“Little lady, you truly have marvelous skill!”
“Eh? It’s just that I wonder why the flavor of this mantou feels strangely familiar?”
Near the bridge at Xingguo Temple in the city of Bianjing, steam swirled around a bun stall sheltered under an indigo cloth canopy.
The diner held a mutton bun soaked in fragrant sesame oil with both hands. While asking out of curiosity, he couldn’t resist the temptation of the peppery and onion-scented aroma. He lowered his head to take another bite of the mutton filling, squinting his eyes in delight as he savored the endless aftertaste.
“I can taste it… this flavor is quite similar to the ones from that Ziying Roll stall next to the Great Xiangguo Temple a while back!”
“All the delicacies in the world share similarities. My little stall has only been open for a few days; perhaps you are eating my buns while your stomach is still daydreaming about other delicacies?”
A clear, feminine voice drifted from behind the thick, watery steam rising from the steamer baskets on the cart.
The diner hurriedly wiped his mouth with his sleeve, swallowed the minced meat, and said urgently, “What are you saying, little lady? After eating your buns today, I’m afraid no other buns will catch my eye in the future.”
“But… why do you show yourself behind a veil?” The diner waved his hand to clear the swirling white mist, wanting to catch a glimpse of what kind of “living Bodhisattva” this woman was—someone who sounded so young yet could make ordinary buns so fragrant. To his surprise, once the misty vapor cleared, there was still a layer of moon-white silk acting as a barrier.
Could she really be a Bodhisattva from heaven?!
The diner was stunned and stood there dazed, yet he still didn’t forget to raise his hand to stuff another bite of the delicious mutton bun into his mouth.
Xue Li had no idea what bizarre thoughts were crossing the customer’s mind. At that moment, her head was bowed, her narrow sleeves were rolled up, and she held a rolling pin, repeatedly rolling out the dough that had been brushed with lard pastry.
Speaking of wearing a veil—it really touched a nerve!
Xue Li was originally a somewhat famous food influencer in the twenty-first century. She loved food, loved life, and was a positive person who could be called a “little sunshine of the human world.”
However, for the sake of traffic and money, she was forced to eat amounts of food that far exceeded her capacity every day. It was then that the idea of self-induced vomiting began to sprout. Over time, gastric perforation eventually caught up with her. Later, to save her stomach, she had to give up mukbangs and eat bland medicinal meals every day to recover.
She figured it was heaven’s punishment for wasting food. On a certain quiet night, a violent stomach pain swept over her, and this time, it actually hurt her so much she fainted and transmigrated to the Song Dynasty!
Thinking of this, Xue Li couldn’t help but sigh.
Indeed, wasting food was utterly shameful!
But her money-grubbing heart told her that making money was not a crime! As a modern person coming to ancient times, wouldn’t it be easy to make money?
When she was a child, she always fantasized about taking her memories of the present and traveling back to the years before housing prices skyrocketed to buy up property frantically and become a billionaire. Now, she had indeed transmigrated, but… the time jump was a bit too large.
Ahem, back to the “veil.”
After settling down in Bianjing, she managed to save enough money to set up a sushi stall near the Great Xiangguo Temple. she gave the sushi a more classical name, calling it “Ziying Rolls.”
At that time, candidates from various regions had just entered the capital for the imperial examinations, followed by the Cold Food Festival. Relying on the “Ziying Rolls”—which could be eaten cold and were easy to carry—she made a fortune.
While she did attract a large crowd of diners, she also gained many jealous enemies, especially “Zhang’s Steamed Cakes” near the temple, which boasted a “Three No-Cheats” policy.
Zhang’s Steamed Cakes was originally a famous old establishment with a stable flow of customers. However, ever since her Ziying Roll stall was set up near the temple, the number of customers going to the steamed cake shop had visibly dropped by half.
Who told her she had too much talent for food and was equally adept at doing business? She divided the Ziying Rolls into salty and sweet varieties. The salty ones were mostly rolled with salted plums, pickled cucumbers, fermented fish, and charcoal-grilled pork. The sweet ones were mostly filled with honeyed lotus seeds, candied orange peel, and mangoes. The fillings were wrapped in glutinous rice and perilla leaves. With any choice of filling and a variety of flavors, it was no wonder she had exhausted herself for the sake of food in her previous life.
