After all, Brother Zhang did not try the taste of orangutan, even though those people recommended it.
Of course, it's not that Brother Zhang is worried about safety. If he wants to, it must be safe, but this thing is really not attractive at all. But apart from the orangutans, they said there are some other interesting places in this place. For example, the smuggling ships that pass by will bring some slaves for sale from time to time. If you are willing, you can spend a little money to buy a few. Slaves, and then using these slaves to exchange some good things with the monsters on the island, or simply torture them to death is actually very relaxing.
Of course, it was impossible for Brother Zhang to accept such a proposal, but he didn't say anything, because those who want to change this world are not guardians but revolutionaries. Generally speaking, the backwardness of this place is really disappointing. It's amazing, but speaking of them, they can actually achieve an inexplicable balance in such harsh conditions, which is quite remarkable.
But in the end, Brother Zhang didn't stop. After resting here for a night, he came to the largest town near the Bay of Bengal. It is said that this is now the only designated trading place for Ananda dragon skin, except for the skin of Ananda dragon. , here is also the largest slave trading city and the largest smuggling port in the entire subcontinent.
Standing on the bustling harbor and looking out, the sails are densely packed, ships entering and leaving the harbor are constantly coming and going, and the pier is lit up all night long. The prosperity of import and export has created this city's unique style. Ships from the surrounding Persia, Egypt and even Europe gather here, and people of all kinds come and go in a hurry. Even people in strange clothes like Xiao Zhang are not seen on the street. Any novel place, because there are also many dark-skinned and dark-haired smugglers wandering the streets.
And because of its unique terrain and unique world civilization, this port city should theoretically be the most prosperous city and the city with the highest technological content in the world. The buildings and streets built layer by layer along the mountain show the It has a flavor of early steampunk. Walking in this city is like entering the world of Monster Hunter. Although there is no magical flying carpet, you can see that the flying boats in the city have become wealthy people. The mode of transportation is similar to a taxi.
Brother Zhang had just arrived here, and everything he saw was new. He even paid for a ride on a flying boat with no destination, just flying around the city a few times. Flying boats are not cheap and can even be said to be expensive. They have a unique method of metering by street corner. Each street corner costs one silver coin, and one silver coin is half a day's salary of a hard worker at the dock.
Most of the drivers of the flying boat are practitioners with certain abilities. Although they are different from the Eastern schools, they are essentially the same. Most of these people are very talkative. They are like taxi drivers and Xiao Zhang. high rollers to talk to.
"Ananda Shesha, it is said that it lives under the bay and protects the bay with its own power. It is very lazy and never likes to move. It only needs to eat once every few hundred years, but no one has actually seen it. The way it looked, legend has it that it was very big.”
The pilot of the flying boat controlled the flying boat to fly over the city, and then introduced the customs and customs of the city to Brother Zhang like a tour guide. Because Brother Zhang can communicate spiritually, no matter how obscure he said, Brother Zhang could understand Can understand.
And because Brother Zhang gave this flying boat driver a large piece of gold, if there is no accident tonight, this flying boat will belong to Brother Zhang, and the driver above will concentrate on taking care of this high-stakes customer.
"This is our most famous food store below. Do you need something to eat? I'll buy it for you."
The height of the flying boat has been lowered. Below it is a food store full of the third brother's style. It looks quite high-end. Brother Zhang became curious: "I'll go with you. I'll treat you to food, but you have to be responsible." Pick out what tastes best.”
What surprised Brother Zhang was that this restaurant actually had a special place for the flying boat to dock, which was arranged like a parking lot. After entering, the magnificent feeling really made his eyes light up.
However, the prices on the menu are even more eye-catching. The starting price of the dishes here is five silver coins, and the expensive dishes are calculated in gold coins. What surprised Brother Zhang the most was that there was Ananda Dragon's dragon skin soup here. In order to study what it tasted like, he spent ten gold coins to order one.
