Chapter 7: Table Full Of Delicacies
“Everyone, please eat quickly. If the dough drops sit too long, they’ll swell into a lump.”
Looking at the calculating gazes exchanged between the younger version of Father and the youth who clearly wasn’t an ordinary person, Xiang Chuan felt that if she didn’t speak up soon, this lunch would be dragged out into dinner.
The three elders chuckled, each picking up a spoon, harboring expectation and a touch of unease. Unanimously, the three first sipped a mouthful of soup. Their tongues touched the rich tangy sweetness laced with a special spicy aroma, instantly shocking them greatly. Among it were some yellowish flocculent objects sliding into their throats with the soup, which, based on prior observation, should be eggs.
Was this the taste that eggs and tomatoes could produce? The youth’s mind was extremely unsettled now. From birth until now, he had lived over two hundred years, and in his impression, liquid egg soup juice carried an intolerable fishy smell, so chefs preferred adding eggs to solid food mixed with vegetables and grains to intake vitamins, protein, and carbohydrates simultaneously. But the noodle soup before him (emotionally, the youth refused to lump this delicacy with the “noodle soups” he had tasted so far, but rationally, he still felt this dish should be called “noodle soup” based on its materials and structure) overturned all his prejudices about mixing eggs with soup.
If it was this delicious, forget eggs being unsellable— they’d be in short supply.
The youth sighed inwardly, scooping up a spoonful of dough drops. The dough in the spoon wasn’t uniform, which challenged the aesthetic bottom line of modern people who preferred symmetry and neatness, but the sip of soup juice just now was enough to offset this minor discomfort. However… was this meant to be swallowed directly too? The youth looked at the three young people and found them chewing. Could it be that this needed chewing like solid food? This soup-like food actually required chewing?!
Embracing the shock of his worldview being refreshed, he tentatively put the dough into his mouth and chewed lightly. The soup-soaked dough drops seemed to burst in his mouth; this chewing was somewhat addictive, and the fully cooked dough drops slid easily into the esophagus, one bite after another—impossible to stop!
When the youth came back to his senses, he had already eaten half a bowl of dough drops, leaving him greatly embarrassed. Fortunately, Mr. and Mrs. Xiang Weiguo sitting beside him weren’t much better off. To cover his awkwardness, the youth pretended to casually glance at the other serving plates. He first picked up the fried banana— no particular reason, mainly because the preparation method was too bizarre. Since the fleet’s founding, it had always advocated getting vitamins from vegetables, so people weren’t too fond of fruit, and due to high water content making it prone to spoilage, at most leisurely wealthy folks bought some for decoration. Using it properly as an ingredient like this was unprecedented.
Just coated in egg mixture and dipped in oil once— what difference could that make?
The youth speared a small piece of fried banana. Xiang Chuan had specially cut the bananas into bite-sized pieces, making them quite convenient to eat. The Xiang family dining table had a heating function, so when the fork pierced the banana skin, he could still see hot steam rising from inside, the steam mixed with aroma entering the youth’s nostrils, carrying an indescribable sweet fragrance. Popping it into his mouth and chewing finely, the hot banana wrapped in the crispy fried egg mixture shell was so sweet and fragrant! Was this the taste of banana after being dipped in oil once?
Having tried the fried banana, he naturally had to taste the fried potato shred pancake and egg pancake too. The egg pancakes came in sweet and savory versions, and the youth preferred sweet. Across from him, Xiang Xue was swapping her savory egg pancake with Brother Xiang Qi’s sweet egg pancake, while Xiang Chuan scolded her sister in between for being picky. For some reason, this scene made the egg pancake in his mouth taste even more delicious inexplicably. The fried potato shred pancake was more like a snack than a main dish; the egg mixture mixed between the fragrant potato shreds refreshed the youth’s cognition of eggs once again, and the half-run egg yolk in the center had no fishy smell at all, but was unusually sweet and fragrant.
After continuously eating fried foods, the youth felt his mouth somewhat sticky and greasy, unconsciously wanting water. At this point, he noticed Xiang Chuan ate two bites of potato shred pancake followed by a spoonful of dough drops, the movements so fluid as if this was the normal eating order. The youth hesitated, then imitated her, sending a dough drop into his mouth. Suddenly, the tangy sweet soup juice seemed to absorb all the greasiness in his mouth at once, returning it to a refreshing state. Eating another bite of fried potato shred pancake then not only brought back that initial enjoyment, but the lingering tomato egg soup flavor in his mouth mixed with the fragrant potato was so delicious.
If Xiang Chuan knew his inner thoughts, she would certainly point out: In the 21st century, eighty percent of french fries eaters worldwide chose to dip them in ketchup.
After finishing lunch, everyone moved to the living room. Now, everyone including the three elders felt their waistlines had expanded by a circle, but the satisfaction from ingesting gourmet food had made the two women present selectively ignore body maintenance issues.
“Your daughter’s culinary skills are truly masterful.”
The youth picked up a piece of yam cake from the tray. The already cooled pastry wasn’t sticky, and after a gentle bite, the full milk fragrance of the yam and the fresh fruit filled his mouth with joy.
