Chapter 118: Chef’s Special Feature
Once the plump auntie accepted the existence of the manor, she immediately fell into character.
When Jian Xingxia told her to cook, the auntie asked without skipping a beat, “Where’s the stove? What kinds of ingredients do you have?”
Jian Xingxia led the auntie to the kitchen. “Right here. There are two large brick stoves and a small burner.”
As for the ingredients, several baskets sat on the floor by the kitchen door, packed to the brim with vegetables given by Auntie Lu and the others over the past few days, along with fresh wild greens Da Hei had harvested after learning to identify them.
Of course, there were also tomatoes and cucumbers Jian Xingxia had plucked from the smart temperature-controlled greenhouse.
A few bowls sat on the countertop, holding pork and cured meat freshly taken out of the refrigerator. Several other bowls contained various mushrooms, daylilies, wood ear mushrooms, kelp, and other dried goods Jian Xingxia had gathered, leaving them for the auntie to use as she saw fit.
The auntie’s eyes widened to the size of saucers. “Goodness! Your family is truly wealthy!”
Leaving the vegetables aside—since their village wasn’t short on greens—just look at the rice, the flour, the oil, the meat… everything was measured in massive heaps!
The auntie grew excited. Rolling up her sleeves, she confirmed with Jian Xingxia once more, “Can I truly use them however I want? A whole jar of oil?”
The jar of oil the auntie was referring to was actually just a portion Jian Xingxia had poured out from a large oil drum into a small container left behind by her maternal grandmother, amounting to barely over a catty.
To modern people, this amount of oil wasn’t considered much at all. After all, modern people minded eating less oil, but when they actually used it, they were incredibly generous.
Jian Xingxia smiled and nodded. “Yes, use it however you want. If you run short on anything, you can just tell me.”
The auntie took a deep breath. “Then I won’t stand on ceremony!”
This was a blessed opportunity granted by her late mother, who had told her that as long as a person was diligent, things would be fine. She resolved to cook a few spectacular dishes to show the young lady owner!
Back home, the auntie cooked for a massive household, so her efficiency was beyond question.
First, she washed the rice and set it to steam, then immediately began kneading dough. She had never seen stainless steel mixing basins before, but after looking around, she found them to be the most practical. Having already confirmed with Jian Xingxia that everything in the kitchen was meant for cooking and eating, she used them without a shred of hesitation.
What was there to be afraid of when encountering strange objects? A daughter without a mother, facing a bleak future with no livelihood—that was terrifying! Anyway, both her mother and the young lady owner had said that as long as she worked hard, she would absolutely never be mistreated or shortchanged.
Therefore, the auntie was bursting with confidence, holding her breath to deliver an excellent performance. As for other minor details… who cared!
While the dough was resting, the auntie began slicing and mincing meat, rendering lard, and mixing fillings…
Jian Xingxia watched from the side, realizing she couldn’t offer any help at all. When she offered to tend to the fire, the auntie flatly refused.
“I can manage on my own!”
Her diligence had been forged through practice since childhood! Now was her time to display her skills; how could she let someone else help?
The auntie handed Jian Xingxia a small bowl containing freshly fried lard residues tossed with salt. “Here, take this to eat!”
Finding Jian Xingxia in the way, the auntie shooed her out to get rid of her.
Holding the bowl, Jian Xingxia walked out of the kitchen, only then belatedly processing what had happened—had she just been fed?
What a novel experience. Out of all the ancient temporary laborers who had come to the manor before, she was always the one feeding others; no one had ever fed her. Even Lin Sanniang hadn’t done this. Because Sanniang was an exceptionally meticulous and thoughtful person, she would always ask Jian Xingxia before cooking to see if it suited her tastes. She rarely made decisions on Jian Xingxia’s behalf, discussing everything beforehand. She certainly wouldn’t just hand over a small bowl with a clear “go play somewhere else” vibe.
But this auntie was different. Right now, the kitchen was her absolute domain, and anyone else was just an interloper!
As expected, a professional cook carried their own unique aura!
Jian Xingxia felt that the guesthouse’s meals were officially in safe hands.
