MM Racing Chapter 3696 The Age of Mercury (6)
Chapter 3696 The Age of Mercury (6)
Chapter 3696 The Age of Mercury (Sixteen)
Schiller's research into new recipes was far from smooth. He thought his cooking skills were already quite good, and he had even watched a lot of corresponding videos on short video apps, but in reality, it was nothing like what was shown in the videos.
Preparing and cooking poultry seems simple, but it's actually quite difficult. Making it edible is relatively easy, but making it delicious is much harder. This is true for chickens, and even more so for geese and ducks. Furthermore, these two types of poultry are more challenging to prepare.
Ducks have less fat, leaner meat, and thinner skin. If not prepared properly, they can become very unpalatable. Geese, on the other hand, have a peculiar taste; if not handled correctly, they can be very fishy, and not everyone can tolerate them.
The main problem is that Americans don't eat these two types of poultry much, and Captain America, a true American and a Stars and Stripes native, is no exception. To make him eat them properly, the meat couldn't have any unpleasant odor, but at the same time, it had to have a meaty aroma and freshness—a truly hellish challenge.
Actually, all of that was fine; Schiller had some experience in handling poultry. What really got him stuck was the last step: how to preserve the crispy skin while keeping the meat tender and juicy during roasting and grilling.
Overcooking resulted in crispy skin but dry meat; conversely, juicy meat made the skin soft and not crispy enough. Schiller tried everything from improving the goose breed to redesigning the oven, but nothing worked. He was starting to wonder if America was cursed by bad feng shui.
The stove he used was a brick stove he built himself, right next to the kitchen on the first floor of the sanatorium. Besides the backyard, the hotel also had a side courtyard, or more precisely, a side passageway connecting the backyard to the front yard. The previous owner of the hotel had sealed off this passageway, using it only for storing odds and ends. After Schiller bought the hotel, he cleared out the clutter and opened a door in the kitchen leading to this side courtyard. Thus, he had both an indoor and an outdoor kitchen.
The indoor space is mainly used for preparing simple dishes, including Western food and cold dishes; outdoors, Schiller built a rural earthen stove specifically for stir-frying. This time, he built a kiln next to the earthen stove for roasting duck and goose.
Actually, you can buy those electric ovens used in professional restaurants to roast duck and goose in the US, but Schiller thinks the best roast goose comes from an oven he built himself, and it's not roasted, it's actually grilled over a fire—the taste is absolutely amazing. So Schiller prefers to build his own oven rather than buy a ready-made one.
Even though the owner generously taught Schiller how to build the oven, and Schiller did indeed build an identical oven as instructed, he just couldn't replicate the taste of the other person's oven.
Many people think that Chinese cuisine is difficult to learn because everything is labeled with "appropriate amount" or "moderate," while Westerners prefer to be precise down to the gram, so their cooking success rate is higher. However, this only applies to basic dishes; it doesn't work for more advanced dishes.
Schiller went to the restaurant he frequented and recorded every step the owner took when roasting the goose. All the ingredients and recipes were accurate to the milligram. You could say that everything was exactly the same as what the owner did, but he just couldn't make it taste the same.
Through observation, Schiller discovered that although the furnaces had the same structure, the fire itself was extremely unstable. Even if the same wood was used and the timing of adding firewood was the same, the resulting flames were completely different. Which one burned well and which one burned poorly depended entirely on luck, which also led to different products.
To increase your success rate, you need to practice a lot, figure out your oven's quirks, and be flexible during the baking process. Often it's all about intuition; there's no precise recipe to rely on.
Most of the preliminary work is now complete; all that remains is to practice continuously and refine the details of each step. This is bound to take some time.
The problem was that Steve's birthday was fast approaching, and there wasn't much time left. Since empiricism wasn't working, Schiller had to choose a more scientific approach. He called Peter and Stark over.
The group stood in front of the stove in the side courtyard. Schiller explained to them how the stove worked and then showed them a duck.
As the duck was cooking, Stark was already getting impatient. He said, "This is already delicious enough, what are you still asking for? Are you trying to make all the food we brought look like manure?"
“That doesn’t need me to make it stand out,” Schiller said, pursing his lips. “And don’t flatter yourselves, dung won’t explode. What I mean is, the crust isn’t crispy, which means there’s something wrong with the heat. You guys need to figure out a way to improve this oven.”
“Wait a minute,” Peter said. “I don’t care if the crust is crispy or not. I’m really hungry, Doctor. This smells amazing. Is it done yet? Can I eat it?”
Peter kept peering into the oven, swallowing hard, clearly starving. Stark cleared his throat and said, "To keep our culinary business going, Peter went to Nick yesterday and got another dose of Spider-Totem Power. You know how hungry he was when he first became Spider-Man. We have to make sure this great guy gets enough to eat..."
Schiller knew he wanted to eat it but was too embarrassed to say so. He added some more firewood to the stove and said, "Don't rush, it'll be ready soon. But I must tell you, this is not the final version, nor does it represent my culinary skills."
"You overestimate us, Doctor. In your words, our taste buds, corroded by syrup and industrial flavorings, simply can't discern any subtle differences in flavor. There's a limit to how delicious something can be for us. No matter how well you make it, we probably still won't be able to tell the difference."
