The Lantern Festival meal was sure to be a highlight, since they weren’t going back to their hometown, their small family home definitely deserved a grand feast for the holiday. Plus, with Ning Ge being in Qing City, it wouldn’t do just to let him go to a restaurant and get by with a meal alone.
Cheng Su carried her grocery basket to the agricultural market. On the way back from her in-laws, she had also brought home a live chicken, which she was still keeping. She thought that today would be the day to slaughter it, to spare her the continuous care it required.
During the New Year’s celebrations, they’d had chicken stewed with mushrooms, or sometimes stir-fried, to the point of growing tired of it. Cheng Su planned to make something different, soy sauce chicken.
She headed to the ingredient shop to buy the necessary items, weighed a live fish, and bought a handful of chilis and green peppers.
The Lantern Festival wouldn’t be complete without tangyuan, so Cheng Su purchased peanuts, sesame seeds, and flour, planning to make her own after dinner. Considering that Chunhua was still in confinement and Guihua might be too fatigued from her morning sickness to bother cooking, she decided to buy extra—making them together would be more fun.
Having made her way around the market, her grocery basket was filled to the brim and heavy to carry.
She placed the basket on the front basket of her bicycle and pedaled back to the compound.
The compound appeared quieter than usual, with the clothes-drying square stark and hardly any clothes hanging on the poles.
Perhaps it was because the new year had not yet passed, and many families had not returned, or some had left—like He Xing, who indeed had not come back.
Cheng Su suddenly remembered a saying, "There are people who will stay in your life for a while, teach you something, and then leave, becoming a memory."
Wasn’t that exactly the case? People come and go, in all shapes and forms, they arrive, they depart, disappearing into the obscurities of the world.
Carrying her grocery basket home, Cheng Su stored everything in its place. She picked up the phone to instruct the restaurant and factory about work, deciding not to go there herself.
At the factory, they had told Ning Ge to come over for dinner after work, unaware that Ying Xiaoya would snatch the phone, insisting Cheng Su cook an extra portion as she wanted to join them.
On such a major holiday, there had to be a reason someone would come over uninvited for a meal—it turned out that a relative of the Ying family had passed away, and County Chief Ying and the rest had rushed to the funeral, leaving no one to cook.
Upon hearing the reason, Cheng Su agreed without hesitation, hung up the phone, and hurriedly made sure she had enough groceries.
Qi Taiguo came home for a while at noon, and Cheng Su told him that Ning Ge and the others would be coming over for dinner, so he should return early. Qi Taiguo agreed to it.
In the afternoon, Cheng Su reviewed some reference books and took a brief nap before starting to prepare dinner.
She simmered a soup of pork ribs and lotus roots, plucked and butchered the chicken, stewed sweet and sour pork knuckles—all the while, the kitchen clattered nonstop, and as the stewing meat released its aroma, appetites were keenly aroused.
After processing the chicken, Cheng Su washed the pot, added oil, and made a sauce with soy, bay leaves, star anise, among other things. Once the flavors mingled, she added the chicken to the pot, slowly turning it with her chopsticks, occasionally bathing it in the sauce.
Old Madam Liang, drawn by the scent, came by and marveled at Cheng Su’s cooking method, "Chicken is usually stewed, fried, simmered, or steamed—I’ve rarely seen it made this way. This takes skill."
Cheng Su smiled and said, "This is a cooking style from Guangcheng in the South. Once it’s ready, I’ll let you have a taste."
The traditional method for making soy sauce chicken isn’t like this, but rather similar to marinating in brine—preparing a large tub of soy sauce mixture to soak the chicken.
However, her method was simplified because she was only making one meal with one chicken, avoiding the need for a vast quantity, and instead opting for a straightforward simmering.
But as she looked at the chicken gradually coloring and the aroma growing ever more fragrant, Cheng Su thought to herself that with enough heart, even simple food could become extraordinary.