Quick Transmigration: The Supporting Female Lead Stays Out of It - Chapter 35: Chef 34

The Emperor had different feelings for Yan Langqing, so naturally, he found her more pleasing to the eye than the others. But even so, he couldn’t betray his conscience and say that the zongzi Yan Langqing made was better than the zongzi Lin Dan made. The outcome of the competition was already out, and anything he said now would be useless; he should still be true to his own stomach.

Thinking of this, he put down his chopsticks and slowly said, “Lin Dan, you’ve won.”

As soon as the words fell, a crisp sound came from the private room. It was Yan Langqing dropping her chopsticks. Everyone looked at her, only to see that her eyes were red, her face was pale, and her hands and feet were slightly trembling, as if she couldn’t bear the burden. Her father, Yan Shouye, was staring at Lin Dan, his face filled with resentment and unwillingness.

Lin Dan bowed, showing no smugness on her face, “Then, may I ask Chef Yan to fulfill the bet and return the gold knife and cookbook?”

Yan Langqing opened her mouth with difficulty, as if she wanted to speak, but Yan Shouye had already shouted in anger, “No, that’s my father’s stuff, it’s my Yan family’s, why should I give it to you?”

“Your grandfather passed it to my father before he died, so that’s my father’s stuff. Back then, you wanted to take it back from me based on your own skills, and now I’m taking it back based on my own skills as well. What’s wrong with that?”

Yan Shouye wanted to argue, but the Emperor had already frowned, his face showing displeasure. Yan Langqing immediately pressed on her father’s shoulder and said in a hoarse voice, “I’ve brought the items, I’ll give them to you now.” She only brought them to show her generosity, but she didn’t expect to really lose to Lin Dan. But the people had already judged her to have lost, and the Emperor had personally admitted it, so what could she do even if she was unwilling?

Lin Dan put the gold knife aside, opened the Yan family’s cookbook, and couldn’t help but raise her eyebrows. This cookbook had been split into two parts by Yan Langqing. The second half, which belonged to Lin Baotian, was returned to Lin Dan. The first half should have only had sixty pages, but now, this cookbook was even thicker than before it was split, showing that Yan Langqing had worked very hard over the years, researching many new dishes, adding new brilliance to the Yan family’s cookbook.

However, the more Lin Dan looked, the more her brows furrowed, and in the end, she sneered. She tore out a page and handed it to a head chef who had come to watch the competition, saying, “This braised deer tendon, I remember that it was researched by Chef Liu. Now it’s returned to its original owner; this steamed mandarin fish is from Chef Fang, here you go…” She successively tore off many pages of the cookbook, returning them one by one to the developers.

These people looked at Yan Langqing, then at the Emperor, neither accepting the pages nor refusing them.

The Emperor’s face showed confusion, not knowing what trick Lin Dan was playing this time. However, Prince Cheng sneered, “Your Majesty may not know, but this imperial chef is very domineering. If she can’t make good dishes to please you, she goes to the people to steal other people’s dishes and doesn’t allow them to sell them anymore, saying that they are for you to eat, and others can no longer eat them, which is a great disrespect. If that’s really the case, Your Majesty, please make a list of foods, and let us avoid them, so that we don’t commit a great offense!”

Prince Gong pretended to be alarmed and spread his hands, “If that’s really the case, wouldn’t we starve to death? If Your Majesty eats meat, then we can’t eat it, and if Your Majesty drinks water, then we can’t drink it either?”

Prince Cheng quickly comforted, “Don’t worry, you won’t starve. You can go to the Yan family’s restaurant to eat. The dishes that the Emperor has eaten are not allowed to be sold anywhere else, but their restaurant does them without fail. Others revere imperial power, but their family doesn’t fear it; they have Chef Yan to support them!”

The two of them sang a duet, completely exposing the Yan family’s methods of attacking their peers in secret, and even pinned a label of usurping imperial power on them, scaring Yan Shouye until he was trembling like a sieve, his face drained of all color. Yan Langqing looked at her father in disbelief, and cried out in a shrill voice, “Father, what exactly is going on?” Then she immediately knelt down and begged the Emperor for forgiveness, “Your Majesty, this commoner has never said such words; this commoner was also deceived, please forgive me!”

