Recognize the goods

  In the afternoon at three or four o'clock, Zhang Jin left after discussing the wedding menu with Hai Jufu's family and settling the procurement matters. Seeing Zhang Jin leaving, Hai Jufu's wife, who had been somewhat absent-minded since noon, began to complain to her husband: "You said you just agreed to let Little Zhang be the head chef, what if he can't do it? He'll just run away without a care, and Erwa's big day will be ruined! In front of so many people, isn't that slapping our faces?"

  Hai Ju Fu glared at him, raising his voice to scold: "What do you know? Can someone who drives a Jeep cheat us? He has no grudge against us, what's the benefit of cheating us? Besides, he paid several tens of thousands in the village committee this morning, do you think he'd have the idea of running away with the pot?"

  Scolded by his wife with just two sentences, Hai Jiazhen had nothing more to say. However, Hai Julu was not finished speaking yet, "Moreover, wasn't there still a few tables of wine to thank the villagers who helped with the wedding banquet the day before the wedding? If Xiao Zhang couldn't make it, we could have spent a bit more money and invited that fat guy from the city instead!" This sentence finally revealed Hai Julu's cunning nature, which had been accumulated over the years due to his age. An old sly person can be very cunning, but an old simple-minded person may not be able to be extremely cunning, yet their rich life experience can also make them a bit sly.

  It seems that Hai Jufu's words are reasonable, and his wife naturally nodded in agreement.

  Having chosen Haiwozi Village, Zhang Jin finally decided to give up his current job with a decent salary but rich benefits and chose to resign.

  When Zhang Jin got into his newly maintained car in the parking lot with the last few personal items he had taken from the hospital, just as he was about to start the engine, his phone suddenly rang in his pocket.

  Zhang Jin looked at the caller ID on the screen and smiled. Zhang Jin put the phone receiver half a foot away from his ear before pressing the answer button, "Boss, where are you? I just got back from my shift and Ning Ning told me you've already quit, is that true?" Even though the receiver was not close to Zhang Jin's ear, Xiao Fei's loud voice still came through clearly. It made Zhang Jin secretly congratulate himself on his foresight.

  After the sound similar to a broken gong disappeared, Zhang Jin put his mobile phone back to its normal position and said with a threatening tone: "Old Three, if you shout like this again, I'll hang up."

  Xiao Fei hastily suppressed his voice and said in a low tone, "Alright, alright, I won't shout. Now tell me, is what Ning Ning said true or false?"

  "Really!" After giving the answer, Zhang Jin also realized that Xiao Fei would definitely be excited and shout again after hearing his response. He quickly covered Xiao Fei's mouth and continued to say: "Don't rush, come to my house after work today, I'll explain it carefully to you!"

  After hanging up Xiao Fei's phone, Zhang Jin restarted the car and drove slowly to the big market in the west of the city.

  Although there are still five or six days before the wedding banquet of Hai Ju Fu's second son, many ingredients to be used at the banquet should also be prepared in advance. The dinner at home for Ye Meng's little girl was just a small test of Zhang Jin's skills, and the wedding banquet on June 6th is when Zhang Jin will show off his skills.

  When Zhang Jin's car stopped in the parking lot in front of the big market, Hai Jufu and his wife, as well as Hai Gensheng and his wife, had already arrived and were waiting for him at the entrance. Seeing Zhang Jin's eye-catching grass-green Puma shoes, the four of them hurriedly came up to greet him.

  "Uncle Hai, Aunt Hai, Big Brother Hai, Big Sister Hai, you've been waiting for a long time, right? Sorry about that, I was delayed by some things earlier." After getting off the car, Zhang Jin hurriedly greeted the four of them.

  Hai Ju Fu hastily piled on a silly smile and said: "No, no, we just arrived, just arrived."

  A few people chatted and walked together into the market.

  The large market in the west of the city is the largest meat distribution center in Shenzhen. Every household in Haiwocun village grows vegetables and raises poultry such as chickens and ducks, so they don't need to buy green vegetables, poultry, eggs and other things from outside. Moreover, Haiwocun village is located by the sea and has many rivers, although there are no large-scale fishing fleets, but there are still a few households that rely on the sea for food and rely on the river for food, so they don't need to buy river and sea fresh products from outside. Therefore, Zhang Jin and Hai Jufu came to the big market today to buy some beef and mutton that are not produced in Haiwocun village.

  As soon as I walked into the big market, a strong bloody smell hit my nose. In the rows of warehouses with rolling shutter doors, trucks and refrigerated trucks loaded with various meats were coming in and out, creating a busy scene. From the moment we entered, there were constantly people coming up to us, each boasting about their own products as "rare in heaven and unmatched on earth", and claiming that they had good quality at low prices.

  For these touts, Zhang Jin simply ignored them. The words of these salespeople are not credible at all, and it's better to judge the quality of things for oneself. Moreover, as a top-notch chef, Zhang Jin was extremely confident in his ability to identify ingredients. And because of Zhang Jin's resolute attitude, Hai Jufu and the other three, who were only there to carry money and goods, naturally followed his lead and ignored the people who came up to chat them up, treating them as if they were invisible and deaf.

