Chapter 7 – Beggar’s Chicken
Rehosted by – Kitchennovel.com
Translated Prosperousfood.com
Re-translated and Edited by Gumihou
It turns out that the divine thing was hidden inside her body.
However, it could only be activated under special circumstances.
Those conditions depended on the grandpa and those other little orphans.
In the original story, Xiao Qi caught the eye of a paedophile who tried to kidnap her. Naturally, the others tried to stop him, and ended up killed by this scum. Shiyu happened to be out at the time, and came home to a blood drenched house. When she went looking of Xiao Qi, the little girl had already been killed and her corpse thrown to the dogs.
That dandy of a paedophile came from an influential Xiuzhen[1] practising family in Qing Shan City. To a helpless beggar, he was someone she could never offend. Finally, with the help of the male protagonist, Novel!Shiyu managed to gain her revenge against him. When she finally achieved her revenged, Novel!Shiyu personally cooked her friend’s favourite dishes as offering in front of their graves, which was how she managed to finally activate the divine artefact and began her journey as a Cooking Saint on the road towards immortality.
Shiyu felt conflicted, since the plot was written this way, could it be that all her companions have to die?
When she thought of everyone’s happy faces, she felt that there must be something she could do.
The people Novel!Shiyu was supposed to be with were all here. Therefore, there was a high possibility that the paedophile would also appear. The only thing she could now was monitor the situation and avoid it if possible.
Only, there was no saying when this thing would happen…
As her mind grew chaotic, Shiyu finally decided to eat her problems away.
There was already a space in the garden dedicated for growing vegetables, though it was not large. Shiyu got everyone to help tidy up the little plot before heading out to the mountain to gather some wild vegetable seedlings to plant.
When they heard the plants would result in delicious things to eat, the little radishes grew incredibly motivated and worked their hardest. Lao Er and Xiao Wu cut down some bamboo for Grandpa to make a lattice fence while Shiyu hoe the ground. Though she never did any farm work in her past life, the work was not exactly rocket science, and she managed to dig a respectable plot after half a shichen (1 hour).
When Grandpa offered to help, Shiyu had to bodily block him. Grandpa was already quite elderly, and had not have a a good life. If he became too tired, it might seriously impact his health.
After some thought, Shiyu decided to ask the neighbour to help them out. Though this was a fantasy world filled with Xiuzhen practitioners and immortals, the common people here still have a bit basic gardening skills.
The neighbour she approached happened to be the father of the tearful little girl from that afternoon. When he heard that Shiyu wanted some help with the garden, he immediately took up his tools and headed over. When evening fell, the little vegetable garden looked like it had been hoed and and tidied up professionally.
“Many thanks.” Shiyu said gratefully, and even gave him a bag of steam buns to take home.
Just like that, the issue of the vegetable garden was taken care of.
The fire they had used to grilled the pork that afternoon was still there. Shiyu ordered Lao Er and the rest to gather up more firewood and some clay from the river. She sharpened her knife and ‘took care’ of the chicken.
That’s right. Tonight, she intends to make Beggar’s Chicken.
The Beggar’s Chicken was something that could be said to taste not bad, or not good. For a delicious Beggar’s Chicken, one must put in quite a lot of effort. For the sake of hygiene, she immediately drain the blood, pluck the feathers and gut the chicken immediately after killing it. Not a lot of ingredients was necessary to make this dish. Once the inside of chicken was properly cleaned, she stuffed it with mushrooms as well as other edible fungi. To give it a better taste, she rubbed salt all over the surface of the chicken.
When the stuffing and seasoning was done, she wrapped the chicken with a freshly plucked lotus leaf and tied it up into a need package. A thick layer of clay was slapped onto the package and more lotus leaves was used to cover it for easy transportation.
Lao Er and Grandpa had just finished digging a shallow hole in the garden. Shiyu lowered the chicken into the hole, and shifted the embers over the hole, and started a small fire there.
