Wei Caiwei was cooking for the first time—he couldn’t possibly refuse to show his appreciation.
Wang Daxia quickly picked up the iron disc—no, the mooncake—blew off the dust on its surface, and deliberately placed it toward the back of his mouth, biting down with his sturdiest molars.
Still, it was too hard to bite. Wei Caiwei’s mooncakes were even harder than an energetic Wang Xiaoxia.
Wang Daxia couldn’t help but feel troubled. His gaze fell on the eight "Blooming Flowers and Full Moon" mooncakes on the plate, reminding him of a story his childhood teacher had told him: "Using one’s own spear to attack one’s own shield."
As a last resort, he could only fight fire with fire—or in this case, mooncake with mooncake.
Surely, if he hit one mooncake with another, he could crack it open.
Earlier, Caiwei had mentioned the mooncakes had Assorted Nuts Filling. No matter how hard the crust was, the walnuts, peanuts, pine nuts, and sesame seeds inside should still be chewable.
Wang Daxia almost wanted to applaud his own cleverness. He took one mooncake from the plate, placed it on the cutting board, picked up another mooncake, and slammed them together!
With a loud thud, his palm went numb from the impact, but the two colliding mooncakes remained intact. The only damage was that the character "好" on the top mooncake lost a horizontal stroke in its "子" component, turning it into "女了," while the "月" character on the bottom one lost two horizontal strokes.
Wang Daxia picked up the three horizontal strokes knocked loose from the mooncakes—they looked like three thin sticks. The force of the impact had only dislodged them without shattering them. Not daring to test their hardness with his teeth, he used his hands to snap the thin sticks in two.
Wei Caiwei claimed she had used Ding Wu's Recipe to bake these mooncakes. Could the secret ingredient be molten iron? How could they be this hard? Was she baking mooncakes or forging swords?
Nevertheless, humanity’s journey from primitiveness to civilization began with the skill of making and using tools. After the striking method failed, Wang Daxia picked up the sharp kitchen knife on the cutting board and started chopping.
This time, he finally managed to cut (or rather, hack) the mooncake open!
From the cross-section, it was clear the mooncake did indeed have Assorted Nuts Filling. However, the crust was excessively thick, with only a thin layer of filling in the middle, which was why it had been impossible to bite into.
Just looking at the thickness and hardness of the crust made Wang Daxia’s teeth ache before he even took a bite. He decided to continue chopping the mooncakes into smaller, more manageable pieces.
After hacking apart two mooncakes, the kitchen knife had several nicks in its blade. Wang Daxia stared at the damaged edge with concern, but just then, he heard the call from outside: "Scissors sharpened, knives repaired!"
Wang Daxia had found his savior. He hurried out with the knife, asking the itinerant knife sharpener to grind away the nicks.
By the time the knife was sharpened, Wei Caiwei had returned from washing vegetables at the Sweetwater Alley well.
Holding the freshly polished knife, Wang Daxia said somewhat guiltily, "The knife was a bit dull, so I had it sharpened."
"Thank you," Wei Caiwei replied, carrying her vegetable basket into the house. "The chicken soup is ready. I don’t know how to stir-fry, so we can just blanch these vegetables and mushrooms. I bought dipping sauce for the hot pot from a restaurant."
Drawing on her memories, Wei Caiwei attempted to recreate Ding Wu’s hot pot. She brought out a Red Copper Hot Pot from the kitchen, placed a few pieces of charcoal in the central chamber, and poured the prepared chicken soup into the pot as the base. The chicken used for the broth wasn’t discarded; after letting it cool slightly, she shredded it by hand to make a cold chicken salad.The autumn sky was clear and the breeze cool in the small courtyard. It was the most pleasant weather of the year, perfect for enjoying hot pot without feeling hot. A red copper hot pot stood in the center, bubbling with golden chicken broth. Beside it were freshly washed vegetables, plates of beef and lamb sliced by the butcher, a mound of shredded chicken, and the five-nut mooncakes Wang Daxia had chopped up.
