Chapter 375: Chapter 287: Deep-Fried Starch Sausages, Double Waves of Street Vending

He welcomes diners to patronize his business, but not like this.

If dinner starts at seven, can’t they come five to ten minutes early to line up?

Do they really have to come forty minutes in advance?

He used to think it was abstract enough when some diners arrived half an hour early, but now these two are even more surreal.

If this trend continues, in a few days will they have to come an hour early to queue?

This won’t do, it seems necessary to correct this unhealthy trend.

Foreigners should act like foreigners and not learn the competitiveness of the Great Xia people!

But the question is, how to prevent diners from lining up early?

Pushing his doubt aside for now, he smiled and nodded towards the two.

"Good morning, you’re here way too early, there’s still quite a while before dinner starts."

"It’s fine!"

Nicole waved her hand nonchalantly: "We’re curious about the cooking process and wanted to take a look."

Saying this, her eyes drifted towards the steaming dishes behind Lin Chen, aside from stir-fried shredded potatoes with green peppers, they were all dishes she’d never seen before!

"Is breakfast today stir-fried dishes with rice?"

Asking this clearly showed she’d watched Lucas’s previous videos.

Lin Chen shook his head: "It’s not rice, it’s porridge. We, the Great Xia people, are more accustomed to having porridge in the morning. Today’s is a basic white porridge."

"Porridge? Ah~~ I remember, it’s like the kind sold in those stores in Chinatown with roast ducks hanging by the glass windows, right? Served in a big bowl?"

"Yes, just like that."

After briefly introducing the dishes to them, he turned back inside the vehicle to stir the white porridge and began preparing for the fried breadsticks.

After a moment of thought, he decided to fry the breadsticks in two batches to greatly reduce serving time, otherwise, it would be impossible to keep up.

The space in the oil pot is limited, and it can only fry a few breadsticks at a time, taking several minutes per batch.

If he made them fresh, by the time he finished frying a hundred, they might have run out of good reviews before they were even done.

However, frying them twice could easily make the breadsticks old and crunchy, so he needed to perfectly control the heat of the first fry.

The breadsticks shouldn’t be removed from the pot before they’ve fully risen, nor should they be fried all at once to a golden color.

The perfect state is when the dough is fully risen and initially set, with a light yellow surface when taken out. At this state, the inside of the breadstick is evenly heated and expanded but not fully cooked.

When refried, they need to be fried for just half a minute to a minute until they are brown on the surface, and the taste should be no different than if they were fried in one go.

He hadn’t tried this method before, so to be safe, he decided to fry one first to test.

The oil pot was already heated, kept warm at low heat, ready for frying at any moment.

In front of the two, Lin Chen took a piece of dough from the side to process.

With skilled technique and fluid movements, before they realized it, the dough was cut into uniformly sized pieces.

Then, Lin Chen took a chopstick and pressed a groove into the center of each dough piece, placing non-grooved dough pieces over them.

This innovative dough-making process immediately piqued their interest, and they hurriedly took out their phones to record this magical scene.

They thought what they had seen was already amazing until Lin Chen stacked all the dough pieces and used the back of a knife to press down the middle of the smooth surface of the top piece.

Then, with his fingertips gently holding the dough pieces, as he transferred them above the oil pot, without any discernible movement, the dough piece was stretched into a shape resembling wide pasta.

When the strangely crafted dough was placed into the oil pot, it surfaced within seconds, expanding rapidly.

Under their phone cameras, within about ten seconds, the dough piece that looked like wide pasta had expanded into a large dough mass roughly the size of an arm, bobbing up and down in the oil.

"?????"

The two women looked at each other in bewilderment, seeing the shock in each other’s eyes.

"What kind of process is this, magic?"

"I’ve only heard of baking techniques that make dough rise, never thought frying could do the same, does that mean bread dough thrown into oil would turn out like this too?"

Lin Chen had never thought of this, after contemplating for two seconds, he nodded.

"It should be, theoretically, both involve using high heat to expand fermented dough, it’s just that frying and baking result in differences in texture, but the shape should be similar."

Without looking up, he focused intently on his work, a strong sense of confidence emanating from him, as if every step was perfectly controlled and planned.

Nicole, who had been watching the dough bob in the oil pot, subconsciously glanced at Lin Chen’s face upon hearing him speak.

After that glance, she couldn’t look away.

Lin Chen was like a magnetic force radiating light, with every move and gesture capturing her curiosity.