The visiting service staff told Brother Zhang that Anandalong's dragon skin soup would take about two hours to come out of the pot and he needed to wait patiently. Brother Zhang didn't say anything about this. After all, he was also a cook. I deeply understand that a good dish takes time to cook.
They ordered a table of dishes, which only cost a little more than five gold coins in total, and a dish of Ananda Dragon's dragon skin soup was more expensive than the whole table. The driver of Feizhou repeatedly praised Brother Zhang for his generosity. After all, this meal is almost equivalent to the entire income that this flying boat guest can save without eating or drinking for half a year, and even more.
You know, Feizhouke is already considered a middle- to high-income group in this city.
However, although they are expensive, these things do not give Brother Zhang a particularly amazing feeling, because most of them are made of expensive spices, such as pepper, chili pepper, cinnamon, star anise, etc... These people in this world It seems that the spices that are full of awe are not worth mentioning in Brother Zhang's side.
But when the pot of Ananda dragon's skin soup came up two hours later, it really gave Brother Zhang a surprise. The basin that came up was probably the kind of basin where you usually eat boiled meat slices, and the dragon soup inside appeared. It's a brown paste and doesn't have any of those messy spices.
Brother Zhang used a spoon to put a spoonful into the bowl. The texture felt a bit like... very thin ice powder, but it was indeed hot, thick and textured. Take a gentle sip, and the first thing you feel when you enter your mouth is that it is mushy. A large amount of colloid has been fully stewed in the soup, and then there is an unprecedented sweetness that fills your mouth, and there is also a unique seafood flavor. It has a slight fishy smell, but the fishy smell is not unpleasant. In fact, it is precisely because of this little fishy smell that it makes this pot of soup have a more wild taste.
There are no spices in the dragon soup, just a little salt. Even the salt taste may be the taste of the skin, because you can taste the taste of the sea that seems to be absent. In this case, it is possible to add nothing, just simple Made from the skin of the Ananda dragon.
Brother Zhang continued to eat a few more mouthfuls. He could clearly feel the gelatinous feeling slowly entering his stomach, and then being quickly digested. Then it penetrated into every part of his body at a very fast speed, although this thing had no effect on him. , but it can really be felt.
After that, he tasted every detail of the dish like a gourmet, and under the pot he found some finely chopped things that looked like the skirt of a tortoise, and he sucked one into his mouth. Without any effort, it melted completely with just a sip of the tongue, and then the umami flavor ten times richer than the soup exploded in the mouth, and the salty taste here told Brother Zhang that his intuition was really right. , the salty taste in this soup really comes from the taste of the skin itself.
After swallowing the food in my mouth, I immediately began to feel a sweet taste rising up. That kind of sweetness with a fresh fishy taste was like drinking a bowl of Buddha Jumping Over the Wall that had been boiled for a long time, but this taste was far stronger than Buddha Jumping Over the Wall. More sufficient.
He picked up one again and observed it carefully. Although it had been boiled to a pulp, from the outside, it looked like eel skin, but it was different because it was thick enough.
Brother Zhang asked Feizhou's driver to call the manager here. He said he wanted to see what the skin of a real Ananda dragon looked like. Can the manager still refuse to let him? This was a big man who was willing to spend fifteen gold coins on a meal. He didn't even need Brother Zhang to go there in person. He quickly ordered the waiter to bring the ingredients.
There are two things on the tray, one is a sun-dried black hard shell, and the other is a dragon skin that has been soaked in water and swollen. The black one is nothing special, just like the shell of a big turtle, about ten centimeters. It's thick, hard and has a fishy smell. But the swollen one next to it showed a completely different appearance. It was a brown translucent piece with a jelly texture. It was about 50 centimeters thick in a bucket, although it looked like jelly. , but it is extremely strong and cannot be poked in with your hands, or even with a needle.
