Chapter 862: Immortal Cooking

Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations

Did the fish sigh just now…

Jiang Haifu seriously suspected that there was something wrong with his hearing, but he had indeed seen the fish sit up, as if it had been awakened, and take off its own skin!

This was an absolutely perfect fish skin, without any trace of being cut with a knife. Except for the holes at both ends, the fish skin was a whole, round piece! Old Man Wang gave the best proof of this with his next move!

He tied up the bottom end of the fish skin and began to fill it with water.

Seeing this, Wang Ling was also stunned.

He had seen the old man cook before, but he had never seen Old Man Wang display this skill!

It seemed that for today’s showdown, the old man had had special training, and had also taken out the special skills he had been hiding for a long time!

— This opponent was surprisingly strong!

Cold sweat ran down Jiang Haifu’s forehead. After taking out the washed fish skin, he used his precise knife skills to cut it into strips of the same width! He was making a dish of springy fish skin noodles! The hardest thing to do with fish skin was to get rid of the fishy smell. Generally speaking, chefs would choose to use chili, Sichuan pepper or other types of spicy seasoning to hide the fishy smell.

But this was actually a more inferior approach.

Not everyone liked spice. The dish this time would be served to everyone for a taste, so the difficulty Jiang Haifu had to overcome was to cook a dish which smelled delicious and didn’t use chilis. Not only couldn’t it smell fishy, it had to have a taste that appealed to young and old alike.

The better the chef, the more charm the ingredients they used would have; the ingredients themselves would set off each other, concealing their shortcomings and bringing out the strengths of each ingredient as much as possible!

Therefore, Jiang Haifu didn’t use seasoning in his cooking! Salt! MSG! Pepper! Soy sauce! Ginger, garlic and so on… None of that! Jiang Haifu drew everything from the ingredients themselves!

Besides, not relying on seasoning was Jiang Haifu’s secret technique which allowed him to blaze his way through the food industry for many years. He gave this secret technique a happy and friendly name —”Haifu’s Family Cuisine”!

This could be considered Jiang Haifu’s unique specialty. Taking into account the age of the old man next to him, Jiang Haifu initially thought he could go a little easy on him so that the old man wasn’t put on the spot and wouldn’t lose too badly… But after witnessing the old man’s Depression Knife Technique, a sense of crisis almost immediately welled up in Jiang Haifu’s heart.

He didn’t really want to lose this battle.

At that thought, Jiang Haifu took a deep breath and started to prepare the other ingredients.

Because he wasn’t using seasoning, he had more ingredients than the old man, and furthermore would only be using one part in most cases. He needed to cut off the parts that he would be using, so his knife skills were very important.

But after witnessing the old man’s “Depression Knife Technique,” Jiang Haifu unexpectedly felt a little uneasy. As he prepared the other ingredients for the fish skin noodles, he stole frequent glances at the old man next to him — he wanted to know what other crazy operation this old man, who was already so advanced in his years, would bring out.

On the other side, the old man filled half the fish skin pouch, which he had cut out with the Depression Knife Technique, with water, then added a portion of rice.

There were twelve people in the house today, and he wanted to feed them as best as he could.

So the old man used the same method to make another identical fish skin pouch. Each pouch was filled with water, and after rice was added, it swelled up like a balloon to the size of a cabbage!

At that moment, Jiang Haifu could also see the importance of the two fish that the old man had carefully selected — the fish which the old man chose were older! The flesh of an old fish might not be fresh, but its skin was very tough! Furthermore, this was a sea wave fish, which had tougher skin compared with other saltwater fish.

So the moment he saw this main ingredient, Jiang Haifu thought of using the sea wave fish to make fish skin noodles.

Meanwhile, the old man’s mind had skipped even further ahead, as he poured water and rice into the fish skin. Was he going to make fish rice?

While Jiang Haifu puzzled over this…

Old Man Wang took out an earthen jar from a bottom cupboard. He hit the jar lightly with his hand. “Get up! It’s time to get to work…”

Then, he opened the jar.

To Jiang Haifu’s amazement, there was actually a yellow-and-white orange cat inside the jar. It took a completely soluble form in the jar, like a liquid… After hearing Old Man Wang’s call, however, it immediately poked its head out of the jar.

Jiang Haifu detected a thick smell of dried fish from inside the jar, which the old man had probably put inside for the orange cat to eat.

The orange cat stretched its paws lazily, then leaped out onto the ground, and unexpectedly stood up on its two hind legs.

“Sir, this is…”

“This is a cat I raised in my hometown. I brought it here with me on my tricycle a while ago. It’s a cat that can cook.” The old man scratched his head and smiled. “I’m too old to throw eighty punches a second anymore, so I was going to have this cooking cat help me out. Brother Haifu, do you mind?”

Jiang Haifu hurriedly waved his hands. “Of… Of course not… Please go ahead, sir!”

The old man was almost eighty years old…

Actually, this contest wasn’t quite fair to begin with.

The old man massaged his own muscles, then took something out of his pocket which he tossed to the orange cat on the ground. Jiang Haifu gave it a look and realized that it was actually a pair of super small boxing gloves!

What was this for?

Stunned, Jiang Haifu saw the old man hang up the fish skin pouches filled with water and rice on hooks in a piece of bamboo. Holding the bamboo horizontally at chest level, the two fish skin pouches were suspended in midair like that.

Then, the old man narrowed his eyes and gazed at the orange cat. “Cooking cat! Use Muay Thai Warning 1 !”

Hearing this order, the orange cat suddenly started to throw punches at these two fish skin pouches!

Instantly, the whole kitchen was filled with the sounds of “ah, hit hit hit hit hit hit hit hit hit!!!!”…

Jiang Haifu and Wang Ling were both shocked. “…”

As a chef with so many years of experience, Jiang Haifu finally figured out what on earth this cat was doing!

This cooking cat was using its adept punches to create friction and heat up the air around the fish skin pouches, while the vibrations of its high-speed punches would shake loose the sea fish salt inside the pouch and combine it with the rice…

This was a one-step operation to make the food tasty!

It similarly didn’t use seasoning, but it also didn’t use any surplus ingredients!

Jiang Haifu realized…

That he had lost again…