After a while, Xu Yanxia, having finished her makeup and styling, arrived at the studio.
Just as Ye Shu had mentioned earlier, today's first recording session was an amateur competition. The four guest judges each had to choose one teammate from ten amateur contestants to proceed with the upcoming matches.
When she arrived, the ten amateur contestants were already standing at their respective stations, listening to the staff explain the rules and precautions.
There were both men and women, with men making up the majority, mostly aged between twenty and forty.
Ye Shu, who had already snooped out some inside information, came over to whisper her report. I found out. That royal cuisine heir surnamed Jin and that Mrs. Zhuang both arranged for their own assistants to get in. If I had known, we would have planted someone too.
Her tone was a bit indignant.
Xu Yanxia merely smiled and said, It's fine. Even if they arranged it, they won't win. The judges aren't easily fooled.
As soon as she finished speaking, seeing that the guest judges had all arrived one after another, the recording officially began.
As usual, the host opened the show by introducing the guest judges and the competition rules, followed by the self-introductions of the amateur contestants.
Once the introductions were over, the contestants began to showcase their signature dishes.
Multiple cameras tracked their movements simultaneously. As a guest, Xu Yanxia, along with the other three, watched and chatted in front of the contestants' workstations.
Thanks to the production team's prior screening, all the contestants had a solid foundation in cooking, but their styles varied greatly, making for quite an entertaining watch.
For example, a slightly chubby young man was making spicy crayfish. Just from his technique in washing the crayfish, you could tell he was an old hand, and his workstation was covered with various kinds of chili peppers.
Upon asking, it turned out he was indeed a night market vendor specializing in crayfish.
There was also a young man making pastries, about twenty-five or twenty-six years old, who introduced himself as a pastry chef from a certain restaurant in Jingbei.
His pastry-making techniques were indeed very skillful, but even though he was making common street-style brown sugar glutinous rice cakes and coconut milk cakes, he gave them the fancy names of Imperial Consort Cake and Empress Dowager Milk Cake.
Needless to say, one look and you knew this was the person planted by that royal cuisine heir, Master Jin.
There was also a woman around twenty-seven or twenty-eight who called herself a stay-at-home mom. She was making noodles, hand-rolled ones at that.
As a Northerner, Xu Yanxia was quite interested at first, only to discover that after making the noodles, the woman took out a jar of sauce produced by Mrs. Zhuang's company to make the fried bean sauce.
And she was chatting very enthusiastically with that Mrs. Zhuang.
She immediately understood that this was also someone planted in advance, so she moved on to watch the others.
A while later, she stopped in front of a boy who looked only seventeen or eighteen, who was earnestly and carefully slicing a block of silken tofu.
After observing his tofu-cutting technique and looking at the various scars on his hands, Xu Yanxia asked, Are you making Wensi Tofu?
Yes, teacher,
The boy quickly nodded, looking a little nervous.
Xu Yanxia smiled and said, Don't be nervous. You look quite young, are you still in school? Why did you choose to make this dish?
The boy was quite honest and told her directly, I'm a culinary major at a vocational school. This dish is the most difficult one in our current curriculum, so I wanted to show off the hardest thing I know how to do right now.
Xu Yanxia nodded and smiled, offering a word of encouragement, Keep it up.
Then she continued walking forward.
As the designated one-hour time limit came to an end, the contestants' dishes were presented one by one.
This segment didn't require the judges to give feedback; the four guests only needed to taste the dishes and pick their teammates.
Unsurprisingly, Master Jin chose the young man making the royal pastries.
And Mrs. Zhuang naturally chose the mom who used her sauce for the fried bean sauce noodles.
Brother Song chose the chubby young man making the spicy crayfish because their cooking styles were quite similar; both liked making robust, late-night street food.
Xu Yanxia chose the boy making the Wensi Tofu.
For no other reason than the fact that he used pure, clean chicken broth without any additives.
Although he was still lacking a bit in seasoning and procedure, compared to the other heavily street-styled contestants, he was the most moldable.
With that, the first recording session ended.
The staff rearranged the set, removed the extra workstations, and prepared new ingredients before immediately starting the second recording session.
The content of this round was for the guests to upgrade and transform the works of their newly chosen teammates. After jointly completing the new dish, it would be handed over to the judges for feedback and scoring.
Compared to the amateur competition just now, this round was clearly more entertaining to watch. The cameras all focused on the four workstations.
Off-stage, Xiaozhen was a bit nervous and quietly muttered to Ye Shu, Since those two teams both have pre-arranged people, do you think they're super prepared and will overshadow Xiaoxia?
Ye Shu, however, scoffed with a smile. Even if they prepared for a year, they wouldn't necessarily be a match for Director Xu. Don't worry about that. I'm waiting to catch the mole today. Help me take some close-up shots of Director Xu so we can post them for promotion later.
No problem.
Xiaozhen immediately opened her phone and started recording.
