The first thing I did was to find out

Chapter 344 Boss Shi
Cao Guixiang is still making stuffed yellow croaker in soup. The yellow croaker has been dried in advance, and the shark fins have been soaked and processed in advance, but the ham, sea cucumber and abalone are all cut and processed on the spot.

Qin Huai felt that Cao Guixiang did it on purpose. She deliberately did not prepare the ingredients in advance and asked him to cut them into strips or cubes in front of him so that he could see what higher-level knife skills were like.

How to put it, simple but very difficult.

When cutting radish shreds or radish slices, which are relatively simple ingredients more suitable for practice, your knife skills can be very cool.

The speed can be very fast, so fast that it leaves an afterimage. The movements can also be exaggerated, as if a close-up cut to the edge of the knife is imminent.

But Cao Guixiang didn't do that when she was processing sea cucumbers, abalone and ham. She didn't cut fast, and was even a little slow. She didn't cut hard, and it felt very slow and gentle, like a beginner who was just learning to cut vegetables and didn't dare to cut, so her movements were gentle, slow and a little cautious.

Of course, Cao Guixiang was not so cautious. She handled all the ingredients gently and slowly, putting them together. A closer look would reveal that the shreds she cut were of uniform thickness and thickness, and the dices she cut were almost carved from the same mold.

The knife skills are subtle and silent.

After processing these ingredients, Cao Guixiang began to chop the shrimp into a paste. Her movements were still slow and looked gentle, but she used more force, and the knife made a regular chopping sound on the chopping board.

Cao Guixiang explained at the right time: "When cutting vegetables, you need to pursue speed, but you can't just pursue speed."

"When you were cutting radishes, I told you to cut faster because there were still a lot of radishes left to cut. That's because you haven't gotten started yet. At this point, you need to be quick, accurate and ruthless. You need to practice a lot to become proficient. You need to improve your speed and become comfortable with it."

"Of course, you have already gotten started, but you still need to practice quickly, because getting started does not mean understanding. Getting started only means that you can start laying the foundation. As for how long it will take to lay this foundation, I am not sure."

“Once you have a solid foundation and have processed all kinds of ingredients, you can start to challenge more difficult things. For example, deboning a whole chicken, carving melons, and even pure knife-skilled dishes like Wensi tofu, you need to learn to slow down.”

"When preparing such a big dish, you must be slow, not just in action, but also in mentality. You can't eat hot tofu in a hurry, and you can't cook a good dish in a hurry. Slowness does not mean unskilled, in many cases, slowness means meticulousness."

"This is why many masters don't like impatient disciples when they recruit them. It's not that being impatient is bad, but once you develop this habit, it's easy to get into trouble. Those who are slow and seem to be slow don't mean they are stupid, sometimes they may just be more cautious and meticulous."

Hearing what Cao Guixiang said, Qin Huai suddenly thought of Gu Li.

Gu Li cooks very slowly, sometimes so slowly that people around him can't stand it, even Tan Wei'an can't stand it. But no matter if someone urges him or not, Gu Li always cooks in this slow state. There are no small problems when he cooks, but big problems are constantly encountered.

This is not to scold him. Many times, the big problems are due to lack of skills and cannot be done. However, many small problems can be avoided. Gu Li avoided all the problems he could avoid within his ability. The rest is pure lack of strength.

Qin Huai asked thoughtfully: "Then Master, should I slow down a bit when cutting vegetables and making snacks in the future?"

Cao Guixiang shook her head and seasoned the chopped shrimp paste. "You are not an impatient person, and you don't need to change your usual habits for the so-called better. Everyone has their own personality traits and habits. No one can be perfect. When your level is high enough, you are perfect."

"Your knife skills are just getting started, so naturally people can find a lot of faults. But if your knife skills have reached the pinnacle, even if you have a lot of unreasonable habits and small flaws, people will only say that this is the style of a master."

"When I was a chef in Qiu County, my boss praised me like this every day." Cao Guixiang said as she heated oil in a pan and began to fry the shrimp heads. She simmered over low heat, adding oil and pressing the shrimp heads. "Even if I made mistakes while cooking and forgot an ingredient, my boss would still ask me if it was a new recipe I had researched."

Qin Huai was shocked when he heard this: "Is this possible?"

Cao Guixiang was multitasking. While chatting, she kept moving her hands. She fried the scallions and shrimp heads and stir-fried the ingredients, constantly turning the spatula. The look and expression on her face was still the same as when she was chatting.

