Spring Breeze Twenty Years

Chapter 769 Soup

Construction has stopped, all equipment has been gathered together, the gates are closed, and the assigned night watchmen have already started their shifts.

The difference between the early 90s and later years is that ordinary people were poor. Although the standard of living had improved significantly compared to the 80s, there were not many rich people. Moreover, due to certain issues with the welfare housing system, the housing situation of ordinary people was quite tight. The phenomenon of three generations crammed into a dozen square meters was common throughout the country.

Then there are the shantytowns across the country. These shantytowns are where people try every possible way to build houses in the limited space they have, without any planning or schemes, just to squeeze out a little bit of living space. In the movie "The Talkative Zhang Damin," even having trees inside the house is considered good, at least it's still quite spacious.

The result is that several times the population is crammed into a small area of ​​residential buildings. Forget cars, even pedestrians have to be extra careful walking. In some places, even bicycles can't get in. Then sewage flows freely and garbage piles up. If a fire breaks out, it spreads rapidly, and nobody can do anything but stand on the outside and watch. More people mean more problems, and more problems are harder to solve. The longer things drag on, the more people there are.

The situation in Northeast China was slightly better, because only Liaodong had a larger population and denser urban areas, and these were mainly concentrated in places like Fengtian, Beixi, and Anshan. The situation was much worse in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. Back then, you couldn't call yourself a big city if you didn't have a few shantytowns.

What was the hottest thing back then? Bricks, cement, timber, tiles—anything related to building houses was in high demand. If no one was watching over the construction site, the bricks and cement would be gone in a few days. Have you ever seen a woman carrying a bag of cement in each hand, walking so fast you couldn't catch her? It was all out of necessity.

The habit of building walls around construction sites in China originated from this period.

After inspecting the construction site and exchanging words of encouragement with the staff who remained behind, Xiao Wei returned to the courtyard. Today, the food factory started trial production, and An Laowu started making soup. These were all very important matters, and he couldn't feel at ease without keeping an eye on things.

The so-called trial production refers to bread and biscuits, mainly instant noodles. Cakes have been baking normally for several days, otherwise the cake shop wouldn't be able to open. The cake shops in Fengtian have introduced vegetable-based cream, also known as fresh milk. At this time, there are no domestic manufacturers, and it is all imported from abroad.

Top reputation is a product of American Vegan Foods. Legend has it that Mr. Vegan, the radish-headed man, found inspiration in Chinese soy milk and created vegetable fat cream, a product that quickly became a bestseller worldwide.

To this day, it remains the world's largest producer of vegetable fat cream, with factories in China as well. However, its sales in China began to decline in the late 90s because its focus on taste resulted in a slightly smaller rise, which led to it being defeated by domestic products with larger rises. Although it doesn't taste good, it rises much more, meaning one box can make one more cake.

As for taste and nutritional value, what are those? Consumers don't even understand what vegetable fat cream is, so how can they have any choice?

Forget about the taste; the craftsmanship in China has been declining, even falling behind the era of yellow buttercream. Nowadays, cakes in China are just decorated with fruit or flowers; there's no real skill involved. Most cake decorators can't even make buttercream flowers properly or don't know how to make them at all.

This is the biggest characteristic of most Chinese craftsmen: no matter what it is, they never study it in depth, but instead try to be lazy and just do a shoddy job.

……

After washing and scalding the bones, put them in a pot of well water without adding anything else. Bring it to a boil over high heat, then simmer over low heat for two hours. Pour out the broth, add more well water, and simmer three times. Remove the oil from the broth from the three simmers, mix them together, add scallions, ginger, star anise, Sichuan peppercorns, and angelica root, bring to a boil, add salt to taste, and add ground bone powder in the correct proportion. The stock is now ready.

When using it, simply stew the vegetables directly in the broth, add garlic and MSG, and a little salt to taste.

Bone meal must be ground from marrow-containing bones.

It's not just for stews; it can also enhance the flavor of stir-fries.

No matter what kind of Chinese cuisine it is or what school of thought it belongs to, the secret is basically in the broth. No matter how thoroughly you learn or practice other techniques or procedures, it's useless if you can't get that flavor out of it.

A simple boiled cabbage dish explains this matter perfectly.

Legend has it that one winter, Empress Dowager Cixi caught a cold and felt listless and tasteless. She couldn't stand meat and lost her appetite, so she punished several imperial chefs. When they ran out of ideas, they hired a famous chef from the common people to help. But this guy was also at his wit's end. He spent two days at home making a pot of soup, soaked the sleeves of his cotton-padded jacket in the soup, dried them in the sun, and then wore it into the palace.

Using the excuse of a secret recipe, he dismissed everyone in the kitchen, boiled a pot of water, then boiled the sleeves of his cotton-padded jacket in it. He used this water to cook a bowl of clear soup noodles for Empress Dowager Cixi, who was delighted with the meal.

This person left the palace and immediately fled with his whole family overnight. He boiled water from a tattered cotton-padded jacket for Empress Dowager Cixi to drink. How many times would his whole family have to die to be satisfied?

Of course, this is just a folk tale, and whether it actually happened is debatable. Chinese people like to make up stories about anything, and they like to associate these stories with royalty. There are thousands of dishes related to the emperor's family all over the country, which shows how busy the emperor's family must have been back then. Even beggars who performed crosstalk came up with a set of "imperial dishes".

The broth is the essence of Chinese cuisine.

After only two batches, An Laowu announced that it was a success and production and bottling could begin. Xiaowei and Chen Hui clapped their hands in delight, as the problem limiting the restaurant's development was no longer an issue.

An Laowu wiped his hands and said, "Let's find a few smart and trustworthy people to do this. I'll make the ingredients into packets, and they can just put them in. After the packets are used, we can just recycle them." He took the notebook and wrote down the temperatures and times he found.

Actually, he only used one spice packet at this moment, and Xiao Wei pretended not to see it, not wanting to ask. The contents were definitely several Chinese medicinal herbs, but no one could guess exactly what they were. (Dried tangerine peel, angelica root, nutmeg, cardamom, bay leaves, three qian each, a handful of old scallion roots, soaked in cooking wine before use)

The three of them rinsed the filling machine with boiling water again, tried filling a bucket, and it worked well, only one bag leaked.

Chen Hui said, "What do we do with the oil in this bucket? Throw it away?"

Xiao Wei said, "Let's take it down and use it in the cafeteria. The bone broth oil will make the dishes taste better."

An Laowu said, "What a waste! You make instant noodles, right? If you put a small oil packet in, your instant noodles would taste better than everyone else's."

In 91, instant noodles were not yet widespread and were considered a food for the wealthy. Each noodle contained only a lump of noodles and a salt packet, but no oil packet.

Chen Hui clapped his hands: "Fifth Brother is amazing! I think it'll work, it'll definitely work. Add a little bit of broth in it, and it'll be unbeatable."

Xiao Wei said, "How about we add a soup packet and an oil packet? Let's call the instant noodles Anji, and I'll give you 10% of the profits, Fifth Brother. I'll find someone to get the equipment; there's enough space here. After we get the restaurant's ingredients ready each day, we'll specialize in producing the seasoning packets."

An Laowu patted his increasingly large belly and laughed, "That's great, that's good."

(End of this chapter)