FWF Chapter 101 The Michelin chef is picking cilantro in the backyard
Chapter 101 The Michelin chef is picking cilantro in the backyard
The mornings at Renxin Pharmacy are usually woken up by the smell of soy milk from the breakfast shop next door.
But ever since Old Wu moved into the backyard and started the "fermentation project" at Wang Minyu's behest, the air quality index on this street has become very Schrödinger-like.
Wearing an N95 mask and carrying two baskets of xiaolongbao (soup dumplings), Li Siyuan stood at the shop entrance for a long time, mentally preparing himself before daring to push the door open.
"Senior brother, hold your breath." Zhao Na followed behind, holding today's dose of air freshener in her hand, and skillfully sprayed it three times into the crack in the door.
The scene inside the store was somewhat eerie.
Su Qing sat behind the counter, holding a pair of medical tweezers, intently picking out all the scallions from a bowl of white porridge.
Her movements were so precise, it was as if she were performing optic nerve separation surgery. Every single scallion was completely peeled off and arranged in a neat matrix on the table.
Guan Shan squatted on the stone stool by the door, holding a stainless steel basin in his arms, which contained half a basin of white rice and leftover braised pork soup from last night.
He ate with such gusto that you could hear the violent crunch of carbohydrates with every bite, completely oblivious to the faint, tangy smell in the air.
"Where's Dr. Wang?" Li Siyuan placed the steamed buns on the counter, his voice muffled behind his mask, sounding deep and unsteady.
"The backyard," Su Qing said without looking up, "They said it's for pre-job training of new employees."
Li Siyuan's heart skipped a beat.
A new employee? Didn't that food critic Tang Wei leave last night? Did they hire some strange new talent?
The two walked through the corridor and came to the backyard.
The scene before them once again shocked the two medical students' worldview.
A middle-aged man dressed in a custom-made white chef's uniform, with his hair neatly combed, was kneeling in the medicinal herb field.
He held a rusty pair of shears in his hand, trembling as he looked at a wildly growing plant.
The plant was about half a person tall, with dark green leaves and an intensely strong, almost dizzying, odor—it was a "mutant coriander" that had undergone systematic modification.
"Mr. Pierre, hurry up." Wang Minyu stood beside him like a supervisor, holding his signature stainless steel tea mug. "Coriander must be picked an hour before sunrise, when the volatile oils in its stems and leaves are at their most active. If you dawdle any longer, the sun will come out, and its medicinal effects will be diminished."
The man called Pierre looked up, revealing a face filled with despair.
Li Siyuan recognized the face.
Last week's cover of "Changxiang Food Weekly" featured him—Pi Ye, whose stage name is Pierre, the head chef of the only molecular gastronomy restaurant in Changxiang City. He is known as the "magician on the plate" and is best at using liquid nitrogen and centrifuges to make food unrecognizable.
"Dr. Wang," Pierre's voice trembled with tears, his hands shaking so violently he could barely hold the scissors, "I'm a cook, not a farmer. And... I'm allergic to cilantro, psychologically."
"That's right." Wang Minyu took a sip of tea. "This is part of desensitization therapy."
The story begins an hour ago.
Pierre went to the emergency room in the middle of the night.
As a top chef, he recently discovered that his hands began to tremble uncontrollably.
For someone whose livelihood depends on the precision of plating, this is practically a death sentence for their career.
He visited the neurology departments of major hospitals, and underwent tests for Parkinson's disease and essential tremor, but all his indicators were normal. In the end, his diagnosis was "excessive psychological stress."
After hearing about Tang Wei's miraculous recovery of his sense of taste, he decided to give it a shot and rushed over to knock on the door that very night.
Wang Minyu made the diagnosis in just one minute.
It's not Parkinson's disease, it's nerve damage caused by the accumulation of heavy metals.
As a fervent believer in molecular gastronomy, Pierre, in pursuit of the ultimate taste, has been tasting a large number of deep-sea fish over a long period of time, especially those large fish that are at the top of the food chain and are rich in mercury.
In addition, in order to maintain the color of the ingredients, he secretly used some non-compliant chemical color fixatives.
Mercury poisoning damages the cerebellum and nerve endings.
Western medicine's chelation therapy requires a long hospital stay and has significant side effects.
Wang Minyu's solution was simple and straightforward: eat cilantro.
Of course, it's not your average cilantro.
The system-improved "mutant coriander" contains a special plant chelating protein in its cell wall, which has a 500-fold greater adsorption capacity for heavy metal ions than ordinary plants.
But the prerequisite is that it must be eaten raw, and in large quantities.
"Cut." Wang Minyu uttered a single word coldly.
Pierre gritted his teeth and snipped off a bunch. The aroma of cilantro, hundreds of times more concentrated, exploded instantly, as if someone had injected an entire bottle of cilantro essential oil directly into his nostrils.
"Ugh—" Pierre gagged.
"Don't stop, I want three jin." Wang Minyu said expressionlessly. "Guan Shan, bring the juicer."
Ten minutes later.
On the examination table in the lobby, there was a large bundle of dark green liquid.
That eerie green color is reminiscent of Chernobyl's nuclear wastewater.
Pierre slumped in his chair, his hands trembling as if he were playing the piano.
