Running a Food Stall to Support My Deceptive Omega - Chapter 33.1

Hearing Rong Heng’s words, Mu Jinyu helplessly reached out to cover her mouth again. “We are not in that kind of relationship; you cannot call me ‘Wife-Lord’.”

Rong Heng tilted her head. Her pale face had been exposed to the sun for a long time, and at this moment, it had gained a hint of color, looking much more ruddy.

She said, “Others can call you Wife-Lord, but I cannot?”

Mu Jinyu replied, “Others cannot either.”

Rong Heng was once again somewhat confused. If she wasn’t to call her Wife-Lord, then what should she call her?

“What should I call you? Boss Mu?”

Mu Jinyu said, “Just call me by my name.”

Speaking of this, Mu Jinyu remembered that she didn’t seem to have told Rong Heng her name. She said, “You can just call me Mu Jinyu.”

Mu Jinyu?

Rong Heng thought for a moment, then pointed at the little calico cat and said, “Jinyu? Goldfish! [Note: ‘Jinyu’ sounds similar to the Chinese word for ‘Goldfish’]”

Remembering that Rong Heng had once caught a goldfish for the little calico cat to eat, a trace of a smile appeared at the corners of Mu Jinyu’s mouth. “It’s Jinyu. ‘Jin’ as in today, and ‘Yu’ as in feather.”

“Jingyu? Jinyu? Goldfish!”

Hearing Rong Heng repeat it several times with a still somewhat strange intonation, Mu Jinyu picked up the wet handkerchief that had fallen onto Rong Heng’s knees. After rubbing it clean, she hung it on the rack holding the water basin to let it dry.

“You can call me whatever you want, as long as you don’t call me Wife-Lord.”

After saying that, she walked toward the kitchen again. “The marinating is almost done. You can watch from the side; it won’t sting your eyes anymore.”

Rong Heng immediately stood up and followed behind her.

Mu Jinyu lifted the entire pot containing the mutton and placed it on the ground, then put a new pot on the stove.

She poured a large amount of rapeseed oil into the pot. Before the oil temperature got too high, she added the previously prepared scallions, ginger, cornelian cherries, and celery.

She deep-fried them in a large amount of oil.

Such vigorous frying allowed the various flavors inherent in these vegetables to be completely infused into the oil, making the taste of the oil different.

Once the vegetables were all fried until they were charred, dry, and golden brown, she added spices such as star anise and cinnamon sticks to continue frying.

She fried them until everything in the pot was completely dry and slightly dark, but not to the point of being burnt black, and then she ladled out all these ingredients.

The remaining pot full of oil was now fragrant oil infused with aromas.

While waiting for this fragrant oil to cool in the pot, Mu Jinyu took out another basin.

She was going to make a large basin of sauce to spread over the lamb. Not only would it make the roasted mutton bright in color, but it would also take the flavor to the next level.

The Great Rong Kingdom was powerful and its people wealthy; commerce was developed, and the craft of making sauces was also very advanced. Basically, anything could be made into a sauce.

She poured several large bowls of soy sauce into the basin.

This soy sauce was made from soybeans.

Mature soybeans had to be left in the fields until the branches and leaves were completely dried by the sun, and the beans themselves were dried until they were hard as rocks without a trace of moisture before they would be harvested.

Then they were transported to soy sauce workshops all over the Great Rong Kingdom.

These dried beans would not spoil even after traveling for three to five days on the road; they were at their most useful state.

After being delivered to the soy sauce workshops, the craftsmen would soak these beans in water for an entire night, causing the originally dry and hard soybeans to soak up water until they were plump and bulging.

The soaked soybeans were then placed on steamers to be steamed.

A layer of cloth must be placed at the bottom of the steamer to separate the beans from the steamer so that they wouldn’t stick to the bottom.

Steaming the beans didn’t take too long; there was no need to steam them until they were completely soft and mushy. They only needed to be steamed for fifteen to thirty minutes until the beans were cooked through and no longer tasted raw.

The steamed beans were all poured into basins and set aside to cool.

Once cooled, the previously prepared flour was poured in.

The flour and soybeans were tossed and mixed evenly until every soybean was coated with flour.

Because when flour is in its wheat state, the bran wrapped around it cannot be completely removed regardless of what method is used, the flour used for making soybean soy sauce actually contained bran. Furthermore, this flour had to be dry-fried in a pot once before being poured onto the soybeans to be mixed.

However, even with the mixture of bran, the texture of the final soybean soy sauce would not be affected in the slightest. In fact, it was precisely because of this that the soybean soy sauce possessed its unique sauce fragrance.

It was excellent for cooking or mixing with rice.

After mixing the flour and soybeans thoroughly, they were poured into a large circular winnowing basket. A cloth still had to be placed at the bottom of the basket to allow the soybeans to be more breathable during the fermentation process.

The soybeans shouldn’t be spread too thickly in the winnowing basket—at most two or three beans deep, a thin layer was about right.

Then these soybeans were covered with cloth, and the winnowing basket was carried to a cool place. Some stones were placed under the bottom so that the bottom of the basket wouldn’t be pressed against the ground, which would prevent ventilation.

Soybeans needed to ferment away from light, so this step was usually completed inside the workshop.

About a day later, white fungal fur would grow on the soybeans.

At this time, the soybeans that had stuck together in clumps were broken apart until they were in a loose, grain-by-grain state, then covered with cloth to continue fermenting.

After another day or two of fermentation, the white fungal fur on the soybeans would turn yellowish-green, which meant the soybeans had finished fermenting.

These fermented soybeans were then carried outside the workshop and placed under the sun for two or three days.