“You’re too kind. This is also our first time knowing the child had such skills.”
Lin Minzhi was modest in words, but her face couldn’t hide her pride.
Indeed, she had originally thought her eldest daughter with average aptitude would remain unremarkable among the three siblings, and she had prepared to let Xiang Chuan live her life without worries about food and clothing, neither excelling nor failing. Today was truly a big surprise.
“It’s like discovering her new talent.” Xiang Weiguo remarked emotionally. He looked at Xiang Qi and Xiang Xue, “According to the servant’s report, Xiao Chuan found these recipes online?”
“Yes, but she didn’t say where from.” Xiang Qi paused, then continued, “I speculate she found them in information turbulence.”
Information turbulence— hearing this term, Xiang Weiguo and Lin Minzhi weren’t so surprised by their eldest daughter’s sudden change.
So-called information turbulence was the massive data stored on pre-Tianyuan Earth’s cloud network, fragmented via the time-space jump system and the space-time network between the twelve fleet branches. It encompassed records of Earth people’s cultures and histories from various pre-Tianyuan eras, including all sorts of book contents. Piecing together various fragmented text from it into books was the most invested field for modern network enthusiasts and some government agencies. But information turbulence’s appearance time and location weren’t fixed; sometimes those network experts spent endless effort finding traces in the farthest corners of the space-time network, sometimes it appeared unannounced in some resident’s private network. People who gained from information turbulence would sell it to government agencies or network enthusiasts with collection hobbies, usually for a good price; some chose to keep it themselves, turning it into their own knowledge.
Now looking at it, Xiang Chuan must have gained some delightful harvest from accidental information turbulence.
“Brother Xiang Qi, don’t say everything out loud.”
Xiang Chuan slowly approached with the starfish servant carrying the tea tray. She had just overheard some of the conversation, and her “memory” naturally included the concept of information turbulence. Unexpectedly, there was such a convenient ready-made excuse to use, so if she tried new dishes she hadn’t made before and failed in the future, couldn’t she pass it off as information turbulence? She thought beautifully.
“Sister Xiang Chuan, what’s this? It smells so good.”
Xiang Xue blinked her eyes at the tray the servant held, which had six glass cups containing liquids of various colors. The white liquid emitted a rich sweet fragrance, while the orange and milky white liquids had a faint fresh aroma.
“The white one is milk with sugar, the orange is orange juice, and the other is apple juice.”
The youth and Xiang Xue first chose milk, Xiang Chuan took a cup of orange juice herself, and the remaining orange juice and apple juice were claimed by Mr. and Mrs. Xiang Weiguo and Xiang Qi.
With the prior egg pancake and the yam cake now in hand as foundation, the youth and Xiang Xue overcame their stereotypes of milk’s fishy smell, gently sipping the milk. Instantly, their eyes lit up; the silky milk was thick and rich, the subtle sweetness making it even more flavorful. Xiang Qi drinking orange juice and Mr. and Mrs. Xiang Weiguo drinking apple juice had similar expressions.
“How did you cook this milk?”
The youth finally couldn’t hold back and asked Xiang Chuan directly. As an elder asking a child for her cooking secret was indeed somewhat impolite, but he really couldn’t suppress his curiosity.
“Heat the milk to a boil, then add a spoonful of sugar.”
“…And?”
The youth waited for more.
“That’s it.”
“That’s it? Just that?”
“Yeah, just hot milk. What could be complicated?” Xiang Chuan smiled, “I saw you and Xiao Xue both like sweet things, so I added some sugar. Actually, it’s good without sugar too. These fruit juices, though—the kitchen AI almost turned them into fruit paste.”
This remark silenced everyone. Just heating milk gave this texture? Then what about the fishy-tasting milky white liquid everyone had disliked so far? As for Xiang Weiguo, he examined the juice in his hand, then his youngest daughter’s milk, hesitated a long time, and decided to ask his daughter to let him taste that sweet milk.
“No way, this is milk Sister made for me. If you want to drink, Dad, have the kitchen AI prepare it for you.”
Xiang Xue said, dodging behind Xiang Qi, her disdainful expression embarrassing Xiang Weiguo.
“You, with so much milk at home, if you want to taste it, wait till there’s time and have the kitchen AI make you a big basin—no one will fight with you. How can you fight drinks with a child?”
Lin Minzhi nagged. Xiang Weiguo chuckled dryly, shrinking back a bit— wasn’t he just momentarily curious?
[Beep— Madam, Mondo Hotel general manager has a message for you.]
The servant starfish suddenly said.
“Ah…”
Xiang Weiguo and Lin Minzhi exchanged glances. Oh right, before lunch they had booked a suite at Mondo Hotel to host this guest, but got so absorbed in the meal they forgot. Now… leaving aside if their stomachs could take more, after tasting their daughter’s delicacies, the couple had no appetite for the all-soup-juice and solid food signature dishes they remembered from Mondo.
In the end, the ordered meal was all distributed to the couple, the youth’s driver and attendants.
The drivers enjoyed the top fleet gourmet food, sincerely praising their boss’s generosity, unaware their boss had long “graduated” from such fishy soup and solid food.
