Proofread by Claire.KK
LQ had in fact been smelling the food for a while. The sour and spicy fragrance made her mouth water.
She was indeed unhappy about the absence of Ye Xiaoxian yesterday but she felt alright once she had complained. She was actually waiting for Ye Xiaoxian to give her an out. As Ye Xiaoxian said this, LQ then replied, “Fine, I’ll let you go this time. Let me try your food.”
She lifted a fish fillet with her chopsticks first.
The fish fillet was marinated in corn flour, so it tasted smooth and soft after it was cooked; besides, with those dried peppers it satisfied her taste buds the instant she had put it in her mouth.
It was LQ’s first time tasting such a delicious dish. Compared with Ye Xiaoxian’s cooking, the food cooked by LQ’s own kitchen was nothing but tasteless.
Still she was as entitled as Miss Liu, so she was not willing to praise Ye Xiaoxian directly, but she said, “It’s a bit spicy but I can take it.”
Ye Xiaoxian smiled. “Then maybe try the lemon chicken feet.”
Due to the limited time, the chicken feet were not marinated long enough to preserve the flavor but Ye Xiaoxian stir-fried them after they were boiled. So they were also smooth, soft and easy to chew.
After LQ tasted one she could not help but try another one.
Ye Xiaoxian then said, “Qianqian, perhaps you should eat the fish first since it won’t taste as good when it gets cold, but chicken feet are still good when they cool down.”
The fish was a little spicy so she needed rice to go with it and she ended up having two big bowls of rice.
After she finished eating she asked Ye Xiaoxian, “Now you can tell me what happened between you two in the mountain, can’t you?”
Ye Xiaoxian smiled. “Nothing much. Just my hair tie was snagged by my bamboo bucket and broke, so he bought me another one, but he didn’t just buy one for me. He actually bought one for each woman in our family.”
LQ then became jumpy. “What did he mean by this?”
“How can I know? He was a riddle.”
“I reckon that he was too shy to just buy one for you so that’s why he bought one for each woman in your family!”
“You can tell that?”
LQ once again passed all of the novels to Ye Xiaoxian. “Or you can read these novels. I can lend them to you for a few days. You do read, don’t you?”
“I do, though I have no time for reading them. I have to open up shop and cook food!” said Ye Xiaoxian. “But I can borrow a couple of them and give them to my little sister-in-law. She’s been practicing writing these days, though she doesn’t show much interest, but if there were some novels to read then perhaps she’d be more interested.”
“Fine, these are all for you then. I’ve read them all anyway,” said LQ generously.
Before Ye Xiaoxian left, LQ added, “Your husband must have started to take an interest in you. Trust me, if you take more initiative he might be willing to sleep in the same room as you.”
Ye Xiaoxian. “…”
After Ye Xiaoxian left, LQ asked Housekeeper Liu to take the leftover fish fillet to Lord Liu to let him try it.
Lord Liu was wondering why her daughter was so fond of the food Ye Xiaoxian cooked, but once he took a bite of the fish, he fell for it also and made a clean sweep of the plate.
Meanwhile, LQ ordered others to buy new novels. She was reading novels while eating chicken feet and before she knew it she had eaten them all up.
…
When Ye Xiaoxian went back to her stand she was starving.
It was been a long time since she had had fish fillets in hot chili oil and she craved for some also, so after she sold out all the cold jelly she went to the market to buy a three-jin grass carp and some other ingredients, deciding to cook some fish fillets in hot chili