A Bite of Douluo Continent

Chapter 360 Three Mushrooms, Six Ears, Nine Bamboo Shoots, and One Sheng (Bonus Chapter 1/10 for Alliance Leader Yue Zhuoshuo)

The recipe for Dinghu vegetarian food is not that difficult for Lanxing.

Its distinctive feature is the abundance and preciousness of its ingredients. Regardless of the ingredients used in the vegetarian broth, the main ingredients alone include three types of mushrooms, six types of fungus, nine types of bamboo shoots, and one type of shiitake mushroom. These nineteen complex vegetarian dishes are indispensable, and some of them are difficult to find on the market and cannot be artificially cultivated, which is why this dish is so precious.

The "three mushrooms" refer to button mushrooms, straw mushrooms, and shiitake mushrooms.

At first glance, I didn't recognize any of them, except for mushrooms, which were somewhat familiar to me.

But many people call most fungi mushrooms. So which kind of mushroom is being referred to?

Actually, among these three mushrooms, the mushroom refers to the white button mushroom.

The name "mouth mushroom" has nothing to do with the mouth. It is not because of its small size that it can be eaten in one bite. Rather, it is because this special fungus is abundant in the Mongolian grasslands and was originally processed and sold in the Zhangjiakou area, hence the name "mouth mushroom".

Because this type of mushroom has a higher nutritional value than most other mushrooms, it remains one of the more expensive types of fungi to this day.

Straw mushrooms are a type of fungus that is popular in the Fujian and Guangdong regions and is relatively rare in other parts of China. These straw mushrooms are shaped somewhat like quail eggs. The cap does not fully open but wraps around the stem, making them look quite cute with their round shape. The gradual brown color on the surface is also very attractive.

As for winter mushrooms, they are a type of mushroom that is easily confused with shiitake mushrooms. The two are similar in color, so some merchants often use shiitake mushrooms to impersonate winter mushrooms.

In fact, shiitake mushrooms are smaller than regular shiitake mushrooms, smell more fragrant, and taste better. The biggest difference between them is that dried shiitake mushrooms do not wrinkle after drying, while dried shiitake mushrooms wrinkle severely.

The six types of fungus refer to golden fungus, silver fungus, wood fungus, elm fungus, stone fungus, and osmanthus fungus.

The first three are more commonly heard of, while the latter three are almost never heard of.

Needless to say, wood ear mushrooms are the common kind we eat. They have a black or dark brown surface and a crisp, tender, and smooth texture. They are delicious whether stir-fried, boiled, or served cold.

But even fewer people can truly distinguish between silver ear fungus and golden ear fungus.

Many people might think that the white fungus sold in the market that is more yellowish is golden fungus, and that the whiter fungus is silver fungus.

But actually, both are white fungus. Those that are whiter are often artificially bleached.

The base of the white fungus is light yellow, while the open ear flaps are white, presenting a gradual color gradient, like a large, spreading flower.

The real golden ear fungus is almost entirely the same color, a color that is quite similar to real gold, and can be recognized at a glance.

Unlike silver ear fungus, golden ear fungus doesn't spread out; instead, it's wrinkled into a ball like a brain. In terms of texture, golden ear fungus is soft and glutinous, unlike the crisp texture of silver ear fungus.

Elm ear fungus comes from Gansu Province. It has a pinkish-red surface with fuzz and a mushroom-like aroma after drying. Rock ear fungus has one brown side and the other side is charcoal black. It grows flat in damp rock crevices. As for osmanthus ear fungus, it is probably the most beautiful of the six types of ear fungus. Its small fruiting body has a bright orange color and contains a large amount of carotene.

After the six ears, comes the nine bamboo shoots.

Nine types of bamboo shoots refer to bamboo shoots, golden bamboo shoots, asparagus, vegetable bamboo shoots, hairy-tail bamboo shoots, pen bamboo shoots, ginger bamboo shoots, hanging silk bamboo shoots, and pig stomach bamboo shoots.

So many bamboo shoots!

Fresh bamboo shoots, short and thick, are white and light green after peeling off their outer skin. When sliced ​​and stir-fried, these shoots are exceptionally tender and crisp, and have a cooling and detoxifying effect.

As for golden bamboo shoots, they sound like a very high-class food, but they also have another name: carrots.

Um... it's the carrot that everyone knows.

Asparagus is relatively rare. This type of bamboo shoot is about the thickness of a finger, green and long, with similar length from top to bottom. Each shoot is about two to three fingers long. After being stir-fried, it has a fragrant and delicious flavor, a crisp texture, and tastes very good.

As for lettuce, it also has another name, lettuce shoots. It is a variety of lettuce, but it is not exactly the same as lettuce.

