Lin's Roasted Noodle Cake

  "Xiao Fang, what are you cooking? Why is it burnt?"

  Yang Xin returned home from the workshop, and as she approached the Lin's house, she smelled a faint scent of burnt food coming from the small kitchen. She thought it was Lin Fanghua cooking dinner, so she shouted out to her.

  These days, Lin Zhenhua was left to work on the petrochemical machine, and Yang Xin moved over to keep Lin Fanghua company. Every day, she ate and lived at the Lin's house, and after getting off work, she would directly return to the Lin's house, almost making her parents feel like their daughter had already gotten married.

  "It's not Xiaofang, I'm back." Lin Zhenhua poked his head out of the kitchen and smiled at Yang Xin.

  "Little Hua." Yang Xin was overjoyed, "When did you come back?"

  "I came back after three o'clock in the afternoon and bought some food when I passed by the farmer's market. These days, I wasn't at home, did you guys suffer?"

  "What are you talking about?" Yang Xin said with a snort, "It's as if you've done a lot of work at home, aren't all the household chores done by Xiaofang?"

  Lin Zhenhua said, "Xiaofang can do housework, but if you want to eat good food, I, the super chef, have to make an appearance. You guys must not have had any delicious food these days, wait for me to come and treat you."

  Lin Zhenhua was talking to Yang Xin while still busy in the kitchen. Yang Xin found it very strange and couldn't help but move forward to watch.

  Only in the kitchen, on the coal ball stove, a simple iron frame was set up, and in the middle of the iron frame, a cage-like thing made of thick iron wire was supported, with a large dough inside, being roasted over the fire. Lin Zhenhua kept turning the iron cage to make the dough heat evenly in all directions. As it had been roasted for some time, the surface of the dough already had some scorched marks, and the burnt smell Yang Xing had just smelled was coming from here.

  "Little Hua, are you baking bread?" Yang Xin asked. Bread was a luxury item that everyone had at least seen before. However, the dough Lin Zhenhua was baking didn't look as soft as bread, and its volume was much larger than bread.

  "It's much more delicious than bread." Lin Zhenhua deliberately kept people in suspense.

  "How did I smell a wine scent?"

  "That's right, when I was making the dough, I added half a bottle of white wine."

  "Why is that?" Yang Xin's curiosity was piqued.

  "What are you talking about!" Lin Fanghua suddenly appeared behind the two of them and shouted loudly.

  Yang Xin patted her chest: "Oh my, you scared me to death! Why didn't you make a sound?"

  "Hey——!" Lin Fanghua responded to Yang Xin's call, shouting loudly, then looked at Lin Zhenhua with a smile: "Brother, you still know how to come back?"

  "Nonsense, this is my home, why wouldn't I come back?"

  "I heard from Master Hao that you've taken a liking to a young female welder over there, and people are already calling her Lin Shen," said Lin Fanghua, as if breaking news. The Master Hao she mentioned was Hao Songlin, a welder in the container workshop who lived near their home. Among the several welders who went to the petrochemical plant this time, there was also Hao Songlin, who had personally witnessed Lin Zhenhua and Shen Jiale's bet.

  "For goodness' sake, when did you become like a middle-aged woman who loves gossip?" Lin Zhenhua was getting a headache.

  "Little Hua, is this true? That Lin Shen, I heard she's very pretty?" Yang Xin also chimed in, and when Hao Songlin said this, she was present too. She was more concerned about the authenticity and details of the story than Little Fang.

  Lin Zhenhua shook his head: "Don't listen to Hao Shifu's nonsense, in his eyes, even an old sow has double eyelids."

  "What about in your eyes?" Yang Xinkuo didn't let him change the subject.

  "Uh... the thing is, that female welder, Shen Jiale, she's even older than my aunt, her waist is as thick and round as a heat exchanger made in a container factory, her face is all pockmarked, just like a flange... Lin Zhenhua was slandering Shen Jiale against his will, but he clearly heard a loud sneeze coming from over 60 kilometers away to the north."

  "How can you describe someone like that!" Yang Xin and Lin Fanghua laughed so hard they were doubled over, a face as long as a flange was really too ridiculous. However, Yang Xin genuinely liked Lin Zhenhua's analogy, all the women who had tried to or had gotten close to Lin Zhenhua in Yang Xin's eyes were all flanges. As a machinist, Yang Xin's task was to drill holes on the flanges, one after another.

  "Alright, alright, you two go back inside and sit down. I'll have dinner ready in a bit." Lin Zhenhua said to the two girls after the alarm had been lifted.

  Lin Fanghua said: "Brother, what are you doing? You're not calling me out to eat roasted glutinous rice balls at night, are you?"

  "What's wrong, am I not even enough to eat a roasted mantou?" Lin Zhenhua retorted, this sentence was actually exposing her shortcoming, because Xiaofang often cooked rice into something like roasted mantou or roasted glutinous rice balls.

  "Let's eat a bit better today," said Lin Fanghua. In the days when Lin Zhenhua was not at home, she and Yang Xin had been eating very simply at home, and she really missed Lin Zhenhua's boiled fish.

  "Give me a reason first." Lin Zhenhua said, he wasn't worried that his sister wouldn't understand the Cantonese accent, he had explained it to her many times before.

  "Of course there is a reason." Lin Fanghua said, "Firstly, you're back, and both Yang Xin and I have missed you..."

  "I didn't think so..." Yang Xin's face turned red as she softly denied it.

