10 Chapter 6 Making Tofu

Back to the front counter.

Xia Yu looked around. "Where is the middle-aged man?"

There were only two empty bowls left. The ramen and soup were completely gone. The third bowl was still placed on the counter. Xia Yu intentionally left this to enjoy it by himself.

"Left."

The old man lifted curtain and walked into the restaurant.

Xia Yu didn't pay much attention and sat down casually, wolfing down the third bowl of ramen.

"Ha…"

After a few minutes, he finished up the ramen and was finally full. Xia Yu stretched his body and planned to have a bath. Suddenly a voice came through: "What do you think about your beef ramen?"

The old man crossed his arms and leaned on the door. His face looked dark and there was no expression.

"…"

Xia Yu pointed two empty bowls and smiled. "Grandpa, one bowl was eaten by you. So, you should know the taste. You don't have to ask me. Haha."

Xia Yu knew that old man's ramen lost to his already.

Under the magical cooking situation from 'Mirror Crystal', the cuisine he made was much better than the original taste.

Xia Yu's ramen not only defeated old man's ramen in texture but the taste of soup and combination of ingredients. Xia Yu certainly knew that the old man didn't try his hardest. He was not sure how much the old man had shown. But he won this round. He could finally release a bit pressure now.

Hey, old man you lost!

It was so easy!

In fact, Xia Yu only dared to say those words in his heart.

"When did this naughty boy secretly learn the recipe of Xia's Ramen Soup?" After a moment of silence, the old man asked slowly, and his face looked serious.

"Secretly learn?" Xia Yu pulled his face. "Grandpa, can't you use some nicer words? It belongs to our Xia family. How is it a secret for me? I tasted the recipe from your ramen. It is called self- learning! Don't you know self- learning, huh?"

"You can taste the recipe from the soup?" The old man's expression was disbelieving.

Xia Yu cleared his throat and opened his mouth, saying it straight out. "One fresh bull bone, one fresh steak, 50g of Sichuan pepper, 50g of ginger skin, a bit fennel, tsaoko and 20g of cinnamon, 15g of pepper, 10g of mina and meat shark, 5g of alpinia, lemon grass, 3g of long pea and some orange peel, star anise, amomum…"

"This is the recipe for the soup. About 30 types of ingredients."

"If using a big pot for business, the percentage of ingredient should be 20% dry ginger slice, 18% Sichuan pepper, 12% fennel…"

Xia Yu hadn't finished talking, but the old man waved to stop him.

"Enough!"

The old man turned to back kitchen. "Come with me."

Xia Yu didn't know why and followed through. The old man wore an apron and Xia Yu faced his back. "From now on, I will teach you cuisine. First, you will need to learn every famous Chinese cuisine."

"No problem!"

In the past, Xia Yu would not take it seriously and find an excuse to slip back to the room to sleep, but now, with the assistance of the Chef God System, if the old man taught him, could he understand many recipes?

Just thinking about it, he was impatient. The spring of foodies was coming!

"You are very good at noodles, and we will start from noodles."

The old man took out the flour and started to work while explaining. Xia Yu listened very attentively, much more seriously than learning at school.

The next day.

Xia Yu woke up at eight o'clock in the morning. He learnt cooking until the middle of the night last night. He couldn't close his eyes and sleep away the time away. This was the first day of spring break.

There were three holidays in Nihon. Spring break, summer vacation, and winter vacation. 

Spring break was at the end of a school year, usually from March to early April.

And April 1st was the start of the new school year for Nihon secondary and higher schools.

Xia Yu sighed and scrambled to get up.

There was movement in the narrow small courtyard. After washing, Xia Yu stood on the corridor and he found that the old man had gotten up early. The old man was like an old donkey dragging the millstone in front of the antique stone mill in the courtyard. Soymilk continued to flow out of the grinding circle and into the barrel.

Xia Yu intended to go up to help after watching a while. Who knew that the old man suddenly released his hand, picked up the bucket of soymilk and walked back? "You wash the grinder with water."

The old man spoke in his usual commanding tone while walking past.

Is this making tofu or what?

Xia Yu's mind was full of question marks.

The old man barely made tofu by himself. Most of the time, the tofu used in the dishes were bought from the outer shopping street. Xia Yu was the one who carried out those errands. Full of sadness, he did not want to mention it any more.

Uh…

Thinking of the soybeans used to grind tofu, Xia Yu's complexion changed and hurried into the kitchen. He deliberately soaked a bucket of soybeans, about 5 kilograms, before he went to bed last night. He got rid of the skin for those soybeans after soaking it for a few hours. It was now used to grind soymilk.

Needless to say, soymilk is definitely used to make water tofu. After all, Xia Yu couldn't wait to practice cooking and master the new recipe 'Magic Mapo Tofu' in the Chef God System last night.

But the bucket of soybeans was gone!

"Grandpa…" He gritted his teeth and looked at the busy figure in the kitchen. His anger slowly disappeared.

The old man was also making tofu. He had taken the bag made of tofu cloth and poured the soymilk in the bucket from the bag. The filtered soymilk juice flowed into another clean wooden bucket.

Each kilogram of soybeans needed about 6 kilograms of water, so a barrel of 5 kilograms of soybeans could eventually be made into 30 kilograms of soybean milk, which was more than enough to fill a large wooden barrel. When Xia Yu washed the grinding tools and returned to the kitchen, he saw that the old man had boiled a large pot of soymilk.

There was some plaster powder was placed on the kitchen counter.

Xia Yu was very clear about the method of making tofu. Even if he didn't know it in the previous life, this time, he had learned about how to grind and boil soymilk.

Plaster powder was the key to making tofu. Without this material, soymilk could not be solidified.

The old man mixed the plaster with a bowl of water and poured the liquid into a boiling pot, then stirred it while asking, "Water tofu or dried tofu?"

"Water tofu!" Xia Yu answered without hesitation.

The old man pointed to the wooden pallet which was ready. There were many such wooden pallets, layered on top of each other, just like a steamer. Xia Yu knew what the old man meant and waited while lifting the wooden tray.

The next step needed cooperation. The old man scooped up the soymilk, and Xia Yu held the tray. These trays were wrapped with tofu cloth. After the soymilk was filled, he covered it with the cloth and continue to do the next tray.

A total of more than ten trays were filled before the soymilk in the pot bottomed out.

Xia Yu wiped away sweat. Xia Yu looked at the wooden pallets which were piled up and he smiled.

About half an hour later, the water temperature cooled down and the tofu was formed.

So many plates of tofu were enough for him to practice 'Magic Mapo Tofu'. He didn't believe he couldn't make a glowing dish with more than enough ingredients to use.

Xia Yu left the kitchen and habitually wiped the table and chairs at the storefront as he didn't want to waste time whilst waiting for tofu to process.

Xia Yu had a bit of mysophobia, so the restaurant had been spotlessly cleaned by him in recent years. Cockroaches appeared in the kitchen once, Xia Yu went to shops to buy several kinds of insecticide just for it. He made kitchen become clean, and there were no corpses of unknown creatures anymore.

Don't ever think that there are no cockroaches in Japan.

The climate here was hot and humid and was especially suitable for insects to live. Japanese cockroaches were bigger than Chinese ones. Xia Yu heard about cockroaches that as big as palms from his school friends. At that time, his face was pale and scared. 

Was that caused by the pollution of nuclear radiation?