The Emperor lowered his eyes and examined her, his eyes, which were always filled with a gentle light, now were icy cold. Yan Langqing looked up and met his gaze, her heart couldn’t help but skip a beat. She had lived in the palace for a long time and didn’t often go home, and she never expected that her family would act so domineeringly. She only wanted to learn more dishes, and she also sincerely wanted to help the chefs in the folk, but instead, she harmed them. No wonder the few head chefs invited today looked very stiff when they saw her, as if they dared not speak out in anger and were quite disdainful.

But she couldn’t care about how others saw her anymore; she was only worried that the Emperor would be displeased with her. Young Master Tang had already been disgusted with her ten years ago, and now she had lost the gold knife, lost the cookbook, lost her reputation, and lost the hearts of the people. She couldn’t afford to lose the Emperor’s favor. If she didn’t have the Emperor, after today, she, Yan Langqing, would be nothing.

Yan Shouye was so frightened that he didn’t dare to say a word, just kept kowtowing behind his daughter. When he was showing off his power and suppressing his peers, he never thought that he would have such a day.

Lin Dan removed all the recipes that the Yan family had stolen and placed them aside, preparing to return them to their original owners.

The Emperor glanced at her and then said with a frown, “Get up. Anyway, your family’s restaurant has already closed down, so let’s forget about those things from before. You can take back those cookbooks, whoever they belong to. What you should do in the future is still what you should do. I am the Emperor, and I am also the master of the people, and the things I can eat, everyone in the world can eat.”

With a light and airy sentence, he let the Yan family father and daughter off. Prince Cheng and Prince Gong showed dissatisfaction, but they didn’t say anything more.

Lin Dan was still removing recipes. When she reached one of them, the calm expression finally rippled, “If I remember correctly, this dish, the Ten Thousand Blessings Meat, is Chef Yan’s signature dish, right? Because you ate this dish, Your Majesty took a liking to your cooking skills and summoned you into the palace.”

Yan Langqing’s expression, which had just relaxed, began to tighten again.

Lin Dan glanced at her and said with a hint of mockery, “But who knows that the authentic Ten Thousand Blessings Meat is not made this way, and it’s not even made with meat. Imperial Chef Yan, I remember that you once said that you would never make my father’s dishes in your life, but why did you take my father’s hard work to gain your own future? You are truly two-faced…”

Yan Langqing’s lips were trembling, as if she wanted to retort, but she was too nervous to speak. However, Yan Shouye, with a righteous voice, shouted, “Lin Dan, don’t talk nonsense! This dish was clearly researched by our Langqing herself; I saw it with my own eyes!”

Lin Dan closed the cookbook and slowly said, “Is that so? Did you research it yourself, or did you hear it from my father’s disciples? If I remember correctly, my father’s two disciples are now head chefs in the Yan family’s restaurant.”

“You, you are just making empty accusations, falsely accusing me!” Yan Shouye was so angry that he almost vomited bl00d, but Yan Langqing, the person involved, was still silent, her face pale.

Lin Dan opened the door and said, “Whether it’s just empty accusations, let’s wait until I make the real Ten Thousand Blessings Meat before we decide.” With those words, she went straight to the kitchen.

The Emperor looked at Yan Langqing deeply, and then followed her unhurriedly. The others, how could they sit still, and immediately ran over to join in the fun. Today’s competition was really one wave after another, it was truly dramatic and exciting! Who would have thought that Manager Lin, who was bound to lose, would win under the pressure of imperial power? Who would have thought that the seemingly gentle and kind Chef Yan was actually a woman with such deep scheming and who would stop at nothing?

