Munitions Empire-Chapter 1063 - 985 Imperial Kitchen
Chapter 1063: 985 Imperial Kitchen
The dietary habits of the Emperor of the Great Tang are highly particular, with a team of over 40 chefs bustling early every morning to prepare His Majesty’s meals for the day.
Tang Mo is a person who enjoys fine food. While in Brunas, he devised many food recipes himself. Although his own cooking was lackluster, when handed over to the chefs below, they all became classic delicacies.
To this day, the saying that “the world’s finest cuisine comes from the Great Tang” is accepted by most people. Everyone knows that some of the tastiest methods of food preparation originated from the Tang Empire.
This also coincides with the objective laws of matters; the Tang Empire was the first country to introduce the concept of three meals a day to its citizens, and its grain production is still the highest in the world. Every year, the Great Tang Empire spends a tremendous amount of money to import grains and meats, which gives the Tang Empire even more resources to research on cuisine.
In the Forbidden City, there might be the world’s largest and most fully-equipped kitchen, featuring a special cold storage for food preservation, where even the apprentices who are just starting to learn could be considered as master chefs elsewhere.
As the Emperor of the Tang Empire, the most powerful empire in the world, Tang Mo’s daily menu needs meticulous deliberation.
Even every morning upon rising, Tang Mo has his blood pressure measured, is diagnosed by a private medical team, and then the team sends his health data to the kitchen office, where a professional dietary design team decides on Tang Mo’s breakfast.
The medical team inquires about Tang Mo’s mood, considers his rest the previous night, whether there was any intimacy, and confirms with Tang Mo’s secretary about his mental state after reviewing documents.
Then, after considering these factors, Tang Mo personally selects what he wants to eat, and after a process of elimination, determines the lunch and dinner for the Emperor of the Great Tang Empire.
Before his crossover, Tang Mo was very much against the expensive so-called OMASAKE cuisine, whether it was Chinese or Japanese; he really disliked OMASAKE of any form.
He always believed that diet is an extremely personal thing; there is no standard measurement for it. The more a food is recognized as delicious, the further away it is from satisfying individual needs to the utmost.
The gimmick of OMASAKE, where the chef decides the menu, makes it impossible for the customer to enjoy the ultimate service.
Therefore, before his journey through time, Tang Mo felt that real OMASAKE service should involve the chef first communicating clearly with the employer and then purchasing the best ingredients on the day to provide high-class service with exquisite culinary skills.
Imagine if you reserved OMASAKE and then you find out in the evening that the table is full of sweet and sour pork ribs or syrup-coated sweet potatoes, and the ordering party is a family of diabetics… How awkward would that be? If the person ordering is in a bad mood and doesn’t feel like eating seafood, only to discover the main course is lobster, what then?
As the national power of the Great Tang Empire grew stronger, the team serving Emperor Tang Mo became more professional and refined, and Tang Mo finally experienced the true “imperial enjoyment” in this world.
He himself was eventually forced to transform from an arms dealer who was not particular about enjoyment and often dined in the open air, into a genuinely extravagant and indulgent emperor.
What defines an Emperor? It is the minutiae that you don’t think of yourself, for which countless people are scrutinizing, being particular about, and regulating for you.
The complex ceremonies and etiquette of the Nobility are formed through numerous specializations, and Tang Mo realized that unknowingly, he had developed many habits that he had never had before.
In fact, the food that the Emperor eats is not necessarily delicious, because at a certain level of development, it simply begins to align with the standard of “nutrient intake”.
To ensure the absolute health of His Majesty The Emperor, there is a fixed standard for diet planning. The Emperor’s meals must guarantee balanced nutrition; if you eat fried foods today, then it’s best to eat something light the next day.
Even the food schedule varies according to Tang Mo’s mood and the intensity of his work: what to eat when attending events, what to eat in the office while reviewing documents, what to eat as a late-night snack before bed… Each has its strict standards.
Moreover, much of the food the Emperor eats is even served cold; because it needs to be tested for poison by inspectors, and there are designated personnel who risk their lives to taste for toxins.
Who the Emperor dines with at noon or in the evening, and the related etiquette, all require advance preparation. What is served when entertaining the Prime Minister differs from a Minister, and different still when hosting military generals.
For a simple example, Prime Minister Roger of the Great Tang Empire holds a supremely aloof position. When His Majesty invites the Prime Minister to dine together, the meal tends to favor sweet dishes, because Prime Minister Roger has a sweet tooth, and this meal should naturally accommodate him.
While entertaining various Ministers with a predominance of fish and seafood is different, entertaining generals requires a focus on meat dishes, which is an unwritten rule, and even during cooking, there should be an emphasis on heavy oil and roasting to highlight the robust and resolute character of military generals.
This is only the surface, specific to each banquet, the Imperial Chefs within the Forbidden City exhaust their wits to make the meals stand out as much as possible.
