“At any rate, I know that you have your own thoughts.” Luo Xingchen didn’t say any more on the topic. There was no need for her to give Su Tang reminders about things she already knew. Besides, considering it was Su Tang they were talking about, things would probably work out. The girl was probably smarter than she was anyway.
Su Tang nodded and tacitly agreed to drop the topic. She did have her own plans, of course. She was just waiting for the first round of payment from the soap business to take action.
“I had someone pay the rent for this courtyard for another three months. I think it should be enough for you for the time being. When you have more money on hand, it will be easy for you to find any place you want.” Luo Xingchen casually set the topic aside.
“Alright, I’ll just take that as you paying for your meals!” Hearing that Luo Xingchen had paid the rent, Su Tang directly accepted her generosity.
Luo Xingchen laughed. “It seems that your meals aren’t very cheap.”
“Tch, don’t eat them then, if you can!” Su Tang glared at her. The rent for this courtyard should only be two to three hundred copper coins a month, or only a few taels of silver for half a year, but could money even buy the good things that were inside her space?
Luo Xingchen said with admiration, “I dare not. Miss Su is an unparalleled chef in this world. Rather, I am the one being blessed in this deal. It’s my honor!”
“So fake.” Su Tang snorted, and then they both laughed together.
By this time, Zhang Cuilan had already finished preparing the two fish and had come back to ask Su Tang what to do next, so the two girls got up and headed out to the main room. When they got there, they saw Su Nuo sitting there and eating a tomato while looking at the fish that Zhang Cuilan had scaled and gutted.
When he saw his sister coming, Su Nuo looked up and asked, “Sister, are you going to cook your Hot and Sour Grilled Fish for Mr. Song now?”
Earlier today, Su Tang had asked Song Yi for leave so that she could come back and meet her friend that had traveled a long way to see her. But, of course, Song Yi had acted very reluctant to let her go. He complained that Su Tang didn’t think about her Master anymore now that she had made friends, and that she already only came to study in the afternoons but she was even asking for leave on top of that.
Anyway, Song Yi grumbled for a long time but, seeing him like this, Su Tang immediately knew what was going on. So she acted very filial and obediently said that she would go and cook some delicious food and send it to him later that evening. Of course, once he extracted a promise for food Song Yi instantly let her go.
Su Tang felt terribly amused as she remembered the scene. It seemed that as her Master had grown older he had become more and more like a child for some reason.
Of course, Su Nuo had heard Su Tang promise to cook delicious food for Song Yi, so when he saw the fish laid out in front of him he assumed that was what it was for.
Su Tang nodded as she walked over to check on the fish, “That’s right. This is for my master and we’ll be eating something else.”
Su Nuo gulped down his saliva and nodded obediently. He knew that he was still in a mourning period and that he couldn’t eat fish, meat, or poultry. During this time their family even used rapeseed oil instead of lard to cook because of that.
“Cut it down the middle and we’ll start grilling!” Su Tang had brought out two snakehead fish this time which each weighed exactly five jin.
Ever since the space had reached level 15 and upgraded it was able to raise these snakehead fish and snakehead fish were actually very nutritious. Plus, they didn’t have small and thorny bones, and they also tasted very good. Su Tang planned to cook her
Hot and Sour Grilled Fish using the snakehead fish this time because, after all, Song Yi was already fairly old and Su Tang was worried that he might accidentally choke on the small bones that were in the other kinds of fish from the space.
Everything had long been prepared and, although Zhang Cuilan had never cooked the
Hot and Sour Grilled Fish that Su Tang mentioned, she had worked in kitchens for most of her life, so when Su Tang gave her instructions she immediately understood and began to carry them out.
Seeing that there would be no problems on Zhang Cuilan’s side, Su Tang went to check on Baohe and direct her through the steps of making the soup base for the dish.
This time Su Tang didn’t use the spring water from her space as a seasoning the way she had in the past, instead, she had asked Zhang Cuilan to make fish soup for lunch for herself and her daughter earlier in the day. By now the fish meat had all been eaten clean from the soup by the mother-daughter pair, but there was still the fish soup broth leftover and Su Tang planned to use this broth as the basis for the soup base this time.
After a while, Su Tang added the chili and tomato sauces and the milky white fish soup instantly changed color. Soon after that, the Hot and Sour Grilled Fish began to give off its signature sour and spicy aroma and caused all of the people present to begin salivating hungrily.