This Mid-Autumn Festival seemed quite promising.
As they sat down, Wei Caiwei, as the hostess, wanted her guest to eat well. Noticing the mooncakes on the dessert plate were too few, she said, "There aren’t enough mooncakes. Let me get another one."
"That’s plenty!" Wang Daxia quickly stopped her, worried she might damage her teeth. "Mooncakes are too sweet; a little is enough. Besides, there’s a whole table of dishes."
Wei Caiwei picked up a halved mooncake and pointed at the filling. "I love five-nut mooncakes the most, but they always have candied winter melon strips inside. I hate the taste of those. Ding Wu used to pick them out for me. Later, he taught himself cooking and started baking mooncakes himself, using only five nuts and rock sugar, no candied strips. I love his five-nut mooncakes the most and never buy any from pastry shops."
"This year, I tried making them myself. The first few kept splitting open, so I thickened the crust to wrap the filling properly."
No wonder the crust was so thick!
Pretending to be curious, Wang Daxia asked, "Your filling is so unique—five nuts without candied strips. I’ve never seen that before. What did you use for the crust?"
Wei Caiwei replied, "Flour."
Wang Daxia pressed, "And?"
"Of course, I added some water and kneaded it hard to mix it in. Kneading dough evenly is tough—a pampered young master like you wouldn’t understand. The dry flour stuck to my hands and was hard to rub off. I only washed it away when I cleaned the vegetables earlier."
Wang Daxia truly didn’t understand, but he felt something was off about Wei Caiwei’s method.
Yet he didn’t dare ask further! It was her first time cooking, and regardless of taste, she deserved encouragement.
In truth, whenever Ding Wu made mooncake dough, he added lard, butter, eggs, powdered sugar, and leavening starter.
Whether making crumbly peach cookies or plump mooncakes, his secret was loading up on oil and sugar. For personal consumption, he spared no expense, using as much as possible.
Pastry shops had to control costs, but Ding Wu used all he wanted.
Wei Caiwei, who only ate the results, assumed the crust was just flour and water.
Without fat or leavening, and rolled so thick, the crust indeed turned weapon-like after high-temperature baking.
No wonder even the kitchen knife got chipped.
"Here, you’re the guest—you try first." Wei Caiwei placed a small piece of mooncake on Wang Daxia’s plate, watching him expectantly.
In her previous life, Wei Caiwei had never set foot in the kitchen, so this was Wang Daxia’s first time tasting her homemade pastry across two lifetimes.
Wang Daxia had planned to dump a plate of lamb into the chicken hot pot, but Wei Caiwei’s enthusiasm left him no room for refusal.
He had already tested the mooncake’s hardness with the kitchen knife—unless he had iron teeth, chewing it was impossible.However, such a minor issue could hardly stump the clever Wang Daxia—the man who had destroyed two White Lotus Sect strongholds in succession, been promoted three ranks by the age of fourteen, and become the youngest Hundred-Household Commander in the Embroidered Uniform Guard!
As the saying goes, everything has its nemesis—just as brine coagulates tofu. No matter how hard the pastry crust was, wouldn’t it soften after being soaked in water?
Wang Daxia pretended to take a sip of tea, holding a large mouthful of hot tea without swallowing it. Then, he placed the chopped mooncake in his mouth, held it for a while, and pressed his tongue against the crust. Feeling that the hot tea had softened it, he began to chew.
As he chewed, he felt something sharp prick him inside his mouth, like a developing canker sore—it hurt a little. But what did a little pain matter? I only have to endure some pain, while Wei Caiwei would lose her confidence in her culinary skills.
He endured it.
Wang Daxia continued chewing, only to be pricked again—this time, it hurt even more. Moreover, a metallic, bloody taste filled his mouth, as if he were bleeding.
Was this crust made of iron? Not only did it refuse to soften, but it also cut my mouth.
