Chapter 192 Moon in the Sea

Xu Qing picked up the spoon, scooped up a spoonful of food and put it into his mouth.

The rich seafood aroma instantly blooms in your mouth.

This is the sweetness and deliciousness that is unique to seafood. With the simplest braising method and without adding any seasoning, it brings out its most essential and purest charming aroma.

The first is the rich flavor of the soup. After being boiled in the casserole, the essence of the food is fully integrated with the water. The deliciousness and sweetness melt in the water, turning it into a fragrant clear soup.

Its appearance is as clear as water, without a trace of impurities, pure and simple. The soup looks ordinary, but the taste is extremely fragrant, and every mouthful of soup is full of the deliciousness of seafood, as if an invisible hand has picked out those delicious flavors and filled them all into every drop of water.

The flavor of the soup alone is very full.

Moreover, the taste of seafood is not monotonous. The seafood carefully selected by Li Yan has their own unique aroma. These different aromas overlap and blend with each other during the cooking process, and they are so harmonious that they seem to be one. When you savor them carefully, they retain their own charming charm.

They make the taste of the soup complex and charming, like the water surface reflecting different brilliances, wonderful and dreamy.

After tasting the soup, the ingredients in the casserole also enter the mouth.

First, the lobster has a full and firm texture. When you bite it, it feels a little bit elastic, as if the shrimp ball is bouncing gently between your teeth. Under this subtle elasticity, the shrimp meat retains its unique tenderness, as soft as tofu, but firmer and fuller than tofu. This wonderful texture of softness and toughness, elasticity and tenderness, makes you chew it again and again, savoring this wonderful feeling.

Next, the taste of the fish roe. The fish roe will become opaque after being cooked, but the fish roe in this casserole remains golden and transparent, as crystal clear as jade, and it is slightly cool and refreshing when you eat it.

Li Yan did not throw the fish roe into the casserole with other ingredients to stew, but added the refrigerated fish roe when serving, so the fish roe was undercooked.

Fresh fish roe should have a sense of separation from the other ingredients in the casserole, after all, the ingredients in the casserole are cooked together, and the various flavors are perfectly integrated. However, fish roe is an outsider, forcibly inserted into the harmonious picture.

However, even after eating the fish roe, there is no sense of disruption in the mouth and the taste is still round and perfect.

Li Yan marinates the fish roe before adding it to the casserole so that the taste of the fish roe is consistent with that of other ingredients.

The cold fish roe is delicate and smooth. It bursts in your mouth when you bite it lightly, like countless small bubbles jumping and dancing in your mouth. This wonderful feeling instantly brings your taste buds to the vast ocean, as if countless small fish are gently spitting bubbles in your mouth.

Moreover, the cold fish roe makes the soup taste more refreshing, and the sweet taste is extremely vivid against the backdrop of the cold taste.

Then, the taste of kelp comes in. The smooth taste of kelp is like silk sliding gently between the lips and teeth, playfully avoiding the pursuit of teeth, slipping through the gaps between the teeth.

After biting down with teeth, there is a slight elasticity, and the tender meat inside breaks easily. The crisp taste makes you feel refreshed between your lips and teeth.

Kelp has a unique salty taste, so there is no need to add salt, the taste of the dishes is delicious enough. At the same time, the flavor of kelp also makes the sweetness of seafood more refreshing, which is the fragrance of plants, like a refreshing breeze blowing through the mouth, alleviating the greasiness of meat and seafood.

Then extend the spoon to the bottom of the casserole and scoop up the fish, shrimp and scallops hidden at the bottom of the water.

The scallops are plump and elastic, the small fish are so tender that they melt in your mouth, and the shrimps have a thin shell that makes a crisp sound when bitten by teeth, crisp on the outside and tender on the inside. The various flavors in the mouth are like a symphony, harmonious and grand, vast and deep, just like the vast ocean.

After tasting all kinds of seafood, the spoon turned to the original lobster ball and put it into the mouth again.

This time, the lobster ball in my mouth had a completely different flavor, becoming dazzling and eye-catching, and its taste instantly overwhelmed the taste of all seafood.

No, this is not covering up, but absorbing, as if all the previous seafood and all the ingredients in this casserole exist for it, to bring out its freshness to the best and to reveal its most beautiful posture.

At the same time, the extreme deliciousness of the lobster also instantly awakens the seafood taste left in the mouth, and a variety of delicious and rich flavors instantly bloom on the taste buds, beautiful and dreamy. At this moment, the lobster ball in the mouth seems to have really turned into a bright moon on the sea, round and bright, it selflessly sprinkles its light down, forming another moon on the sea, forming a bright moon that belongs only to the sea. Under the sea, countless small fish and shrimps poked their heads out, gently clustered together, and carefully chased the bright moonlight.

The moon in the sea is the calm and reserved sea that wants to gently embrace the perfect and distant bright moon in its arms.

This is exactly what Li Yan once wanted to tell Meixiang.

It was a confession that he, who was once not good at speaking and shy, never dared to say out loud.

Xu Qing looked at the casserole in front of him and sighed softly.

It's a pity that this confession came so late after so many years, and has gradually changed over time.

Even though Li Yan tried desperately to regain the mood of the past and recreate the dishes of the past.

But this dish is still too unreal.

It was like a dream, one that the chef knew clearly he could never realize.

How can diners be moved by something that even the chef himself does not believe in?

This dish is beautiful, whether it is the appearance, taste, or imagery, it is all stunningly beautiful. However, it cannot stay in our hearts, like a beautiful but fragile bubble that bursts at the slightest poke.

Li Yan saw that Xu Qing had finished tasting the food, so he asked, "How does the food taste?"

Xu Qing said: "This dish is beautiful. But it is too unreal."

"As expected..."

Li Yan sighed softly.

In fact, he vaguely felt it while cooking.

He kept chasing after the plum fragrance in his mind, but forgot what the real plum fragrance looked like.

He just showed the illusory and beautiful moon in his heart.

But even he couldn't convince himself.

At that time, he was thinking about telling Meixiang about this feeling.

However, many years later, when he made the dish again with a different mood, he realized that the bright moon in the sea was so illusory.

Just like the name of this dish, Moon in the Sea, what he scooped up was just the fantasy in his heart.

What do the real plum fragrance and the real bright moon look like?
Li Yan looked at the dish in front of Xu Qing and asked, "Can I find the answer in your dish?"

Xu Qing shook his head and said, "The answer is not in the dish, but in your own heart. What I can do, and what this dish can do, is just to reflect the past in your heart."

(End of this chapter)