After the dough was prepared,
the next focus was the filling for the Mille-feuille!
The minced pork was placed into a clean ceramic bowl, followed by minced ginger, minced scallions, Sichuan peppercorn powder, white sugar, cooking wine, edible salt, and other seasonings, then stirred evenly.
It could be said that,
Mille-feuille was that simple!
It didn't require overly high-end ingredients; common flour, pork, scallions, and so on were enough!
Finally, a kind of shortening also needed to be made.
The purpose of the shortening was to drizzle it over the surface of the pastry and the meat filling after the Mille-feuille was finished, adding flavor and crispiness!
Sosuke continued by taking a small bowl, adding 10g of flour, then a little edible salt for seasoning, and finally, lard.
The reason for using lard instead of various other vegetable oils was that lard itself was beneficial for flakiness, so using shortening to make this flaky oil was very good!
After adding the lard,
he stirred it evenly with chopsticks.
Finally, the prepared filling and shortening were set aside for later use.
Of course, directly adding the shortening into the filling was also an option, but Sosuke didn't do that!
...
"Very good."
"Next, it's time to witness a miracle!"
After finishing all of this, Sosuke
once again closed his eyes tightly and began to adjust his breathing frequency.
Once he had completely calmed down, he began to fold the dough, which had a diameter of over 3 meters!
There were usually two ways to make a pastry: one was to fold it like folding a quilt, layer by layer. The more layers folded, the more layers the finished Mille-feuille would have! And with this folding method, the shape of the finished product varied.
For example:
There were round ones!
There were rectangular ones!
And there were square ones!
So, the advantage was that the shape could be folded according to one's own method.
As for
the other method, it was to make it into a round shape.
It wasn't folded layer by layer, but rather, after the filling was spread, it was rolled from one side of the dough to the other, and then the ends were sealed after rolling.
Finally, the dough was rolled into a round shape from one end, and then re-rolled into a flat pastry with a rolling pin!
Clearly, Sosuke used the first method.
Once the pastry was made, it could be pan-fried. First, after the pan was heated, a suitable amount of cooking oil was added!
When the oil temperature reached about 60% heat, the prepared pastry was placed in, and then slowly fried over medium-low heat until both sides were golden brown!
Thus, the seemingly simple but complex Mille-feuille was completed!
...
Upon closer inspection,
the freshly baked Mille-feuille
still had a high temperature and was constantly emitting a rich pastry aroma!
Although this Mille-feuille contained scallions, and the dark specks on its surface looked like black sesame seeds, its simple appearance alone made it difficult to entice diners' appetites!
However, Rindo, who knew this was Sosuke's cooking style, was filled with anticipation!
"Can I…"
"Can I eat it now?"
Afterward,
she swallowed her saliva.
The impatient Rindo looked away from the Mille-feuille and then looked up at Sosuke.
"Yes!"
"Of course, you can."
Sosuke merely nodded.
And after receiving Sosuke's permission, Rindo excitedly picked up a small piece of Mille-feuille.
However, the moment her hands touched the Mille-feuille, her watery eyes widened significantly, filled with disbelief!
"Hiss!"
"This… this texture!"
"Am I seeing this correctly? How can the crust of this Mille-feuille be so thin!"
"You can guess."
"How many layers of pastry did I use for the Mille-feuille I made?"
Seeing the incredulous Rindo, Sosuke seemed to anticipate this scene and asked mysteriously.
"Could it be…"
"Is it… is it 100 layers!"
"No, no, no, such thin pastry layers, if stacked to a height that can barely be held with both hands, at least… at least it must be over 500 layers of pastry!"
Hearing this, Rindo stared at the Mille-feuille in her hand for a few moments.
After a brief contemplation, she stated what she thought was a very fair answer!
"Mille-feuille!"
"I made a Mille-feuille!"
Upon hearing this, Sosuke shook his head and smiled, speaking again.
"Huh?"
"1000 layers!"
"You… you actually used 1000 layers of pastry to make a Mille-feuille!"
Doubt!
Shock!
Frustration!
And finally… numbness!
Rindo's emotions kept changing because of this Mille-feuille in front of her.
But no matter what, the Mille-feuille Sosuke made this time completely subverted her understanding and perception of some dishes.
After all, every Mille-feuille seen outside didn't actually require 1000 layers of pastry!
The so-called 'thousand layers' was just a name!
One should know that the thickness of an A4 paper is 0.104 millimeters. If stacked to 1000 layers, the thickness would be 10.4 centimeters!
And only by making the pastry as thin as paper—no, because meat filling also had to be added, its thickness had to be several times, or even dozens of times thinner than A4 paper, to make the Mille-feuille in front of her!
In other words,
in this world, there was simply no chef
who would be crazy enough to stack 1000 layers of pastry to make a Mille-feuille that could be held with both hands.
But Sosuke in front of her, not only had such a crazy idea, but more importantly, he actually achieved it!
...
"Theoretically speaking,"
"I adopted the principle of pastry layering, which is to allow each thin layer of pastry to be coated with butter and then cut!"
"Thus, during the heating process, the internal butter will slowly melt."
"And the water within it will produce steam, utilizing the upward force of this steam to gradually expand each thin layer of pastry, forming a distinct layered, thin-sheet structure!"
"Then,"
"if your math is a bit better,"
"you should understand that I used the folding method."
"Each time it's folded and then rolled out again, then folded again… allowing the number of layers in the pastry to grow exponentially in cubic increments."
"Of course,"
"the initial dough!"
"The very top and very bottom layers have no butter, so each time the next fold is made, these two layers of pastry will merge into one layer!"
"In short,"
"the first time it's folded,"
"the number of layers will be 3 multiplied by 3 equals 9, then minus 2, resulting in 7 layers!"
"And the second fold, the number of layers will again be 7 multiplied by 3 equals 21, then minus 2, resulting in 19 layers!"
"Finally,"
"by the 6th fold,"
"the final number of layers will be 487 multiplied by 3 equals 1464, then minus 2, resulting in 1459 layers!"
Rindo: (⊙o⊙)
Hmm!
This kind of mathematical calculation problem,
she found it very difficult to figure out right away, but the final number of 1459 layers, Rindo understood perfectly clearly!
Good gracious!
This was too outrageous, wasn't it?
The number of pastry layers required for this Mille-feuille was not exactly 1000 layers, but rather…
1459 layers!