The beauty of Huaxia's cuisine lies in its "color, aroma, taste, form, and presentation."

"Color, aroma, and taste" are well-known and undoubtedly important, but "form" and "presentation" are equally significant.

The so-called "form" means that the dish has a perfect shape, immaculate presentation on the plate, and a neatly arranged appearance, making it very appetizing, aesthetically pleasing, and full of ambiance and taste.

Just like the Li Village Sliced Pork that Jiang Yu is currently making, slicing the meat is a highly technical and demanding process. It is the key to the visual appeal of Li Village Sliced Pork once completed. Without proficient and excellent knife skills, it's extremely difficult for a chef to slice the meat to meet the required standards.

If the sliced meat doesn't meet the standards, it will not only differ in taste but also lack the beauty of "form" in "color, aroma, taste, form, and presentation."

At this moment, the kitchen of Seat No. 7 was silent. Faintly, you could only hear the laughter of students queueing for food in the canteen downstairs.

Perhaps due to the distance, these sounds appeared sporadically, making the kitchen feel even quieter.

All the happenings outside did not affect Jiang Yu, who was currently highly focused.

He carefully held his breath, eyes tightly fixed on the piece of meat pressed by his left hand, while the other hand steadily moved the knife to slice the meat bit by bit.

Although this sounds slow, it didn't actually take long, just a short minute. A large, thin piece of pork, with equal fat and lean meat, fell gracefully from the block with the knife's stroke, looking just like a gauze bandage.

This is not a deliberate mockery. It is said that the original name of Li Village Sliced Pork was "Garlic Socked Meat," but someone later found the name inelegant and changed it to "Li Village Garlic Knife Sliced Pork."

After slicing the first piece, Jiang Yu couldn't help but breathe a long sigh of relief. He picked up the piece of meat and examined it closely.

The piece was evenly marbled, with glistening, translucent fat, and a thin layer that seemed almost transparent. The large, thin slice was intact, without tears, holes, or much sinew.

Even without dipping it in sauce, the slice, as thin as a cicada's wing and seemingly blowing away at the slightest wind, already stirred a desire to taste it just by looking at it.

Placing this adequately cut piece aside, Jiang Yu bent down and continued slicing the meat.

It took him about half an hour in total to finish slicing this entire piece of "second-cut pork."

As he progressed, Jiang Yu had pretty much mastered the slicing technique, not only ensuring the thickness was consistent but also significantly increasing his speed compared to the beginning.

This is perhaps what they call "practice makes perfect."

After the white pork was sliced, Jiang Yu washed two crisp cucumbers and swiftly sliced them into strips as thin as toothpicks.

After that, he took a clean big white plate, placed the cucumber strips between the sliced pork, and carefully rolled them into ten-centimeter-long rolls, arranging them in a circle on the plate.

The final step was to prepare the dipping sauce.

The full name of Li Village Sliced Pork is "Li Village Knife Garlic Sliced Pork," so naturally, the sauce should highlight the garlic flavor.

Jiang Yu took dried Seven-Star Peppers, Sichuan peppercorns, and garlic, pounding them into a paste in a mortar; this is the special dipping sauce for Li Village Sliced Pork, called "Rice Cake Pepper."

Pouring the pounded "Rice Cake Pepper" into a bowl, he added soy sauce, an appropriate amount of MSG, sugar, sesame oil, and other seasonings, mixing them well, completing the dipping sauce.

Jiang Yu placed the small bowl of dipping sauce in the middle of the large plate, marking the completion of the cold dish named Li Village Sliced Pork.

The next dish to prepare was the Huaiyang Cuisine's Steamed Lion's Head.

Previously, Jia Dequan mentioned that Steamed Lion's Head is a dish that tests one's knife skills. Jiang Yu felt a bit surprised since he had made Lion's Head before, but not the Huaiyang version, rather the Poyang Lake Lion's Head.

Poyang Lake Lion's Head is a traditional specialty dish of Jiangzhou.

This dish requires cutting taro into shreds, mixing with fine salt to marinate until soft, and chopping pork into granules.

Next, mix the meat grains, taro shreds, water chestnut pieces, ham shreds, dried scallop shreds, minced ginger, and egg thoroughly. Then, add dry starch, fine salt, soy sauce, and pepper powder, mixing well before dividing into four portions, each wrapped with a salted egg yolk, becoming a Lion's Head dough.

After frying the Lion's Head dough to golden brown, the dish could be either steamed or braised, both methods resulting in a very delicious taste.

This Poyang Lake Lion's Head is beloved by the people of Jiangzhou and is an indispensable dish on most families' New Year's Eve dinner table.

Perhaps, like most people, Jiang Yu thought that Lion's Head was merely about chopping the meat into a paste and shaping it into balls, a bit laborious but doable with care, and wondered what this had to do with knife skills?

But after thoroughly researching the Huaiyang Lion's Head recipe, Jiang Yu realized he had underestimated Huaiyang cuisine.

As one of Huaxia's four major cuisines, Huaiyang cuisine is famous for its "fine knife skills and clever slicing." Its craftsmanship is primarily reflected in its knife work.

It is said that of the over two hundred types of knife skills in Huaxia, Huaiyang cuisine employs them, which shows a great deal.

If Huaiyang cuisine's Wensi Tofu belongs to the showy type, then slicing a piece of fragile silken tofu into thousands of threads while keeping them intact, placing them in clear water with each strand visible, fine as hair.

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