The aroma of cooking filled the house: I sent my eldest brother to become the Grand Secretary.

He Yu was so angry because He Fei questioned Shen Cao's cooking skills that he shoved He Fei's arm away violently.

Nothing!

Hefei pouted, as if to say no one else could say that.

That's true, from ancient times to the present, no one has ever cooked pork ribs like this.

In the kitchen, Shen Cao was focused on stir-frying ribs and didn't notice the argument between the two. But if she knew how much He Yu trusted her, she would be very happy.

The ribs in the pot have been stir-fried until they are slightly charred on both sides, and because spices were added earlier, some of the aroma has been released.

At this point, Shen Cao continued to add seasonings and poured the prepared preserved plums into the pot.

These preserved plums were bought by Shen Cao at the market before.

People nowadays call it dried fruit, and it tastes much more sour than the preserved plums they ate in their previous lives.

And since Sprite is no longer available, she can only use rock sugar instead to increase the sweetness of the plum ribs.

After adding the preserved plums, she added some salt, soy sauce, and oyster sauce.

Then pour a shallow amount of hot water into the pot to just cover the ribs, and let them simmer.

While the ribs were stewing, she quickly prepared the braised pork. After stir-frying the braised pork, she put it into a clay pot to stew.

The stew was almost ready, so she decided to prepare the two eels.

She prepared one eel for braising and the other for grilling, then brushed them with her own homemade kabayaki sauce to make eel rice.

Eel rice is usually made with river eel, but sea eel is better than river eel. The meat is more delicate and richer in oil, making it taste better and without the muddy taste of river eel.

In her past life, Shen Cao liked to buy sea eels to make eel rice, which she thought tasted better than river eels.

Li Xiaoyu had already prepared the two eels as instructed, and she had deliberately asked her to keep the eel livers.

Eel liver was a hidden delicacy she learned from her grandfather, and after trying it once, she was completely won over by its delicate texture.

She put the prepared eel into a basin, then poured in hot water to scald the surface of the eel, which made it easy to remove the slime from its surface.

After cleaning the eel, she prepared to cut the braised eel into pieces.

There is a long spine running down the middle of the eel. She first cut the eel in half along that spine, and then cut off the spine along the other side.

Because these two eels were quite large, there were some large fish bones on both sides. However, these fish bones were growing close to the belly of the fish, so she used a knife to gently cut off all the fish bones on the belly side along the thin layer of meat.

This completes the process of deboning the eel.

She originally didn't want to go through all that trouble, because you can eat braised eel and spit out the bones as you go. But once, Shen Wan accidentally got a fish bone stuck in her throat while eating fish, and it took her a lot of effort to get it out.

From then on, she would almost always go through the trouble of removing fish bones whenever she cooked fish, rather than see her younger siblings get choked on them again.

After removing the bones from both eels, she cut the eel that was to be braised into chunks and the eel that was to be grilled into strips.

Because the eel was quite large and had thick flesh, she was worried that it wouldn't cook through easily when grilling, so she made some cuts on it. This not only made it easier for the flavors to penetrate but also made it easier to grill.

She found a larger clay pot. It has to be said that the kitchen layout of the restaurant used to be very reasonable, even the stove was.

The stove in this kitchen not only has a place for a large pot, but also has many small pits specially set up along the path of the furnace. When not in use, they are covered with special lids. When in use, the lids are simply removed and the pot is placed on them.

She placed the casserole on the stove and then poured in the lard.

After the lard melted, she first poured in the eel bones and pan-fried them over medium heat until both sides were golden brown and crispy.

Then pour the eel meat into the pan and fry until the eel meat is set.

After frying the fish, take it out.

There was still some oil in the pan, so she didn't add any more. She poured in the chopped garlic and ginger slices she had prepared earlier, and fried them until the garlic was slightly browned. Then she pressed the fish meat and bones on top of the garlic and ginger slices.

Then pour in the special seasoning (soy sauce, oyster sauce, pepper, sugar, a little salt, etc.).

Finally, she poured in the local rice wine she had bought. The rice wine tasted sweet with a hint of alcohol, and she felt it was better than the beer she used in her previous life when she added it to stews.

After adding rice wine, she poured in a little Shaoxing wine, so that the stewed eel wouldn't have any fishy smell at all.

And it tastes especially good.

After adding the rice wine and yellow wine, the water in the casserole just barely covers the eel, so there's no need to add any more water.

She covered it, letting the temperature and time cook it into the final delicious dish.

She had already marinated the grilled eel in advance by mixing it thoroughly with soy sauce, honey, cooking wine, salt, pepper, ginger slices, and scallion segments.

While the fish was marinating, she took some burning firewood from the kitchen stove and put it into the oven in the yard.

That's right, there's an oven here too. When she started cleaning up, she specifically asked the craftsman who built the oven for Shen Family Restaurant last time to build one that's a little bigger than the one for Shen Family Restaurant. Now it's ready to be used.

Because she had already done these things before making the braised eel. By the time the braised eel started stewing, the grilled eel was already marinated and the oven was already heated.

She poured the eel into her specially made, deeper baking pan, and then covered it with the lid. This was mainly because if the pan wasn't covered, the eel would be too dry after baking and wouldn't have that tender, juicy texture.

How does she know? Don't ask. The answer is that she failed to bake it before, and this is the best way she's ever tried it.

After grilling the eel for about the time it takes for an incense stick to burn, Shen Cao took the grilling tray out of the oven and added some more fire to increase the temperature.

Then another layer of sauce was brushed onto the surface of the grilled eel that had been taken out.

When Shen Cao was brushing on the sauce, she could see that the grilled eel was already cooked. There was a thin layer of juice on the bottom of the grill pan and oil seeping out on the surface. It tasted very good, but the color was a bit pale.

Therefore, the sauce she applied this time not only added color to the grilled eel but also enhanced its flavor. This sauce mainly consisted of soy sauce and honey, with a higher proportion of honey.

The sugar in honey caramelizes during high-temperature baking, giving the grilled eel a beautiful color.

After brushing the sauce on twice, the surface of the grilled eel already looked quite nice, so she sprinkled some white sesame seeds on top.

Then I put the baking tray back into the oven, this time without covering it.

The purpose of grilling is to remove excess moisture from the surface of the eel, thereby increasing its color and oil content.

The increased temperature causes the moisture on the surface of the grilled eel to evaporate quickly, forcing out the oil.

Because a layer of soy sauce and honey is added to the surface, the high temperature causes the honey to caramelize, and combined with the color of the soy sauce, a very tempting dark brown color is achieved.

The oil can also make the brown color look glossy and very tempting.

High-temperature, fast-roasting keeps the eel meat juicy inside even after it's been cooked through, resulting in a delicious grilled eel that's crispy on the outside and tender on the inside.