After entrusting the important task of making Three at Buns and Fernted Rice with Stead Buns to Zheng Siyuan, Qin Huai began slicing radishes.
He hadn’t cut radishes seriously for two days, and although Qin Huai didn’t feel like his knife skills had obviously stalled or declined like last ti, there was still so effect.
In the first 20 minutes, his touch wasn’t right.
As soone who couldn’t describe the exact operation but could only say, "You know the feeling, right?" Qin Huai highly valued intuition.
He felt that intuition was a magical thing.
When you have the right feeling, everything seems divinely aided; when the feeling is off, even though the procedure is flawless and all the details are controlled, the desired effect is still not achieved.
Qin Huai was slicing radishes in front of a phone cara, trying to regain the feeling while cutting.
"What’s up, Xiao Qin? Your mind seems elsewhere. Just back from a business trip to City A and too tired to chop radishes? If you’re really tired, just cut fewer, half an hour should suffice," Cao Guixiang said cheerfully.
Cao Guixiang was kneading dough.
It’s not dumpling dough; it’s bun dough. Cao Guixiang planned to improve the family’s breakfast with so Northern style large at buns that she should theoretically be good at making.
In fact, Cao Guixiang had so pastry skills, and they were quite good. She wasn’t like Zang Mu and Tong De Yan, who were purely at chefs. Perhaps due to the tis, when Cao Guixiang apprenticed in her youth, she learned a bit of everything.
In her words, back then in the Beiping chef circle, because of a particularly hardworking predecessor, being versatile was a necessity. This predecessor was proficient in both at and pastry, Shandong cuisine and Cantonese cuisine, eventually encompassing all strengths.
Under the influence of this predecessor, chefs like Master Cao needed to be adept in various skills to maintain their reputation in the circle, so Cao Guixiang learned a bit of everything from her master during her training.
Stuff like buns, stead buns, and fried sauce noodles, which were common snacks for sale, were things Cao Guixiang could manage.
It’s just that over the years Cao Guixiang rarely made snacks, and her pastry skills beca a bit rusty. She had long retired from being a chef, usually just cooking so ho dishes for her family. Instead of spending ti making buns and stead buns to freeze and steam every morning, it was better to grab a rice noodle roll from the breakfast shop at the community gate.
It might be due to her frequent interactions with Qin Huai recently. Every ti Qin Huai practiced his knife skills on video, Cao Guixiang would chat away to distract him. Qin Huai’s life is very simple; outside of snacks, it’s just custors, his sister, and friends. Talking about snacks so much made Cao Guixiang a bit itchy to pick up and practice her long-lost pastry skills again.
At this ti, Qin Huai had to say sothing very ruthless.
Even if Cao Guixiang wasn’t a pastry chef and hadn’t made snacks for many years, her kneaded dough was still very beautiful, more so than Pei Xing’s.
Pei Xing, don’t listen, this is a negative comnt.
"Not tired, Master Cao; I just couldn’t find the feeling earlier," Qin Huai explained, "Holding the knife felt off, cutting like this felt wrong, applying force like that felt wrong, and I adjusted several tis before it felt comfortable."
"You haven’t practiced enough to form muscle mory, which is why you feel uncomfortable here, awkward there," Cao Guixiang laughed, "Many beginners have this issue, always wanting to get things right in one go, unaware that so things rely on comprehension, so on practice, and so on both comprehension and practice."
"Xiao Qin, the last ti you told that often you can’t teach people clearly, you think it’s about the feeling, the strength, doesn’t this relate to why you can’t articulate specific adjectives?"
"Things that rely on comprehension can’t be taught."
"Take knife skills as an example. Last ti you asked how long you needed to keep slicing radishes, and I didn’t know. You asked what state the radishes needed to be cut into to be considered good, and I couldn’t say."
"Slicing radish thin like a cicada’s wing and translucent counts as good, right? Of course."
"Achieving uniform thickness and length in radish strips, spreading them out and piecing them back into a whole radish counts too, I think."
"Cutting them into tiny square pieces, stackable like building blocks counts, doesn’t it? That doesn’t seem to be an issue."
"But is practicing knife skills really just about achieving those? Do at chefs practice knife skills just to cut beautiful radish slices, neat radish strips, or nice radish cubes? Can machines not accomplish these tasks? If machines can easily do this, why would a chef spend years or even decades, exhausting themselves early and late, day in and day out practicing knife skills?"
"Because machines are inflexible, but food is alive."
"When you truly make a dish, when your skills are honed and your intuition sharp, you’ll know what ingredients you need. You’ll know the precise thickness of radish slices, the length of radish strips, and the size of radish cubes needed."
"Once you’ve reached a sufficient level, you’ll genuinely realize the importance of basic knife skills for both at and pastry chefs. Though you’re just starting to practice knife skills, you already understand their importance, which is why you specifically choose assistants with good knife skills."
"Sotis not being able to articulate sothing and just saying ’it’s about the feeling’ isn’t a bad thing. Being able to express the word ’feeling’ ans you’ve felt it. For soone who doesn’t understand it, it just ans they haven’t grasped the feeling they need to. There are many master chefs who don’t know how to teach apprentices, and even more who lack the words to do so. When I was learning, so could only keep pushing apprentices to practice without explanation, but they were all undoubtedly great masters."
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