"Have you ever had any particularly delicious crab roe snacks?" Qin Huai straightforwardly asked.
Qin Huai was very aware of Wang Gen Sheng’s character. The most prominent trait of the honest Uncle Wang was his directness. He always spoke his mind and answered any question. If he felt something could be said without shame, he would say it. If something couldn’t be said, he wouldn’t make up an excuse; he would simply say it was something he couldn’t talk about.
That’s just how way Uncle Wang was, straightforward and sincere.
To get Uncle Wang to talk, there was no need for tricks or preambles, you could just get straight to the point.
As Qin Huai expected, Uncle Wang began to think seriously. About two or three minutes later, after Qin Luo had finished his bowl of crab roe noodles and mixed another, Uncle Wang finally spoke slowly.
"It must have been the Double Crab Bun I had when I was young." Uncle Wang’s eyes were filled with nostalgia, "A friend treated me to it, I only had it once, but I really miss it."
Qin Huai was a bit surprised. The friend Uncle Wang mentioned must surely have been Xu Nuo. If Uncle Wang had a second friend who could afford to treat him to Double Crab Buns, then the friends Accountant Wang made in his youth must have been extraordinarily wealthy.
However, Qin Huai hadn’t expected that Uncle Wang had only eaten Double Crab Bun once.
From Uncle Wang’s description, Qin Huai had thought either Uncle Wang had never had Double Crab Bun and wanted to try it once at Huang Ji to make up for the regret. Or perhaps he had eaten it many times in the past and now wanted to recapture the taste of bygone years.
But it turned out he had only eaten it once.
It seemed the Double Crab Bun must have been very delicious for Uncle Wang to long for it over the years.
"What exactly did it taste like? I’ve been researching the recipe you previously gave me. Honestly, just looking at the recipe, it’s hard to get a sense of it. Do you still remember what the Double Crab Bun tasted like? Can you describe it to me in detail? Was it made with fresh crab roe or Crab Yellow Sauce? When did you eat it?"
"January." Uncle Wang said with absolute certainty, "My birthday is at the beginning of January, and I ate the Double Crab Bun on my birthday."
So it was the Crab Yellow Sauce version.
"As for the exact taste..." Uncle Wang pondered again. He often doubted himself about having senility, and not without reason. Now that Uncle Wang was older, his memory wasn’t as sharp as before. Although he liked reminiscing about the past, he repeatedly only told a few particular stories.
If a new listener wanted to hear something new, Uncle Wang would tell them he couldn’t recall it at the moment.
"It’s somewhat similar to this." Uncle Wang tried to merge his somewhat unclear memory with the current crab roe noodles to provide a detailed description, "It’s... a strong crab roe flavor, but at the same time, subtly light."
"Very fragrant, biting into it you could see the filling was oily with yellow crab oil but surprisingly not greasy at all when you ate it."
"The texture was quite rich, like eating the custard of a salted egg yolk but much fresher than the salted egg yolk."
Uncle Wang’s descriptions were quite illustrative. Qin Huai more or less understood that it was likely made with crab roe sauce that didn’t have too many added spices and was thickened to, in today’s terms, render out the oil and then incorporated into a filling to make the Double Crab Bun.
That’s not right; Zheng Siyuan doesn’t know the recipe for making Double Crab Bun with fresh crab roe, but there’s no way he got the Crab Yellow Sauce recipe wrong. Unless Zheng Da learned it wrong, or secretly altered the recipe himself. However, with Huang Shengli as corroboration, even if Zheng Da changed it, he couldn’t have hidden it from Huang Shengli.
According to Zheng Siyuan, the Crab Yellow Sauce recipe involved adding many spices to make the flavor very intense and complex. Meanwhile, Uncle Wang’s evaluation was that the crab roe flavor was strong but also somewhat light, suggesting that the flavor wasn’t overwhelmingly strong, nor were the spices complex.
The two opinions were contradictory.
Qin Huai looked at Wang Gen Sheng earnestly for a moment. He believed Uncle Wang wouldn’t lie unless his memory was faulty, but Wang Gen Sheng’s memory wasn’t that poor.
But Zheng Siyuan also had no reason to deceive him.
And Zheng Da had no reason to deceive Zheng Siyuan either.
Qin Huai arrived at a conclusion in his heart.
Zheng Siyuan was telling the truth, and Uncle Wang was also telling the truth. It’s just that the Double Crab Bun Uncle Wang tasted back then wasn’t made by Master Jing; someone else had made it.
If that’s the case, the approach to making the Double Crab Bun shouldn’t follow Zheng Siyuan’s method. It should follow Uncle Wang’s, as he was the issuer of the side task and the one who had tasted the Double Crab Bun. His needs should be met.
Qin Huai hadn’t expected that improving his rapport with Wang Gen Sheng would bring such an unexpected surprise. Without today’s conversation, how many detours he might have taken!
"Thank you so much, Uncle Wang." Qin Huai said with a smile, his voice full of genuine gratitude, "Do you have time in the afternoons lately?"
"Huh?" With his mouth again stuffed with noodles, Wang Gen Sheng was startled, then immediately responded, licking the crab roe from the corner of his mouth and swallowing the noodles down, "Yes, yes, free anytime."
"Your Uncle Wang is retired now; all I have is time!"
"Then I’ll need to trouble Uncle Wang to come by every afternoon to taste the Crab Yellow Sauce. I plan to make the Crab Yellow Sauce first, and once it’s right, I’ll make the Double Crab Bun."
"Did the crab roe noodles suit your taste today? If they did, every day after you’ve tried the Crab Yellow Sauce, I’ll make you a bowl of crab roe noodles, so you won’t have to come all this way just to sample the sauce."
The always honest and upright Wang Gen Sheng couldn’t resist such temptation, smiling so broadly that the corners of his mouth almost reached the back of his ears, "How can I accept this? What’s that saying, I’m taking things without proper return here." Fresh chapters posted on novel•fire.net