As expected, Song Bowen came again the next day.
By the time of the chen hour (around 7–9 a.m.), there were already very few customers left at Lu Yan’s stall, and she had nearly sold out of everything. Song Bowen arrived right on time.
“Young Master Song.” Lu Yan waved at him and pulled a letter from inside her robe. “My younger brother is rather shy and doesn’t really know how to make friends. Why don’t you two start by corresponding through letters? This is the one he wrote to you.”
Song Bowen was overjoyed. He quickly accepted the still-warm letter with both hands and carefully tucked it into his robe.
“Miss Lu,” he said with a bow, “I brought yesterday’s braised pork home to my parents, and they both loved it. You don’t know—my father has been so troubled lately that he hasn’t been able to eat much. Yesterday he actually ate several extra bites, and my mother was over the moon.”
Lu Yan smiled.
“That’s wonderful. I also prepared something especially for you today. Take it home and see whether it suits your father’s taste.”
As she spoke, she took out a small bamboo steamer from her insulated container and lifted the lid.
Inside were six crystal-clear shrimp dumplings.
Song Bowen had rarely seen food this exquisite before and stared at them with wide eyes.
It wasn’t really his fault for being so amazed. At this time, starch wasn’t yet widely used in cooking. The starch-based foods Lu Yan made—such as her jelly noodles and shrimp dumplings—were practically ingenious shortcuts, and their greatest appeal was their novelty.
Delighted, Song Bowen thanked her repeatedly before hurrying home with his servant.
Those six shrimp dumplings immediately appeared on the Song family’s lunch table.
This time, Madam Song didn’t even need to point them out. Master Song spotted them at a glance.
The wrappers were crystal clear, and through the translucent skin one could see the pink shrimp inside. Each tiny dumpling had over a dozen pleats and the six of them were arranged in a circle like a blossoming flower.
“You bought these outside again?” Master Song asked Song Bowen, who was unusually home for lunch.
Song Bowen nodded.
“The stall owner made them specially. Yesterday I took one of her jars and gave her half a tael of silver, so she prepared a new dish for me today. I thought they looked beautiful, so I brought them home for Father to try.”
Master Song nodded approvingly and picked up a shrimp dumpling.
The moment he bit into it, the approval in his eyes deepened.
The wrapper was completely different from ordinary dumpling skins—thinner, chewier, and more elastic.
One bite was enough to reveal large pieces of shrimp inside. The fresh, sweet flavor of the shrimp filled his mouth, smooth and delicate, incredibly delicious.
Master Song praised it lavishly and even picked one each for his wife and son. Everyone ate happily.
“This stall owner truly has some wonderful ideas,” Madam Song exclaimed. “Yesterday’s meat already made me realize she uses many spices, but today… I have no idea how she came up with this dumpling wrapper.”
Song Bowen smiled.
“This stall owner really is a remarkable person. If you knew her age, you’d be even more surprised.”
Now that was unexpected.
From what they had heard—a talented cook running a food stall—Master and Madam Song had assumed she was a married woman in her thirties or forties.
Song Bowen’s words suggested otherwise.
“How old is she?” Madam Song asked curiously.
“I didn’t feel it was appropriate to ask directly,” Song Bowen replied after some thought, “but she looks much younger than me. I’d guess she’s only eleven or twelve years old.”
Both Master Song and Madam Song were stunned into silence.
After selling out and packing up her stall that day, Lu Yan kept thinking about what Song Bowen had said—that Master Song had no appetite.
In her opinion, the best appetite-stimulating foods were sour and spicy dishes.
The undisputed champion among them was pickled mustard fish.
Unfortunately, she couldn’t buy pickled mustard greens anywhere, so she’d have to make them herself.
Luckily, that didn’t take long.
On her way home, she bought a basket of mustard greens.
The pickled greens used in the dish were made from mustard greens. No special seasonings were needed.
She washed the greens and laid them in the sun until they softened, then blanched them briefly in water. She also sterilized a clay jar with boiling water and let it dry.