On stage, the host routinely began interviewing them one by one—
First up was Brother Song's team. Seeing that their prep area now had chicken feet, abalone, and bullfrogs in addition to the crayfish, the host immediately asked, Are you two going to make an upgraded version of the spicy crayfish from earlier?
That's right,
Brother Song replied in his deep baritone voice, This time we're making the Supreme Overlord Crayfish, which is especially suitable for the late-night crowd who loves spicy food. Please look forward to it.
As he spoke, he flexed his upper arm muscles for the camera, as was his habit.
The host complimented him along those lines and then moved on to interview Master Jin's team—
I wonder what kind of royal cuisine Master Jin and his teammate will bring us this time?
Master Jin chuckled and said, The requirement for this round is to upgrade and transform. Since my teammate Xiaofang made pastries earlier, we will continue to bring you a royal pastry this time: the Royal Rose Cake, made with the finest tribute roses from Yunnan.
Alright, let's wait and see!
After the host finished speaking, he brought the camera over to Mrs. Zhuang's workstation.
The two of them were busy kneading dough of various colors—purple, green, and yellow—looking very colorful.
It made him exclaim Wow, and he said, So many beautiful balls of dough. I wonder what surprise you two moms are going to bring us?
Mrs. Zhuang, still adorned in her usual jewelry, smiled at the camera and said, Earlier, the loving fried bean sauce noodles made by my teammate Huihui's Mom touched me very much. So, next, we are going to bring you an assorted fresh vegetable dumpling dish that is full of love and nutrition, and is also especially suitable for babies to eat.
Hearing this from the side, Xu Yanxia couldn't help but scoff in her heart.
—What a great full of love and nutrition.
Since this round was about helping teammates upgrade their dishes, the teams were allowed to bring their own ingredients. Therefore, those colorful balls of dough were actually made by the two of them using vegetable powder they had brought along, rather than freshly squeezed vegetable juice prepared on the spot.
Judging by the vibrant and uniform colors of their dough, they definitely used a lot of artificial additives and food chemistry tricks.
...
However, she had no time to pay attention to that right now.
She had a much more important task: helping her teammate, Xiaoman, upgrade the Wensi tofu from earlier into Chrysanthemum tofu.
"Wensi tofu is all about the thinness of the shreds, while Chrysanthemum tofu is all about the shape,"
By the time the host approached their station, Xu Yanxia was already teaching Xiaoman how to cut the Chrysanthemum tofu.
"When cutting Chrysanthemum tofu, the key is to cut straight and deep while controlling your strength and spacing. The blade must be perfectly perpendicular to the tofu at a ninety-degree angle. The space between each cut should be wider than with Wensi tofu, but it must be perfectly even, and you absolutely cannot cut all the way through."
Seeing her holding the knife in one hand and gently guiding the tender silken tofu with the other, all while carefully explaining the key points to her teammate without a single pause in her movements, the host didn't even dare to interrupt.
He could only turn to the camera and whisper his introduction, "It seems our Director Xu is going to help her teammate Xiaoman transform the Wensi tofu from earlier into an even more exquisite dish. Let's wait and see."
But because the sight of her cutting the tofu was so mesmerizing, even after finishing his piece, the host was reluctant to look away. He guided the cameraman to stay and capture a few close-up shots of Xu Yanxia's knife work.
It wasn't until she was about to finish cutting all twenty blocks of tofu that he finally planned to check on the other contestants.
Unexpectedly, right at that moment, a loud crack echoed through the room.
One corner of Xu Yanxia's workstation suddenly collapsed, and the entire countertop tilted sharply without warning.
This gave the host a terrible fright, and Xiaoman couldn't help but cry out in alarm, "Teacher!"
In an instant, the eyes of everyone in the room, including the judges, darted over.
The directing team was already preparing to cut the camera feed and quickly sent staff over to replace her workstation.
To everyone's surprise, Xu Yanxia didn't stop her movements at all. Instead, she adjusted the angle of her blade to match the tilt of the table and kept cutting. She calmly told Xiaoman, "Don't panic. When you encounter a situation like this, as long as you keep the knife perpendicular to the tofu, there won't be a problem. Of course, you must maintain the exact same amount of pressure as before."
With a few more rapid slices, she finished the last block of tofu in a matter of seconds.
Xiaoman hurriedly and carefully placed the freshly cut tofu blocks one by one into the clear water beside the stove.
The camera quickly zoomed in for a close-up. As Xiaoman gently swirled the water, the excess tofu crumbs drifted away. The soft, shapeless blocks of tofu gradually bloomed into beautiful chrysanthemums.
Every single petal was perfectly uniform in thickness and length, without a single visible flaw.
"Her knife skills are absolutely incredible!"
The host couldn't help but exclaim in awe.
Xiaozhen, who had been so tense she hadn't even dared to breathe, finally let out a long sigh of relief.
But right after that, Ye Shu's voice rang out from the side.
"Excuse me, Mr. Zhuang, why are you holding up your phone to film our Director Xu instead of filming your own wife?"
"Our Director Xu has a boyfriend!"
