Chapter 56

Chapter 56: To Slice One Block of Tofu into Eighty Slices!…

“Wensi tofu?”

Chen Ran didn’t stop halfway, but first finished cutting the radish in her hand before stopping to look at Grandpa Xu behind the mask.

He placed the block of soft tofu in front of her, pinched two strands of her radish shreds, and glanced up at the light.

Chen Ran had been cutting radish shreds for a long time.

At first, when cutting potato or radish shreds, she could still make some spicy pickled vegetables as treats for others. But as the shreds got finer and finer, they were no longer suitable for pickling.

Now, the radish shreds Chen Ran cut were as thin as hair.

Shu Jianmin once tried out of curiosity to thread a sewing needle through them; an ordinary sewing needle could go through three of Chen Ran’s radish shreds.

“That’s decent, keep cutting.”

The radish shreds that impressed Shu Jianmin so much only earned a lukewarm “decent” from Grandpa Xu.

Watching Chen Ran pick up the tofu, he gave a brief instruction: “Trim the edges, then start slicing.”

Chen Ran first cut a slice from the bottom of the box, taking the entire block of tofu out.

Because of the packaging, the tofu bore the imprint of the box and needed to be trimmed into a neat rectangular shape before slicing.

“Sslice eighty pieces.”

Chen Ran glanced at him, took a deep breath, and began slicing the tofu.

Although she knew wensi tofu was the pinnacle of knife skills in Chinese cuisine, she had never tried it before.

“Hold the knife loosely, relax.”

“Your hand is steady, so why so much force? Young and serious-minded!”

“Relax your hand, but don’t relax your shoulder too! Use your arm to push, not your wrist!”

Her first try at slicing tofu was a failure.

“How many slices did you cut?”

Chen Ran felt embarrassed.

She believed her knife skills were fairly good—after all, she had been cutting radish shreds for so long—yet she only managed fifty-three slices from one block of tofu.

“Only fifty-three slices…”

“Fifty-three slices is okay for a beginner.”

Chen Ran didn’t really accept the consolation; she knew how much time she had immersed herself in knife skills.

“You’re about forty percent short, meaning each slice was about forty percent too thick…”

Grandpa Xu looked at Chen Ran’s hand and noticed she had unknowingly tightened her grip on the knife again, her knuckles white from the force.

He recalled his own apprentices.

One by one, despite his constant pressure, they still held their heads high. But this little girl—he didn’t know who had trained her—did so well yet was still this nervous.“Then keep practicing. Once you reach eighty slices, move on to shredding.”

“Okay!”

Chen Ran, who hadn’t relaxed even after being comforted, actually relaxed upon hearing this.

He remembered his second apprentice who died young, who had the same temperament. If the second apprentice were still alive, that bastard wouldn’t have caused things to end up like this.

For a kid this serious—even to the point of obsessiveness—blind praise isn’t appropriate.

He watched Chen Ran take several blocks of tofu from the fridge again, and with each slice, she remembered his earlier instructions: first relax the wrist, then use the arm’s strength to drive the knife forward.

For a child like her, giving her a clear path, correcting her constantly, and guiding her was more important than just affirmation.

What she needed wasn’t affirmation, encouragement, or praise; she wasn’t practicing cooking for confidence.

Cooking skills were not something she cultivated for herself. On the contrary, she cultivated herself as a tool for cooking!

She was only focused on the cooking itself!

Grandpa Xu sighed and turned to leave. He moved quietly, and when closing the door, he saw the girl didn’t even look up.

Each of her cuts was light and steady; before every slice, it seemed she was recalling the key points Grandpa Xu had mentioned.

Grandpa Xu stared through the door crack for a moment, then left the kitchen and went to knock on his granddaughter’s door.

Xu Ruyi hadn’t gone to sleep yet and was still working on her game script. Hearing the knock, she quickly opened the door.

“Grandpa, what is it?”

“Buy me a new copy of the ‘Famous Chefs Records’ tomorrow.”

Grandpa finally showed interest in cooking again!

After the incident back then, Grandpa’s hands were disabled and he could no longer hold a knife. His face was twisted and no longer presentable.

Since then, the family hadn’t seen that book, ‘Famous Chefs Records,’ anymore.

The beautiful Grandma Chang used to come to the house often to discuss cooking with Grandpa, but after that, seeing Grandma Chang get turned away several times, she gradually stopped coming.

It had been almost ten years…

Xu Ruyi got excited, her voice almost loud.

“I’ll look for it and buy all the recent editions!”

Grandpa Xu shook his head: “No need. That man said Chen Ran appeared on the latest episode of ‘Famous Chefs Records,’ so just buy the latest issue.”

He then mentioned something else: “Also, buy me a smartphone… one that can record videos and read the news.”

“Grandpa, I’ll order it now… no, online shopping is too slow. I’ll buy it first thing tomorrow morning!”

“Mm, when you go buy groceries tomorrow morning, get extra tofu. Also buy a few old hens over three years old.”

