I've been possessed by a culinary genius, and I've turned Shaxian snacks into a rip-off!

After seeing Su Su off, Li Zhibai couldn't wait to rush into the kitchen and open the door of the food reconstituter.

Om-! ! !

The moment the hatch was opened, a cool breeze rushed out of the cabin, carrying a faint scent of green plums.

The batch of green plums that had been refrigerated in the box for several months has now completely changed.

Each fruit has a bright green skin covered with a layer of white frost-like powder, making it look as if it were just picked from the plum tree, and it is very fresh and tender.

Li Zhibai picked up a fruit and turned it around under the light.

The peel is smooth and firm, and the green color is just right, without the slightly dull look that cold-stored goods often have.

"This system's cutting-edge technology is really something!"

Li Zhibai sighed, then stuffed the green plum into his mouth and took a big bite.

Click!

The flesh is crisp, followed by a burst of intense sourness that explodes in your mouth.

"Holy shit! Holy shit!"

Li Zhibai's features instantly scrunched up, his face scrunched up like a big bun.

Sour! Extremely sour!

But after the sourness subsided, a fresh, clean fruity aroma appeared on the tip of the tongue, eventually turning into a distinct sweetness.

Li Zhibai closed his eyes and chewed a few more times, savoring the fruity aroma, before his expression gradually calmed down.

"It definitely doesn't taste like frozen food anymore; it really feels exactly like it was just picked from the tree."

"Great! Really great!"

Li Zhibai glanced at the food restoration device again, and the more he looked at it, the more he felt that this thing was a good thing.

With this, I won't have to worry about the freshness of the ingredients when cooking anymore.

Of course, the premise is that the ingredients must be alive first. Dead things cannot be brought back to life; they can only be restored to the state they were in when they died.

Even so, this feature is still incredibly powerful.

Li Zhibai then poured all the restored green plums from the box into a clean basin, turned on the tap, and slowly washed each one, rubbing off the thin layer of fruit powder on the surface.

This batch of green plums is a size larger than the ordinary green plums sold in the market. After all, the best fruit on the market was selected. After washing, they are lush and green, and just looking at them makes people want to swallow their saliva.

That said, since his Shaxian snack shop opened, besides free tap water and stew pots, there's nothing else to drink in the shop.

Although stewed soup tastes good, it doesn't quench your thirst.

If the guests are thirsty, they can only drink tap water, which makes him feel a little sorry for them.

It's not that I feel sorry for the guests, it's that I feel sorry for the water bill.

Although tap water doesn't cost much, the sheer number of people makes it impossible to keep up. With 60 slots available each day, and each person drinking two cups, that's 120 cups in total.

Although each cup costs only a few cents on average, it adds up over a year.

If we can successfully develop a beverage this time, we can recommend drinks to customers when they are thirsty. This will not only save on water bills, but also allow us to rip off more customers.

Killing two birds with one stone, how wonderful!

As for the inspiration for this drink, it naturally comes from Yu Shen and his childhood sweetheart story.

——Green plum juice.

The core flavor of Yu Shen's story is plum juice.

The tartness of the green plum is the soul of this drink, but if it only has tartness, the flavor profile is a bit too thin.

He needs to add more layers of flavor to the sour base.

Yu Shen once mentioned in a bar how Xia Xia's grandmother made plum juice: first, she would rub the skin with coarse salt to remove the astringency, then crack each plum with a small hammer, remove the pits, and finally seal the plums in a glass jar with layers of rock sugar and let them marinate for a few days.

When drinking, scoop two spoonfuls of plum sauce and mix it with ice-cold well water.

This is basically the original way to make plum juice.

Li Zhibai would definitely not copy it verbatim.

Because pure sweetness and pure sourness are too simple; what he wants is a layered sensation where the sourness rises and falls, and there's something supporting it in his throat after swallowing.

Ideally, the aftertaste should build up layer by layer, making you want to drink ten more cups after finishing just one.

What can be used to mask the sourness of the green plums?

Li Zhibai made his way around the kitchen, checking each usable ingredient one by one, and finally settled on a can of top-grade light-fragrant oolong tea.

A few words flashed into his mind in an instant: tea bones, plum blossom soul, ice spirit.

With the soul of fresh green plums, the bone of fragrant oolong tea, and the spirit of ice, we make a cup of green plum oolong iced tea.

"That sounds like torture," he muttered.

"Let's get started!"

For his first experiment, Li Zhibai planned to process the green plums and make a glass of freshly squeezed juice.

