Chapter 5: 5 The Unique Cooking Oil

Just as Ye Fei had picked out which recipe to work with when someone by the username of ‘Tao Tie [1]’ came into his channel. This guy’s name also reflected his personal interest very well. By naming himself after an [2] evil beast of gluttony and greed, Tao Tie clearly signal his love for good food.

After popping into the channel, Tao Tie send up a chat message, “Yi~? Why is there nobody here?”

Offended, Tasting Everything Under Heaven retorted, “Tao Tie, open your dog eyes and take a good look. You trying to say that this daddy is not somebody?”

From the familiar tone, one would assume that Tasting Everything Under Heaven knew Tao Tie. Then again, the circle of fans under Fine Food Category was only so big and can’t be compared to the number of fans from Song & Dance or Storytelling. Therefore, people who often haunt the Fine Food channels of QQ Broadcasting more or less knew each other.

Tao Tie laughed, “I did see you, Tasting Heaven Bro, but I’m surprised, ah. What is a senior fan like you doing here alone? This guy is only an Iron Star Rank 1 noob, ah. What’s so interesting about him? Better to visit Devourer of Peaks & Rivers’ channel. That guy is going to challenge 10 Burgers, 2 pounds of [2] Zha Jiang Mien and 20 Chicken Fillets. It’s really exciting, ah.”

“Tch,” Tasting Everything Under Heaven sniffed and said, “What’s so interesting about that? Isn’t it just watching some dude stuff his face? Wait, why are you here and not there?”

Tao Tie said, “It’s only starting at 10 a.m., I have some time left and was attracted by this channel’s ostentatious name. Heheh, don’t you think Divine Culinary Channel is kind of ostentatious, huh? You’ve been here for a while now, right? How much has this broadcaster eaten?”

Tasting Everything Under Heaven replied, “Nothing yet,”

Tao Tie, “… f*ck me, so what are you doing here, ah? Come on, come on, what’s so good about watching a rookie… Hm~~ What is this guy doing?”

Tasting Everything Under Heaven let out a little ‘hehe’ laugher and said, “Have you finally realized it? There’s something different about this place. Let me tell you now, this new channel is pretty interesting. All the other broadcasters only ate and drank things they bought but this Ye Fei is making his own food, ah. See those potato strips on the cutting board? He just cut those right before my eyes. Tao Tie my friend, let me tell you, his knife work is topnotch! I can’t resist crying out ‘good!’”

“For reals?”

“Why would I lie? I’ve already handed out HX¥50 worth of Applause and Flowers. You know I don’t give out rewards easily.”

The QQ Broadcasting Platform would automatically tally up the tokens given out by all viewers by marking the value down as a number next to their avatar.

Next to Tasting Everything Under Heaven’s avatar was a 50¥ [3], meaning he had contributed HX¥50 today.

“!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” Tao Tie reacted like a cat whose tail had been stepped on. “Aiyo! F*ck me! This for real, Tasting Heaven Bro?”

Tasting Everything Under Heaven, “How can it be fake? The knife work alone was enough to induce me to reward him. Let me tell you, ah. I’m curious to see what he would do next. If he pleases daddy, this daddy is willing to shower him with more tokens. Well? Are you interested yet?”

Tao Tie hesitated for a moment. On one hand, Devourer of Peaks & Rivers was about to break his eating record, on the other was a curious newbie broadcaster strongly recommended by Tasting Everything Under Heaven. Which should he choose?

After a while, Tao Tie sent up a smiley face, “I’ll believe you this once. I want to know if this guy is as interesting as you claimed.”

While they two had been chatting with each other, Ye Fei finally decided to go with Golden Potato Strips.

To make Golden Potato Strips, the first step was to cut the potatoes into strips. The other was to choose the oil to fry the potatoes. Since this was a simple, two-ingredient recipe, the quality of the ingredients as well as the skill of the chef factor a lot in the quality of the Golden Potato Strips.

Since the potatoes were given to him by the System, they should be the good stuff. However, he could only use his own factory blended peanut oil to fry the potatoes since he was not given any oil.

Ye Fei often cooked for himself at home [4] due to the unfortunate combination of being poor and having a huge appetite. It was much cheaper to just feed himself at home. He took out a brand new wok and placed it on the stove. He turned on the fire and was about to pour the peanut oil into the wok when a mechanical voice interrupted him.

“The blended peanut oil has been disallowed by the System. If you wish to make Golden Potato Threads, please use the Top Grade Rose Oil prepared by the System.”

Ye Fei nearly dropped his bottle of oil into the wok.

Rose Oil?

Recently, there had been a few new, very unique edible oil extracted using high tech means. Not only were these oils fragrant and delicious, but scientists had also artificially imbued them with all sorts of nutrients needed by the human body.

However, these oils were also very expensive to make. One could say that these special edible oils were made to be consumed by the rich. In fact, not just any old rich people could afford it, only the super-elite rich could afford it.

Ye Fei never thought he would ever have the opportunity to use this special cooking oil… this System is too m*otherf*cking powerful, ah!

Excited, Ye Fei looked left and looked right. However, he did not see any new bottles of oil anywhere.

Finally, he looked into the box that contained potatoes. A miracle! The remaining potatoes had disappeared leaving only a pink, heart-shaped box inside. The box was very finely made and looked like it could contain about 1 jin* of item. However, no matter what the content was, the box alone looked like it was worth a lot of money.

*jin = 600g

Ye Fei carefully took out the heart-shaped box and slowly teased the seam open.

Suddenly, the smell of roses filled the air.

The fragrance was fresh and invigorating, one whiff alone calmed Ye Fei’s mind and refreshed his spirit.