Why not just swallow it? My stomach will surely digest it—no need to let my mouth suffer any longer.
Wang Daxia’s mind sometimes worked in a single track. The last time he dined on a decorated pleasure boat, he had gotten a fishbone from sweet and sour fish stuck in his throat and similarly tried to swallow it down by stuffing two mouthfuls of rice into his mouth.
Just as Wang Daxia was about to swallow it with the tea, Wei Caiwei grabbed his throat. "Why is your mouth bleeding? Don’t swallow—spit it out."
Wei Caiwei had been watching Wang Daxia eat the mooncake she made with eager anticipation, so what a horrifying sight it was to see two trails of blood trickling from the corners of his lips?
Wang Daxia spat everything out. Under the autumn sun, a gleaming shard of a blade was clearly visible amid the assorted nuts filling!
Wei Caiwei quickly poured him clear water to rinse his mouth. "I’m sorry, it’s my fault. I accidentally mixed in a foreign object while preparing the assorted nuts filling."
As Wang Daxia chewed and ended up bleeding, the sight of the metal fragment instantly reminded him of the moment he had swung the kitchen knife to chop the mooncake.
"It’s not your fault—it’s mine." Though embarrassed, Wang Daxia didn’t want Wei Caiwei to develop a lasting fear of making mooncakes and hurriedly explained, "When I chopped the mooncake with the kitchen knife earlier, I chipped the blade in several places and didn’t notice that broken fragments had embedded themselves in the assorted nuts filling."
"Luckily, I was the first to eat it, or you would have been the one hurt."
Wei Caiwei was taken aback. "So when you asked the craftsman to sharpen the knife earlier, it wasn’t because the blade was dull—it was because you had chipped it?"
Wang Daxia nodded.
"Are the mooncakes I made really that hard?" Wei Caiwei picked up an intact mooncake and made as if to take a bite.
Oh no! Her teeth will shatter! "Stop!" Wang Daxia, quick-eyed and swift-handed, slapped the mooncake out of Wei Caiwei’s grasp.
The mooncake flew out, hitting the courtyard wall. The wall had been freshly plastered this year by Chen the Agent in his rush to rent out the house. The mooncake struck it, chipping off a piece of the plaster, then rebounded and fell to the ground, creating a shallow dent before rolling to a stop at Wei Caiwei’s feet.
Wei Caiwei picked up the mooncake. Despite all it had been through, the assorted nuts mooncake remained almost perfectly intact—like a chaste widow who had erected a memorial arch in honor of her virtue, steadfast and unblemished, preserving her purity.Looking at Wei Caiwei's disappointed and dejected expression, Wang Daxia comforted her: "It's alright, your efforts weren't wasted. Even though the five-nut mooncakes aren't edible, they can be used as hidden weapons for self-defense. Think about it - if an intruder breaks in and you throw a mooncake at them, they'll assume it's food and won't bother to dodge. Then unexpectedly, a single mooncake could crack their head open."
Wei Caiwei stared at Wang Daxia: I know you're trying to comfort me, but... when you say things like that, you'd really be better off keeping quiet.
Wang Daxia would never forget the Mid-Autumn Festival of the thirty-ninth year of Jiajing's reign, because on this day when he was having a meal with Wei Caiwei, he couldn't eat the steaming hot pot due to two cuts in his mouth from swallowing razor blades that were still bleeding.
He could only drink the bland, watery mung bean soup meant to clear heat and reduce inflammation, and eat plain chicken shreds without any salt or seasoning, while watching Wei Caiwei sit across from him enjoying the chicken broth hotpot. She finished mutton, then beef, followed by mushrooms, greens, taro slices, and finally ended the meal perfectly by cooking a small handful of fine dried noodles in the remaining broth.
Author's note: Caiwei: He needs to learn his lesson about not swallowing things recklessly. Both fish bones and razor blades are dangerous. Without the big summer (Daxia), there can be no little summer (Xia). When the skin is gone, where can the hair adhere?
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