He first drained the water from the washed green plums, took an ordinary kitchen knife from the knife rack, drained the washed plums, poured them onto the cutting board, and then used the blade of the kitchen knife to pat them down one by one.

Snapped!Snapped!Snapped!

The plums split open one by one, revealing pale yellow flesh and round pits, while their sour and sweet aroma intensifies.

"Salt it first, or candide it directly?"

After thinking it over, Li Zhibai chose a compromise: use coarse salt to blanch the green parts, then marinate them with rock sugar.

First, sprinkle some coarse salt on the plums, then rub them. The astringent taste on the surface of the plums will be immediately brought out, and clear juice will seep out.

"Just keep soaking, and I'll give you a little treat after you're done."

While muttering to himself, Li Zhibai scooped up the prepared green plums, rinsed them briefly with water, and then poured them into a glass jar. He layered the green plums with rock sugar and began to pickle them.

"Now all we have to do is wait."

Li Zhibai wasn't the kind of person who had the patience to wait. He simply stuffed the glass jar into the system's high-tech refrigerator, set it to a short-term low-temperature accelerated penetration mode, and decided to give it a try first, regardless of whether it would work or not. He was going to experiment anyway.

This high-tech refrigerator comes with a molecular-level penetration acceleration function. Although it can't compress several days into a few minutes, it can certainly speed things up by two or three times.

When the time was almost up, Li Zhibai took the jar out. The rock sugar inside had almost melted, and a lot of plum juice had been extracted.

Then he scooped up a spoonful of the freshly pickled plum juice and tasted it.

"Hiss—!" His facial features contorted on the spot.

It's still sour.

He then brewed a pot of top-grade oolong tea until it turned amber, before pouring the tea into a high-tech refrigerator to cool it down quickly. He then poured the tea into a glass, added a few spoonfuls of freshly pickled plum juice, stirred it, added two ice cubes, and took another sip.

The sourness of the green plum and the bitterness of the oolong tea combined didn't taste very good.

"It tastes awful!" Li Zhibai honestly gave it a one-star review.

He was just about to throw away the failed plum oolong tea and start a new recipe when he suddenly discovered something new.

The liquid in the cup, which was originally a pale green plum juice mixed with tea, seemed to have turned slightly redder around the rim after he added ice and stirred it.

One of Li Zhibai's greatest strengths is his keen sensitivity to the details of ingredients.

After discovering this phenomenon, he placed the cup under a bright light and stirred the liquid inside with a spoon a few times.

This time he saw it clearly.

On the upper part of the cup, where the liquid was originally bluish-green, a faint pink layer did appear in the part that had more contact with the air.

"What the hell?"

Li Zhibai was shocked.

A green drink that turns pink after being smelled?

He quickly brewed another pot of oolong tea, and after the tea cooled, he poured it into a new glass. Then, he slowly poured the pickled plum juice into the glass.

The green fruit juice blended into the amber-colored tea soup and gradually gathered into a greenish-blue color at the bottom of the cup.

Then, he dropped a few ice cubes into the glass and stirred it gently a few times.

A miracle occurred.

The greenish-blue color that was originally at the bottom of the cup gradually spread outwards, and the color changed, becoming a bluish-green with a hint of yellow, and finally it actually began to transition into pink.

If you lift the cup and look up from the bottom, it's as if a flower is slowly blooming at the bottom of the cup.

"Holy crap! This is illogical!"

Li Zhibai held the cup of tea and observed it carefully, watching it gradually deepen in color, from light green to pale pink, and finally to a light, translucent pink, which was quite beautiful.

"The password really can change!"

He quickly figured out the underlying principle.

Green plums contain a large amount of anthocyanins, and oolong tea itself also contains tea polyphenols. Combined with temperature changes, this triggers a chain reaction, resulting in this discoloration-like phenomenon.

Of course, that's not his main focus.

What he cares about is that if the color-changing effect can be made more eye-catching and magical, then this tea drink will have a great selling point.

Have you ever tried a tea drink that changes color automatically?

Never tried it before? That's perfect, he has an exclusive one.

This unique plum oolong iced tea even has a magical color-changing effect, so it's reasonable to charge a little more, right?

.......................

PS: First of all, thank you to [Old Six Reading in the Grass] for the gift! The author is preparing to work hard to update more frequently. Starting today, there will be extra chapters for gifts. If the gift reaches 30 RMB, an extra chapter will be added automatically. Let's try it out. I'll start adding chapters today. I guarantee at least 2 chapters during the day and 3 chapters tomorrow. Let's work hard together to stimulate my enthusiasm because I really feel a bit numb to writing now.