  So, several people started from the first wholesale market at Linmen and went on to look at each house one by one. That's right, just "look"! In "Wulin Three Kingdoms", whether it's weapons, armor, herbs, or minerals, almost all items are divided into eleven levels from zero to ten, from low to high, and food ingredients are no exception. And identifying the level of these items requires appraisal skills and special sub-professional skills. As a master-level appraiser and master-level chef, Zhang Jin naturally identified low-grade food ingredients such as beef and mutton with ease, just by using his appraisal technique, it was clear at a glance. There was no need to pinch, smell, or taste like others did.

  For Zhang Jin's attitude of taking a glance and leaving, the previous few households were fine, at most they would try to persuade him with a few words, but when they saw that his attitude was firm, they would let it go. However, when Zhang Jin walked into the door of what seemed to be the nth household, and was about to turn around and leave after taking a glance around, the female boss of this household became anxious.

  The boss of this wholesale market was a fat woman in her forties, who saw the five people and flashed at the door, then turned around and left, and hurriedly followed up, blocking the way for several people.

  The plump boss lady with piercing eyes chatted a few sentences, figuring out that Zhang Jin was the decision-maker among them. She offered Zhang Jin a cigarette while making small talk: "Big brother, don't rush to leave! You guys are here in Xishi to buy meat, right? Let me tell you, if you want to buy meat, come to my place and it'll be just fine. I'm not bragging, but among the 207 butcher shops in Xishi, only 43 sell beef, and the best one is mine! Look at this piece of beef on the counter - my family's cows are different from others. Others' cows are raised in feedlots, producing a lot of meat, but they're fed additives and hormones that aren't safe to eat. Our beef comes from Mongolian grasslands, where the cows have been grazing since they were young, eating only grass and no artificial feed. Naturally, there's no harm from those hormones. Try it once and you'll know the difference between our meat and others'. Don't think that just because this beef doesn't look as oily as others', it's not good. Some beef looks shiny and pretty, but that's because they've added oil to cover up the poor quality..."

  The boss's wife was eloquent, and once she started bragging, she went on and on without stopping, with a bit of the grandeur of Su Qin and Zhang Yi. Although what the boss's wife said was all nonsense, Zhang Jin was not moved at all, he had already known the pros and cons of this beef from that one glance before. The result of the evaluation by the master chef and the master appraiser is:

  Beef, 0-grade food material; poor quality; contains estrogen *g/kg, dioxin *g/kg... mildly toxic; freshness level, low;

  Zhang Jin originally didn't want to bother, but the boss's wife wouldn't let him go, grasping his sleeve with her plump hand and chattering away in an attempt to sell him something. Zhang Jin was unable to shake her off and didn't want to get into a physical altercation with her. After all, this kind of place where all sorts of people gathered was bound to have some shady characters lurking around, like thugs who made a living by collecting protection fees. If Zhang Jin had already mastered his skills, he wouldn't be afraid, but for now, he was just an ordinary person with zero-level "Huā Huā Bǎo Diǎn" (Peony Treasure Canon) who hadn't even grasped any of its uses yet - a low-ranking rookie who didn't want to pretend to be a master and end up getting hurt.

  So, Zhang Jin finally played his trump card: "Sister, don't think I don't know how to judge meat! Let me tell you, although I'm young, I'm a pretty good chef. Identifying types of meat is my specialty. This meat is definitely not from grass-fed cattle on the pasture, but rather from a feedlot. If we were to have it inspected by a specialized department, I don't know if the hormone levels would be over the limit or not, but they're definitely present. And this meat in your display case is definitely not fresh, although it hasn't gone bad yet. At the very least, it's been stored in a cold storage twice. Am I right?"

  As soon as Zhang Jin's words came out, the fat boss's flattering smile turned into a awkward smile: "Ah, it's still the big brother who knows the goods, sorry, sorry. But don't worry, my sister has good stuff here, definitely the best." After finishing speaking, she led Zhang Jin and his five companions to a refrigerated truck parked at the entrance of the store, quickly opened the rear cold storage compartment, and pointed at the beef hanging in the carriage: "Big brother, take a look at this meat, how is it?"

  Zhang Jin nodded his head in satisfaction after throwing away the appraisal technique. "Good meat, authentic grassland beef, and all of it is tender beef from cattle under three years old! Not bad, let's talk about the price?" These meats made Zhang Jin very satisfied because the result of his appraisal was that most of these beef had reached the level of first-class ingredients! To know, usually the highest grade of food materials sold in the market for domesticated livestock is only top-grade zero, and the fragrant home-raised free-range chicken eaten at Hai Ju's house before was only mid-first-grade.

  Seeing that Zhang Jin was a connoisseur, the plump boss lady was afraid of losing business, so she didn't overcharge and gave him a fair price. So Zhang Jin bought several dozen catties here at once, and through the introduction of the plump boss lady, he also bought several dozen catties of first-class mutton in another butcher shop, and Zhang Jin's procurement task before the wedding banquet was successfully completed.