“The curry powder is made from cloves, coriander seeds, cinnamon sticks, star anise, cumin seeds, and nutmeg”

Fu Chen placed the aforementioned spices into a large spice grinder. The machine had a wire that was plugged straight into the flat kitchen counter. Fu Lian stared curiously at all of the different spices. 

“whirrr”

The spice grinder had been turned on and ground the spices into a dark brown powder. Fu Chen took the bowl off of the spice grinder and placed it onto the kitchen counter.

“You want to ground the spices into a fine powder for the curry powder. The curry paste is slightly harder to make.”

Fu Chen heated a pan over medium-high heat. While that pan was heating up, he diced some onions, crushed and peeled a few bulbs of garlic, and grated several ginger roots. 

“Now that the pan has sufficiently heated up to medium heat, add in onions, garlic, and ginger roots. Once they begin to darken, remove the pan from the heat and put the ingredients into a blender.”

He dumped the contents of the pan into a blender. Then, he took out some dark red chilies.

“Add the fresh chilies into the blender and blitz the ingredients into a paste. You can also use dried chilies if you add in some water.”

“click”

Fu Chen placed the lid onto the blender and turned it on. 

“whirrrrrr”

The ingredients started to fly around in the glass blending container. As seconds passed by, the contents of the container started to change colors. 

“whirrr…..”

Fu Chen turned off the blender and took the glass jar off of the blender base. He opened the lid and revealed a dark red paste.

“Do you want to smell it?”

Being very curious, Fu Lian nodded her head and approached the glass container.

“Ah!”

She yelped in surprise because she felt a slight stinging sensation from her eyes. Determined to take another look, she formed tiny sheets of energy and placed them over her eyes. This time, she didn’t get stung and took a sniff of the paste. It gave off a strong aroma that made her mouth water.

“After the paste is finished, you mix the curry powder into it and set that aside. Alright, let me show you how to prepare the rice.”

Fu Chen filled a metal pot with long grains of white rice. He moved to the kitchen sink and filled the pot with water.

“You want to wash the rice several times in order to remove the excess starch from the surface. That starch will make the rice sticky and gummy which is undesirable for the curry we’re making.”

He rinsed the rice several times with the water turning less cloudy each time and stopped when the water was clear. 

“Now that we’ve removed most of the surface starch from the rice, fill the pot up with water. Look at the first phalanx of your index finger.”

Fu Lian looked slightly confused so Fu Chen decided to point to the first segment of his index finger that had the fingernail.

“Some people place one of their fingers on the surface of the rice and fill the water up to their first phalanx. Since we are a restaurant that values cleanliness, just fill the water till it is around an inch above the surface of the rice layer.”

He filled the pot with water, placed it on top of the stove, and turned on the heat.

“Bring the pot of rice to boil and then bring down the heat to reduce it to a simmer. Place the lid on and let it simmer for around 20 minutes.” 

Fu Chen then turned to the pot of gently simmering beef stock and took the pot off of the stove.

“The stock is ready which means that we strain it now.”

He used a metal strainer and carefully poured the steaming beef stock into multiple glass jars. “Here, try some of the finished stock.”

Fu Lian was given a soup spoon filled with a beef stock that was darker in color compared to the beef stock from earlier. 

“slurp”

‘The stock is richer and has a more intense beefy flavor compared to the one I had earlier.’

The soup spoon was licked clean and Fu Lian was wagging her tail. Noticing the longing look on her face, Fu Chen filled a bowl with beef stock and handed it to Fu Lian. She started to rapidly drink the soup. While Fu Lian was busy drinking the beef stock, Fu Chen took out a large metal pot and placed it on top of the stove.

He opened up a fridge, took out large slabs of meat, and placed them onto several metal trays. 

Fu Lian had finished her bowl of soup and saw the trays filled with meat. Fu Chen gestured to her so she walked over and stood next to him.

“These are slabs of chuck roast that will be used for the curry.”

He pointed at the greyish-white lines that ran across the meat. 

“These greyish-white lines are the connective tissues of the chuck roast. The lighter colored lines that are surrounding the connective tissues are pieces of fat.”

Fu Lian tilted her head and asked a question.

[Don’t connective tissues make the meat tough?]

“Yes, but the connective tissues in the chuck roast are mostly collagen. When you cook pieces of tough meat that have collagen over a long period of time at a low temperature, the fats break down and give the beef a fall-apart texture.”

Fu Chen placed one of the chuck roasts onto a cutting board and started cutting them into small chunks. After cutting the beef into chunks, Fu Chen cubed some butter and diced some onions.

“Let the pot heat up and then have the butter fully melt in the pot. Season the chunks of chuck roast with salt and pepper.” 

He added in the diced onions and chuck roast chunks. As the ingredients started to caramelize, a sweet, buttery, meaty aroma permeated through the kitchen.

“Add in tomato paste, the curry paste, and beef stock.”

“ssssss”

Fu Chen stirred the pot several times and let it gently simmer with the lid on.

“We’ll place in cubes of potato 30 minutes before the curry is finished so they can cook, but not turn into mush.”

--------

4 hours later….

“fwoosh”

The lid of the pot was taken off and revealed a reddish-brown curry that had chunks of tender beef and cubes of fluffy potato in it.

“tap, tap”

Fu Lian woke up from her nap when Fu Chen tapped her shoulder.

Fu Chen smiled slightly, “Did you have a nice nap.”

She nodded.

“You can try the curry now.”

He pointed to a bowl of curry that was slowly dripping into the mountain of rice underneath.

“This is your breakfast, the restaurant is going to open in around an hour.”

Fu Lian quickly dug into the steaming bowl of curry and rice with her tail wagging furiously

Fu Chen was humming an odd tune while he prepared the food for breakfast service. Abyss 1 and 2 appeared with ominous lights glowing through the slits of their masks. The painted smiles on the masks widened.