"Of course. When did I become a chef? Qiu County is just a county town. How rich can it be? We live by the mountains and the sea. There is no shortage of seafood, but many vegetables and condiments may not be available on the same day. I'm not even talking about ginseng, deer antlers, and bear paws... In the first few years when I was a chef in Qiu County, I could still make bear paw dishes. Sometimes I wanted to buy some high-quality millet but it was not available."

"My boss at the time was a very nice guy, very generous. Not only did I get a high salary, but I also got a high commission. At that time, Chi Yuan was like my son. He would come to the restaurant after school every day, and the boss didn't care if he bent over the counter to do his homework. Every time he came, the boss would bring Chi Yuan some melon seeds, plums, candies and so on. Later, when Lao Zhang and I bought a house in the city, the boss also paid a lot for us. He was a great person."

"It's just that my tactics were not good enough. At that time, several restaurants wanted to recruit me. They stuffed red envelopes into my hands and Lao Zhang's, but the bosses didn't know anything about it."

"Other restaurants are giving him trouble, and he doesn't handle the food supply problem very well. The most famous restaurant in Qiu County is always short of food, which really puts me at the end of my rope. Sometimes the dishes I cook are just messed up, and the only thing missing is the Kung Pao Chicken."

Cao Guixiang used simple words to narrate a sinister business war, and Qin Huai listened with great interest. He didn't even notice that Cao Guixiang had already fried the abalone, sea cucumber and other ingredients.

It is not accurate to say that the dish is ready after frying. These ingredients are the soup for the yellow croaker. After frying, the soup, scallop water and fresh shrimp oil are added to thicken the sauce. At the end of the pot, only a small bowl of the dish is left. The aroma is overflowing, the soup is thick and golden, and the sea cucumber, abalone, scallop and fresh shrimp are visible. At first glance, it looks like Buddha Jumps Over the Wall.

The soup is ready, and all that’s left is the yellow croaker.

Cao Guixiang heated up another pot of hot oil and fried the scallions. She took the scallions out and began to pour hot oil over the yellow croaker to make its skin firmer. As she poured, she continued:

"Thinking back now, it was really outrageous. Being a chef in peacetime was like being in a famine. There was nothing here and there. Sometimes I had to use this ingredient to make up the number, sometimes I had to use that ingredient to make up the number. If I hadn't gotten the money, I would have quit long ago."

"But it does help me improve my cooking skills. Before I became a chef in Qiu County, I was an educated youth in the countryside, so my cooking skills were not as good as before. If it weren't for the boss's incompetence and making things more difficult for me, I wouldn't have been able to improve my cooking skills so quickly. To use the words of you young people, it really increased the intensity of my work."

As he was speaking, the oil was poured off.

Cao Guixiang poured the freshly prepared "soup" into the belly of the yellow croaker, sealed it with shrimp stuffing, placed shark fins, ham shreds and dried shrimps on the yellow croaker, simply seasoned it, and steamed it in a pot.

"Okay, the stuffed yellow croaker is basically done at this point. It only needs to be steamed over medium-high heat for a quarter of an hour before it's ready." Cao Guixiang said, "Sometimes you can't blame me for not wanting to make these big dishes. To be honest, the cooking process of these dishes is very simple, but the preparation work in the early stages is too complicated." "For these 15 minutes of steaming, it takes 15 hours to prepare."

Qin Huai smiled and said, "Master, it's the same when we make plain dim sum. The last step, steaming the buns, only takes a few minutes, but the previous steps take a long time."

"When my parents first opened the breakfast shop, they had to get up at around 2 a.m. every day."

"Yes, it's good to have this awareness and not be afraid of trouble." Cao Guixiang, who was accustomed to fishing enforcement, nodded with a smile and continued to make the next dish.

Qin Huai: ...If Zhang Chu had practiced fishing skills with Cao Guixiang more often, he would have caught a big fish long ago.

Cao Guixiang had cooked the remaining dishes in front of Qin Huai, so she didn't explain them. To be precise, there was no point in explaining them because Qin Huai couldn't understand them at all.

"Master, after you resigned, is your boss still running the restaurant?" Qin Huai asked curiously.

From Cao Guixiang's description just now, Qin Huai heard that Cao Guixiang's boss was very lucky.

It doesn't matter if the boss is a useless N-card, the employees are SSR and have max loyalty, so they will lead the way throughout the whole process.

"Of course not. Lao Shi didn't run a restaurant in the beginning. He was a fisherman at first, and went out to sea to fish every day. At that time, we were poor, and we lacked seasonings and were reluctant to use oil when cooking. Lao Shi and other fishermen always steamed fish and seafood, and were reluctant to use oil."