According to the dietary standards of the Emperor of the Great Tang, except for breakfast, lunch must consist of six dishes plus one soup, without any repeats within a week. Even if His Majesty The Emperor makes a special request to taste a certain dish multiple times, that dish can appear at most twice within the week.
Dinner must also consist of six dishes plus one soup. If it’s shared with the Imperial Concubine, an equal number of dishes are added according to the Imperial Concubine’s dietary standards: the evening meal standard for the Imperial Concubine of the Great Tang Empire is five dishes plus one soup, so if the Emperor dines with the Imperial Concubine, it amounts to eleven dishes and two types of soup.
And if the Emperor dines with three Imperial Concubines together, then the number continues to grow: dining with four people means twenty-one dishes, four soups… The Princes are still young, their meals are calculated separately.
If His Majesty The Emperor invites a Minister to dine, then additional dishes must be added. Generally, when Ministers stay to eat, it’s three dishes plus one soup, and for the Prime Minister, it’s four dishes plus one soup.
Sometimes, to bestow grace, additional dishes are added, with up to three dishes to reward the diligence of the Ministers or the bravery of the military generals.
However, sometimes to demonstrate favor, the number of dishes might be reduced: The purpose is to let the Minister and the Emperor share the same dishes, signifying an intimate bond with His Majesty The Emperor. Hmm, at this time both people still eat six dishes plus one soup, whether they are full or not, only heaven knows.
Under normal circumstances, those who can mix with the Emperor for a meal and receive a “special exception” probably wouldn’t care about being full, they would only feel that the meal is extremely honorable.
Does it sound like a bit much? In fact, most of the dishes are wasted, but this is the rule, this is the standard.
Tang Mo actually also feels it’s wasteful, but all this is the majesty of the Emperor of the Great Tang Empire, a necessary display, extravagance matching his wealth.
If you consider that everything consumed by His Majesty The Emperor must be of the finest quality and as fresh as possible, then the price of one meal is probably enough for an ordinary person to eat for a year.
But no one thinks Tang Mo is wasteful because his food and clothing expenses come from the internal treasury, using his own money.
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As the Emperor of the Great Tang Empire, Tang Mo actually has another identity, that is the world’s richest man! He is the real owner of the Great Tang Group, earning more money each day than one can estimate.
There’s no need to calculate the profits of the subsidiaries and branches under the Great Tang Group, even the daily increase in market value of these companies is already unimaginably large.
It can be said that Tang Mo is now burning money as if literally setting fire to cash, burning his own banknotes in heaps, yet it’s very likely that by the end of the day his net worth has still grown.
When a person has reached this level of wealth, they must think about how to spend money. He must make his wealth circulate, and by doing so, he can maximize the consolidation of his wealth.
Therefore, Tang Mo has no choice but to support his own medical team, his own culinary team, he also has a band of his own, as well as his professional photography team, driver squadron, private security force…
He loves gourmet food, so he can support thousands of people who worry about his dietary concerns. In this way, he provides over a thousand job positions, creating over a thousand high-income groups.
Being as wealthy as he is, extravagance is considered just normal expenditure. Because he is so wealthy, Tang Mo even established strict taxation to limit people as wealthy as himself.
As an Emperor, he still pays taxes according to the law, and pays the most prescribed amount of tax. Seventy-five percent of his income is taxed, but even so, he remains the richest person in the world.
Today is another ordinary morning, and the Imperial Kitchen of the Forbidden City of the Great Tang Empire begins another busy day.
The head chef claps his hands to signal all the busy chefs preparing ingredients to stop their work and starts reading the Emperor’s dietary preferences for today: “Less salt! Sugar can be added in moderation; His Majesty specifically named mandarin fish, spare ribs, cowpeas, and Chinese cabbage. If you have any ideas, now is the time to speak up, summarize them later and submit for selection.”
“Is the lion’s head decided upon last night being retained?” a chef curiously asks.
“There’s already starch, if we keep the lion’s head then we can’t serve the Squirrel Mandarin Fish,” another chef reminds.
Everyone chips in their suggestions, you say one thing and I say another, quickly deciding on at least thirty dishes, then jotting them down in a notebook and handing it to the head chef.
Afterwards, the Imperial Kitchen needs to submit this list of dishes, present it to Emperor Tang Mo for review, where Tang Mo will circle a few he wishes to eat, and then send it back to the Imperial Kitchen, which will then prepare the corresponding dishes according to His Majesty The Emperor’s preference.
It’s another busy day, starting from preparing the ingredients, followed by frying, sautéing, boiling, and deep-frying, crafting a variety of delicious foods. The dishes’ presentation must be exquisite, and the cooking time precise. Then comes the taste test… and finally, serving it up to His Majesty The Emperor…
