After walking for nearly 40 minutes, Katie led Lin Yilong through Hyde Park to her apartment.

The apartments of new career girls are usually very sloppy, in addition to the unclean common areas, the common equipment is often damaged, and the moldy walls are also one of the signs of sloppiness. The new apartments are not bad, but the old ones in Paddington and Kensington are no better than the cheap shared apartments that Vera started out in the Tower district — the kitchen sink is forever littered with dirty dishes, the stovetops, ovens and microwaves are never wiped clean, and the teacups and spoons are forever soaked in the sewage. In short, if you want to share a house with others, there will always be various hygiene inconveniences in the communal facilities you live with.

In fact, this is very easy to understand: young people have no money, they are still very busy at work when they first join the company, and they are busy dating others when they have occasional breaks, and this kind of uncleanness can be understood by other people who share a house - so, in order not to passively "understand" such a situation, Lin Yilong never finds others to share a house, but lives in a single apartment with more independence.

At least the last time Lin Yilong came, the kitchen shared by Katie and her roommate was the same as other shared kitchens he had seen, and Lin Yilong couldn't help but worry about the hygiene of the food tonight. When Lin Yilong took advantage of Katie's return to the room to change clothes, carrying two large bottles of Coke, a watermelon and a few bags of cashew nuts into Katie's kitchen, he even heard the sound of his entire digestive system screaming and crying.

This time, the kitchen was quite tidy, from the ceiling to the floor, from the windowsill to the doorway, it was carefully cleaned.

The sound of Katie and Lin Yilong entering the door may be heard, and Katie's roommate walks out of the room.

Lin Yilong couldn't think of a word that could accurately describe Katie's roommate, her complexion was not as dark as that of South Asian men and many other South Asian women, a bit like the feeling of white Europeans shrouded in thin black veils, plus dark circles because of staying up late for a long time. If such a state appears on the street, I am afraid that the patrol police will investigate whether or not to take possessive nerve stimulant drugs.

When he sees the living, Lin Yilong always puts on a business-style smile.

"Hello. First time meeting!" Katie's roommate greeted Lin Yilong, "You must be Katie's boyfriend, Katie rarely brings anyone else here." ”

"When we met for the first time, I was Lin Yilong, just call me Yi. Lin Yilong introduced himself, "What should I call you?"

"Fatima. Fatima is the name of the Prophet's aunt and daughter, the most common title given to daughters in the Muslim world, "What do you do? Like Katie, you are also a lawyer?"

"It used to be. Lin Yilong replied briefly.

The two continued to exchange polite pleasantries for a while, until Katie finished changing her clothes and came out of the room.

"Tonight, I'm going to make the traditional Bengali mutton steamed rice. Fatima said.

"Please repeat?" said Lin Yilong, another word that he couldn't understand.

"Mutton steamed rice is a Bengali specialty dish that combines mutton, long grain rice and spices. Fatima said.

After confirming that "mutton steamed rice" was not an English word, Lin Yilong knew that he had asked a stupid question.

"And what are we missing?" asked Katie.

"If I could, I happened to be a very important spice. "I'm short of saffron, which is only available in big supermarkets." ”

Katie looked at Lin Yilong, who immediately understood.

"What else is missing?" Lin Yilong asked, "It just so happened that I went to buy it together." ”

"If you can still buy ghee, it's much better than rapeseed oil. Fatima said.

Lin Yilong went out, borrowed a Barclays bicycle, and went to the nearest Tesco supermarket in Holland Park.

After wandering around the supermarket for a long time, I found ghee, but I couldn't find saffron.

"Excuse me, do you know where saffron is?" Lin Yilong also heard of saffron for the first time, thinking that it was some kind of spice unique to Bengalis, so he went to ask the supermarket salesperson.

The salesperson pointed to the spice counter for Lin Yilong, and handed Lin Yilong an empty standard spice bottle with the words Saffron written on it.

"It's empty!" Lin Yilong called out in surprise.

The salesperson shook the bottle up and down, revealing several very thin red stamens in a very small plastic bag.

"Only half a gram. The salesman pointed to the net content on the package and introduced it to Lin Yilong, "Saffron is the most expensive spice in the world, of course it is expensive." ”

Lin Yilong got the goods he needed, paid for it, returned to Holland Park, and took it to Fatima. After Fatima's repeated humbleness, Lin Yilong retreated from the kitchen to Katie's room, giving the kitchen to chef Fatima and handyman Katie.

When he arrived at Katie's room, all he did was to inquire about the price and cultivation of saffron, which was perfect for Lin Yilong's tree farm, especially the courtyard and garden that had been converted from the razed town to the ground.

In the wild, saffron cannot be found, it is a product of human cultivation - saffron is not difficult to cultivate and process, but what makes this plant the most valuable in spices is that although it is not difficult to grow, people only need the stamens of this flower for seasoning and dyeing, and the rest will be discarded. It usually takes 75,000 saffron flowers to collect a pound of saffron spice raw material, which is then dried to produce less than a pound of finished saffron spice. The accumulation of flower fertilizer, insect removal, and labor costs at the time of collection, as well as the ongoing sanctions on Iran, the main producing area, are the main reasons for the high price of saffron.

Even in Britain, in Cornwall and Devon, where dark cuisine is abundant, there is also the production of saffron, which can reach tens of kilograms a year, which is completely unable to meet the needs of South Asians and Middle Easterners entering the British Isles. Saffron has a lower barrier to entry than truffles, unlike truffle restaurants or luxury stores, where Lin Yilong even sells saffron in Arabic or South Asian-style shops and shisha cafes to get purple and red tickets.

That is, as long as the EU sanctions against Iran are not lifted, the price of saffron is guaranteed for quite some time.

The initial findings of Lam's initial investigation are encouraging, and the next step is to follow up on Fatima's opportunity to make lamb steamed rice and have the privilege of tasting the magical taste of saffron first-hand – if you like the smell of saffron, maybe it's not a bad thing for Londoners to have a crowd of Middle Easterners gather around Paddington Station and in the Tower area to set up shops, restaurants and shisha parlours.

Hearing Katie invite him to the kitchen to eat, Lin Yilong went out without saying a word, and on the plate in front of him, like Jiangnan's steamed rice, mutton and South Asian long-grain rice were mixed together, and the difference was not very obvious.