Lin Dan was the honored guest brought by the Emperor. The restaurant owner, how could he dare to disobey, immediately cleared the most spacious stove and also prepared the ingredients for her. She picked up a piece of tofu, cut it into two-inch squares, and carved the beautiful “Ten Thousand” character on one side, then put it into a rich and fragrant milk broth to stew. After about two quarters of an hour, she took it out and used a wok to hold some sauce, constantly adding ingredients, making the sauce thick, and turning it into a shallow layer of sauce. Then, she put the tofu squares into the sauce and continued to simmer them, but only immersed a layer of skin.

Prince Cheng reminded, “You’ve put too little sauce, the tofu squares haven’t been fully immersed in the sauce, so they won’t be flavorful enough.”

Lin Dan smiled lightly, “The prince doesn’t know, that’s the flavor this commoner wants.” After two quarters of an hour, she took out the tofu squares one by one and arranged them neatly on the plates. Everyone stared intently and saw that the tofu squares had turned into a mixture of one-tenth sauce color and nine-tenths milky white, and the shape was very strange.

Lin Dan then put the tofu squares into a hot oil pan to fry, the side with the sauce was fried until it was fragrant and crisp, forming a layer of crust, while the other side was untouched by any oil, still white and tender. After this step was done, Lin Dan put the tofu squares back into the bone broth to stew, then into the red broth to braise, and finally steamed them in a steamer. After that, she used chopped fish, chicken, and pork to stir-fry into a thick sauce and poured it over the steamed tofu squares, sprinkling some ginger and green onion for flavor.

The tofu squares, repeatedly stewed in the meat broth and sauce, had already absorbed the essence of various broths, becoming incredibly delicious. Because the surface was stained with sauce, it was also fried once, so it looked exactly like pork skin, and if the people didn’t see it with their own eyes, they would have thought it was a dish of braised pork, not tofu.

The Emperor was the first to pick up a piece and taste it, and his eyes immediately lit up. It was because this tofu not only looked like braised pork, but also tasted like it, but it didn’t have the greasiness of meat, instead, it was full of the richness, softness, and mellowness of meat.

Lin Dan explained slowly, “My mother loved to eat meat, but was afraid of getting fat, so my father thought of researching a dish for her that wouldn’t make her gain weight, and thus this dish, the Ten Thousand Blessings Meat, came into being. It both absorbed the strengths of meat dishes and discarded their weaknesses, being neither greasy nor cloying, soft and glutinous, and fragrant, melting in the mouth. My father told me about this dish, and also told his two disciples, but it was never recorded in the Yan family’s cookbook, and at that time it wasn’t called Ten Thousand Blessings Meat, but rather Ten Thousand Character Meat, because the lines of the Ten Thousand character were complex, and only by carving the character of Ten Thousand could the tofu become flavorful. Imperial Chef Yan, you probably got the recipe from my father’s two disciples, but were ultimately unable to make the tofu taste like meat, which is why you directly chose to use pork to make the dish, right? This most ordinary of vegetarian dishes, in your mouth, has become the Ten Thousand Blessings Meat specially researched to celebrate the Emperor’s birthday. Imperial Chef Yan, your ability to fathom the Emperor’s intentions is truly extraordinary; if you could have used it all in cooking, how would you have ended up losing to me today?”

Without ample experience and diligent research, even if you obtained a recipe, it would be very difficult for an ordinary person to replicate the dish, because you wouldn’t know how to process the ingredients, how to control the heat, or how to measure the proportions of the seasonings. If the ingredients weren’t handled well, the heat was slightly off, or there was a shortage of seasonings, the dish would completely lose its flavor.

Imperial Chef Yan did indeed, as Lin Dan said, get the recipe but was unable to make the tofu taste like meat, so she could only use meat directly. It’s not that she didn’t want to research her own dishes, but she had been driven out by the Marquis back then, and it was her most perplexed time. She wanted to carve out a place for herself so much, wanted to establish herself in the capital so much, wanted to prove herself so much, that she inadvertently took a wrong path.

Seeing the Emperor’s slightly scrutinizing and questioning gaze, the back she had barely straightened finally slowly collapsed. This time, she had lost, lost completely, ruined her reputation!

TL notes: ten thousand Chinese character refers to “万” (wan).