Although the Song Dynasty had rice wraps, fortunately, there were no rice wraps wrapped in perilla, and the fillings were usually a single, sour type that didn’t taste very good. Therefore, when such a previously mediocre—or even slightly unpleasant—food was modified to be delicious, the diners’ sense of novelty was piqued.
It should have been a good thing, but the trouble was that she set up her stall diagonally across from “Zhang’s Steamed Cakes.”
Those who ate steamed cakes, and those who didn’t, all gathered in front of her stall out of curiosity.
This completely infuriated Shopkeeper Zhang.
He conceived a wicked plan and bribed a group of local thugs to pose as customers and buy Ziying Rolls at her stall. After eating, these lowlifes suddenly cried out about stomach pains, rolling on the ground and acting shamelessly, intentionally attracting a crowd. As the owner of a century-old establishment, Shopkeeper Zhang stepped forward righteously, cursing her for using rotten fish and spoiled meat to make money and harming people’s lives, forcing the market officials to intervene.
Shopkeeper Zhang was a local bully with deep ties to the market officials. After they perfunctorily listened to a few sentences of her defense, her first stall was sentenced to “death.”
Poor Xue Li knew she was innocent, but she had no background. Her attempts to argue were dismissed as mere babbling.
The Ziying Roll stall was forced to close, but she was someone who couldn’t be killed off. She first moved to a small alley to continue her stall, but the neighborhood residents didn’t dare trust her skills anymore. Having no other choice, she painfully gave up the superior foot traffic of that location and sought another place to make a living.
Hmph, if Xiangguo Temple won’t work, Xingguo Temple surely will, right?
Fortunately, business had been good in those days, and she had saved a small amount of capital. This time, she surveyed the trade rules in advance, put on a veil, and moved her operations to Xingguo Temple!
It was just that hateful steamed cake shop…
They claimed “Three No-Cheats,” yet they clearly cheated her!
Xue Li grew furious at the memory. She raised the rolling pin high and slammed it down hard on the dough, letting out a loud thwack as if she were beating that cunning Shopkeeper Zhang until his teeth were scattered across the floor. The impact caused a cloud of white flour to suddenly puff up from the cutting board.
“Cough, cough… if the little lady doesn’t want to say, then don’t say it.”
The diner had just stuffed the final essence of the bun into his mouth and hadn’t had time to swallow yet. Hearing that earth-shaking bang, he shuddered, thinking he had offended Xue Li. With a red face and a stiff neck, he hurriedly waved his hand.
“I won’t disturb your business anymore. I’ll come back tomorrow to buy your buns!”
“Eh…”
Xue Li raised her rolling pin and hurriedly looked up, only to see the man’s retreating back as he ran away.
She shook her head helplessly.
That Zhang the Skinflint—not only did he squeeze out her stall, but he also caused her to scare away her customers. He truly was a menace.
However, she didn’t have time to settle accounts with him right now. The urgent matter was the dough in her hands.
There were many types of flour-based snacks in the Song Dynasty, which could generally be divided into two categories: Chuibing and Mantou.
But the Chuibing in the mouths of Song Dynasty people was not a roasted flatbread; it was a steamed flour food without filling, originally called “steamed cake” (Zhengbing). To avoid the naming taboo of Emperor Renzong (Zhao Zhen), “steamed cake” lost its name and had to be changed to Chuibing, which is equivalent to modern solid steamed buns.
Quite the opposite, Mantou in the Song Dynasty referred to flour food with filling, similar to modern Baozi.
The baskets Xue Li made early this morning were Song Dynasty Mantou. There were mutton buns, popular in both the palace and the streets to suit public taste; bamboo shoot and meat buns, filled with minced mountain bamboo shoots and fatty pork seasoned with Sichuan peppercorns for freshness; sugar-filled buns, made from red bean paste mixed with maltose and pinched into a pointed peach shape, decorated with rouge-red yeast and intended for children or those who loved sweets; and, to cater to the vegetarian pilgrims of Xingguo Temple, vegetarian buns made with diced tofu mixed with chopped fragrant mushrooms and cabbage, seasoned with sesame oil. The skin was rolled extremely thin, revealing a green and white pattern after steaming.
