Adorable Food Goddess

Chapter 48: Is that possible

Translator: Kats  Editor: Perriemix

Ye Jiayao focused on carving the carrots in her hands. She hasn’t played with them for a long time and handling them now felt unfamiliar. It wasn’t until she carved the first flower that she found her groove back again.

When other kids were busy with playing the piano, dancing, and learning maths, Ye Jiayao played with carrots. At that time, she was jealous of the stuff that his father carved, so she practiced intensively to mimic them. After carving for a few years, she finally reached the point that the things she carved were better than her father. There wasn’t a challenge anymore and she eventually lost interest in the art.

“How did you know how to do this?” second lady Li asked in surprise.

“I learned from my father before,” Ye Jiayao answered vaguely.

The second level chef helper, Liu Qisheng, elbowed the first-class chef helper Zhong Xiang and quietly said, “Brother Xiang, this guy knows how to play a show.”

Zhong Xiang groaned unhappily. He had to admit that this Li Yao was a strong competitor. However, he knew that he wasn’t any worse than him. What Zhong Xiang lacked was chance. He was an apprentice for four years and he spent six years being a chef helper. He literally climbed from the bottom to get where he was today. He had real skills and he was a consistent hard worker. Master Chef Niu was just too selfish and didn’t want to promote chef helpers because he feared they would surpass him. Now that Chef Niu left, he thought now was finally his chance to excel, but Manager Li was reluctant to promote him. Instead, Manager Li hired second lady Li, who in turn brought Li Yao.

Within just one morning, Li Yao had already become the first-class chef helper – the same level as Zhong Xiang. Now, Li Yao was handed such an important dinner for his first test. It was not fair.

Zhong Xiang secretly hated Li Yao for stealing what was supposed to be his.

Ye Jiayao carved the decorations for the plate and asked the other workers to put tonight’s dishes in a straight line. She determined different shapes for each dish before she got started on creating a pattern.

The chef’s order goes color, fragrance, taste, and shape. However, Ye Jiayao has always thought that color and shape should be put together and placed before everything else. It was the color and shape of the dish that the customers would see first and would largely influence their decision. Also, a dish’s color and shape that was well done would set a huge appetite for the customers.

From the moment she saw the menu, she immediately pictured how they would look individually. She decreed that every dish on the menu would get a different design of plating.

There were eight cold dishes and 18 hot dishes in total tonight.

There would be 26 plates and 26 different styles. Never repeated.

Second lady Li didn’t know which dishes were in which plates, but she admired them all the same. She was amazed by the beauty and uniqueness of the patterns and designs on the plates.  This Li Yao is truly talented!

Decorations were frequently used in Huaiyang food, as Huaiyang food paid a lot of attention to refinement. They used refined materials, refined work, and beautiful matches, but Li Erniang hasn’t seen any other master chef making such exquisite accessories.

After the food materials for the cold dishes were prepared, Ye Jiayao went to work on arranging them.

She neatly positioned the duck tongue, using bamboo leaves to make rolls. She arranged the preserved and braised beef into the shape of a crescent moon and decorated the plate with the carrots she carved as flowers. She used honey to flavor the Chinese yam and decorated it with a few matrimony vines. She then used coriander and red cabbage to add more flourish to the plate.