The Game of Life TGOL

Chapter 511: Chapter 509 Morshock

Jiang Feng realized that due to habitual thinking, he had been trapped in a misconception.

Every year at the Jiang Family’s New Year’s Eve dinner, members would engage in a battle of wits over the taste of dishes. Therefore, the old man’s New Year’s Eve menu had always been a top-secret document. Jiang Feng, having been a contestant for so many years, momentarily forgot that this year he had been promoted to the judge’s panel.

Being a judge, he certainly needed to ask the head judge first for any rules he didn’t understand.

Jiang Feng went straight to the kitchen.

The game update had added new features and issued him three new tasks all at once, which meant he spent a long time in the restroom. By the time he got to the kitchen, his aunts had finished washing up and Jiang Jiankang and the others had completed their tasks for the day. Only Sir was left in the kitchen.

Sir was busy with the mutton.

There were many mutton dishes on the Taifeng Building’s menu, but due to regional reasons, Jiang Feng seldom ate mutton while in Alan City and Z City, mostly encountering it only in hotpot as sliced mutton. It was only after arriving in Beiping that he started to see more mutton dishes on the dining table.

In the half-year he spent in Beiping, Jiang Feng practiced a lot of mutton dishes.

Being the unknown real owner of Taifeng, before Jiang Feng became a popular chef with his Eight Treasures Chestnut Fragrant Pigeon and Stuffed Crab Orange, he was a utility person in the kitchen, always moving wherever he was needed. He could flexibly switch between being a Furnace Chef, a chopping cook, and a Kitchen Apprentice Cook, without showing an ounce of Crown Prince arrogance.

It was also for this reason that Jiang Feng practiced many mutton dishes.

“Grandfather, how many dishes do we need to prepare for tomorrow?” Jiang Feng asked.

“It depends on how it goes, we’ll prepare as many as we can,” Sir said.

Weiguo was handling the sheep’s large intestines.Nôv(el)B\\jnn

Jiang Feng noticed that Sir was currently dealing with sheep offal. Besides the large intestines in his hands, the basin next to him also contained sheep’s heart, liver, lungs, large and small intestines, kidneys, tongue, eyes, and ears. Almost all the miscellaneous parts of a whole sheep were in the basin.

“Grandfather, are you planning to make a sheep offal soup tonight?” Jiang Feng asked.

“No.” Sir, usually a man of few words while working, was concise. He pointed to the basin and said, “Clean the intestines.”

Obediently, Jiang Feng washed his hands and began cleaning the small intestines in the basin.

Cleaning sheep offal was a meticulous and dirty job, with intestines being the trickiest part to handle, almost as challenging as cleaning pig’s large intestines—one reeking of fishy smell and the other of mutton smell.

At first, Jiang Feng thought Sir was preparing these sheep offal to make marinated meat, as these strongly flavored ingredients were perfect for marination.

While Jiang Feng was cleaning the sheep intestines and contemplating which dishes he could distribute to the families in the village without causing strong opposition from his uncles and older male cousins, he noticed Sir, who had finished with the sheep’s large intestines, start chopping onions.

This did not seem like the preparation to marinate the offal.

“Grandfather, what are we going to make with these sheep offal tomorrow?” Jiang Feng, knowing well the importance of asking when unsure, inquired.

“Morshock,” Sir replied.

Jiang Feng: ???

Mor-whatever-ck?

Wait a minute, Mor-whatever-ck!

“Mor… what-ck?” Jiang Feng asked.

“Morshock, it means the dish served in a bowl,” Sir repeated, placing the chopped onions into a small bowl, then started chopping the minced meat.

“Didn’t your grandmother tell you this afternoon?” Sir asked back.

Jiang Feng shifted his gaze away from the onions, “Grandma told me this afternoon that you and Master Huang made a whole sheep feast for the firefighters who fought the blaze 50 years ago, but she didn’t provide any details.”

“That’s exactly what we did back then, using these sheep offals to make 16 soup-based dishes, complemented with pickles, mutton soup, mutton with baked pancakes— that’s the whole sheep feast. The 16 dishes made from sheep offal are called Morshock,” Sir explained.

