Gourmet: From a Stall in Northern Europe

These things aren’t just tasty, they also have a breakfast vibe. The only problem is he can’t make them all by himself.

Even with Lucas, there are only two of them. Aside from dishes like dumplings and wontons, which can be prepared an hour or two in advance, most breakfast foods are best when made fresh.

Lucas can help, but his skills are limited. Making dumplings or buns requires them to be both aesthetically pleasing and tasty, and it needs to be fast; otherwise, they can’t keep up with the pace.

Considering everything, he’s more inclined to hire chefs skilled in making pastries.

One definitely isn’t enough; he needs at least two. If they can also master stir-frying and soup-making, that would be even better.

He drafted the recruitment notice and directly posted it on domestic job websites, leaving his own WeChat number as the contact.

It’s daylight saving time now, with a 6-hour time difference from home, meaning it’s evening there.

If he’s lucky, someone might discover it in just a few minutes.

However, he’s not in a rush to respond. Casting a net obviously requires time to settle.

It would be best to have several applicants, allowing for clear contrasts among them.

Setting aside the laptop, he mentally accessed the system page, clicked on the national banquet challenge task, and chose to activate it using a Challenge Card.

[Challenge Card used successfully, now randomly generating a simple difficulty task...]

[Ding, you have obtained a national banquet-level recipe: Crab Blood Tofu]

After waiting for quite a while, upon hearing the dish name, Lin Chen’s expression suddenly froze.

"?"

"Isn’t this supposed to be a national banquet dish, just this?"

If he remembers correctly, Crab Blood Tofu is a famous dish from the Jiangnan region, essentially from the provinces surrounding his hometown. But he’s never heard of any notable historical anecdotes about it; it should just be a folk dish.

Could it be... that the content of this recipe is different from the Crab Blood Tofu he imagined?

Full of curiosity, he clicked on the golden recipe scroll.

The first thing he saw was an image of Crab Blood Tofu, which didn’t appear different; at most, the plating was a bit more refined.

Upon seeing the first name on the ingredients list, his eyes were filled with confusion.

"Wait a minute, Crab blood??"

"Crabs have blood?"

He honed his cooking skills while working abroad, predominantly in Western culinary knowledge; his Chinese culinary knowledge is self-taught, and there are many things he’s unclear about.

Foreigners don’t really eat crabs; when they do, it’s typically steamed or boiled crab legs, primarily from giant sea crabs like King Crabs or Snow Crabs. Once the shell is cracked open, you get whole crab meat sticks.

Because foreigners don’t eat them, he mostly doesn’t interact with crabs much; he occasionally buys some when the swimming crabs are in season.

After eating crabs for so many years, he’s always steamed them with strings or stir-fried them in chunks.

Now suddenly there’s crab blood... This is freaking crazy!

"No wonder it’s a national banquet-level recipe, it’s ridiculous. I’ve never heard of this first ingredient."

Quickly scanning the recipe from beginning to end, his inner discomfort slightly eased.

The recipe isn’t very difficult, even simpler than expected; the process of stir-frying the crab powder follows the normal procedure, except for the magical special tofu.

This tofu isn’t normal; it’s crab blood tofu, meaning the two main ingredients of this dish are entirely derived from crab.

Initially, he thought national banquet dishes should be very challenging, but the appearance of this recipe immediately changed his perception.

Beyond the cooking difficulty, it’s very likely that the ingredients will be upgraded, or the difficulty in obtaining them will increase.

Quickly grabbing the computer, he searched the internet for knowledge about crab blood.

After searching literature and cross-checking with relevant videos for authenticity, it finally hit him half an hour later.

It turns out crab blood actually exists; due to its unique nature – transparent color – it’s often mistaken for crab urine.

Since a crab’s internal region is so small, no one can definitely tell whether what’s flowing out is crab blood or urine.

Typically, people eating crabs choose to steam them, preserving the crab’s inherent sweetness, without worrying about such details or even having this concept.

As for crab blood, it might overflow and stick to the crab shell as a white egg-like substance after steaming.

A small crab can only produce a dozen drops of crab blood; collecting enough to make a plate of tofu requires at least four or five hundred grams.

His process needs to be fully documented on video, so the quantity can’t be too small; the face-saving approach must be thorough.

In other words, using regular crabs to collect a bowl of five hundred grams of crab blood requires using hundreds of crabs!

Luckily, here overseas, crabs are dirt cheap; if it were domestically, the entire process would cost thousands or tens of thousands.

"Hiss..."