When we eat lettuce, both the leaves and the stems are edible, while for celery, only the stem is eaten.

After being chopped, the lettuce is a tender green color and looks soft and crisp. It only needs to be stir-fried to have a wonderful texture and flavor.

As for the last five types of bamboo shoots, they are even rarer. The last two, the hanging silk bamboo shoot and the pig belly bamboo shoot, are so rare that even literature on them is hard to find, so the author didn't bother to introduce them.

Beyond the nine bamboo shoots lies a sheng (a type of ancient Chinese opera).

Yisheng refers to the bamboo fungus, also known as bamboo sago.

This is a precious fungus, known as the "Queen of Fungi". It has a slender white stem and a dark green or brownish-green cap. Around the cap, there is a beautiful net-like structure, like a thin veil, which looks like a queen's long skirt fluttering.

These are all the main ingredients of Dinghu Shangsu.

Gathering these nineteen precious mountain delicacies is incredibly difficult, and cooking them all together is already extremely rare, which is why Dinghu Shangsu is so expensive and precious.

But for Qi Han, the situation was completely reversed.

With Ruyi providing the ingredients, obtaining the ingredients for Dinghu Shangsu was completely effortless. However, in the modified version of the system, the cooking difficulty, which was almost non-existent before, was increased infinitely.

The reason is also very simple.

All the mountain delicacies used in this dish have been optimized and modified by the system to become corresponding rare and precious ingredients.

To fully blend the flavors of more than twenty kinds of rare and precious herbs and to maximize their effects, the combined medicinal properties of all the herbs must be combined to achieve a perfect enhancement of their medicinal efficacy. This process is more like alchemy than cooking.

A small mistake can lead to a huge error.

That's why this dish, which costs two thousand gold soul coins, took Qi Han such a long training time.

After sighing for a while, Qi Han began to complete the first step of making Dinghu vegetarian food: the broth.

The so-called vegetarian broth is a special broth made by simmering various vegetables together. When the vegetables are simmered together, they can create a unique aroma similar to meat.

So this is probably the first time that a golden pheasant has survived the process of making soup.

First, slice the celery and carrots, cut the kelp into sections, and put them into a pot with bean sprouts. Add hot water and cook until just tender. Then, remove them and put them into a clay pot.

Many ingredients, especially vegetables, have one thing in common: they have a special flavor when they are freshly picked, but this flavor disappears completely after cooking.

This kind of smell is called the "natural scent".

"Removing raw ingredients" is the process of completely eliminating the raw, unrefined flavors to prevent them from altering the taste of the dish during subsequent cooking.

After the ingredients are cooked through, add longan, dried tangerine peel, white peppercorns, and peeled and diced monk fruit to the clay pot. Finally, add water to cover the ingredients, season with salt, and simmer over low heat for two hours.

Each ingredient has its own unique and peculiar aroma when cooked alone. However, during the process of mixing and simmering, these unique aromas will slowly blend together and become indistinguishable from each other, eventually transforming into a unique fragrance that is indistinguishable from the aroma of meat.

The meaty aroma of this vegetarian broth is the source of the meaty flavor in Dinghu vegetarian dishes.

The concept of vegetarian cuisine in China has always been to make vegetarian dishes resemble meat dishes and to create a dish that is indistinguishable from the real thing.

Chapter 361 The Special Effects of Dinghu Shangsu (Bonus Chapter 2/10 for Alliance Leader Yue Zhuoshuo)

The two hours of simmering the vegetarian broth over low heat were reduced to about five minutes by Ruyi's time compression, and Qi Han was not idle during those five minutes.

He processed each of the three mushrooms, six ear fungus, nine bamboo shoots, and one shiitake mushroom, then cut them into chunks or strips for later use.

This step was one of the reasons why Qi Han had failed so many times before.

If it were ordinary ingredients from Blue Star, they could be cut directly; with Qi Han's perfect knife skills, it wouldn't be too difficult.

But rare and precious materials are different. Although the rare and precious materials used by Dinghu Shangsu are mainly of the hundred-year level, only Yisheng is of the thousand-year level. However, the lower age does not affect the preciousness of these rare and precious materials.

For example, the rare and precious material corresponding to golden ear fungus is a delicate creature called Ryukyu golden silk fungus, which has the strange characteristic of "melting when it encounters metal and dying when it encounters soil". It will immediately turn into a puddle of water when it comes into contact with metal, and will die immediately when it comes into contact with soil. It can only grow on dead wood formed after the death of trees at the level of rare and precious materials.

Qi Han couldn't even use his own kitchen knife against this guy; he could only use the special porcelain knife provided by the system to process the food.

While the other rare and precious materials might not be enough to make Qi Han change his sword, they each have their own rules and precautions, and one wrong move could ruin all his previous efforts.