“Okay, I’ve got it all noted!”

Xu Ruyi watched Grandpa nod, then turned and left, her heart almost bursting with excitement!

After such a big upheaval back then—second uncle arrested, Grandpa’s face and hands ruined—she thought she’d never see Grandpa come back again in this life.She also thought that maybe if she relearned cooking skills, she could make Grandpa happy.

But she also had her own ideals.

Xu Ruyi held the door, watching Grandpa Xu’s figure disappear around the corner before returning to her room to start revising the game script that had already been edited countless times.

She had invested her lifetime savings and the past year of her time into this script.

Not only did she want to perfect the game script, but she also wanted to use the reactions of visitors in the haunted house to grasp the players’ mindset.

The script must be good, and the gameplay must also be good!

She was so absorbed in editing that it was already one o’clock. After brushing her teeth to sleep, she saw Chen Ran had also returned to the room.

“So late?”

“Mm,” Chen Ran awkwardly moved her shoulders but smiled happily, “Seventy-five slices!”

“Seventy-five what…”

Before Xu Ruyi could finish her question, Chen Ran collapsed onto the bed, not even unfolding the blanket, falling asleep sitting astride it.

Just like her second uncle back then, exactly the same.

She recalled when Shu Jianmin was finalizing her salary contract, this girl didn’t even care about her salary and looked around everywhere.

Her second uncle back then was the same—cared about nothing but cooking skills, which led him to fall into Yang Jingzhou’s trap! Addicted to drugs!

Later… he had an episode right in the kitchen, holding a frying pan of hot oil. Grandpa tried to save him by blocking the boiling oil with his hand, which got disabled and covered in burns on his face.

Chen Ran didn’t know her boss had thought about so much overnight. When she woke up the next morning, she vaguely felt some soreness in her arm.

Getting up, she saw a cup of warm water in her own cup. Chen Ran went to pick it up to drink but was stopped by Xu Ruyi.

“Don’t drink water that’s out of your own sight! You have to observe it first before drinking!”

Chen Ran was stunned for a moment, then nodded.

At Swan KTV during the day, she had also heard Gao Shuxian teach her the same, but this was in her own room after all.

“Okay…”

Chen Ran turned to pour out the water and obediently refilled a cup from the water dispenser before drinking, then went to brush her teeth.

Xu Ruyi was somewhat satisfied. She had already bought supplies and brought back several haunted house actors.

The haunted house script was quite complex but didn’t have many roles. She briefly explained it to Chen Ran.

“The haunted house story mainly revolves around the mutual salvation between two female ghosts…”

“One was forced to remain chaste and eventually hung herself. The other was sold into a brothel by her own brother, then betrayed by a sponsored scholar, and took poison. They had no hope while alive, but in death, they watch over each other to seek revenge together.”

The dough used for breakfast had already been prepared the day before by Chen Ran. She kneaded the finely shredded radish into it and made several radish cakes.

Besides that, the chopped tofu wasn’t wasted and was made into a hot and sour soup.

Hot and sour soup with radish cakes, along with sausage and fried eggs, made Xu Ruyi very satisfied with breakfast.

While briefly explaining her thoughts on the script, she introduced the haunted house actors to Chen Ran.“These two are the main two female ghosts acting in our haunted house.”

Chen Ran had just taken a sip of the hot and sour soup and quickly put it down to shake hands with the two actresses playing ghosts.

However, one of them shook her hand somewhat shyly, while the other’s face was flushed red and she couldn’t bring herself to extend her hand for a long time.

“All right, all right, Song Yuhan has social anxiety, no need to shake hands.”

Song Yuhan sat back down, still blushing, and even when eating and drinking, she slightly turned her body sideways.

Because of her social anxiety, she chose to work as a haunted house actor after graduating from art school rather than joining a drama crew to act.

She was very satisfied with the current work atmosphere, only needing to occasionally dress as a ghost to scare people.

And… this haunted house really didn’t have many visitors! It had been open for nearly a week, but only the boss’s friends had come by once.

“All right, now that we have a cook, we can make our prop dishes.”

Xu Ruyi had very high standards and strict demands for every scene in the haunted house.

Moreover, a haunted house that takes six to seven hours to complete really needs to provide some food for the audience!

In conclusion, having a table of edible prop dishes that can also blend into the scene is the best way.

“For the prop dish menu, Ranran, do you have any opinions? These dishes all need to fit the theme of an ancient scholarly family. Huaiyang cuisine has always been the cuisine of literati, so I added a clear-braised Lion’s Head meatball.”

“For the other dishes, just judge and prepare accordingly, but they must be lighter and fit the script background.”

“Okay,” Chen Ran nodded, biting into a radish cake. “I’ve only made red-braised Lion’s Head before, but clear-braised should be doable. I’ll ask Grandpa Xu for advice. Do we prepare one table of prop dishes every day?”