Brother Zhang curiously asked a few questions, and the manager answered them one by one. He said that the skin of the Ananda dragon cannot be cooked directly after buying it, because it will have a special smell and be difficult to cook. pharynx. You need to use a knife to scrape off the black mucus on the outside of the dragon skin bit by bit, and then put the processed dragon skin into the oven to steam it to dryness. This process alone takes ten days or even longer, and steaming it to dryness After taking the dragon skin out, it can be hung in a cool and ventilated place for storage. When needed, you can use a saw to cut off a piece for foaming.
It takes about seven days to soak the hair. The water must be changed every morning and evening. The water must use the purest fresh water. It must not have any impurities, let alone the smell of salt and alkali. Just soaking a piece of dragon skin is enough pure fresh water. It cost a gold coin to bring it from afar.
After the dragon skin is soaked, it will have a special texture. At this time, metal cannot be used to cut it, because if it is contaminated with the fishy smell of metal, picky gourmets will flip the table. At this time, they will use the sharp beak of an eagle or the fangs of a crocodile to split the dragon skin.
The divided dragon skin will appear in the shape of strips, because otherwise it would be impossible to cook. These dragon skins are then put into a soup cooked with hard grass from the East. This soup can effectively neutralize the sea smell in the dragon skin and make it sweet.
And this is not the last process. The last process is to put the dragon skin that has been washed, swollen and soaked in hard grass juice into a pot made of expensive ceramics and stewed. Although the dragon skin is already very soft at this time, it is still It takes two to three hours of cooking before it's ready for the table.
Brother Zhang was amazed. He had never thought that it would take so much effort to make this thing. No wonder it was top-notch cuisine. Judging from the money, it seemed that it was not too expensive.
Because the cost of the first few things here is there. The first is pure water. There is no pure water that costs a dollar a bottle. Pure water requires those alchemists to make it bit by bit. This cost is invisible. It's more expensive. Another thing is that there is no bamboo here, or they don’t have Xiangfei bamboo. This completely requires smuggling and importing things. There is no way to reduce the cost. The last one is that they do not have exquisite porcelain firing technology. Although clay pots can also be used for cooking, they cannot withstand high-temperature stewing for such a long time, so they have to use ceramics. Where do they come from? Still have to smuggle it in. Brother Zhang saw that a white porcelain plate smuggled from the East cost a gold coin in the market outside. A stew pot that could withstand high temperatures was probably not cheap either.
But these things are at Brother Zhang's side... Isn't that something that PDD can search out hundreds of pages of?
"Can you sell this to me?" Brother Zhang just wanted to buy some Ananda dragon skin directly. After all, it can save a lot of effort if it is handled well.
However, this request was declined, because this is their signature dish. Although no one will have trouble with money, it will be the king’s birthday in a few days. If these finished products are sold to others now, there will be no Time to make new ones. Compared with money and life, life is obviously more important.
Brother Zhang can understand after hearing this. After all, since people can introduce the production method, they are not afraid of people imitating it. After all, this thing has no technical content, but the time cost is there, and it also needs to be Plenty of patience.
"Where can I buy it now?"
The manager looked embarrassed and said with an embarrassed smile: "What we can buy this season are all in stock. The next time the Ananda dragon sheds its skin will be in nine months, and now we all buy it from the Vaishmiya in the city." That buy, his temper is very strange, if you don’t give him a satisfying gift, he won’t sell it.”
"Then what gift does he like?"
"Like... pigs, live pigs."
Live pig... Brother Zhang frowned. He already had some premonitions in his heart. This so-called Vaishmi Ayin was probably Ananda Dragon, because a normal person would definitely not ask for live pigs when buying things. Such a thing as a pig.
Self-produced and sold? Still quite good at doing business. Brother Zhang decided to pay a visit to Vaishmi Ayin.
After eating, Brother Zhang ate up a large portion of the soup for the first time, because it tasted really good, and he also discovered a problem, that is, a large part of the alchemy of these people has been integrated with the food. In one body, although the effect is worse than simple elixirs, it is no longer difficult to swallow.
"Take me to find that Vaishmi Ayin." Brother Zhang said to the driver of the flying boat: "I want to buy some Ananda dragon skin."
