The Game of Life

Jiang Feng never fought an unprepared battle. Since he wanted to learn the Eight Treasures Chestnut Fragrant Pigeon, he had to study the origins of this dish.

Without researching, he wouldn’t have known; once he did, not only did he find out the origins of the dish, but he also uncovered the love and hatred behind it.

The Eight Treasures Chestnut Fragrant Pigeon is a new dish improved by Sun Guanyun from the traditional Chaozhou dish Pigeon Swallows Swallow. It was once the signature dish of Jubao Building. The first edition of “Taste” featured a gourmet review of Jubao Building’s Eight-Treasures Chestnut Aromatic Chicken, which was personally written by Xu Cheng.

As for why it was once the signature dish, it’s because Sun Guanyun liked to hold back when teaching disciples; he wanted to keep the true craft within his own family. As a result, not a single one of his numerous disciples mastered the authentic version of the Eight Treasures Chestnut Fragrant Pigeon, and the imitation versions did not satisfy connoisseurs who came with high expectations.

Gradually, the Eight Treasures Chestnut Fragrant Pigeon was no longer the signature dish of Jubao Building, and it became just a nourishing dish that tasted alright.

The origin of the Eight Treasures Chestnut Fragrant Pigeon was even more bizarre. Sun Guanyun’s father was once an undisputed leading figure in the Guangdong culinary world, respected by many. He had four disciples who weren’t relatives and quite a few “disciples registered in the name” like Jiang Weiguo. In his later years, he took a godson, who was Sun Guanyun’s junior disciple Sun Maochai, a young man of startling talent and intelligence with a natural gift for cooking that made everyone tremble with awe.

Sun Maochai was a full twenty years younger than Sun Guanyun, but his cooking skills were on par with him. After Sun Guanyun’s father died, Sun Guanyun had to compete with Sun Maochai in a culinary contest in front of many connoisseurs for the position of head chef at Jubao Building, the winner would become the new head chef. And that memorable final battle was over the dish Pigeon Swallows Swallow.

Sun Maochai won the contest but had no intention to fight with his senior brother. He left Jubao Building, and Sun Guanyun got the position of head chef but lost a chef’s confidence.

Sun Maochai first went to Guangdong Province and then to Hong Kong City, catching the rapid development phase of Guangdong cuisine for over a decade. He absorbed the strengths of various major China cuisines and international cuisines, innovating and advancing, becoming an undisputed master of Guangdong cuisine.

Sun Guanyun got the position of head chef, but Pigeon Swallows Swallow became his lingering obsession. After toiling in seclusion for many years, he finally created the Eight Treasures Chestnut Fragrant Pigeon yet missed the golden era of Guangdong cuisine’s development. He may have overcome Sun Maochai in Pigeon Swallows Swallow, but he had long been left behind in terms of cooking skills.

After looking at the history of Jubao Building, Jiang Feng felt that Sun Guanyun truly had bad luck. The restaurant was opened by Sun Guanyun’s father, and Sun Guanyun’s brothers received other inheritances from their father, so this restaurant was supposed to be passed down to Sun Guanyun by rights, and moreover, Sun Maochai had no intention of contending for it. It was Sun Guanyun’s eldest disciple, driven by greed and seeing that his teacher had died and Sun Guanyun was easy to bully, who conspired with Sun Guanyun’s second brother to seize the restaurant.

The eldest disciple thought he was a better chef than Sun Guanyun and that a culinary competition would be a just and founded approach to taking over the restaurant, he was confident of his success. However, what he didn’t expect was that Sun Guanyun’s father also held back when teaching his disciples; he only passed on the true secrets to his own son, not even to the godson, and naturally, he was turned away disgraced in the competition.

This troublemaker forced Sun Maochai out of Jubao Building and inflicted Sun Guanyun with a perpetual demon, reducing what could have been an even greater Jubao Building into its current state of decline and empty fame. Such troublemaking ability could indeed be considered a shining pearl in the realm of troublemaking.

If it weren’t for this troublemaker, Jiang Feng believed that if Sun Maochai and Sun Guanyun, the two disciple brothers, managed Jubao Building together, not only would they have made Jubao Building flourish, but Guangdong cuisine would have also shined even more.

Unfortunately, there are no ‘ifs’.

Having ingested such an enthralling and substantial scoop, Jiang Feng was originally going to look up the recipes of Pigeon Swallows Swallow and the Eight Treasures Chestnut Fragrant Pigeon, but he inadvertently came across another juicy piece related to Jubao Building.

