880 Eggplant With Garlic Sauce

She had searched for the critical point that Mag had told her the whole afternoon. After countless trials and errors, she had finally understood the characteristics of those spices more deeply and found the critical point this time.

It was a very strange feeling. She had stopped stirring the sauce when a voice suddenly sounded in her head, telling her to stop.

“Congratulations! You have mastered the mixing of barbecue-flavored sauce. I’ll teach you the other two sauces next time. Now let me show you how to grill kebabs.” Mag got up and went to the kitchen. Firis smiled excitedly and hastily followed after.

Grilling kebabs was easier said than done. Firis had so much to learn; how to control the fire, how to turn the kebabs to cook them evenly, when to brush the sauce, and how to tell when they were cooked to perfection. These skills could only be obtained through a large amount of practice.

Cutting beef into cubes and skewering them was effortless to Firis. She could do it much quicker than Mag with the help of magic.

In order to train her, Mag asked her to cut all the beef he needed for tonight and had her skewer it with bamboo sticks. Then he asked her to cut up all the other ingredients for other dishes, and told her it was also to train her cutting skills.

Mag watched as evenly chopped pieces of ingredients fell into several large containers. Each and every piece was so beautiful that even he himself couldn’t do better. He looked at Firis, who was now surrounded by many tiny wind blades. She’s like a cutting machine, Mag thought to himself.

Mag used to take two hours to prepare the ingredients, but Firis finished it in half an hour.

Mag then happily started teaching her how to cook beef kebab.

He told her about the advantages of beef kebabs and the temperature range of the grill, and taught her when to do what and how to do it. He was patient and meticulous.

But still he worried it might prove to be too difficult, especially for one who was new to kebabs.

It had taken him dozens of days of practice to make the kebabs acceptable to the system, and that had been with the help of the experience of many master chefs.

Of course, he had the patience to wait. It was not easy to become a chef. The good thing was she had talent as well as basic skills.

Firis listened attentively. Grilling kebabs was not of the same difficulty level as making sauce; she could tell just by listening to him.

“I have taught you everything you need to know. Remember the taste and then recreate it,” Mag said, handing over one of the two kebabs he had just cooked to Firis, and walked out of the kitchen, eating the other one. Firis had helped him finish the preparation of ingredients in advance, so he had one more hour to rest today.

Firis looked at the beef kebab in her hand. The strong aroma of the beef and sauce made her mouth water. The sauce was made by her, while the beef was bought at the market.

The fat parts of the beef looked like small crystals. The sauce was well distributed. The surface of each piece was covered with grease. It looked very tempting.

After a short hesitation, Firis opened her mouth and bit off a piece of beef.

Her beautiful eyes went round when her white teeth bit into the meat. Tasty juice came out and mixed with the sauce, stimulating her taste buds. The sauce made the beef even more flavorful.

The more she chewed, the better it tasted, so she naturally chewed faster and faster. It was an interesting virtuous circle. She chewed happily until she swallowed the meat into her stomach, yet the pleasant taste still lingered in her mouth.

This beef kebab tasted a little different from the ones she had had for lunch. Perhaps that was because she now had a much deeper understanding of this dish now that she had seen firsthand Mag’s wisdom and skills in making the sauce and grilling the kebabs.

She finished her kebab in no time at all. She licked the sauce off her fingers, her eyes shining with determination.

She looked at Mag, who was writing on a piece of paper, took a deep breath, and picked up a raw beef kebab.

…

“Eggplant with garlic sauce… maybe this dish will help me win the competition,” Mag whispered.

Mag’s eyes suddenly brightened after crossing off countless dishes. He wrote down eggplant with garlic sauce on the paper and then circled the four words.

Eggplant with garlic sauce was one of Mag’s favorite dishes. He also liked grilled eggplant, which was a famous street dish that could bring happiness to anyone who ate it.

Mag still remembered the taste of the eggplant with garlic sauce he had tried in a small restaurant in Sichuan Province. Authentic or not, it was the best eggplant with garlic sauce he had ever had.

He had made a second visit to that place later, only to find a new building standing where the old and shabby restaurant should’ve been; it had been demolished.

Fortunately, on a whim, Mag had asked the owner there about how he had cooked it. The man clearly hadn’t intended to keep it a secret. He had happily shared his experience with his curious customer. Mag searched his memories, and found he could still recall the ingredients and steps.

Yet knowing the ingredients and steps was not enough to make the dish magnificent. He had to figure out the amount of spices and seasonings, the temperature of the stove, and the most important thing—how to make chili broad bean paste.

Chili broad bean paste was the most necessary ingredient in this dish, which was also one of the most important seasonings in Sichuan cuisine. It could be found in the kitchen of almost every family in Sichuan. In the eyes of many residents living there, eggplant with garlic sauce was not authentic without chili broad bean paste.

Adding some chili broad bean paste into the hot oil would give the dish a distinctive flavor, resulting in a pleasant and persistent aftertaste.

The chili broad bean paste was essential in twice-cooked pork slices with green peppers and Dongpo pig knuckle as well as in eggplant with garlic sauce.

Making bean paste was also a must-learn skill for every housewife in Sichuan.

Of course Mag didn’t have this skill.

However, as a fan of Sichuan cuisine, he had criticized many Sichuan restaurants. In order to make himself look professional, he had made several trips to Sichuan’s Pixian county to watch the residents there make the chili broad bean paste. He hadn’t asked them for the recipe, though. Now he only vaguely remembered the ingredients and steps.

Mag looked at the steps and ingredients he had written down and sighed. “What I know right now is too little. I need to practice a lot to figure out the best recipe. The competition will start in five days. I don’t know if I can make the eggplant with garlic sauce perfect by then.”