The Game of Life-Chapter 762 - 761 Fatty Tiger

Chapter 762: Chapter 761 Fatty Tiger

Chapter 762 -761 Fatty Tiger

The influence of the three grandmasters on Jiang Feng was monumental.

The most evident change was that the buff dishes he made were basically all S grade, except for the pure meat dumplings.

Speaking of pure meat dumplings, Jiang Feng was now quite puzzled. When his culinary skills were advanced, the pure meat dumplings he made were F grade, and even when his skills reached the grandmaster level, the pure meat dumplings were still F grade. Admittedly, the defining feature of pure meat dumplings is their bad taste; their unpalatability is their hallmark. If they weren’t hard to swallow, customers would think the chef didn’t put his heart into making them that day.

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But Jiang Feng really wanted to know if this dish could be made beyond an F grade.

For this purpose, he once made a batch of pure meat dumplings without intentionally making them taste bad, striving to make them look like normal dumplings by strictly following the tutorial, but the rating was still F.

Perhaps this is the charm of pure meat dumplings—any version not rated F is not a good dumpling.

In the days that followed, Jiang Feng continued his routine from the previous months, reporting to Yonghe House every day and continuing to learn the method of making Jiang’s Sea Cucumber Soup from Peng Changping. As Wu Minqi had previously agreed with Jiang Feng, she packed up her things, returned to Wu Family Restaurant for closed-door culinary training, was unreachable during the day, and communicated at night.

Every night, Jiang Feng and Wu Minqi would have a video call to exchange and summarize what and how much they had learned that day and what they planned to do the next, just like college students in a long-distance relationship bracing for final exams.

The learning process for Jiang’s Sea Cucumber Soup went very smoothly.

In less than a month, Jiang Feng had managed to make it look somewhat decent.

Of course, it was just that—somewhat decent.

Jiang’s Sea Cucumber Soup is a top-tier dish that embodies high difficulty, long preparation time, and immense mental effort, making it extremely taxing to make. Most of the historic dishes that are slightly more ancient all share this problem. Jiang Feng felt that the main reason these dishes are so hard to make isn’t that they really need to be, but because the dignitaries who dined on them wanted their food to be this challenging to prepare.

If they weren’t slightly difficult, time-consuming, and made with pricier ingredients, how could they highlight their own taste, and how could they feel that their money was well spent?

Working on a single dish for a month could be tormenting, so Jiang Feng not only learned Jiang’s Sea Cucumber Soup but also shamelessly took the opportunity to learn another dish, which he had seen in Jiang Chengde’s memory, the Phoenix Egg.

If there was any difference in his learning during this period, it was the addition of one more person learning alongside Jiang Feng, none other than Peng Changping’s official disciple Zhou Shi.

It’s worth mentioning that Zhou Shi adopted a new cat.

This cat was reserved by him during the New Year at a cattery, thinking that the rest of his life would consist of running his shop, raising a cat, dating, getting married, having children, and living an ordinary life, which is why he decided to get the cat. However, to his surprise, his fortunes took an unexpected turn, and at the age of thirty, he began striving again as his career experienced a second spring.

While Zhou Shi started to make an earnest effort, the cat also had to start to fight hard.

Zhou Shi was out early and returned home late each day, spending almost all his time at Yonghe House, except for when he was sleeping. This left the master cat alone at home, where, in the absence of a tiger, the little cat became king. Upon returning home each day to a weary body, the warm and tidy space Zhou Shi hoped for was instead a showcase of the daily accomplishments of the tabletop cleaning master.

Zhou Shi knew neither how to raise nor how to train a cat, and he certainly didn’t have the time to train one. Once, during lunch, he casually complained to Jiang Feng that he really wasn’t suited to raise a cat, as someone like him, who neither had the time nor the adequate finances, was not fit to care for a pet that required time or money.

Then his words were overheard by Peng Changping.

Following his acting gig, Jiang Feng discovered another of Peng Changping’s hobbies.

Raising cats.

Peng Changping had raised a total of seven cats.

After retiring, with both time and money to spare, Peng Changping noticed that the other elderly gentlemen around him all kept dogs, using dog walking as a way to pass the time. However, he wasn’t too fond of walking dogs; after all, if not raised well, it meant the dog walked him. So, he started raising cats instead.

Master Peng’s initial thought was simple. Since cats and dogs only live about a decade or so, if he started raising a cat in his sixties, he guessed that by the time the first cat reached the end of its life, he would be close to the end of his own. Having a pet to accompany him during the last chapter of his life seemed like a good choice and experience.

However, he outlived not only the first cat he raised but also its great-grandchildren, while remaining robust himself.

After saying goodbye to seven cats, Peng Changping didn’t want to go through the pain of parting with a beloved pet several more times, so he simply stopped raising cats and turned to raising great-grandchildren instead.

Upon hearing Zhou Shi was struggling even to handle a single cat, Master Peng thought it was time to display his true talent.

Therefore, Master Peng’s daily routine became eating breakfast, first visiting Zhou Shi’s home to check on the cat, coming to Yonghe House to see his disciple and Jiang Feng, going back to see the cat before lunch, and after having lunch, visiting the cat again before checking on the progress of Zhou Shi and Jiang Feng.

It could be said that Master Peng spent more time each day with the cat than he did meeting Zhou Shi and Jiang Feng combined.