Then she packed the greens into the jar, added some salt to the blanching water, let it cool, and poured it over the greens until they were fully submerged.
After sealing the jar, the pickles would be ready in about three days.
Even though the pickles had only just been started, Lu Yan was already craving fish.
As soon as she got home and put away her money, she grabbed her fish spear and basket and headed to the Cui River.
The black fish in the Cui River were truly enormous.
Even an expert fish catcher like Lu Yan spent half an hour before spearing three large fish weighing seven or eight jin each. Her basket was almost too small to hold them.
Satisfied, she carried them home in both arms.
Now she no longer worried about whether they could finish the food.
Three fish—one for her family, one for the Song family, and one she could even sell.
Tomorrow she could add another filling to her lotus-leaf buns.
After cleaning the fish, Lu Yan filleted the meat, separated the bones, and chopped off the three large fish heads.
She decided she might as well make fish head with soaked flatbread.
She split the fish heads open and marinated them with salt and yellow wine.
Then she prepared the dough. She scalded one-third of the flour with boiling water before adding cool water and kneading it into a dough.
After dividing it into equal portions, she wrapped each piece around seasoned oil paste and rolled them flat.
The finished flatbreads came out golden and crisp.
Once the breads were done, she turned to the fish heads.
She fried them until golden on both sides and removed them from the pan.
Into the oil went scallions, ginger, chili peppers, Sichuan peppercorns, and star anise. Then she added her homemade sauce.
As soon as the ingredients hit the pan, an irresistibly rich aroma spread everywhere.
The only thing Lu Yan regretted was not having Pixian chili bean paste. Still, her own sauce wasn’t bad—she just couldn’t produce that beautiful red chili oil.
She’d have to buy some beef fat in the future and make her own.
After frying the sauce, she returned the fish heads to the pot and added yellow wine, simmering them for three minutes so the fish could absorb the flavors.
Then she added enough water to cover the fish heads and simmered them for another quarter of an hour.
The dish was ready.
She cut the baked flatbreads into triangles and soaked them in the fish broth.
A delicious pot of fish head soaked flatbread was complete.
Another new dish!
Lu Sheng was thrilled.
The flatbread was crispy on the outside and tender inside. One bite made crumbs scatter everywhere.
When soaked in the fish broth, it absorbed all the rich flavor while the outer crust retained a slight crispness and the inside became saturated with soup.
It was unbelievably delicious.
Not only did they finish the entire basin of soaked flatbread, but Lu Sheng also ate all the extra flatbreads that Lu Yan had baked and hadn’t yet put into the soup.
After lunch, Lu Yan minced the remaining fish meat into a paste and divided it in half.
One half would become fish wontons, and the other half would be made into fish cake.
Though both dishes looked troublesome, they were actually quite simple.
Lu Yan’s hands moved swiftly, and before long she had wrapped two full trays of ingot-shaped wontons.
The fish cake was even easier. She simply seasoned the fish paste, placed it in a bowl, and steamed it, brushing a layer of egg yolk over the top every few minutes.
That evening, the Lu family’s dinner consisted of a pot of fish wontons and a plate of sliced fish cake.
Lu Sheng loved them.
The little ingot-shaped wontons were bite-sized, their wrappers as thin as paper, and the fish filling was fresh, tender, and silky smooth.
He couldn’t stop eating them one after another.
The fish cake was delicious too.
Most importantly—
It cost them nothing!
Lu Yan’s skill with a fish spear was practically divine.
“Very good. This can be sold,” Lu Sheng commented as usual.
“I really do plan to sell the fish cake tomorrow,” Lu Yan said, “but forget about the wontons.”
“Why?”
“The other day I mocked those wonton vendors for putting in so little filling that it was barely there at all. If I start selling wontons myself now, it wouldn’t look very good.”
Lu Sheng burst out laughing.
Thinking about those street vendors spreading a tiny dab of filling with a bamboo sliver, the phrase ‘barely there’ suddenly became absolutely hilarious.