Especially seeing those steady eyes filled with determination staring at the dough in the frying pan, revealing a self-confidence that controls everything, made her heart uncontrollably speed up.

As a Nordic person, life comes without any pressure; whether it’s school, work, or healthcare, social welfare covers everything, and there’s no need to bear any burden, with substantial money on hand.

In such a societal environment, the entire Nordic society brims with a leisurely atmosphere. It’s almost impossible to see the kind of diligent and upward spirit like Lin Chen among people, nor the strong self-assurance he possesses.

Many excellent Western chefs also possess strong self-confidence, but it’s actually overconfidence, with a tendency to brag about their skills, while their real craft isn’t that impressive.

People like Lin Chen, who say nothing but prove themselves through actions, are indeed a breath of fresh air among the mundane crowd, a genuine anomaly.

This fatal contrast sparked strong curiosity and affection in Nicole towards him.

Most importantly, the guy’s cooking is genuinely delicious!

Sometimes, when she’s falling asleep at night, she even fantasizes about how wonderful life would be with a perfect husband like Lin!

Three hundred and sixty-five days a year, she could enjoy a variety of cuisines every day!

The thought of such days brings happiness~!

"Excuse me, are you two in line?"

While she was immersed in her beautiful fantasy, suddenly a clear sound of footsteps came from behind.

She shuddered, her wandering thoughts instantly returning to her body, and she nodded hastily.

"Yes, because the preparation process is interesting, I wanted to record it and show it to my friends."

"The preparation process is interesting?"

With her words, Su’s curiosity emerged strongly, stepping closer to peek inside through the window.

Upon seeing Lin Chen’s actions, she didn’t hesitate to take out her phone and began recording this magical moment.

As time passed, the dough slowly matured, with a rich aroma spreading from the food truck as its center to the surrounding area.

Lin Chen had already activated his customer-attraction aura; more and more diners appeared before the food truck, all raising their heads and sniffing intensely, their faces full of anticipation.

It’s a general rule that food which smells delicious will taste good a hundred percent.

Especially when it’s fried!

Not only the tourists but even Wang Ziqin came downstairs early to join the queue.

Since he received the breakfast menu sent by Lin Chen last night, his wife requested him to come downstairs in the morning to buy breakfast to bring back.

Other breakfasts don’t quite attract them as strongly, but this congee with side dishes, soy milk with fried dough sticks seems to be some kind of switch imprinted in their DNA; if they don’t have a few bites periodically, they feel uneasy.

In the homeland, this feeling was absent, but having been abroad for a long time, they genuinely start to miss these ordinary foods unconsciously.

Busy as he was, Lin Chen glanced at the long queue, estimating roughly there were dozens of customers, then surveyed the table piled to the brim with fried dough sticks, sensing it was about right.

The remaining dough sticks could only be fried while serving food, or else fried and nowhere to place them, making the customers wait overly long isn’t good either.

The only issue is that today’s preparation volume is significantly less than usual, which might cause dissatisfaction among many who couldn’t purchase any.

But as it’s the requirement of the challenge task, he couldn’t change it autonomously.

To compensate for the customers’ dashed expectations, he even prepared a second plan.

Childhood street food challenge!

Since the last time he made fried chicken fillet, he hadn’t touched upon this series temporarily.

One reason was genuinely being busy; another was the relatively low difficulty of this series’ challenge tasks, with average rewards, and a seemingly large preparation volume, making it suitable for less busy times to undertake.

For instance, taking it out today is excellent for gap filling, doubling as lunch vending, saving him a great deal of energy and effort.

If diners aren’t full enough, they could enhance Jonathan’s business next door.

Every day diverting many customers might undermine Jonathan’s confidence as a chef; occasionally rewarding him is deserved.

"Chef, do you really not need our help?"

Dais, Elsa, and Lucas, also arriving early at the food truck, were puzzled, unable to discern what madness Lin Chen was pulling, not letting them intervene, saying he wanted to complete the breakfast sales himself.

"Yes!"

Lin Chen shouted loudly, fearing they might not hear due to the din from the customers.

"But not helping here; I need you to assist in handling sausages prepared in the backend. You can ask Lucas for detailed instructions."

"Me???"

Lucas pointed at himself perplexedly.

Why ask me, I know nothing!

"Once the breakfast sale here concludes, they’ll move straight to the next stall to sell fried starch sausages, the flower-cut kind, you know, right?"

"I need you all to assist in peeling the starch sausages and making the cuts!"