Chapter 322 - 142: Pastry? This Is Simply a Work of Art

Chapter 322: Chapter 142: Pastry? This Is Simply a Work of Art

All eight small balls were sliced, and a small knife was used to pare away the layer of yellow pistil-skin from the bottom of each sphere.

At this point, Su Chen didn’t feel like explaining anymore.

’It’s just so tedious.’

It was no wonder apprentices nowadays didn’t want to learn how to make traditional Chinese pastries.

Sure, Chinese pastries were beautiful and delicious, but a single pastry like this lotus crisp required him and Old Ba to work on it together.

There weren’t many people in the world whose skills could match his, and masters whose pastry skills could compare to Old Ba’s were few and far between.

On top of that, these lotus crisps had to be sold immediately after being made!

They couldn’t be stored for long and were almost always made to order.

’No wonder there’s not much information about these pastries online anymore.’

’If things keep going this way, these skills will truly be lost to time...’

Then he thought about Western-style baking.

You just mixed everything according to the recipe, threw it in the oven, and waited. It was simple, easy to learn, and even someone without professional training could make something that looked presentable!

’Traditional Chinese pastries were delicacies for nobles and officials in ancient times. Even now, they still are!’

Ordinary people had neither the energy to learn how to make them nor the financial means to enjoy them.

After the red "petal" dough was cut out with a mold, he rolled it out larger with a rolling pin, once again making it thin on the edges and thick in the center.

"We’re finally almost done." Su Chen let out a heavy sigh.

He placed the peeled, yellow "pistil" in the center of the red dough, cut-side down and oil-core up. Pressing down on the pistil ball with one hand, he used the web between the thumb and forefinger of his other hand to continuously gather the "petal" dough upwards, cinching it until it resembled a shumai dumpling. Then, with one final cinch!

The opening was sealed shut.

"Wow! Making these pastries is seriously tough work!" Chen Wenliang exclaimed.

Aunt Fang felt the same, rubbing her shoulder. "Forget you guys actually doing the work, I’m exhausted just watching. The people back in the old days were incredible to even think this up."

"I used to watch TV and think emperors were so stingy for giving out pastries as rewards," He Shuting said, her mind wandering. "But now I see... if they were pastries like this, that’s actually a pretty incredible reward! This must be something only an emperor could eat."

How could an ordinary person ever get to eat something like this!

He gently molded the sealed spheres, brushing a layer of egg wash over any uneven spots on the seam before coating them thoroughly in sesame seeds.

It was a good way to cover up imperfections.

He put them back in the refrigerator to chill. Once the small spheres had hardened, he took them out.

"Damn it all!" Su Chen said, huffing as he picked up one of the spheres. "For this order, I’m asking you, is twenty thousand yuan expensive?"

Even someone as patient as him was feeling extremely irritable by now.

’Looks like I’m still a long way from having the heart of a true artisan.’

"Twenty thousand?" Chen Wenliang scratched his head. "If you ask me, it’s both expensive and not. For just these two types of pastries, it’s definitely a bit pricey. But when you factor in the atmosphere and the service, you can’t call it expensive at all."

"I don’t think it’s expensive either," said Zhang Li. She had found a stool somewhere and was now sitting on it, her short legs dangling without touching the floor. "I saw online that someone went to that Bulgari place for afternoon tea. A few pieces of cake cost several thousand yuan, and they couldn’t hold a candle to these pastries!"

Regardless, Su Chen felt that twenty thousand yuan for this order was an absolute steal.

You couldn’t appreciate it just by looking; you had to experience it to understand.

He took the hardened spheres and, on the side without sesame seeds, made three deep cuts. These would form six "petals."

The cuts were deep, going almost all the way to the filling.

"Alright, time to Blast!"

There were eight small, unassuming pink spheres. If you hadn’t witnessed the process with your own eyes, you’d never imagine how much painstaking effort went into them.

Su Chen picked one up and placed it in a wire skimmer. "These have to be blasted one by one; you can’t just toss them all in at once. Now we just have to wait." 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ

The oil temperature was around 130 degrees Celsius. He lowered the skimmer holding the sphere into the clear oil, and small bubbles began to rise from the slits he’d cut.

As for Su Chen, while one hand held the skimmer in the wok, his other was constantly adjusting the heat to control the oil temperature.

"If the temperature is too high, the color will change. High oil temperature is the biggest enemy of this pastry."

Chen Wenliang knew a thing or two about this as well. "Dough colored with fruit and vegetable juices is very unstable. The slightest temperature change will alter the color."

As more and more bubbles formed on the sphere’s surface...

Aunt Fang’s eyes suddenly lit up. "It’s opening! It’s opening!"

"What’s opening?"

"Gasp! Look, it really is opening!"

Zhang Li hopped off her stool with a THUMP. "What’s opening? Huh? What is it?!"

Everyone focused their gaze on the small sphere in the skimmer.

It was supposed to be a round sphere, but the small bubbles rising from it now formed a hexagonal pattern!

If you looked closely...

...you could see that the small sphere now looked like a budding flower, and Su Chen’s hand seemed to be working magic!

The flower bud was blooming, its petals unfurling at a speed visible to the naked eye!

When all the petals had bloomed, the pistil inside also rapidly blossomed in the hot oil. Unlike the orderly unfurling of the petals, the pistil’s transformation looked somewhat chaotic and random, but that only made it a more realistic depiction of a real flower’s core.

When Su Chen lifted the "lotus flower" from the wok with his chopsticks and arranged it on a white jade plate...

...everyone present felt their breath catch in their throats.

"This... Boss Su, you’ve really made your food blossom!" Aunt Fang said, her words a clever pun.

Her words resonated with everyone.

Liu Shengnan suddenly had an idea. She immediately grabbed a few items from a pile of things she’d bought and arranged them on the plate.

They were a few lotus leaves and a couple of seed pods.

"A work of art. This is simply a work of art! This is..." Chen Wenliang was at a loss for words to describe the sight before him.

Six petals bloomed in layers, pink at the edges and fading into a soft, tender pink toward the center, where a bright yellow pistil sat.

Paired with the decorative leaves, how could this still be called a pastry?

It looked exactly like a living lotus flower, plucked and placed right onto the plate!

"This is unbelievable! I have to get a picture!" He Shuting was the first to lean in close to the plate. CLICK!

She got her selfie.

And Su Chen let out a huge sigh of relief.

’This should be more than enough to satisfy the order, right?’

The pastry war sparked by the socialite.

Chinese-style would be victorious!