I calculated the days before I left, so I happened to be on the first day of the month when I went to class. In the first lesson, the teacher gave us several books on cooking, and talked about the origins, history, and characteristics of the culinary industry.

Our teacher was a tall, thin black man. He was a high school student and wrote very well. I heard from other students that he is our famous chef in Nanyang, and his skills are very good, and he was hired by the principal for a high salary.

There were about 20 students in our class, some from various counties in our Nanyang area, but none of our fellow villagers in Xinye. Among them, the principal's youngest son also studied with us.

After explaining some basic principles of cooking, the teacher told us that before we learned how to stir-fry, we were given a free technique - making pasta. What to do with pasta?

Originally, for a noodle-based province, most of our Henan people would fry fried fritters and didn't use chef school at all. But I won't. I told you, I was pampered since I was a child, and my parents only thought that I could get into college and get ahead, so they didn't let me learn these things.

Until I dropped out of high school, these small things that usually didn't seem worth mentioning became big things for me. In general, fried fritters need to be mentioned first.

Raising noodles requires a certain amount of experience and skill, otherwise the noodles are either too hard or easy to hydrate, and the fried fritters are either hard or too soft. I won't talk about our family. Whenever the family wants to fry fritters during the Chinese New Year, I only give them a hand.

However, we only "know how to fry" fried fritters at home, and there is never a theory to guide us. It's not the same in chef school. It will describe the method and steps of frying fritters in words, and describe it vividly, how much to use for what noodles, how much water to use, how much alum to add, and how much salt to add, all have a clear proportion.

This kind of description helps me in writing because I can learn the art of descriptive from it.

I don't know how to blow up at home, and now I suddenly have to face this kind of skill, which is tantamount to a challenge for me. Another rule is that only one of our 20 or so students can have a chance to do it, and the others can only watch from the sidelines.

There is an idiom called "the eye is high and the hand is low", a skill that you can learn if you just look at it and don't practice it, I should really call you a genius.

Our teacher always asked a fair young man from Zhenping to teach us how to practice. Because he was originally a cook at home, he first had a certain foundation, so if he learned the theory, the skill would be even more superb.

However, it is so difficult for us former laymen to get into this industry.

After the noodle class, I haven't learned much yet, and I've officially learned how to stir-fry. In the beginning, it was the same as learning pasta, and the teacher first explained a lot of theories to us.

From his gushing narration, I know what the four major cuisines of China are, and the tastes of the four major cuisines are: sweet in the south and salty in the north, sour in the east and spicy in the west. Our Henan cuisine evolved from Sichuan cuisine and is known as Sichuan-Yu cuisine. It is some characteristics of Sichuan cuisine, plus some local flavors in Henan, which are collectively called Sichuan-Henan cuisine.

After all, I went to high school and my comprehension skills are okay, so I don't have to waste much thought to understand these theories at all. But when it comes to practice, it's troublesome.

If you want to be a chef, the first hurdle you need to pass is to be skilled in knife skills. To what extent is it cooked? The vegetables should be cut quickly, the size of the cut vegetables should be uniform, the thickness of the slices should be the same, the size of the dices should be the same, and the length and thickness of the silk should be almost the same.

The teacher told us that the requirement for shredded potatoes when making fried three shreds is to cut the shredded potatoes like matchsticks, and the middle is not allowed to stick. We asked him if he could be that level.

The teacher showed us on the spot: I saw him gently roll up the sleeves of his two hands, expose his wrists, and then pick up a potato that was even up and down, left and right, front and back, and now put a thin slice underneath, and then put the crossed side on the cutting board and began to cut the potato slices.

He gently pulled the five fingers of his left hand together and moved slowly as he moved the knife in his right hand up and down. After a while, the potato slices were lying on the cutting board one by one. He then pressed the potato slices down with his hand and cut the shredded potatoes.

After cutting the shredded potato, he pulled one out of the middle and asked his classmates to come and see. The classmates who had good deeds took out a match and compared it together, and it was exactly the same. So, I couldn't help but praise it.

Looking at the teacher's flower-like performance, I can't help but think of those unfathomable martial arts masters in Jin Yong's martial arts novels. Huang Yaoshi in "The Legend of the Condor Heroes", Gu Mozhi in "Dragon Babu", and Zhang Sanfeng in "Heaven and Dragon Slayer". Their attainments in martial arts have also reached this level.

But to be proficient to this level is not something that can be done in a day or two, a month or two months. That's where work is needed. God, I'm a person who is in a hurry, how can I practice that kung fu. So, I got upset again.

However, no matter how upset I was, the money had already been paid, and the tiger couldn't get out of the brittle bones in his mouth, so he had to learn there hard.

In order for us to practice knife work, the teacher spent half a month. The principal would buy some cheap white radishes from the market for us to cut. After cutting the turnips, the teacher led us to the side of the railway, and each of us was given a large kitchen knife and a cutting board, and we found some sentiments on the side of the road to cut them.

However, we cut for a few days, and none of us were skilled enough to be as good as a teacher. Then, we asked the teacher how long you have been practicing knife skills and when you have practiced them. He said, half a year.

He also said that he had cut a lot of things, about 1,000 catties, and said that his hands had been cut off a few pieces of flesh before he practiced to this point. When he said this, it made me even more discouraged. I told you that I am a cowardly man, and the thought that the kitchen knife might cut into my hand at any moment makes my heart furious, and my hand holding the knife only trembles.

In this way, the knife work cannot be practiced.

Since I can't pass the knife level, then learning to cook can only give up halfway. For example, if you go to a restaurant and apply for a job as a chef, and tell people that you don't know how to cut vegetables, will they use you?

So, I learned really badly at that chef school. However, the principal was quite "righteous", and at the end of the semester, he really helped me recommend a job as he said in the advertisement.

It was a small noodle restaurant. The principal told me that I would first be asked to do chores there, and then slowly learn how to stir-fry with the stir-fry master.

Oh reader, I forgot to tell you one more thing. Even when I was at that chef school, there was a beauty salon class with a lot of beautiful girls.

They would come to us a lot, and I could have talked about a girlfriend, but I wasn't in a good mood at the time. I think the most important reason is that I lied to my parents and had a troubled conscience. And in the chef class, it didn't go very well. There's no way to fall in love in that mood.

Another reason is that I am as timid and shy as I used to be. It is said that I am so handsome, as long as I take the initiative, there is no girl who can't catch up. But I'm just so shy.

You're going to ask if I want a woman, and I'm going to tell you, think a lot. But that's how ambivalent I am. I miss women very much in my heart, and I am very afraid when I see women. What kind of ghost psychology is this? But that's how I was at the time.

Oh, I'm going to tell you, the noodle restaurant I entered is owned by a Muslim, the owner is also surnamed Zhang, and his wife is chubby, always showing a smiling face. In addition to us, there was a boy who did chores and a middle-aged cook, and there was also a beautiful girl.

The other boy was Xiao Wang, two years younger than me. The beautiful girl's name is Xiao Cui, and she is four years younger than me. Don't worry, where there are girls, there is my love story.

This article is from Reading Books and Novels