"This method is said to be the original flavor of seafood. It's okay to eat it once or twice to taste the freshness, but no one can stand eating it for years. The smell makes me want to vomit."

"Lao Shi's family has been fishermen for generations. He has been eating like this since he was a child. He dreams of eating all-you-can-eat white rice. After the policy was relaxed, he didn't want to be a fisherman anymore. As others started to trade in seafood, he was not good at business but had good luck and made a lot of money. He started by selling seafood."

"Boss Shi originally sold seafood. How could his supply be blocked by others after he opened a restaurant?" Qin Huai was stunned.

Compared with Boss Shi, Huang Anyao still has his merits. At least the young master will not be blocked from supplying goods in this way.

"That's why people say that Lao Shi doesn't know how to do business. He is just like that, honest. In the beginning, he believed everything others said, and after being stuck several times, he gradually learned how to do business. But it is because of his honesty that I am willing to be a chef in his restaurant."

"At that time, Lao Zhang and I didn't have a place to return to the city, so we wasted several years in the countryside. Our two children were grown up and needed to go to school. Our village party secretary used his connections to find Lao Zhang a temporary job at the timber factory in Qiu County. The salary of a temporary worker was not enough for our family of four. At that time, I was planning to borrow money to set up a stall in Qiu County to sell big pot dishes, and then Boss Shi came to me."

"My craftsmanship is very good, but it was useless to say that you have good skills in that situation. We are in the countryside, and we are only famous in a few villages. Your grandfather Zhang's carpentry skills are also very good, but we have no money, no connections, and no channels. The village party secretary has talked a lot and asked people for help to find connections, but he can only find a temporary job."

"At that time, Lao Shi was persuaded to open a restaurant in Qiu County. He thought that since he was in the seafood business, he would not be cheated because he had the supply. But after he bought the restaurant, the chef he had agreed to hire suddenly quit. Lao Qin, the Party Secretary of your village, heard the news and came to tell our Party Secretary. Our Party Secretary went to find Lao Shi, and that’s how I got the job."

"I didn't expect that I would stay in the restaurant for so many years. The restaurant business was so good that Lao Shi stopped running his own seafood business and just stayed in the restaurant every day waiting for food."

Qin Huai:......

Is this Boss Shi a relative of Han Guishan? Why are these two people so lucky?
Does he also have a manta ray assistant?

Zhang Chu, who had been sitting on the sofa playing with his phone, heard Cao Guixiang talking about Boss Shi coming over to join in the fun, and agreed: "Old Shi is really amazing."

"He asked someone to find connections to help me get a permanent job at the lumber mill, and he also introduced me to a lot of private jobs. Later, we transferred Chiyuan and Siyu to the city, and he also helped to get their enrollment. It was said that he spent a lot of money, but Lao Shi would never admit that he spent any money, and insisted that he had connections."

Cao Guixiang smiled and shook her head: "What relationship does he have? He is just stubborn and stubborn. It's always like this now."

"The Luzon Yellow this time is obviously not his product. He must have bought it from someone else with higher quality. He insisted that it was his new good product and sold it to us at his price."

Qin Huai was shocked: "Ah? Did you buy Luzon Yellow from Boss Shi?"

"Yes." Cao Guixiang nodded. "After I resigned, the restaurant closed. Lao Shi didn't have the talent to run a restaurant, so he went back to his seafood business. His business has been doing well over the years. Although he is not rich, he has made a lot of money."

"On weekdays, when I want to cook delicious dishes, I get the ingredients from him. Otherwise, I wouldn't run a restaurant. I don't usually need a lot of ingredients. How can I get high-quality ingredients from ordinary suppliers?"

"Oh yes, Guixiang, when I went to pick up the goods two days ago, Lao Shi asked me why I suddenly bought so much. I guess he wanted to come and have a free meal." Zhang Chu said.

Cao Guixiang said, "Tell him to come two days later, on the day Xiao Qin leaves. Xiao Qin has to practice knife skills and thicken the sauce these days, so he doesn't have time to make three-shred shark fin for him."

Zhang Chu scratched his head: "I really don't understand. Braised shark's fin is so delicious, why does he like to eat three-shred shark's fin?"

"Oh, by the way, Lao Zhang, when Lao Shi comes to eat, remember to give him the money for the yellow croaker. We paid for ordinary yellow croakers, but he gave us two 4-jin wild yellow croakers. The price difference is too big, so you have to give him the money."

Qin Huai:......

Who said Boss Shi doesn't understand the ways of the world? Doesn't he know quite well about it?
High-end hunters often appear in the form of prey.

(End of this chapter)