In particular, the corresponding rare and precious material for bamboo fungus is the Nine Heavens Immortal Spirit Flower, which is said to "fall into the mortal world upon encountering worldly affairs".

This means that Qi Han's breath would be greatly diminished in its medicinal properties if it came into contact with such rare and precious herbs.

Fortunately, with Qi Han's current cultivation level, he can still handle a type of ingredient while holding his breath; otherwise, he really wouldn't be able to deal with this outrageous rare and precious ingredient.

In five minutes, Qi Han finally finished processing all the ingredients. Wearing silk gloves, he carefully put the nineteen kinds of rare and precious herbs into the pot to cook until just done, then took them out and piled them in a small bowl in a fixed order.

The reason for wearing silk gloves is that one of the rare and precious ingredients cannot be touched before cooking, as touching it will cause it to lose its medicinal properties.

After the ingredients were piled up, the vegetarian broth on the side was also ready to be cooked.

As soon as the lid was opened, a rich aroma of meat slowly wafted out. The enticing fragrance of this vegetarian broth was no less than the broth that Qi Han had made before. The enticing and wonderful flavor entered his nostrils, making him swallow hard.

Because it uses only vegetables, the vegetable broth will not have any foam or be too cloudy. Simply filter it to keep the cooked vegetables, and it can be used directly without any further processing.

Carefully pour some of the vegetarian broth into a bowl filled with various rare and precious ingredients. Then, invert a beautiful porcelain plate over the bowl and place it directly into a steamer. Steam for half an hour, then drizzle with a spoonful of the thickened vegetarian broth before serving.

The steaming time was reduced to two minutes, which was enough time for Qi Han to thicken the vegetarian broth.

Return the prepared vegetarian broth to the pot, heat it until it boils again, add a spoonful of cornstarch slurry, mix well, and then a simple thickening process is complete.

Next, take out the steamed ingredients and turn the bowl and the inverted porcelain plate on top upside down to get a neatly stacked Dinghu vegetarian dish. Finally, pour the thickened vegetarian broth evenly over the surface, allowing the broth to soak into the porcelain plate in a thin layer. This completes the Dinghu vegetarian dish.

Gently covering the dish with a lid to prevent the unusual phenomenon from forming immediately, Qi Han presented the Dinghu vegetarian dish to everyone.

"Dinghu Shangsu has arrived."

However, when faced with such a three-Michelin-starred dish, the expressions on their faces were all quite strange.

"What's wrong?" Qi Han asked, somewhat puzzled.

“Boss, if I eat this now, the special effects of this dish might be wasted.” Fuya looked troubled. “I just broke through to the Soul Power Realm not long ago.”

“Yes…me too.” Ying Shuangshuang couldn’t help but speak up, her face showing a hint of frustration.

So it was due to a special effect?

Qi Han was stunned for a moment before he realized what was happening.

Dinghu Shangsu, as a top-tier three-star recipe costing two thousand gold soul coins, is almost at the threshold of a four-star recipe. Moreover, it uses more than twenty kinds of rare and precious ingredients, so its special effects are naturally not bad.

Dinghu Shangsu has a special effect: If a Soul Power level below the seventh ring reaches a bottleneck, there is a 50% chance of directly breaking through after consuming it; it has no effect on Soul Power levels above the seventh ring.

Although the effect of this dish is limited to those below the seventh ring and the breakthrough probability is only 50%, its effects are still terrifying.

Because it has no usage restrictions, as long as you can afford it, you can try it every time you hit a bottleneck below the seventh ring.

"It's alright, the main thing is to let everyone taste it," Qi Han said softly, but it didn't seem to have much effect.

"Boss, how about we save this opportunity for me? I'll let you know when I reach my limit, and you can make it for me then." After thinking for a moment, Fuya suggested somewhat embarrassedly, "It would be such a waste to eat it now."

It is not impossible.

Qi Han pondered for a moment, then nodded.

Seeing that Qi Han agreed, Ying Shuangshuang and Ji Yunruo spoke up one after another, making the same request. It was clear that neither of them had reached the bottleneck of the Soul Power realm.

Seeing Ping Xinyan's expectant gaze, Qi Han couldn't help but smile, "Xinyan, have you reached a bottleneck?"

"Mmm!" Ping Xinyan's big eyes sparkled brightly.

She has been stuck at level 48 for half a month and has not yet broken through. Under normal circumstances, it would take more than a month to break through to level 49. If she could break through directly, she would save more than a month of hard work.

"Then you three can keep your Dinghu Shangsu for now, and this one will be for Xinyan." Qi Han nodded, placed the Dinghu Shangsu in front of Ping Xinyan, and then slowly opened the lid for her.