“Divine Child, let’s make food!”
Liang’s voice, filled with urgency yet oddly excited, rang in Han Cheng’s ears, causing the corners of his mouth to twitch involuntarily.
This guy is changing too quickly, isn’t he?
Just a moment ago, wasn’t he showing his teeth, ready to throw away those Sichuan peppercorns?
And now, as soon as food is mentioned, how did he become so eager and impatient?
Liang, where’s your integrity as someone like the divine farmer?
Han Cheng sniffed, looking at the excited and eager Liang, and couldn’t help but roll his eyes in his mind.
In fact, even Han, the great Divine Child, doesn’t have much of a concept of integrity.
A layer of red oil floating on top, a numbing and spicy hotpot that looked particularly appetizing?
Han Cheng swallowed again and quickly pushed that tempting thought out of his mind.
Because the weather wasn’t right, it wasn’t hotpot season, and besides, there were no chili peppers.
Malatang? Mala crayfish? Mala fish pieces? Mala mudfish?…
A barrage of delicious foods rushed into Han Cheng’s mind, leaving him dizzy and drooling.
Sometimes, having too many choices is just as painful.
After being bombarded by the imagined food for a while, Han Cheng slowly began to calm down.
That’s when he suddenly realized something more serious: the numbing and spicy flavors have always been linked together.
When only numbing without the spice, many foods lose a lot of their flavor.
The frustrating part now was that the tribe had no chili peppers, and they didn’t even have things like cloves or mustard to replace chili peppers somewhat. This made Han Cheng, who had been so excited a moment ago, feel a bit deflated.
With Sichuan peppercorns, food flavor can be significantly improved compared to before, but without spice, it always lacks something.
Han Cheng didn’t want to settle. After all, this was the first time Sichuan peppercorns had appeared in the tribe, and he had to make something truly amazing with them. At the very least, it should be something he would be proud of.
Just like the people from the Green Sparrow Tribe, who loved to see outsiders marvel at the good things in their tribe, Han Cheng, as a newcomer, also wanted to see the people in the tribe marvel and show respect for the things he made.
This kind of mental satisfaction was almost as good as physical pleasure.
“Wait a bit. I’ll think about how to use this seasoning before cooking with it,” Han Cheng suppressed his impulses and said to Liang, who was standing nearby, swallowing and eagerly eyeing him.
This left Liang a bit surprised.
He had been drooling for so long, and now Han Cheng was saying this?
Complaints aside, Liang didn’t object. After all, the Divine Child in their tribe was the boss, and he decided everything.
Holding the packet of Sichuan peppercorns, Han Cheng left the kitchen and walked toward his room. He didn’t want to leave the precious spices in the kitchen, where someone might carelessly throw them away.
After safely placing the peppercorns in his room, Han Cheng sat on the bed, cradling his face in his hands, thinking about how to create a dish using only Sichuan peppercorns without the addition of chili.
Finding such a dish wasn’t easy, because numbing and spicy were almost always tied together, with numbing more of a supporting flavor.
You can have spicy without numbing, but you can’t have numbing without spice; the taste would be significantly diminished…
However, Han Cheng’s frustration didn’t last long.
As he walked out of the tribe’s courtyard with the shaman to check on the increasingly yellow millet and soybeans that were starting to shed their leaves, a very famous dish suddenly popped into his mind—Mapo Tofu!
As soon as Mapo Tofu appeared in his mind, Han Cheng couldn’t help but get excited.
In his knowledge, this was one of the few famous dishes that didn’t rely on chili but instead used numbing as the main flavor.
Moreover, the tribe had all the necessary ingredients to make Mapo Tofu. In just a few days, once the soybeans were harvested, they could make enough for every person in the tribe to taste this dish!
With the idea formed, Han Cheng looked at the vast field of beans about to ripen, and his heart and face lit up with joy.
The shaman also smiled broadly.
Since Han Cheng returned from the Copper Mountain living area, the shaman had smiled every time he came out to check the vast fields of crops nearing harvest.
At this time of year, even the rabbit, usually the shaman’s favorite, was neglected.
The shaman could wander in the fields all day without getting tired.
Reaching out to touch some low-hanging grain spikes, pulling weeds from the field, adjusting the ‘bow’ the scarecrow was holding, and cursing and chasing the birds eating the millet…
During this time of year, the shaman always had endless tasks to do in the fields and never got bored.
“So much grain…” The shaman pointed to the field of beans, grinning at Han Cheng.
“Yeah, so much grain!” Han Cheng replied seriously, but in his mind, he imagined plate after plate of Mapo Tofu, his face beaming with a smile.
Though the two weren’t quite on the same wavelength, the older and younger duo were undeniably enjoying their conversation immensely.
As the wheat ripened and the silkworms aged, the millet also matured steadily.
After spending most of the afternoon checking the earliest planted millet and carefully distinguishing the grains, the Green Sparrow Tribe’s months-long project of building a wall temporarily halted.
Without much rest, everyone started preparing for the autumn harvest.
The carpenter, Lame, and others checked the sickles, carts, wooden forks, rakes, and brooms.
Ironhead, who usually worked with grass, squatted by the fine grinding stones, dipping his hands into the warm water from the clay pot and carefully sharpening the sickles. He occasionally tested their sharpness by running his finger along the edge.
In the three ‘品’ formations, some people wet the threshing area with water, while others were leading deer and rolling out the framework to start threshing the grain…
Amidst the festive and somewhat relaxed preparations, the Green Sparrow Tribe was about to begin a busy harvest season, and they had already prepared for a grand harvest feast…