With Ka Luo as the assistant, Chen Qi poured less than half of the remaining rice berry flour and had Ka Luo knead it into dough and set it aside to let rise. He took some hydrochoerus dragon bones and boiled them into a bone soup.

While the soup was boiling, he took some cured antelope meat and cut it into cubes for later use. Chen Qi also took some large cabbages from the storage room. He broke off leaf after leaf and washed them then neatly stacked them in a large pottery dish.

There were about a dozen potatoes left. Chen Qi took a few of them and peeled and cut them into thin slices to be used later. Then he cut the two large chunks of thawed hydrochoerus dragon meat that he’d brought in early in the morning and sliced them thinly, which was enough to fill a big pottery dish. After processing the ingredients, he saw that the dough had been left to rise for a while, so Chen Qi rolled it out with a rolling pin, then divided it into three parts and set them aside to let rise some more.

Ka Luo had already processed the ginger and scallion, and moved to Chen Qi’s side to watch what he was doing.

Chen Qi added a few tablespoons of fish oil to the pottery pan. The oil was freshly fried out yesterday. There was a fish that looked like mackerel and was bigger than the crucian carp they’d caught before. The fish was rich in fat, and the oil fried out from one fish was enough for them to use for a long time. Azhang often went fishing and would especially fish for at least one of this kind of fish. Now there were two large dishes of oil stored at home.

After the oil is hot, the antelope meat, that was diced earlier, was put into the pan and stir-fried until it was fragrant. Then, chopped ginger and onion were added, followed by less than half a plate of water. Then, a small handful of rice berry flour was put into the pan and stir-fried evenly. Next, some sugar was added and the dish was left to simmer for a while until it thickened before it was removed from the fire.

Chen Qi prodded it a little with his finger for a taste. Seeing that, Ka Luo also poked his finger in it for a try. “What is this?”

“Minced meat sauce.” Because of limited ingredients, Chen Qi could only make it so simply. When he found the taste was good, he continued to process the dough.

The dough was rolled out with a rolling pin and was cut a few times with the dragon-horn knife. Chen Qi wanted to try to pull the dough into strips like he’d seen done in ramen shops before. He didn’t know whether the dough was not tough enough or whether his skills were too lousy, but many times, the dough would break into two halves when he pulled it. Left with no choice, Chen Qi could only use the most brain-dead method to cut the rolled dough into strips with the dragon-horn knife and then put the cut dough into boiling water to cook for a while.

After the noodles were cooked, they were put into a pottery bowl and a little bit of the boiled bone soup was added into it. Then a spoonful of the just-made minced meat sauce was scooped in and the dish was mixed evenly with chopsticks. Dividing it into several portions, he had Ka Luo and Ajing have a taste too.

Ka Luo took a small taste. The noodles were smoother than the meat dishes he had eaten before. He chewed a few times then swallowed. “It’s a little better than stewed meat, but not as tasty as the fried meat patties.” Ka Luo commented.

Chen Qi rolled his eyes at him. As long as it was not a meat dish, the beastpeople were not as interested in other food. Chen Qi had long been accustomed to this, so he did not dare to make too much so as not to have it go to waste.

Holding the pottery bowl carefully, Chen Qi inhaled a deep breath of the noodles’ fragrance. If the baked patties from before were half considered staple food, then this small portion of noodles in this bowl was the real staple food. Counting it, it had been more than half a year since Chen Qi came here, and the Zheng* characters that were previously used to record the time had the sixth character’s second stroke. However, the rice porridge he’d been cooking with rice berries for so long was, to be more precise, actually rice paste. Although it carried a similar fragrance to rice, it was not the real rice after all, while these shaped noodles were real and authentic noodles.

*Same as in ch 19. The Zheng character = 正 is the Chinese tally mark. https://www.reddit.com/r/korea/comments/ijxiur/tally_marks_from_around_the_world/