By the time this was all done, the sun was just setting. The sky turned rosy pink, the fading rays of light gave everyone a red tint. Shiyu suddenly felt that this kind of carefree life was not too bad.
Shiyu glanced around and saw Xiao Qi staring at the fire with eyes bright with anticipation. The fire’s reflection seemed to danced in her eyes and she had the feeling that this little child was incredibly pretty. A closer look showed a tender white face, which given the proper nutrition, would grow into a cute, doll like face. Her cuteness was undeniable, it was also what attracted the paedophile in the first place.
Her heart seemed to have leapt to her throat. She wanted to tuck Xiao Qi into a closet, or take her far away. However, even if she were to change their location, there was no guarantee that they could avoid this flag or cause a worse disaster via butterfly effect.
She could only keep her eyes open and play by ear for now.
Heart heavy with thoughts, she brought out a tray of the remaining intestines and began to grill them. When they saw her working, the rest all began to help. They worked until the rest of the meat were grilled up. That’s when they discovered they had made too much.
“This is fine, let’s sell them tomorrow with the buns.” They had gotten their hands on these free anyway, any sales would mean a profit. If no one buys it, they can eat it later.
Once the large intestines were done, it was time to put out the fire. After scattering the embers, they dug out the hardened clay. It was very hot and lumpy looking, but when they thought of the chicken inside quite a few people started drooling; hating the fact that they can’t just smash the lump open now.
Shiyu did not disappoint them. She grabbed a piece of rock and smashed it again the harden clay. When the clay shell cracked, they could smell the fresh scent of lotus leaf. When the shell was peeled off, a golden yellow chicken appeared to sparkle in front of them.
The clay immediately cracked, and a fragrant smell whiffed out. After getting rid of the mud, and opening the leaves, a golden yellow colour chicken appeared in front of everyone. It was infused with the mouth-watering aroma of the mushroom and made all salivated in anticipation.
Since it was still quite hot, Shiyu sent Xiao Wu to fetch chopsticks and a large plate. She carefully manoeuvred the whole chicken and began to split it up.
Suddenly they heard a loud commotion from the outside. “Lin Fan, do you believe that you’re still that untouchable genius from before? You’re nothing but a beaten dog now. Just wait, after the great clan competition later you’ll be forced out of the Lin Clan.”
“What a useless person. Using up all the clan resources just because your father is well connected. If I were you, I’d have left sooner. You sure are thick face to stay within the clan.”
“What’s the point of speaking to this waste of space? He won’t even be fit enough to polish our shoes in the future.”
Lin Fan.
Shiyu handed the chicken over to Grandpa and crept softly towards their front gate. From there, she could see a bunch of youth crowding around a young man in a back alley. They were kicking and hitting him with their fists.
It was a long time before they were satisfied. A few of them put their noses to the air, sniffing, “What’s that smell? It’s really nice. Great, now I’m hungry. Let’s go, and get something to eat. We’ll have to be careful not to beat him to death, otherwise that father of his will take it out on us.”
With that, the group wondered off, still grumbling among themselves.
Finally, there was only that skinny youth left in the alley. As she watched, the youth gritted his teeth as got up. Shiyu narrowed her eyes and was able to see his face clearly for the first time.
It was just as the novel had described: Delicate and pretty, yet shot through with a stubborn streak.
This waste of space was the mysterious stallion male protagonist – Lin Fan. Really didn’t expect to meet him so quickly!
[Gumihou: Of course we must have Beggar’s Chicken, every foodie or cooking story somehow always have this. Lol]
Also, since Beggar’s Chicken is pretty famous, there’s no need to translate a particular recipe, so here’s a youtube of it! Let me know if anyone attempts it, alright?
[1] Xiuzhen practisers are people who cultivate to become immortals. It is where immortals, saints, and demi-gods etc come from. Hence the title of the novel Little cooking saint.
^_^
Translated by Gumihou from kitchennovel dot com.
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I just started reading this novel and it just so happens that this chapter reminded me of emmymade’s beggar chicken. Watched the video a good couple of weeks ago. Probably sometime during the summer.