The Game of Life-Chapter 820 - 819 Jiang Feng Mental Health Assessment

Chapter 820: Chapter 819: Jiang Feng Mental Health Assessment Special Day

Chapter 820 -819: Jiang Feng Mental Health Assessment Special Day

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After the point-based competition ended, the production team didn’t notify the contestants about the time of the semifinals. They only informed Jiang Feng about the two restaurants that had advanced from the American side—Peng Changping’s Chinese restaurant and Chef Arno’s former employer, before he switched to The Top Floor restaurant, a long-standing, well-known Michelin three-starred Western restaurant called New York Light.

Don’t ask why the restaurant is named New York Light; its English name is a direct translation.

It was harmonious that the restaurants advancing to the semifinals consisted of two Chinese and two Western restaurants. Jiang Feng was utterly unconvinced that there was no behind-the-scenes manipulation by the production team.

However, to Jiang Feng at the moment, whether there was indeed any manipulation didn’t matter, nor did it matter whether Taifeng Building could advance to the finals or even win the championship.

Creating a Jiang’s Sea Cucumber Soup that was truly his own was what mattered most.

Nothing was more important than improving his culinary skills.

In this most critical endeavor, Jiang Feng faced unprecedented obstacles.

After the first round of the point-based competition, all the contestants happily had their fill of porridge and returned to their respective restaurants to welcome the fame and profit to come from the program’s broadcast for a considerable period ahead.

Tan Family Dishes from Yonghe House made a comeback to the public eye, Eight-treasure House surprisingly regained some non-existent reputation while making money, Taste House firmly secured its position as the leading light-colored case (white case) restaurant domestically, The Top Floor restaurant became the benchmark and model for domestic Western restaurants, and even Huaiyang Building and Cheng Ji Restaurant, which performed poorly during the competition, saw their business boom.

Taifeng Building placed first in the point-based competition. Although the show had only aired half of its content, Taifeng Building’s performance remained the most eye-catching, and it reaped the most fame and profit.

Logically, Taifeng Building’s business should have been the most booming, but in reality, the exact opposite was true; Taifeng Building had the least change in business among the seven restaurants.

It wasn’t because Taifeng Building had already saturated its business—there is no such thing as a saturated market. In an era where people are willing to queue for two to three hours for bubble tea, as long as the customers don’t mind, no business person would complain about too many patrons; there are never enough customers.

The lack of change in Taifeng Building’s business was due to their signature dish, which also had the most robust presence in the variety show, being acknowledged by the contestants as belonging to the future star who would shine the brightest in the world of Chinese cuisine, Mr. Jiang Feng. As soon as the competition ended, he went on strike and secluded himself for practice.

This time it was real seclusion, not the kind where he previously clocked in daily at Yonghe House as though he had switched jobs. Since the point-based competition ended, Jiang Feng seldom left his house, which was fully equipped with kitchenware, while ingredients were delivered to him daily by Taifeng Building’s suppliers, or he had someone bring them in the morning, directly to his door without him needing to step out—a lifestyle that continued for over half a month.

According to a neighbor across from Jiang Feng’s home who preferred to remain anonymous, during this half-month, anytime they opened their door, they could smell the rich aroma of the broth wafting from the gap under the opposite door. It was fragrant and intense, reminiscent of the chicken soup mother made when returning home for the new year (though admittedly, mom’s chicken soup might not have been that fragrant). Sometimes, if their door wasn’t closed properly, the scent would drift into their home; the tantalizing smell of the broth would cause their child to eat two extra bowls of rice each meal, resulting in an eight-pound weight gain in half a month.

The kid next door was getting chubby from the craving.

The kid next door was getting chubby from the craving, while Jiang Feng was on the verge of tears.

It could be said that he had been working each day of this half-month starting with making stock early in the morning, stir-frying dishes in the forenoon, cooking porridge at noon, painstakingly practicing Jiang’s Sea Cucumber Soup in the afternoon, and even finding time in the evening to practice fruit carving to prepare a fruit platter for Wu Minqi when she returned home at night to eat together.

In such a situation where he was developing his knife skills, fire control, seasoning, and porridge dishes on all fronts, Jiang Feng had reached master level in Cooking Porridge, yet he was still making no progress in exploring and demonstrating his own abilities.

Jiang’s Sea Cucumber Soup remained the same as it always had been: it was Jiang Zhonghe’s Jiang’s Sea Cucumber Soup; it was Peng Changping’s Jiang’s Sea Cucumber Soup, but it just wasn’t Jiang Feng’s Jiang’s Sea Cucumber Soup.

What does it mean to have reached master level in Cooking Porridge?

Cooking Porridge, unlike basic skills such as knife work, seasoning, and fire control, is considered a specialty, even a skill. Polishing Cooking Porridge to a master level is like mastering a dish; having researched a dish to master level on top of the Three Grandmasters’ foundation, while claiming it to be unparalleled in history might be an exaggeration, to say it’s rare in the world would be an understatement.

If Jiang Feng decided now to give up the red-case exclusive porridge craft, abandon Jiang Family Dishes to establish Jiang Porridge, start fresh and create his own brand, he could certainly crush all the major porridge shops across the country in a short period, step on the Cantonese style porridge shops that held the same status as Shaxian Snacks, and establish his own school to dominate the world of porridge, becoming the undisputed “Porridge King.” If he had a bit of business acumen, sufficient capital, and some luck, establishing Jiang Porridge Group could allow him to become the world’s number one dining group to go public within his lifetime.

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Then he’d be beaten to death by Sir.

Of course, Jiang Feng would not do such a thing; he’d have to be insane to abandon an entire forest for the sake of one tree. If he truly wanted to make progress in the world of porridge, he could open a porridge shop in his spare time—taking over Han Guishan’s shop on the snack street could be a good option, and he could still dominate Beiping’s porridge scene.