Among them, the mutton buns were undoubtedly the bestsellers. They were well worth her getting up with “chicken-nest hair” while the sky was still grey to prepare the filling.
For the mutton, one had to choose the “upper brain” cut, which had a mix of fat and lean. It was soaked in spring water to remove the blood, then treated with orange peel, star anise, and yellow wine to remove the gamey smell. Finally, it was placed in a ceramic pot and slow-stewed until it was fall-apart tender.
Xue Li was the first person to taste this delicacy today.
At dawn, with her hair in a mess, she crouched by the stove. Holding a piping hot, oil-soaked bun between her hands, she first brought her nose close to satisfy herself with the aroma, then used her pearly teeth to lightly bite into the tender meat that had soaked up the thick, amber-colored soup.
The fat and membranes, stewed for four hours over a small fire, had melted into gelatin. At the moment of chewing, the rich milky and fatty fragrance dissolved at the base of her tongue, as if she were tasting the creamy smoothness of floating clotted cream. The fragrance filled her entire mouth!
Recollecting it, Xue Li couldn’t help but swallow her saliva.
If the mutton buns were already this delicious, how amazing would the “palace exclusive” crab meat buns be?
She had wanted to make crab meat buns for a long time, but her current funds were limited. A catty of mutton cost about forty wen, while crab meat cost at least three or four hundred wen. She knew the difference between having mutton every meal and having crab meat once.
In Bianjing, there were countless shops selling buns. The original owner of this body was a delicate young woman, essentially an orphan. If she wanted to get rich soon, she had to use her past experience and find a unique path.
For example, right now, she was recreating the “Broken Crust Buns” (Posu Bao) she had eaten in her previous life.
She had come out to set up her stall very early. It wasn’t until the spring sun hit her face and her wrists ached that she finished rolling the lard-pastry dough as thin as plain silk. Even the elm rolling pin and the cutting board were stained with the scent of wheat flour and lard.
One had to know that the thinner the dough was rolled, the more layers would be formed when rolled up, and the layers of the flaky crust would only be rich after steaming.
Xue Li divided the long roll of oily pastry dough into uniform pieces. The salty filling was made of pork belly, diced spring bamboo shoots, and chopped mushrooms, seasoned with fermented bean sauce, ginger, and green onions. The sweet filling was based on red bean paste mixed with honey-marinated osmanthus and powdered sugar to enhance the sweet fragrance.
She skillfully flattened the dough pieces, wrapped the fillings, and her slender fingers flew, lightly pinching and folding. In an instant, she created rows of pleats, looking just like the slightly open mouths of carp—exquisite and elegant.
The bamboo steamers were lined with a layer of banana leaves to prevent sticking. She placed the buns inside and steamed them over a fierce wood fire for the duration of an incense stick. Then, the Broken Crust Buns, with their flaky skins as thin as clouds, could leave the steamer.
Since it was Xue Li’s first time making Broken Crust Buns, she was initially unsure. But when the lid was lifted and the hot steam, carrying the aroma of flour and oil, rushed toward her, revealing the oily, flaky skin of the plump white buns in the mist, her anxiety vanished.
“What kind of mantou are you making? How can it be this fragrant?”
Xue Li had just taken a Broken Crust Bun in her hand, tossing it back and forth between her hands because it was so hot. Just as she was about to tear it open to see how the layers had turned out, she heard the auntie from the neighboring stall—who sold Guoduo—lean over curiously to ask.
“Fresh out of the steamer and still hot. Auntie, why don’t you try one too?” Xue Li smiled and handed the bun over.
After the incident with Zhang’s Steamed Cakes, she deeply realized that in business, it was essential to maintain good relationships with the surrounding merchants.
Seeing her so cheerful, the auntie felt a bit embarrassed. She hurriedly waved her hand to decline, but Xue Li was faster, deftly stuffing a bun wrapped in oil paper into her palm.
“Oh dear, it’s not easy for a young lady like you to earn money. I’m already up there in years, how can I eat your food for free?”