"Drink it." Wang Minyu pointed to the cup. "This is the first course of treatment. After drinking this cup, one-tenth of the free mercury in your body will be absorbed, and your hand tremors will be reduced by 30%."
"This is not scientific..." Pierre stared at the liquid, his eyes unfocused. "I work in molecular gastronomy, I know about the surface tension and viscosity of liquids... This stuff is almost as viscous as paint."
"From a traditional Chinese medicine perspective, this is called 'aromatic awakening, dispelling foulness and detoxifying,'" Wang Minyu began to talk nonsense with a straight face. "From a biochemical perspective, this is a coordination reaction between plant polypeptides and metal ions. Do you want to drink it or not? If not, turn left and the Department of Neurology at the Second Hospital welcomes you."
Pierre closed his eyes and thought of his 200,000 yuan Yanagi-ba knife, which had been sealed away because of his shaky hands.
He suddenly picked up the cup and, with a death-defying air, gulped it down.
Glug, glug.
Li Siyuan and Zhao Na couldn't bear to look at her and turned their heads away.
As the liquid went down his throat, Pierre's face instantly turned green—literally green.
The pungent smell that hit him right in the head made every pore on his body explode.
Immediately afterwards, a cool sensation spread from the esophagus to the limbs and bones, and the previously tense and uncontrollably twitching muscle fibers miraculously relaxed.
Five minutes later, Pierre put down his cup and let out a burp with a strong cilantro smell.
He tentatively reached out and picked up a needle from the table.
As stable as Mount Tai.
"Amazing...amazing..." Pierre's eyes welled up with tears as he reached out to grasp Wang Minyu's hand.
Wang Minyu took a step back with disdain: "The consultation fee is 28,000 yuan. Scan the code or pay by card?"
Without a word, Pierre pulled out his phone: "I'll give you thirty thousand! The rest is a tip!"
"Wait a minute." Wang Minyu reached out to stop him. "You have to pay the money, but you also have to keep the person here."
Pierre was taken aback: "What do you mean?"
"I just expanded the kitchen at my pharmacy, and I'm short of cooks." Wang Minyu pointed to the mess of herbs and fermentation vats in the backyard. "Your illness isn't completely cured yet, and you need to drink 'special coriander juice' for half a month. Also, you need a lot of dietary fiber to help expel the toxins from your body."
"so?"
"So, for the next two weeks, you'll be the head chef here," Wang Minyu said with a capitalist's smile, "responsible for all our meals, and..."
He pointed to the long line outside the door for "Resurrected Stinky Tofu".
"Make that thing look amazing. You're a Michelin-starred chef, don't disappoint me."
Pierre looked at the bubbling black brine, then at his hands that had just regained feeling, and felt as if he had fallen from a French restaurant into a biochemical laboratory.
But he had no choice.
"Boss, what's for lunch?" Guan Shan chimed in at the opportune moment, looking expectantly at Pierre. "Could you make a hundred steamed buns? They have to be solid."
Pierre took a deep breath, straightened his bow tie, and his pride as a chef made it impossible for him to refuse the challenge.
"Give me flour," he said through gritted teeth. "And save all those damn cilantro roots for me. I'm going to make... Jade White Soup."
That noon, a dish with an extremely incongruous style appeared on the staff table of Renxin Pharmacy.
A huge stainless steel basin contained a crystal-clear, thick green soup, topped with a few goji berries. The presentation was so exquisite it seemed to mock the dilapidated clinic.
"This is a cilantro root starch solution processed using molecular gastronomy techniques, slow-cooked with pork cracklings at a low temperature." Although Pierre was wearing a white lab coat, his posture was as if he were in a five-star hotel. "Please enjoy."
Guan Shan ladled out a large bowlful, gulped it down, then frowned: "It's tasteless and not filling. Are there any more steamed buns?"
Pierre's lips twitched.
Wang Minyu calmly sipped his soup, feeling the slight warmth in his stomach.
This chef may be a bit pretentious, but his skills are undeniably superb.
The ability to make even the most unpalatable medicinal herbs so smooth is what "medicinal cuisine" should be like.
"Su Qing," Wang Minyu suddenly spoke up, "investigate that fat guy who keeps peeking in from the door."
Su Qing put down her chopsticks, her eyes, which had remained unmoved even when looking at a corpse, swept towards the door.
A chubby man wearing a windbreaker and carrying a large backpack, looking like a hiker, was wandering around.
But what he was holding wasn't a bottle of mineral water, but a miniature handheld spectrometer.
"His gait is unsteady, his lower body is unstable, and there are bloodshot eyes—typical signs of chronic sleep deprivation and anxiety," Su Qing said coldly. "But the smell on him is off. Besides body odor, there's also a... lab rat smell."
"Someone from Kangmei?" Li Siyuan asked nervously.
"He doesn't seem like a tech guy," Wang Minyu said, putting down his bowl. "He looks more like he's here to learn. Pierre, your test has begun."
Pierre looked completely bewildered: "What kind of test?"
"That fat guy is most likely here to steal your 'Jade White Jade Soup' recipe." Wang Minyu pointed to the basin. "Go, give him a bowl. Remember to add some sediment from Old Wu's brine."
"What is that?"
"A microecological preparation." Wang Minyu blinked. "It's a cure for voyeurism."