After doing some simple calculations, he finally understood why this dish was called a National Banquet recipe.

The value is really outrageous, who in their right mind would think of eating crab roe tofu with a cost of several thousand dollars!

There’s definitely a reason why no one makes it.

His mind was working fast, and he quickly thought of a way to cheat.

Small crabs have less blood, so why not use large crabs instead?

King crab!

Buy those big ones, weighing over ten or twenty pounds, one should have enough blood, right?

The price of king crab is also cheaper here, they’re flooding the ocean, but usually, they weigh around ten or twelve pounds. If you want bigger ones, they might be slightly more expensive, but not prohibitively so.

Even a Great Xia Person like him finds this dish outrageous. If he uploads the production video online, wouldn’t it shock those foreign people who haven’t seen much?

Although domestic social media platforms greatly reduce the judgment standards by ten times, there are so many people here that it still has to be posted.

Lucas already has a considerable fan base, with accounts on both platforms, so he can directly borrow from him, making it a win-win situation.

No sooner said than done, he made a phone call and explained the situation briefly.

"Huh??"

Lucas, receiving the call, was a bit slow to react, "What did you say, you want to shoot the production process of a dish with National Banquet level difficulty? Like what those technical bloggers do online?"

"I certainly have no problem with that, but... will it work?"

"I think I’ve seen similar videos before, it’s said that just filming them takes a long time, and it’s not cheap either."

Lin Chen nodded in agreement on the phone, "So, start with something simple first, gather some fan traffic, then once your account takes off, we can make money from ads, and gradually increase the difficulty."

The two of them simply discussed the shooting time and location, and Lin Chen also casually mentioned the recruitment, making Lucas evidently breathe a sigh of relief.

After all, he is not a professional chef, doing so much kitchen work all day long is definitely tiring, now that he’s completely liberated, he can focus on shooting his videos.

Of course, completely leaving the kitchen is impossible because he still labels himself as the Ice Jelly Little Prince, and he still wants to make simple desserts like this.

Because no girl can resist delicious and beautiful desserts.

After hanging up the phone, Lin Chen also posted a message in the work group about hiring people, serving as a notification to his colleagues.

As for whether Jonathan wants to recruit, he didn’t care, nor did he want to bother with it as it wasn’t his concern.

Then he called Boss Magna, inquiring whether it was possible to get a king crab weighing twenty pounds.

Though a crab over ten pounds might be enough, out of caution, he wanted to test-cook it first.

It’s not necessary to do a complete version for testing, just some taste testing would do. Overall, buying a bigger one seems more reliable.

"How much? A king crab weighing ten kilograms?? What do you want such a big thing for?"

Magna immediately perked up upon hearing his request, even raising his voice two notches, "Are you making something tasty again?"

"Yes, I’m preparing to try out an ancient Great Xia aristocratic recipe, akin to what kings would eat in ancient times."

He didn’t know how to translate it, so he simply made it sound impressive, considering he would eventually challenge the Imperial cuisine anyway, he might as well make a big claim now.

National Banquet dishes and Imperial cuisine are distinctly different; Imperial cuisine is higher-end, like the Manchu Han Imperial Feast, most of which has been lost.

While National Banquet dishes are basically upscale dishes used for hosting national leaders.

Compared to ordinary folk cuisines, National Banquet dishes are of a higher grade, with greater demands on skills and ingredients.

Imperial cuisine is almost like the pinnacle, likely more complex and possibly using rarer ingredients than National Banquet dishes.

"Dishes for kings??!!"

Magna’s gulping sound was clearly audible over the phone.

"You know, I’ll bring a king crab myself, can you make a portion for me too?"

King crabs are enormous, with lots of meat, and a man with a normal appetite would be stuffed eating one, let alone the double size Lin Chen wanted.

He planned to bring a smaller one himself, just enough for him to eat, so he wouldn’t affect the video shoot and also give Lin Chen a chance to practice.

"Alright, that’s settled then. There’s no definite shooting schedule yet, just letting you know first. How long does it take to catch a king crab?"

"King crabs live on the ocean floor, but there are nearby seas where they can be found. About a day’s time should be enough, but it’s hard to say whether a ten kilogram one can be caught, that depends on luck."

"If there’s no ten kilogram one, just two would be fine, it doesn’t matter."

"Huh? I thought you had specific size requirements, but it turns out you just need quantity, then it’s easy. Just let me know a day in advance, and we’ll get them for sure!"

While he was still on the phone, his computer notified several times in succession, it was likely the recruiting software receiving resume messages.