Reassured, she carried the lard residues to the back door, sat down, and began stuffing them into her mouth with her bare hands. The crispy lard residues carried an incredibly tempting aroma, and the fine grains of salt were simple as could be, yet they served as the absolute perfect pairing. Inadvertently, she finished the entire small bowl.
Jian Xingxia peeked stealthily around the doorframe. The auntie was currently mixing the lard residues with cabbage to make a filling, though she couldn’t tell whether it was for buns or dumplings. But just smelling the aroma of scallions and garlic unlocked by the hot oil, she knew it was bound to be delicious.
Beaming with joy, Jian Xingxia went to water the vegetable patch. Along the way, she posted the recruitment notice to summon A-Feng over.
Jian Xingxia had taken some of the bamboo crates and baskets A-Feng brought yesterday to hold vegetables, fruits, and dried goods, and placed others around the front and back gates.
In truth, a countryside household didn’t produce much trash. Fruit peels and withered leaves could be used for composting, leftovers could be fed to chickens and dogs, and paper scraps or plastic could be used as kindling. Of course, burning plastic bags created thick, foul-smelling smoke, so Jian Xingxia was generally loath to burn them. As for plastic bottles, they were either used to store vegetable seeds or to portion out fertilizer. In short, the village didn’t tolerate idle waste.
After posting the recruitment notice, Jian Xingxia waited for quite a while without seeing anyone arrive.
She had already finished the lard residues and had even sowed a large handful of vegetable seeds along the plot of land Da Hei had newly cleared.
“What’s going on? Not here yet?”
Feeling a bit puzzled, Jian Xingxia thought for a moment and called out to Da Hei, “Come on, let’s go take a look at the foot of the mountain.”
Hearing this, Da Hei immediately slung a bamboo basket onto his back, grabbed his machete and shovel, and followed Jian Xingxia toward the foot of the mountain.
The terrain in the mountains was mostly uneven, full of rises and falls. Before even reaching the foot of the mountain, they had to scale several small dirt slopes. Fortunately, she had Da Hei; he used his machete to clear a path, and whenever they encountered a slope that required scrambling up with both hands, he used his shovel to carve out a few steps for Jian Xingxia.
“Master, advance!”
Jian Xingxia: “…”
Why does that sound so strange? It feels like someone unleashing a dog and telling it to fetch.
The two scrambled over two small dirt slopes before they finally spotted—A-Feng, who looked like a miniature mountain.
All kinds of bamboo ware were bound together with hemp rope, using a stack of over twenty crates on A-Feng’s back as the highest apex, directly tied into a mountain of items. A-Feng’s naturally thin frame was almost entirely buried beneath the bamboo ware. If the “miniature mountain” hadn’t been shuffling along, Jian Xingxia would have almost thought there was no one there, just a pile of bamboo items.
“Oh my gosh! Why did you bring so many things?!”
Jian Xingxia hurriedly called Da Hei over to help lighten A-Feng’s load.
A-Feng panted and wheezed, entirely unable to utter a word of refusal. When he left home, his grandfather had insisted on leaning on a cane alongside his grandmother to see him off to the edge of the village. They had stubbornly hoisted a load of bamboo ware that normally required three people to move onto his back.
“Ancestors protect us, A-Feng, you must do us proud! Since the ancestors like it, carry more over!”
His grandfather and grandmother had given him a heavy dose of tough love even while feeling bad for him. A diamond can’t be polished without friction. Suffer a little hardship now, and he would achieve great things in the future.
After his grandparents left, the mountain cave had revealed itself, and A-Feng plunged right in. While inside the cave, he hadn’t felt much, nor did the load on his back seem particularly heavy. But the moment he emerged from the cave, A-Feng directly face-planted onto the ground—the mountain of bamboo ware rising far above his head had directly pinned him down.
He had managed to carry these items for a few hundred meters only with immense difficulty. If Jian Xingxia and Da Hei hadn’t come to his rescue, he would have likely needed another hour to make it.
Jian Xingxia felt both amused and touched; this family of three was simply too honest. Even if they had arbitrarily quoted a price, saying a crate cost a hundred copper coins or even two to three hundred copper coins, she would have bought them anyway—it was still much cheaper than modern ones. But A-Feng and his grandparents had stubbornly stuck to the original price, bringing far more bamboo ware than what was worth one thousand two hundred copper coins.