[Brotherly Feud?! Jubao Building May Face Its Greatest Crisis! ]

With the curiosity of someone who enjoys watching drama, Jiang Feng silently clicked to read more.

A very cliche TV show plot, and all of it is based on hearsay. It’s said that because Sun Jikai, the grandson of Sun Guanyun’s eldest son, has a great talent for cooking, Sun Guanyun intends to pass Jubao Building onto his eldest son, which caused dissatisfaction in his second son.

“According to insiders, the internal management of Jubao Building is currently very messy. Sun Guanyun left FJ in a rage to clear his mind and has not been heard from since. The editor guesses that he may have met with an accident, just why the contents of the will remain a secret is unknown.”

Jiang Feng:…

He silently reported the fake news and closed the article.

Jiang Feng started to look at the recipes for Pigeon Swallows Swallow and the Eight Treasures Chestnut Fragrant Pigeon.

Pigeon Swallows Swallow is a traditional delicacy from the Chaoshan region, with the key ingredients being squab and well-prepared bird’s nest, belonging to the class of nourishing treasures, it is highly sought after by the rich and powerful for its rarity and nutritional value.

The preparation of this dish lived up to the adoration of nobles and officials, requiring the full pigeon to be deboned and then stuffed with official bird’s nest into its belly. Yet Sun Guanyun’s Eight Treasures Chestnut Fragrant Pigeon involved deboning the squab entirely, stuffing it with a variety of ingredients, slow-cooking it over a gentle flame, and finally thickening the sauce. The essence of the whole dish lay in that final act of sauce thickening, from the blending of the sauce to the temperature when thickening, all of which directly determined the ultimate flavor of the Eight Treasures Chestnut Fragrant Pigeon.

One could say, the sauce thickening was the soul of this dish.

Putting aside the tricky part of sauce thickening, even the task of deboning a whole pigeon was quite challenging to begin with.

In theory, the principle behind deboning any poultry is the same as deboning a whole chicken. However, with pigeons being small, with thin skin and thin meat, the difficulty of deboning increased significantly—any slight mishap could ruin the shape of the entire pigeon.

Most crucially, Jiang Feng had never deboned a pigeon before.

The technique of stuffing various ingredients into the belly of an animal dated back to the Zhou dynasty, with one of the “Eight Treasures” back then being roasted pig—an early example where a piglet was killed, its insides removed, and its belly stuffed with dates. Nowadays, roasted pig is still considered a highly challenging and grand dish, with even more complex preparations and a greater variety of ingredients stuffed inside.

Whether it was the knockoff “Three Layered Duck” that Jiang Jiankang had made, the glutinous rice-stuffed duck from the new year’s eve dinner, or Sun Guanyun’s Eight Treasures Chestnut Fragrant Pigeon, they were all variations of that ancient Zhou dynasty roasted pig technique.

This method had one characteristic in common—difficult!

The more varieties of ingredients there were, and the smaller the animal to be filled, the more challenging it became. Just in terms of production difficulty, Eight Treasures Chestnut Fragrant Pigeon was even harder than the authentic Three Layered Duck.

The more Jiang Feng read and analyzed, the more he felt that it was simply impossible to learn this dish in a mere seven days.

Never mind achieving perfection, if he could even manage to produce a version of the Eight Treasures Chestnut Fragrant Pigeon that was ninety percent accurate, he could pin that 1.92-meter-tall, bilingual, wealthy young heartthrob—I mean Zhang Guanghang—to the ground and rub him into it.

And rub him repeatedly.

As Jiang Feng pondered, he began to visualize the scenario.

“Feng, what are you thinking about? You’ve been zoning out and smiling foolishly for a while,” Wang Hao asked puzzledly.

“It’s nothing.” Jiang Feng stopped daydreaming, “I was just thinking about rubbing someone into the ground.”

Wang Hao was taken aback, thinking, Could it be that he discovered the new story I’ve been secretly writing online?

“That person…who are they?”

“Zhang Guanghang,” Jiang Feng replied honestly. There was nothing to hide; probably 31 out of the top 32 contestants nationwide wanted to rub him into the ground.

Wang Hao cautiously asked, “You can’t possibly be… like… even though… Feng, you know… this kind of thing… are you sure you’re not…”

Jiang Feng silently reached into a cupboard for a rolling pin, smiling as he looked at Wang Hao.

“Have you been visiting those weird websites too much lately to mess your head up?”

“Dog Thief Watch the Stick!”

“I was wrong, Feng! I didn’t think that at all, it was a misunderstanding on your part!”

“Pfft!”