The Onion-Cutting Ninja's Secret Crush

135 A Change to the Plan

While Si Qi and Fan Mei had gotten their feedback, Si Jin had continued preparing his own dishes. He had to admit that seeing not just one person but several finish almost right after another gave him some pressure.

He knew he had two hours to prepare everything and as long as he timed it right, he would be able to finish without problems. But seeing others finish — including the men of his own clan —, there was a chance he was doing something wrong and that was why he needed so much longer.

Should he not have made this many dishes? Was it better to incorporate the ingredients into only one or two dishes? Thinking about it, he didn't see a logical reason why one should be better than the other. In fact, his way of doing the task might be better because he could show a wider variety of dishes, thus better displaying the skills he had.

Well, this was something he wouldn't be able to solve right now. He'd discuss with Si Shi Wu later when they had gone home. Also, Xiao Ming would certainly give him valuable feedback.

Just thinking of the latter made his motivation rise and he ignored everything else and just continued with his own attempt at Xiao Ming's task. Since the vegetarian dishes were already done, it was now time for the dishes with meat.

The oyster sauce chicken was easy enough to make. He prepared the sauce before browning the chicken in the pan, adding the other ingredients at a fast pace. Finally, he poured the prepared sauce onto everything and let it simmer while he already moved on to the next dish.

This sure had been easy enough. With this success, his confidence in solving this task successfully rose sharply and the bit of hesitation he had felt before vanished.

He had about fifteen minutes until the oyster sauce chicken would be done so he decided on making the Sichuan beef next. Just like with the wonton soup, he didn't have all the ingredients he needed so this was yet another dish that he needed to improvise on.

The problem this time was that the meat they had been given was chicken, not beef. So really, this might not be the most suitable dish to make but it used few ingredients and he felt it fit the rest of the dishes quite well.

Either way, he figured that it should be possible to still make the dish with another type of meat. Whether it was chicken, beef, or pork, it was all meat in the end. The difference shouldn't be too big. Maybe when being asked about this later, he should call it Sichuan chicken instead. That should give this dish some more legitimacy.

He considered for a moment but then inwardly shook his head. Saying less was still preferable. If he said too much, he would just open himself up for mistakes. He'd let the judges taste the dishes and just give their feedback like that. As long as he wasn't asked directly, he wouldn't say anything.

He didn't think that there would be any big problems. After all, even if there wasn't any meat, you could still make a vegetarian version of most dishes so he should be safe. But it was always better to be safe than sorry. Especially so when it came to a show he was trying to win so he could go out with Xiao Ming.

Anyway, the most important part about this dish was that, other than the meat, it mainly utilized carrots. He had more than just a few to spare so this dish had seemed like the perfect choice. In any case, while he had been studying recipes recently, his repertoire was still limited. He couldn't think of a better alternative.

He only needed one bowl of this dish so he only used a small part of the ingredients as well. He stir-fried everything quickly and still had time before the oyster sauce chicken would be finished simmering.

For the amount of time left, the Cantonese steamed chicken seemed like the perfect choice of dish. After all, he only needed to marinate the meat and set up the steamer. There was more than enough time to finish that. Also, he should steam some rice while he was at it to go with the dish. After all, this was the dish he had decided to use the middle bowl for. Either he'd have to make a bigger amount or he'd have to add something. Everything considered, he figured that making rice and using one half of the bowl for it seemed like the perfect use of space.