December 21st, the Winter Solstice. Winter had long arrived in Beiping, but every household would still eat a bowl of steaming hot dumplings on this day when the sun is directly over the Tropic of Capricorn, the shortest day and longest night of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, which actually goes unnoticed by most.

The Jiang Family didn’t traditionally eat dumplings; Sir was from the north but didn’t have the habit of eating dumplings on the Winter Solstice, and Mrs. Jiang, being a pure Southerner, had only the habit of eating dumplings during the New Year due to poverty in her childhood. If the Jiangs wanted to eat dumplings, they could find many excuses and didn’t specifically wait for the Winter Solstice. The reason everyone went out of their way to gather and eat dumplings this year was to give Jiang Feng an opportunity to meet with everyone.

Mr. Jiang Jiankang, Jiang Feng’s own father, hadn’t seen his son for 16 days.

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Who would have thought that as a father living just below his own son’s apartment, he hadn’t seen his son for 16 days.

He drank a lot of porridge: preserved egg and lean meat porridge, pumpkin porridge, red jujube porridge, Xiaomi porridge, eight-treasure porridge, vegetable porridge, chicken porridge, and seafood porridge. Each bowl was made by his own son, but he didn’t see his son at all.

Jiang Jiankang never expected that he would have to make an appointment in advance to see his own son and still fail to secure one. Even Wu Minqi could see Jiang Feng every day, eating fruit together, and the topics they discussed over the fruit were predetermined by the daytime discussions with Ji Yue and Mrs. Wang Xiulian.

Now for Jiang Jiankang, appointments with his wife, mother, and father were all lined up ahead of him, even his nephew (who had the priority as a doctor), his elder sister-in-law (who was adept at comforting people), and his son’s apprentice could meet him before he could. The Jiang Family members had to make an appointment with Jiang Feng seven days in advance for the family to get together for dumplings on the Winter Solstice, asking him not to arrange any practice for himself on the evening of the 21st so the entire family could gather and joyfully eat them together.

Actually, the idea of making an appointment to see Jiang Feng wasn’t suggested by Jiang Feng himself. To be precise, Jiang Feng still doesn’t know to this day that everyone has to make an appointment to see him. Ever since the end of the competition, all he cared about was how to create his own Jiang’s Sea Cucumber Soup and find his own style.

Style is like inspiration: elusive and might even follow Murphy’s Law in reverse. Murphy’s Law suggests that anything that can go wrong will go wrong, but when it comes to style, what you want never comes. Even though Jiang Feng was prepared for a long-term battle, several days without progress in his seemingly systematic but actually blind practice still put a lot of pressure on him.

Jiang Feng fell into a vicious cycle.

He knew he shouldn’t imitate others when cooking, not Jiang Huiqin, Cao Guixiang, Granduncle Weiming, or any other series of recipe creators. But that’s how he started learning. His learning process was based on 100% imitation, not just of techniques, but his habits while cooking, were all imitative.

Now, being told not to imitate and to be himself, he doesn’t quite know how to do that.

It’s not that he can’t cook; he just doesn’t know what is considered imitation and what is considered being himself.

He can cook something simple like stir-fried shredded potatoes in his own way, showing his undefined style. But when it comes to recipe dishes, he can only copy.

Unfortunately, the dishes he knows how to cook, the high-difficulty ones he is good at, are mostly recipe dishes. Even the non-recipe dish, Eight Treasures Chestnut Fragrant Pigeon, is an imitation of Sun Guanyun. Those who have eaten it say it tastes like it came from Jubao Building.

Now, Jiang Feng only feels completely himself when cooking porridge, working intuitively, relaxed, and happy, harnessing the extraordinary skill derived from his three sifu and master level in Cooking Porridge.

It’s only while cooking porridge that he feels happy.

When cooking other dishes, whether it be Sweet and Sour Yam or Jiang’s Sea Cucumber Soup, Jiang Feng feels like he is solving complex problems, like essay or calculation questions, where knowing the solution isn’t enough—you must come up with a new way to solve it to be correct.

Top students would cry, and weaker students would be heartbroken.

It’s too painful, and too tormenting.

The others might not be aware of Jiang Feng’s inner turmoil, but they are familiar with his condition.

Since the early days of his research on mushroom soup preparation, every time Jiang Feng immersed himself in research, there was an air of madness about him.

It started with others being crazy, but it ended with him being crazy.

Mrs. Wang Xiulian and the elder aunt once seriously wondered if Jiang Feng had a mental illness. His heartbroken weeping after unsuccessfully grinding his skills to reach master level despite hard work, followed by his hospitalization from overwork, remained a concern for both her and Jiang Jiankang.

Jiang Feng’s exploration on the road to culinary mastery is fraught with history.

This time, his behavior was even more extreme; he wouldn’t even step outside his door. Although Jiang Feng now is different from before, with clear improvements in his culinary skills and mental resilience, others don’t know that.

Jiang Shoucheng even started contacting the doctors at Benevolent Doctor to ensure a hospital bed would be ready the moment Jiang Feng collapsed.

For this reason, the security and protection level surrounding Jiang Feng was elevated to its highest the moment he began his seclusion, with even his own father urged not to disturb him if not necessary. Wu Minqi reported his latest movements every day, the elder aunt and Mrs. Wang Xiulian began studying psychology, and Jiang Jiandang picked up medical books (his son’s textbooks) to study neurology.

Amidst this atmosphere, the Jiang Family welcomed the Winter Solstice.

A day for the whole family to gather and eat dumplings.

Also known as Jiang Feng’s Mental Health Assessment Day.