Jiang Feng: …

He had thought the whole sheep feast would include roasted lamb legs, roasted lamb ribs, sliced lamb meat, lamb heads, braised mutton, and stewed mutton in soy sauce. But Sir told him the whole sheep feast was actually made of sheep hearts, sheep livers, sheep lungs, sheep large intestines, sheep small intestines, sheep kidneys, sheep tongues, sheep eyes, sheep ears…

As beautiful as the fantasy was, reality was just as cruel.

Without giving Jiang Feng much time to ponder, Sir, seeing that he had already washed the sheep intestines, ordered him to do the next task, “Go wash the rice and soak it, and then clean and chop the sheep liver.”

“Okay, Grandpa.”

Although this year’s New Year’s Eve feast deviated greatly from what Jiang Feng had imagined, after assisting Sir for an hour or two, he realized that Morshock was actually quite complex.

Although all the ingredients were sheep offal, their preparation was just as complex as that of roasted lamb legs and lamb ribs, if not more so.

Just handling the sheep’s large and small intestines took nearly an hour. According to Sir’s instructions, Jiang Feng filled the washed sheep intestines with a mixture of sheep’s blood, plasma, liver, fat, onions, minced meat, and rice seasoned to taste, and set aside the stuffed intestines for cooking the next day.

The rest of the sheep offal underwent similar processes—cleaning, seasoning, some even soaking in water overnight. Each had its own method of preparation, and the preparatory steps were far more complicated than ordinary mutton dishes.

Jiang Feng had never seen such complex preparatory steps before.

It took Jiang Feng and Sir an entire evening to finish preparing all the sheep offal. They hadn’t even started on the sheep meat, which aligned with what Sir said: watch and learn, cook as many dishes as you can handle.

Jiang Feng suspected that if the preparation for the sixteen dishes of Morshock was too complicated, he and Sir might only manage to cook Morshock the next day. The rest of the mutton could wait until after the first day of the Lunar New Year.

By the time they finished cleaning up the kitchen, it was nearly 11 p.m. After handling sheep offal all evening, Jiang Feng felt like he reeked of mutton, thinking that even sheep would mistake him for one of their own.

“Grandpa, what other dishes are we preparing tomorrow besides Morshock?” Jiang Feng decided to confirm tomorrow’s menu with Sir before going to take a bath.

Confirming the menu is an important step for a chef before starting work.

“I will take care of the Morshock. Tomorrow you get up early, process the mutton, cook a pot of mutton soup with sheep bones and meat, and if there’s time, we’ll make the other mutton dishes; if not, we won’t,” Sir calculated, “For the blackfish, use garlic for braising, continue with the crispy apple recipe, and you handle the pork knuckles and Sweet and Sour Yam.”

Jiang Feng nodded, “Alright, Grandpa, I’ll take care of the pork knuckles and Sweet and Sour Yam… the pork knuckles too?”

Jiang Feng was startled.

Sir, busy counting the dishes for the next day, didn’t have time to look up and see the expression on Jiang Feng’s face, “Otherwise what? Are there too few dishes? Without some substantial dishes, it won’t be satisfying.”

It took Jiang Feng a few minutes to recover from the shock of realizing he was capable of preparing a major dish like pork knuckles for the New Year’s Eve meal. Seeing Sir muttering about what dishes would fill their stomachs, he timidly suggested.

“Grandpa, why don’t we make mutton dumplings with the mutton?”

Sir’s head shot up.

“We’re already short on pork this year, and since Morshock is so complicated, we probably won’t have time to make major dishes like roasted lamb ribs and legs tomorrow. Why not just use mutton dumplings as the main course? If anyone is still hungry, they can eat dumplings, which are also part of the whole sheep feast,” Jiang Feng came up with a plan that would kill two birds with one stone. “We can make extra and take some to Old Madam Li’s family tomorrow night. Not too much, a bowl per family. Douse the dry dumplings with hot mutton soup before taking it to them, as a token of our thanks. We’ll stick to the regular delivery of dumplings on the first day of the Lunar New Year.”

“That will do, let’s do it that way,” Sir agreed to Jiang Feng’s suggestion, “Go to sleep early. Don’t be like your cousins, staying up until one or two in the morning.”

“Stay focused, rest well, tomorrow is the New Year’s Eve feast, do your best. From now on, you’ll be in charge of our family’s New Year’s Eve feast.”

“Yes, Grandpa,” Jiang Feng replied with exhilaration, like a kindergarten child awarded a hundred little red flowers by his teacher.

An indescribable honor.