“Yes, just one table daily is enough. At our current scale, we can only accommodate one group of visitors each day.”

Can it really make money?

Chen Ran felt a little worried for the boss for the first time, hoping the haunted house would at least manage to keep running!

“All right, I’ll prepare the prop dishes right away.”

Back in the kitchen, Chen Ran first prepared the clear-braised Lion’s Head.

That masked Grandpa Xu came again!

She felt a bit happy and quickly reported her practice progress from yesterday: “Grandpa Xu, I sliced seventy-five pieces of tofu yesterday!”

Just a bit more, and she could reach eighty pieces and move on to the next step!

“All right, then stop for tonight.”

Chen Ran paused her meat-cutting movements, looking at Xu Laogui with some surprise.

“Not teaching you now,” Xu Laogui became serious, “You are the eighth generation of the Chen family, right?”

Chen Ran was a bit surprised. Yesterday he asked which branch of the family she was from, and today he already seemed to know her background inside out.

But there was no point in denying it.

“Yes… but now I’m basically disowned by the Chen family.”

Xu Laogui snorted coldly: “Chen Yun from that old thing has no vision at all.”He continued explaining the connection between the two families to Chen Ran: “I am the 26th-generation heir of the Xu family. Back then, the Chen family’s old ancestor, the culinary god, had a kind of semi-master relationship with the 19th-generation Xu family member. So theoretically, I can’t formally teach you. In terms of culinary skills, we treat each other as peers.”

“I’ll still teach you some basic techniques and recipes of Huaiyang cuisine, which is kind of repaying the semi-master favor that the Xu culinary god once gave to the Chen family.”

Peers teaching peers!

Chen Ran was stunned.

But she still understood basic social etiquette and quickly added, “We treat each other as peers in cooking, but I will still call you Grandpa Xu. Culinary skills and social manners are separate matters!”

Xu Laogui seemed quite satisfied with this outcome. He pointed at the pork belly on Chen Ran’s cutting board.

“Cut the fat and lean meat separately. There’s also a piece of fatty hip meat in the fridge, take a small piece of that too.”

At his instruction, the system “dinged” and popped up a task prompt.

[Recipe Advanced Task: Under Senior Brother Xu Zhuoxing’s guidance, upgrade from S-rank braised Lion’s Head recipe to SS-rank clear-braised crab meat Lion’s Head recipe.]

Seeing the term “senior brother,” Chen Ran wanted to complain.

No wonder this time it didn’t pop up a task or mention the red case chef’s original intention. This time it’s “senior brother,” not taking her as an apprentice, huh?

“There are fourteen pairs of ribs on a pig’s body. The pork belly above the fourth to ninth ribs is used for making Lion’s Head.”

“The Lion’s Head must be cut out, not chopped with one chop. Cut fat and lean meat separately—slice first, then cut into strips and dices. Fat dices should be smaller, lean dices must be cut clearly along the grain.”

Chen Ran closed the system panel and followed Xu Zhuoxing’s guidance, beginning to cut the Lion’s Head piece by piece.

“What are you thinking! Just yesterday I taught you to hold the knife more loosely and use your arm’s strength to guide it. You remember how to cut tofu but forget how to cut meat?”

To Xu Zhuoxing, the basic knife skills training in the Chen family was really inadequate. They didn’t teach the basics of force application. This young girl’s knife skills were purely developed through outstanding perseverance.

“Okay! I remember now!”

Chen Ran adjusted her force application and resumed cutting meat according to Xu Zhuoxing’s requirements.

Her previous chopping looked stable with a flickering wrist, quick strokes, and was visually pleasing, but the person and the knife didn’t seem like one.

But now the force application was different!

Like a large python, her whole body twisted!

Her spine moved, her gaze shifted, but her wrist remained relaxed. Then her shoulder dropped, her arm pushed—the knife stroke was like a snake striking out, biting with a snap!

After all these days of knife skill practice, she always felt she hadn’t reached that bottleneck.

But with this twist and exploration, it seemed like even that previously nonexistent bottleneck was broken!

She finally understood what her knife skills lacked.

What was missing was that feeling of “a lion must exert full strength to catch a rabbit”!

When she used the knife, it wasn’t just the knife—it was the force of her entire body conducted through that mysterious iron kitchen knife!

Her entire spirit and energy subtly probed out from that thin blade edge, then suddenly exploded out from the knife’s tip!

After cutting a whole piece of pork belly in one go, she still felt her energy had no outlet.

Just then, Xu Zhuoxing silently handed her a piece of soft tofu that had already been trimmed.Chen Ran didn’t look up or ask, she took the piece of tofu, her thoughts deep as the sea.

One cut... pushed forward.

Xu Zhuoxing looked down at Chen Ran, silently counting the slices of tofu she made.

One cut, two cuts, three cuts...

Fifty-one, fifty-two...

Until the last seventy-ninth cut!

Eighty slices of tofu— the first step of Wensi tofu was accomplished!