  "Think about it, you told my brother to go." Lin Fanghua glared at Yang Xin. These past few days they had been living together, and Lin Fanghua had already figured out that Yang Xin was interested in her own brother. She of course wholeheartedly approved of this. Now seeing Yang Xin's insincere behavior, she couldn't help but look down on her a bit.

  "Second!" Lin Fanghua deliberately paused for a moment. "Comrade Lin Zhenhua, you have to treat me to something. Guess why?"

  "Is it because you washed all of my smelly socks?"

  "Pah! Pah! Pah!" Lin Fanghua said, "Which time wasn't I the one washing for you? You still have the face to say that."

  "Is that when you helped an old lady cross the road after school today?" Lin Zhenhua continued to guess.

  "It was a help, but after helping her cross the road, the old lady said that her home was actually on this side of the road and she didn't need to cross it in the first place." Lin Fanghua laughed as she said this. This joke was actually taught to her by Lin Zhenhua, from whom she had learned many jokes like this over the past few months.

  "I have no idea then."

  Lin Fanghua said with a smile: "Let me tell you, the results of our final exam have been announced today, and I got sixth place in the whole class!"

  "Really?" Yang Xin was both surprised and delighted, "Xiao Fang, you really got sixth in the class?"

  Lin Fanghua was in the county's No. 1 Middle School. The high school department had eight classes, six of which were rural classes and two were urban classes, all of which were the top students in the county. Lin Fanghua's junior high school grades were not very good, barely passing the entrance exam to No. 1 Middle School, with grades that could only be at the bottom of the class, but now she surprisingly ranked sixth, really beyond expectations. If she can maintain such grades, it is possible to take a ordinary undergraduate exam. It's worth noting that the children of Hanhua Mechanical Factory have always been known for their poor grades in No. 1 Middle School, and in previous years, they didn't even pass the entrance exam for a vocational school.

  Lin Zhenhua looked at his sister with a blank expression, seemingly unable to understand why she was so pleased: "You mean sixth in the class, not sixth in the grade?"

  "Are you kidding me? The first in our class is only sixth in the whole grade!" Lin Fanghua said angrily, "Lin Zhenhua, aren't you happy for me at all?"

  "Alright, alright, be happy, be happy." Lin Zhenhua had no choice but to concede. To him, being sixth in the class was not even worth mentioning, and being sixth in the grade was barely passable. However, seeing how happy Lin Fanghua was, he couldn't bear to disappoint her again: "Go ahead, set the table, we'll have a big feast tonight."

  "Are you still talking about eating a big meal with just that roasted bun?" Lin Fanghua was very dissatisfied.

  Lin Zhenhua ignored her and turned to Yang Xin, saying: "Yang Xin, go back and call your brother too. Tell him there's delicious food, if he comes late, it'll be gone."

  Yang Xin and Xiaofang both knew that Lin Zhenhua was good at playing tricks, so if he put on this look, maybe he really hid some delicious food somewhere. The two left the kitchen, one went back to call her brother Yang Tao to come and eat together, and the other went back to the room to pull out a table and set up bowls and chopsticks.

  "Here it comes——" Under everyone's gaze, Lin Zhenhua walked in with the steaming hot dough wrapped in two pairs of cloth gloves. He put a large plate on the table and placed the dough on it, then frantically waved his hands because the dough was really too hot to handle.

  "How can this be eaten?" everyone asked in unison.

  "Look!" Lin Zhenhua, with a forceful pinch through the silk glove, tore the dough in half. A fragrance burst out from within the dough and wafted throughout the entire room.

  "It's a chicken!" Lin Fanghua shouted with joy, and saw that in the middle of the dough, there was a big fat chicken wrapped in it, its skin soft and tender, with juice dripping all over and shining with oil.

  "This is my signature dish, Lin's Beggar's Chicken! Welcome to criticize and correct me!" Lin Zhenhua announced loudly. "Everyone, please take a look, traditional Beggar's Chicken uses yellow mud wrapping, but the mud isn't clean enough. So, clever Lin Zhenhua invented using dough wrapping instead, and added white wine while kneading, which helps remove the fishy smell from the chicken. Originally, there should be a layer of lotus leaf wrapped on the outside of the chicken, but it's not in season now, so I used cabbage leaves instead, which can also produce a refreshing fragrance... Hey hey hey, don't just eat, listen to me finish speaking! Saying a few words of praise would be nice too!"

  "Come, Yang Tao, this leg is for you to eat. Yang Xin, let's each have a wing, it's really delicious." Lin Fanghua didn't have the time to listen to Lin Zhenhua's boasting, she used her chopsticks to quickly dismember the chicken, then hugged a plump chicken wing and started devouring it with relish.

  "How come you all have some, and I don't have any?" Lin Zhenhua looked at everyone and said dejectedly. Lin Fanghua had given Yang Xin and Yang Tao a big piece of chicken each, but hadn't given his brother any.

  Yang Xin suddenly smiled and picked up the remaining chicken leg with her chopsticks, putting it into Lin Zhenhua's bowl: "Isn't this so? Xiaofang left it for you. Who told you to talk so much?"

  "Hehe, Yang Xin still knows how to make me happy." Lin Zhenhua said gratefully as he got the chicken thigh.

  Yang Xin said, "What nonsense are you talking about!" After finishing speaking, she turned her head to glance at Lin Fanghua with a guilty conscience, and met Lin Fanghua's eyes that were full of teasing. Yang Xin couldn't help but feel extremely embarrassed: "Dead Little Fang, what are you looking at? Are you still making fun of me even when there's food to eat?"