Qin Huai couldn't stop eating at all.

In his view, whether it was braised pork with preserved vegetables, simmered duck, braised sea cucumber with scallions, or stir-fried yam, they were all perfect with rice.

Yes, as long as it was made by Cao Guixiang, it was a perfect dish to go with rice.

Among them, stir-fried yam was the simplest and most reasonably paired.

As Cao Guixiang said, yam naturally has a sticky texture and is inherently good for thickening. Thickening yam is easier than other dishes, but at the same time, it's also more difficult.

It's easy because, no matter how you thicken it, the yam will always have a thickened effect when it's done. It's difficult to figure out how to achieve the ideal light thickening, how to make the dish look more appetizing while changing its texture and taste to meet the chef's desired result.

Cao Guixiang achieved it.

When Qin Huai ate the braised pork with preserved vegetables, he felt the pig didn't die in vain.

When eating the simmered duck, he felt the duck didn't die in vain either.

When eating the braised sea cucumber with scallions, he felt the sea cucumber, being on this plate, had died for a worthy cause.

When eating the stir-fried yam, he deeply wished he could have cut the yam slices a bit thinner.

If the yam slices were thinner, the texture would be crisper, and while chewing on the yam, he might capture a sensation closer to a crunchy feeling, that refreshing feeling being the effect pursued by light thickening.

Qin Huai found out that now, when eating, he wasn't just marveling at how delicious or perfect the dishes were with rice, causing him to eat non-stop and to always feel like eating more.

He could now analyze how delicious a dish was and why it tasted so good. Where the cooking chef excelled, where they made mistakes, and where they performed with remarkable skill.

Previously, Qin Huai felt that with Huang An Yao's explanations, good dishes would taste even better. Now, Qin Huai didn't need Huang An Yao to explain anymore, he could explain to himself in his mind.

Even Qin Huai himself hadn't realized that while his eating seemed like gobbling down large bites, each bit was actually chewed slowly, with pauses between when the dish entered his mouth and the chewing, due to contemplation.

This is taste.

Cao Guixiang watched all this with a smile, eating without saying a word, just occasionally adding two pieces of food to Qin Huai's plate and reminding her husband.

"Why eat so much in the evening? One bowl is enough, eating too much will just give you indigestion and stomachache later."

Zhang Chu: ...

So, wife, will love disappear?

After finishing his bowl and a half, Zhang Chu washed the dishes and cleaned the kitchen, while Cao Guixiang and Qin Huai put their aprons back on and went into the kitchen to work.

Cao Guixiang was making broth, and Qin Huai was cutting radish.

The broth in the kitchen had been simmering since the afternoon. For all the big dishes Cao Guixiang made that required broth, the broth simmering time was never less than 16 hours. The chef obviously couldn't possibly stay nearby all the time during this lengthy process.

In reality, as long as someone was around during the initial simmering phase and at the final stage, and checking at intervals during other times, nothing much could go wrong.

At this stage, the broth didn't need monitoring.

Therefore, Cao Guixiang ostensibly was tending to the broth but was actually watching over Qin Huai.

Xiao Qin, the apprentice, was a bit nervous.

It's obviously different from online lessons; in-person teaching meant Cao Guixiang could directly correct his mistakes by hand.

Before, when Qin Huai practiced holding a knife at Cao Guixiang's house, as soon as Cao made a move, Qin would instinctively stop, waiting for her to adjust his hand, forming a kind of muscle memory.

Xiao Qin, the apprentice, focused intently on cutting the radish.

Compared to the last time he cut radishes at Cao Guixiang's house, Qin Huai had made noticeable progress in his knife skills.

People always say going from 1 to 100 is easy, but going from 0 to 1 is hard, and Qin Huai thought both were hard. He had managed 0 to 1, now struggling to get from 1 to 10.

Zhang Chu peeked from outside, unable to really understand, but it didn't stop his self-talk commentary: "Xiao Qin's radish cutting now is quite alright, he's got it down. Radish slices are radish slices, and radish shreds are radish shreds."

"Should I make him a few more cutting boards?"

Xiao Qin, the apprentice, was focused on cutting radishes while also watching from the corner of his eye to see if Master Cao would suddenly rush up and correct him by hand.

Master Cao did not.

Master Cao pretended to be busy with the broth.

Unwittingly, Qin continued cutting radishes, filling one sack after another for shredded radish; when full, Zhang Chu would drag it out and bring another new basket back.

Qin Huai became more relaxed, his cutting motion faster.

In a way, this was the first time Qin Huai was this focused on cutting radishes.

Before, while practicing at Cao Guixiang's house, he couldn't even hold the knife properly, making him partly-focused with every move by Cao Guixiang signaling a mistake.

For the first few days, Qin Huai even wondered if he could still hold a knife. His first reflex each day was to repeatedly adjust his grip, feeling like nothing was right; touching the knife felt strange.

In such a scenario, the pressure of practicing knife skills was imaginable.

Thankfully, Cao Guixiang wasn't the strictly critical type of mentor; however many fundamental mistakes Qin Huai made, however repeatedly, Cao remained patient. Even if corrected, he might repeat the mistake, Cao never showed displeasure, swiftly adjusted his hand, and would say how it should be done.

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