Zhu Yanyi glanced at Yan Aohan. "Let’s go to the market together. We’ll buy things and go home to make you something delicious."
Yan Aohan’s eyes lit up at her words. He especially liked that she called their shared place "home." It was their common home. He nodded eagerly. "Okay. Let’s go to the market. I’ll take you to the biggest one. We have a car, after all."
Seeing his proud look, Zhu Yanyi smiled. "Good." She thought to herself that Yan Aohan was easily satisfied. This made her feel even more tender toward him.
The largest market in the capital was in the east of the city. Since they had a car, the distance didn’t matter. Zhu Yanyi picked very fresh ingredients. As the daughter of the head of the Azure Sovereign Group, getting fresh materials was easy. With the Azure Sovereign vegetable supermarket already open, most of her vegetables came from Zhu Shunyao or were fetched by Luo Gang and others. She didn’t need to buy many vegetables, only a bunch of water celery and two bell peppers.
However, she bought plenty of meat and seafood. The market’s goods were indeed fresh. She purchased two jin of river snails, a small tray of lamb chops, three jin of river shrimp, one yellow croaker, three baby pork ribs, two jin of silver carp, two jin of clams, and two jin of pork belly. Satisfied with her haul, she nodded and left.
After buying the groceries, Zhu Yanyi returned directly to their residential compound. There were still plenty of fresh vegetables at home.
First, she soaked the river snails, silver carp, and clams in water with some oil and salt to help them clean themselves. Then, she began processing the lamb chops, river shrimp, yellow croaker, pork belly, and baby ribs.
Zhu Yanyi was serious about making a grand meal this time, so there was a lot of preparation. Yan Aohan came over to help, and she didn’t refuse. One washed the vegetables while the other processed the meat.
Yan Aohan looked at Zhu Yanyi and asked, "What dishes are you making?"
Zhu Yanyi smiled. "With so much food, we couldn’t finish it all if we made regular meals. So, we won’t eat rice. We’ll eat dumplings."
She looked around and started processing the river shrimp and yellow croaker. She added lemon juice to create a seafood filling. She mixed some pork belly with fresh mushrooms and cabbage for a pork and mushroom filling. She also made a vegetarian filling using mixed vegetables and dried tofu shreds. To distinguish the three types of dumplings, she colored the dough differently. She used spinach juice for green dough to wrap the vegetarian filling, squid ink for black dough to wrap the seafood filling, and plain white dough for the pork and mushroom filling.
The baby ribs and lamb chops were prepared as a dish called "Delicious Double Ribs," a creation of Zhu Yanyi. The baby ribs were sweet and sour, while the lamb chops were seasoned with cumin and salt. The combination was delicious. The silver carp was rinsed with boiling water and eaten raw. The clams were made into a clam soup. The river snails and some pork belly were used to make stuffed snails. She stir-fried the water celery and made a "Treasure Tofu" dish with tofu.
Thus, a rich and abundant small family feast was ready.
Zhu Yanyi had made many dumplings. She didn’t cook them all at once. Besides sending some to Luo Gang and the others via Yan Aohan, she froze the rest in the refrigerator. They could take them out and eat them whenever they wanted later.