters like the Class Eight young gluttons, who immediately went to taste the new dishes as soon as they were offered.
The special texture and taste of the beef and chicken internal organs instantly won over these warriors; they actively wrote detailed tasting notes on SNS as much as possible, which drew more onlooker diners to try them, capturing another batch of fans.
In half a month, nearly eighty percent of Yue Xiang Restaurant’s diners had tried these poultry internal organs, with nearly seventy percent saying they could accept them.
This customer data from Yue Xiang Restaurant also became a major important reference for the Agriculture Bureau’s animal husbandry department to actively promote meat diversity in the market, though that was later.
Nongda Affiliated High School, with heaven-sent timing, geography, and harmony, reached cooperation with Yue Xiang Restaurant the fastest and introduced these organ dishes, so the first-year students from other classes watching on site all knew how delicious beef offal and chicken innards were after cooking, and now their eyes were bulging huge.
One had to know that the quantity of beef offal and chicken innards here wasn’t unlimited like at the school cafeteria and Yue Xiang Restaurant on the main ship—it was absolutely first come, first served. With most of Class Eight surely eyeing the organ dishes too, the rest… when mealtime came, it would be a tough battle.
The students outside the kitchen stared dead at the beef offal and chicken innards being processed in the cafeteria, fists itching one by one.
Kenny & Li Wei: …Are these kids serious?
——
Cultural Committee Member Mandy’s group was responsible for vegetables.
So-called processing was really just cutting the vegetables into shreds, chunks, or mince according to the needs of the staple food and dishes.
The Class Eight students’ vegetable-cutting skills had actually improved a lot compared to during field training, but in Xiang Chuan’s view, the quality was still somewhat unacceptable.
When cutting chunks, they cut too fine, almost into potato slices and radish slices. When shredding, either into thin noodles or as thick as a pinky finger. Mincing was relatively better, but some were minced too finely, almost squeezing out the vegetable juice.
But knife work had no shortcuts.
Either fully hand it over to the kitchen AI for standardized processing—for example, the Xiang Family’s kitchen AI, after being fine-tuned by Xiang Chuan, could produce vegetable cuts flashy enough for the 21st century.
Or practice knife work oneself; what Xiang Chuan could achieve now was cutting shredded radish to the thickness of two pencil leads, relatively better was the A Bite of China Club trio who were arranged by Xiang Chuan to practice weekly, able to reach half a pencil’s thickness. The Class Eight young ones, without Xiang Chuan’s guidance, could cut to pinky finger thickness, which was already not bad—they could always add an extra cut to thin it.
——
Finally, Labor Committee Member Fu Chengkai was responsible for the dessert part.
With the current usable ingredients not allowing much room for Xiang Chuan to shine, she assigned them some easier-to-make desserts, such as pudding, french fries, ketchup, cucumber salad, etc.
But the Class Eight gluttons felt this was too little.
When Xiang Chuan came to inspect, Fu Chengkai sidled over and muttered:
“Xiang Chuan, see if we should make a few more kinds? I see steamed milk pudding and those could be made too…”
She looked at him expressionlessly and said:
“If you don’t mind eating hot steamed milk pudding, then I don’t mind assigning it to you.”
One sentence made the Class Eight gluttons surrender.
—Steamed milk pudding, of course, was best ice-chilled!
