“Hmmm, give it to me fast too, I cannot stand the thought of eating without actually eating!” Xiong Da imagined the fantastic flavours that this wonderfully enormous fish would produce. Even by just holding it previously, he had felt a robust spiritual force coursing through the salmon.
“I am sorry, but I am only able to comply to one order.” Chef Roro bowed his head and Jin noted that it was working properly. “Chef, overwrite the command solely for this man, Wa Xiong Da. The command overwrite is valid for 5 days.” Jin spoke to the Chef as if he was rewriting his commands just for Xiong Da.
“Understood Boss Jin.” Chef Roro nodded his head and placed the salmon on the sushi counter and knocked the fish unconscious with the back of his knife. First, he washed the salmon with a hose and then cut the underbelly of the salmon to remove the guts and other soft organs from the body.
For a bear, Chef Roro showed that his knife wielding skills were superb and the finesse he portrayed was top notch. Soon after, he cut the flap near the fish’s head just behind the upper pectoral fin and bent the head back before detaching the body.
Chef Roro later gave the fish head to one of the bear cubs “Roast it over a wood fire.” The bear cub acknowledged the Chef’s orders as it took the fish head to the oven that was close to the sushi counter. Chef Roro later adjusted the salmon before he took his knife and sliced along the spinal column of the salmon as gentle as possible.
He later picked up the salmon fillet and placed it into another metal tray before proceeding forth. “That salmon fillet…is flawless. There are no hack marks left by the knife at all!” Xiong Da exclaimed and Jin remembered that Xiong Da was a food gourmet on top of his normal work. Jin could clearly see he did not make a mistake making Xiong Da the first person to try out NPC Chef Roro’s cooking. Not only would it fulfil Xiong Da’s training plans, he also had a food gourmet critic as a reviewer and tester, which Jin would probably have needed to pay money for if it had been someone else with such high qualifications.
Of course, Jin tried to find the credentials of Xiong Da, which was not easy even for a computer whiz like him, until Yun utilised the system to find out that Xiong Da was going via an alias as a food gourmet and his ratings were off the chart. Some even rumoured that he had the god’s tongue when it came to criticising food, although Jin was pretty sure that it was just his cultivation. While looking through Xiong Da’s reviews and articles, he did not find any regarding the food in his dungeon supplier store. That could only mean two things…okay, perhaps three.
It was may have been that his food was not good enough to be in Xiong Da’s food review list or since his store was technically not a food store at all, he did not review it. Lastly, Jin thought that perhaps Xiong Da was keeping this store to himself and did not wish to reveal it to other people.
Chef Roro was now cutting the other part of the salmon by segmenting the dorsal fin away. This time around, he was more careful with the cut since this particular part of the salmon contained the salmon belly too, which was where most of the spirit force was. Without moving the fish too much, he neatly incised the other salmon fillet. It was another clean cut and Chef Roro flipped it once more to cleanly cut the belly flab that was attached to the core of the fish.
“The knife went through with such long and shallow strokes. This is indeed a master at work. Boss Jin, your bear here is in almost as good as those hidden sushi chefs terms of knife skills. Simple, clean, effective. I mean, come on! This is a 19 metre long salmon! Just by sitting here looking at him cutting it so easily makes me wonder how much practice this chef must have had! Definitely better than those Michelin star chefs by miles, who keep doing those weird stunts just to entertain their customers.” Xiong Da analysed, which made Jin feel like his response had some hatred towards famous chefs.
While Chef Roro might have had more fish yield by scraping the rest of fish that was left, he decided to pass it to the bear cubs as fresh food for their hard work.
With the salmon fillet he just sliced, there was still the ribcage attached, so Chef Roro continued to perform his knife skills with surgical precision to remove the ribcage away from the fillet. He tilted his knife towards the bone of the ribcage to prevent any damage done to the salmon meat.
Chef Roro later made a slight slit near the tail of the fillet and began to remove the scales from the salmon fillet by running the knife between scales and the fillet. Lastly, he called his bear cub apprentices to come in and remove the pin bones of the fish while he proceeded to cut the next salmon fillet.
“Even by just seeing the Chef doing technical work, I am starting to get hungry just by sensing the spiritual force emitting out of the salmon meat. Please, Chef! Do not torture me any longer.”
“Fishing requires patience and so does good food.” Chef Roro replied and Xiong Da could not deny his wisdom. With a grunt from Chef Roro, the bear cubs apprentices who had been idle immediately moved forward to pass him the rice tub along with a plate. It seemed that Chef Roro’s simple noises were sufficient instructions and signals that clarified what needed to be done.
The rice tub was filled with vinegar sushi rice, which was prepared beforehand by the apprentices. Chef Roro went towards the fish fillet that was already free from bones and beautifully cut a large piece of the fillet and slowly prepared a plate of sushi for Xiong Da.
Meanwhile, Xiong Da helped himself by the pouring the soy sauce and the wasabi. He knew not to mix them together since it was a disrespect to the master for stating that his fish quality was insufficient to eat with just the sauce.
Within moments, the chef first brought out the salmon nigiri sushi for Xiong Da to taste.
“Enjoy.” Chef Roro said as Xiong Da cleaned his hands with a sanitised wet towel and prepared to enjoy it. The salmon nigiri consisted of a ball of vinegared sushi rice smeared with wasabi sauce and was topped with the salmon slice on top of it. The salmon was bright orange in colour, a contrast to its scales and the juice of the meat could be seen protruding out of the meat.
Xiong Da could not help but take his handphone out. “Camera eats first, then me.” Xiong Da held his phone with his left hand as he skillfully took a few pictures before using his right hand to taste the mouth watering sushi. He dipped the salmon nigiri, the meat itself, into the soy sauce and shook it a little before putting the entire thing into his mouth.
The moment it made contact with Xiong Da’s sensitive tongue that had been perfected by the hungry hippo style, Xiong Da could not close his mouth. The taste of the sushi was impeccably desirable. When he started to chew, he could not help but feel his whole body ascend into a different state of being.
The state of Grade 3.
.
.