“Have you ever thought about how I need to eat too?” Schiller said, leaning against the stove with his arms crossed. “There’s not much food left to eat that night, and even less to eat at all. If I don’t cook something delicious, am I just going to go hungry all night?”
Peter fell silent for a moment. His raspberry pie had recently made a slight improvement, evolving from a crematorium to a murder scene. Whether he'd stuffed it with too much filling or what, several times the jam had burst out of the pie, making it look like someone was gutting the poor fruit pie. If there were police in the baking world, he'd probably be in jail already on first-degree murder charges.
“I’m almost there!” Stark thumped his chest. “I can fry the hamburger buns now, and I’m working on the cheese recipe. It won’t be long before I can assemble them…”
"Tony, aren't you overlooking the most important question?" Peter pulled up a small stool and sat down in front of the oven, staring longingly at the roast duck inside, then said, "What about the beef?"
"what?"
"Beef patties. Have you ever tried making beef patties?"
“What’s there to try?” Stark said, somewhat puzzled. “I’ve seen how those food trucks fry beef patties. They just roll the ground meat into a ball, slap it on the griddle, and fry it until it’s medium-rare.”
"What kind of beef are you planning to use? Frozen from the supermarket?" Schiller asked while mixing sauce on the worktable next to him. "What's the fat-to-lean ratio? What kind of butter? How well-done does Steve like it?"
"God!" Stark wailed again, "I always feel like I wouldn't have had so much trouble if it weren't for you guys!"
“There’s nothing we can do,” Peter said, rubbing his face. “Everyone loves Steve, everyone is really interested in his 100th birthday, and everyone is doing everything they can to make him happy. Even Natasha has started learning to cook. If we don’t try harder, we’ll definitely fall behind.”
“That’s what competition is all about,” Schiller said. “But you can’t say I started it. You know what? The bacon in the bacon risotto Clint was making was freshly cured by him, and the applewood he was using was flown in from his hometown! The recipe was passed down to him by his grandmother!”
Stark turned to face the wall, banging his forehead against it repeatedly, and said, "I'm starting to regret choosing the simplest cheeseburger. But I don't even know what specialties I have back home..."
“Weren’t you born on Long Island?” Schiller said. “Why not make the world-famous Long Island Iced Tea? Or seafood barbecue?”
“What you’re talking about isn’t much harder than a cheeseburger,” Stark sighed. “Besides, I don’t really like eating this stuff myself. The seafood restaurants on Long Island are ridiculously overpriced. Last time I passed by and wanted to get a snow crab to go, when the bill came over I wanted them to throw it back into the sea.”
“Speaking of which, do you know the story of Clint and Natasha?” Stark seemed to have suddenly thought of something, and rubbed his hands together excitedly. “There’s definitely something going on between them.”
Schiller and Peter sidled up. Stark said smugly, "You probably don't know, but Natasha decided to switch all her allegiance to S.H.I.E.L.D. because of Hawkeye. The two of them had been having an affair even before Natasha and I did."
"So what exactly happened back then?" Schiller asked curiously. He remembered very clearly that when he first arrived at Marvel, he hadn't actually met Black Widow. The first S.H.I.E.L.D. agent he encountered was Coulson, at which time Black Widow's whereabouts were unknown. Could it be that she and Hawkeye were getting close around that time?
But that was too early; Stark hadn't become Iron Man yet. So it's more likely that it happened a little later, when Natasha, as Stark's personal secretary, infiltrated Stark Tower. However, Schiller and Stark weren't that close at that time, and Schiller didn't know what had happened between them.
"You know that Natasha once disguised herself as an ordinary person and even got a job as my personal secretary, right?"
"Of course, and then the two of you also..."
“Don’t mention it!” Stark said. “I was drunk back then, and I didn’t know she was Black Widow. She’s been using this to tarnish my reputation ever since…”
"Okay, okay, go on."
"As far as I know, Natasha was driving home from get off work, I think she was passing by Fifth Avenue. For some reason, the police mistook him for a jewel thief and were chasing him. He got into Natasha's car and was immediately smitten with her. Natasha saw that he was quite skilled and wanted to use him to deal with Iron Man, so she seduced him just like she seduced me. That guy really gave me a lot of trouble."
"What did he do?" A smile appeared on Schiller's face. At that time, he had just joined Marvel and hadn't yet established himself, and it happened to be a turbulent period, with many famous plots unfolding simultaneously. Even if he knew that some plots would likely occur around this time, he couldn't be in two places at once and couldn't watch them all.
Some plot points aren't actually that important, but missing out on Iron Man's epic misfortune would definitely be a huge loss. But no worries, there are still firsthand accounts from those who experienced it firsthand.
Stark clearly understood Schiller's amusement, so he snorted and shut up. Just then, the roast duck was ready, and Schiller took the whole duck out of the oven and led Peter straight to the kitchen to eat, locking the door between the kitchen and the yard.
"Hey!" Stark yelled as he climbed through the window, "Leave me some! You two bastards!"
(End of this chapter)