At this time, there was no need to cover them with cloth anymore; otherwise, the soybeans would continue to ferment, and then soy sauce couldn’t be made.

Two or three days later, when the soybeans were sufficiently dried.

Some workshops would put the soybeans into cooled boiled water to rinse them, washing away the dust from the soybeans but not the yellowish-green fungal fur, before proceeding to the next step.

Some workshops didn’t want to go through that much trouble and would directly put the soybeans into sauce vats and pour in a vat full of brine.

Soybeans must not touch any raw water; the salt had to be dissolved in boiled water, and the sauce vats for marinating the soybean soy sauce also had to be wiped with alcohol once.

Otherwise, the soybean soy sauce that was nearly finished would turn black and grow mold at this step, resulting in all the previous work being in vain.

After the soybeans were packed into the sauce vats, the vats had to be placed under the sun. Every day, the water from the sauce vat had to be ladled out and poured over the soybeans on the surface that weren’t submerged.

This ensured that all these soybeans were rinsed, making them less likely to spoil.

The soybeans newly soaked in brine for fermentation underwent changes every day. The water became reddish-black day by day, gradually approaching the color of soy sauce.

Until a month later, when the flavor of the soybean soy sauce reached its most mellow and rich moment, the vat could be opened to draw the soy sauce for sale.

Soybean soy sauce made this way was the taste of Mu Jinyu’s childhood. In the past, when she was craving something, she would secretly mix soy sauce with rice, and it would taste incredibly delicious.

However, later on, by the time Mu Jinyu reached adulthood, such purely brewed soy sauce was already rare on the market and had gradually been divided into two major categories: light soy sauce and dark soy sauce.

Light soy sauce was the clear and oily soy sauce scooped from the upper layer after the sauce vat was opened. Its color was reddish-brown, and its taste was salty and fragrant, mostly used to enhance freshness.

Dark soy sauce was the soybean soy sauce that continued to be dried and fermented, with caramel added for coloring. Once made, its color leaned more toward blackish-brown; its taste was milder than light soy sauce, and it had a slight sweetness, mostly used for coloring.

After adding the soy sauce to the basin, Mu Jinyu then poured in black pepper sauce, oyster sauce, cornelian cherries, and cumin.

The methods for making black pepper sauce and oyster sauce were similar.

Oyster sauce was made by putting oysters caught from the sea into a pot and simmering them with water. Once the juice from the oysters was completely extracted, the oysters were ladled out, and the juice continued to boil.

Until only half of the water remained, starch slurry and soy sauce were added to the pot.

When the juice in the pot had completely thickened into a pot of blackish-red sauce, the oyster sauce was ready.

Black pepper sauce was made by dicing ingredients such as shiitake mushrooms, garlic, and ginger into bits and frying them in oil. After frying, water, crushed black pepper, oyster sauce, salt, and other seasonings were added to adjust the flavor.

After making the taste incomparably delicious, a bowl of starch slurry was added to thicken it. The resulting product after thickening was black pepper sauce.

All the sauces were poured into one basin, and Mu Jinyu used a large ladle to stir them back and forth, obtaining a full basin of secret recipe sauce.

With the preliminary preparations done, she could place the iron rack over the stove opening. The lamb was placed flat on the iron rack, and she brushed the sauce over it again and again.

She allowed the mutton to be coated in a thick layer of sauce.

During the process of roasting the mutton, the sauce on the meat would be scorched by the high heat and drip into the charcoal fire, making crackling sounds.

Mu Jinyu had to brush the mutton with sauce numerous times until the full basin of sauce was used up, and the mutton was roasted until it was fragrant, crispy on the outside, and tender on the inside.

This process took about two hours.

During the waiting process, she made two bowls of flour paste and shared them with Rong Heng to line their stomachs, then began to work on other chores.

Waiting for the roasted mutton took a long time; they couldn’t just wait around doing nothing. They had to get some of the work for the afternoon done in advance; otherwise, they wouldn’t be able to manage in the afternoon.

Hearing that they had to work, Rong Heng looked at the mutton roasting over the fire with reluctance. She could already smell the fragrance, yet she couldn’t eat it and had to work on an empty stomach.

The more she thought about it, the more miserable she felt.

She walked into the yard, looking back with every step, sat down at the stone table, and began holding a knife to chop fish meat.

Her strength was much greater than usual. With one strike, the fish meat was chopped cleanly, and even the cutting board and stone table were shaking.

Mu Jinyu couldn’t help but remind her, “Don’t split the cutting board in half.”

Rong Heng tilted her head and let out a “Hmph” from her mouth, still chopping the fish meat with great force.

The loud thumping sounds continued to ring out; those who didn’t know better might have thought someone was driving piles.

Seeing that Rong Heng had no intention of stopping, Mu Jinyu could only bury her head in washing the bowls while thinking that it was fine—knives and cutting boards could be bought again; it wouldn’t be a problem if they broke.

After several days of spending time together, Mu Jinyu discovered that Rong Heng’s strength was truly much greater than hers.

It wouldn’t take long for fish meat to be chopped into meat paste, and she carried more things than Mu Jinyu without even getting out of breath.

She could be described as a first-class helper.

Being so powerful, it was understandable that she ate a lot.

Mu Jinyu was fortunate that she could afford to support Rong Heng and didn’t let Rong Heng suffer with her.

The two worked hard for fifteen minutes. Mu Jinyu wiped her hands dry and once again came to the stove side to brush the last layer of sauce onto the mutton.

Seeing this, Rong Heng put down the work in her hands and hurried over to the stove. She refused to leave, wanting to wait for the mutton to finish roasting.