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“Wow, this is really fragrant, ah. Is it really meant for cooking?”

Ye Fei took the lid off the container and saw that within the box was something that looked like [5] heart-shaped wax inside the box. This is… the oil? Ye Fei leaned forward and inhaled.

[5] The fragrance of roses filled his nose and he had to resist the urge to lick the piece of wax. The colour was a wonderful pink, like solidified rose extract.

However, he managed to restrain himself.

Finally, he picked up a spoon from the container of cooking equipment and scooped out a tiny bit of the [4] pink wax cake and held it over the heating wok, waiting for the small bit of fat to melt and slide into the wok.

He was unwilling to use more of this precious oil. Once he used it up it would be all gone. This was a great luxury, ah. Something that he might not even be able to buy with money. He should save it for special occasions.

“To achieve Top Grade for Golden Potato Strops, Host must use all the oil within the container. Any leftover will be taken back by the System.”

While Ye Fei was treating the oil as though it was precious gold, the System nonchalantly told him to just throw everything into the wok.

The corners of Ye Fei’s mouth twitched. Everything? You want me to use everything, ah? F*ck, is daddy being too conservative? Wait, that’s still a whole jin of super high-grade Rose Oil to make Golden Potato Threads, ah. If people know about it would they come and beat me to death?

However, when he thought about how, if he did not use the oil the System could just make it disappear just like the rest of the [3] unused potatoes, Ye Fei decided that there was no point being courteous anymore and gouged out huge spoonfuls of the oil and just dump it recklessly into the wok.

“Let daddy splurge for once!”

He increased the heat slightly and a few moments later, the solid fat dissolved slowly into liquid oil, filling the room with the powerful fragrance of roses.

“Allow the oil to heat up for two minutes on high heat, add the potato threads, fry for half a minute, remove and serve. Hm, alright, I got it.” Ye Fei muttered to himself as he waited for the oil to heat up. Then, he reached for the pile of shredded potato threads, ready to throw them into the wok.

Normally, to get good fried potato shreds or potato slices, the potatoes should be soaked in water first to get rid of excess starch for a crispier finish.

However, there was no need to go through this stage with the potatoes provided by the System. These potatoes have no excess starch on the cut surface [5].

When the oil was properly heated through, Ye Fei carefully scattered the potato threads into the oil.

The crisp ‘ci la ci la’ of frying felt so much like music to his ears that Ye Fei’s soul nearly started dancing too…

[Gumihou: The reason why Gumi didn’t want to pick up this novel is because of weird ingredients like these. Even so, it is still a technically possible ingredient. See Note 5]

[1] Tao Tie – one of the 4 evil creatures in the world and is usually associated with greed and/or gluttony. Included this explanation in the sentence instead of just leaving it as ‘oh, his name is Tao Tie, so he obviously likes food’.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2zIUK6QYgE

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taotie

This creature was also mentioned in The Feast in the chapter when Su Nuan Nuan first served her family the Buddha Jumps Over the Wall.

[2] Zha Jiang Mian – Also known as ‘bean sauce noodles’

https://redhousespice.com/zha-jiang-mian/

[3] Some minor editing to smooth out the text

[4] The rose ‘cooking oil’ appeared to be some kind of solidified fat, since it was later described to have ‘melted’ with the heat. Could only assume that Rose Oil was probably a type of hydrogenated oil like margarine. Also, to achieve the deep pink colour as described, a lot of food colouring would be required, probably at least 3 different kinds… Gumi thinks this oil sounds kind of disgusting actually…

However, frying with rose oil is still technically possible. Although scientists would probably have to hydrogenate the vegetable oil and put a lot of colouring, to cheat rich people into spending money on a ridiculous thing like rose coloured, rose flavoured, rose scented solid fat for frying.

Also.

Rose oil is difficult to extract and is mostly used as an essential oil. It takes thousands of rose petals to make a few drops of Rosa damascene oil. The fragrance from the Damascus rose fits the description of the scent being refreshing best.

Anyway, it is technically possible to blend rose oil with organic sunflower oil. However, no one in their right mind would use pure rose oil for cooking because the rose flavour would be very highly concentrated and you’ll probably faint just from inhaling it.

So. The NHR Rose Oil 5% blended means 5% rose (0.5ml), 95% sunflower oil in a 10ml bottle at Euro 32.95.

https://www.healthysupplies.co.uk/rose-oil-blend-food-grade-10ml.html#

According to the description, ‘the rose oil is very concentrated, so you only need one or two drops for a recipe. According to this logic, the oil used by Ye Fei could possibly contain 0.01% rose oil and still smell like roses.

The box of solidified oil in Ye Fei’s hand probably contains 500ml of oil (considering the size of the heart-shaped box, possible fancy oil container and the 500 jin description) with 0.01% concentration of rose at 5ml. Depending on the cost of rose oil alone, the price of the Top Grade Rose Oil would probably be at least Euro 330 per 500ml of oil. Considering the fancy box it’s probably closer to Euro 380 or Euro 500 depending on the shop that carries this good.

In short, Top Grade Rose Oil is probably something like a powdered pearl extract face cream. Probably not a lot in there but there’s enough of it to jack up the price of a good by 15 times the regular price.

Oh, the ‘solid pink’ of the rose oil is probably colouring. Sorry to break everyone’s expectations but extracted rose oil looks just like most other oil when it comes to colour. A clear light yellow. Everyone, please don’t be cheated by Divine Culinary System into buying this expensive and clearly fake pink ‘Rose Oil’.

[5] Lol, no starch content on the cut surface? After all that fuss about ‘starch making potatoes slippery’ in the previous chapter?

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