Regarding this, Jiang Feng and Zhou Shi: ???

On the afternoon of August 31st at two o’clock, the poor Jiang Feng and Zhou Shi, as usual, had their unsatisfying staff meal at Yonghe House, deeply sighing at the sight of the braised pork ribs in the bowl with obviously improper fire control.

“How long did Master Peng stay in the kitchen this morning?” Jiang Feng asked with a sorrowful face.

“About twenty minutes, I guess. This morning, Master had to take Fat Tiger to get vaccinated, and I don’t know when he’ll be able to come over this afternoon,” Zhou Shi replied with a similar gloom.

Actually, his cat wasn’t originally named Fat Tiger; it was named Puff. But whether it was Zhou Shi’s pronunciation or Peng Changping’s that was off, to this day the cat thinks it’s called Fat Tiger and doesn’t respond at all to Puff.

“I think you should send Fat Tiger back to your hometown and let your mom take care of it. Master Peng going back and forth every day and constantly changing his coat seems quite tiring,” Jiang Feng suggested.

Zhou Shi shook his head, “No need, Master said he’s going back to the US after the competition. I’m already preparing to apply for a visa here. Let him take care of the cat if he likes to; eventually, I’ll have to send it back to my hometown for my mom to take care of anyway.”

Speaking of the competition, Zhou Shi suddenly realized that ever since Chef Arno proposed the reality show, there had been no follow-up. Curiously he asked, “What about the competition? Is there any development? Like when does it start?”

This time it was Jiang Feng’s turn to shake his head, “Nothing. I haven’t had any news from Chef Arno, and even after I added him on WeChat, he hasn’t messaged me. I don’t feel it’s right to ask him directly.”

Speaking of which, Chef Arno had been very low-key recently. After returning to work at the top-level restaurant, he behaved and didn’t cause any extra trouble. With Taifeng Building losing two Furnace Chefs at once, the top-level restaurant didn’t concentrate its firepower against Taifeng Building either, as if that one dumpling revealed the friendship between him and Jiang Feng.

But Jiang Feng knew it was just an illusion, because Chef Arno had never liked any of his posts in the friend circle, not even once.

“However, I think it’s quite normal; I checked their program, and it usually starts broadcasting after the National Day, recorded and broadcasted simultaneously. I think as long as they can get the competition format out by early September, it should be fine,” Jiang Feng felt that since Zhou Shi brought up Chef Arno, it was only fair to delve deeper into the topic initiated by Zhou Shi.

Once, there was a severe asymmetry of information between them and the top-level restaurant. The top-level restaurant had excellent confidentiality, and they didn’t understand many situations, especially regarding Chef Arno. Even when Chef Arno ran away last time, they found out only after several days.

Now things were different; they had a spy infiltrating the enemy’s ranks—Tao Shu.

Tao Shu himself didn’t realize what an excellent spy he was.

The last time he came to the disciple acceptance banquet with Zhou Shi, he happened to encounter Chef Arno and was not only spared from being fired, but he was also remembered by Chef Arno. The factional division between western and eastern chefs in the top-level restaurant was very clear, with almost all the Furnace Chefs and main assistants being foreign chefs. There were few local chefs, many of whom were just helper hands, and the natural language barrier left little communication between the two groups.

Tao Shu used to simply coast by, waiting for time to pass, and the sole reason he worked at the top-level restaurant was the high salary.

But now that’s changed, because Chef Arno remembered him.

Jiang Feng felt that Chef Arno was probably the only person who could convincingly declare his non-racist stance with a loud voice.

He pretty much discriminated against everyone equally.

After Chef Arno took note of Tao Shu, he would often call him over to assist, and after many such occasions, Tao Shu started to notice Chef Arno’s many habits, even becoming sharp enough to detect when something was off about Chef Arno.

Plus, Tao Shu was a chatterbox and had no one to discuss work with. Even though Zhou Shi was already taken as a disciple by Peng Changping, Tao Shu was unaware of the complex love-hate relationship between Chef Arno and Peng Changping, so he still messaged Zhou Shi daily about the mundane events of the day just like writing a short essay or a diary entry.

By carefully observing the messages Tao Shu sent to Zhou Shi daily, one could figure out what Chef Arno had been up to.

“Has Chef Arno been doing anything unusual recently?” asked Jiang Feng, curious.

“Nothing unusual, same as always. Every day he’s cursing out the person in charge of procurement saying that they must be embezzling money again, that the vegetables aren’t fresh enough, and the meat isn’t top-grade,” Zhou Shi commented as he took a bite of the braised pork ribs, then quietly set down his chopsticks.

“Is the procurement at the top-level restaurant that corrupt?” Jiang Feng was skeptical; the top-level restaurant dared to charge such high prices largely because their costs were high, as they used the best ingredients.

“Which is why Tao Shu told me he thinks Chef Arno just couldn’t find a reason to explode recently and stubbornly picked one,” Zhou Shi said with a smile.

Jiang Feng still felt something was all wrong with that. Chef Arno’s outbursts always had a reason; he certainly wouldn’t erupt without cause.

As Jiang Feng pondered what exactly felt off, Zhou Shi pointed to his phone on the table, “You have a new message on WeChat.”

Jiang Feng picked up his phone to look and found that it was a message from Chef Arno.

The competition format is out.

Jiang Feng opened the message.