In addition to drinks and porridge, as well as side dishes, the protagonist mainly eats insect meat, nuts, roots, fungi and vegetables, some roasted and some eaten raw.
Cooking is also a process of continuous progress in history. It was only after primitive people mastered fire that they learned to cook food. At first, they mainly cooked simple grilled food. Variations include stewing food under the fire like beggar's chicken.
After the invention of pottery, humans can cook food. There are also people who do not have pottery and use cow stomachs as containers to cook food. However, such containers are extremely easy to damage.
After the development of pottery to a certain extent or the invention of bronze ware in China, steaming utensils such as steamers began to appear, which could steam food. The West did not master similar technology until much later. Therefore, Chinese staple foods - steamed buns, steamed buns, etc. are steamed, while Western staple foods - bread, biscuits, etc. are baked (that is, baked).
As for the cooking method of stir-frying, it appeared even later. It had to wait until iron pots and fat became very popular.
Many representative dishes of modern Chinese cuisine, including street snacks, have a history of only a few hundred years, and many of them even appeared after the Republic of China. The diets of ancient commoners and nobles have long been relatively monotonous.
The protagonist now wants to expand his variety of dishes, but the problem he encounters is that his technological level cannot keep up. He can only use natural or primitive artificial cooking utensils. Being able to cook food in pottery is considered a big improvement, so the side dishes It can only be eaten raw or processed by roasting or boiling.
Insect meat can be made into barbecued meat, or added to porridge to make a pot of meat porridge. The protagonist mainly eats mealworm meat. He refuses to eat the more delicate maggot meat that other kings and queens prefer. After all, humans have a fixed impression of flies and their larvae as dirty.
As for mealworms, humans often eat them anyway. For example, fitness people like to eat protein powder. Many brands of raw materials contain high-protein mealworms.
After overcoming this psychological barrier, the protagonist accepted the insect meat, which tasted pretty good, although the muscle fiber was slightly hard, like old beef or horse meat with thick fiber.
The protagonist prefers the fat part of insect meat to the muscles. There is not much fat in mealworms, but whether it is skewered on the muscles and grilled, or put a little in the meat porridge to make oily flowers, the taste is delicious. It may also be that the protagonist's current pursuit of high calories has changed his taste. In his human period, except for cream and chocolate, he had no preference for other fatty foods.
In addition to fresh insect meat, the protagonist also likes to eat cured meat and bacon with unique flavors, both of which are also made from mealworm meat.
Ants also have the habit of eating dried meat. They will put the meat that they can't finish in the sun to dry and dehydrate it, so that it can be stored for a longer period of time.
But the cured meat and bacon of the protagonist are specially made. Considering that the cutting tools of the ants are not very powerful and only have some simple gravel or ceramic knives, these cured meats or bacon are cut into slices before being made, so as to avoid the finished product being too hard to process.
After the fresh meat is sliced, it is dehydrated and marinated in coarse salt, and then exposed to the sun to become cured meat. When placed on a fire and allowed to burn, the smoke produced becomes bacon after being dried.
These two foods are considered very unhealthy in the human world, but they still conquer the tongues and hearts of a large number of people with their unique flavors. The protagonist also likes these two foods very much, and the flavor of the food always reminds him of the past. These two types of food are occasionally given as delicacies to other ants.
Compared with the jerky often made by ants, cured meat and bacon last longer and can be stored in a dry underground storage room for half a year without going bad. The dried meat of the ants can be stored for a week to a month at most, depending on how well it is dried.
Therefore, every year before winter, when a large number of mealworms need to be slaughtered due to lack of feed, the protagonist will ask the ants to make a large amount of meat into bacon to extend the shelf life. After all, curing meat requires a lot of salt, and the protagonist currently does not have access to high-quality and high-yielding salt mine resources.
"Qingqiu City" once agreed to the protagonist's control of "Salt City", but the protagonist discovered that the salt-alkali land there relies on natural crystallization. Although the yield of salt that can be harvested is sufficient to meet demand, the purity is not high and contains many other salt-alkali components. Out of concerns about health, the protagonist tries to prevent everyone from consuming this coarse salt as much as possible.
In terms of side dishes, in addition to mealworm meat, the protagonist will also eat some insect eggs, which are eaten in a boiled way like boiled eggs, which is very nutritious.
The rest is vegetarian food such as various roots, plant stems and leaves, fungi, etc. Many plant stems and leaves can be eaten raw, just like salad.
However, roots and fungi are still mainly roasted or boiled. The roots that ants often eat are not large and cannot be used as food by humans. However, there are starch-rich roots similar to potatoes or carrots, and there are also some like There are things like radish that are spicy and rich in water, and things like beets that are high in sugar, which greatly enrich the protagonist's recipes.
There are also many kinds of fungi, and ants have their own way of identifying edible mushrooms. The main thing is to keep trial and error, and then remember and avoid poisonous mushrooms. These fungi are naturally delicious and are the leading natural flavoring agents when seasonings are scarce. For example, the mushrooms are roasted with fat. The dripping fat wraps the roasted mushrooms until they are crispy and golden. The taste is really unforgettable for the protagonist.
Speaking of seasonings, ants do not eat other seasonings except salt, but the protagonists are different. Most of human cooking art relies on various seasonings, from oriental oil, salt, soy sauce and vinegar to Western basil. , cinnamon, rosemary, etc., as well as Southeast Asian and South Asian curries, condiments always play the role of turning stone into gold.
Ants do not have the custom of using condiments, but their long-term collection experience allows them to know which plants have unpleasant "odors".
What the protagonist wants is what these ants consider to be "strange smells", including spiciness and various strange aromas. Therefore, there are dedicated worker ants responsible for collecting these natural seasonings for the Angel King to enrich the taste of the protagonist's food. However, many of these condiments are hard to come by and cannot maintain a stable supply. They can only be eaten once and for all.
There are also fruits, which the protagonist with a human soul cannot let go of. Ants will also eat fruits, but they usually feast on the fallen fruits instead of taking these perishable foods back to their nests.
It is impossible for the protagonist to go to the wild to find fruits on his own, so the worker ants will bring back a small amount of fruits of suitable size and weight for the protagonist to enjoy. For example, nightshade, pyracantha, various wild berries or lingonberries, etc.
