The expeditionary force began to dominate Southeast Asia by recruiting defeated soldiers

Chapter 456 Zhang Chi: Eggs Must Taste Like Eggs

Let’s go back to late October.

Although Zhang Chi has always advocated "simple life and pragmatic style", he often refuses special treatment and insists on eating in the big canteen of the office building, queuing up for food with ordinary staff members.

However, Zhang Guangsong and Director Jin of the Intelligence Department were still worried. Under the pretext of "protecting the leader's safety", they opened a special small canteen for him in the building, staffed it with a top team of chefs, and started cooking for him.

Over time, this "small canteen" has become a kind of "barometer".

Anyone who can sit in and have a meal here not only proves that he has some weight in the center, but also shows that he has been highly valued by Zhang Chi recently.

At noon that day, Zhang Chi, Zhang Guangsong, Bai Hongsheng, and Chen Zhenchuan were eating and talking about work.

As he was talking, Zhang Chi stretched out his chopsticks, picked up a piece of scrambled eggs from the porcelain plate, and put it into his mouth.

The scrambled eggs were golden, translucent and tender, with some chopped green onions. The aroma filled his nose as soon as he put it in his mouth, but as he chewed it, his brows furrowed slightly.

The people around noticed the change in Zhang Chi's expression and were all shocked.

Zhang Guangsong quickly stretched out his serving chopsticks, picked up some scrambled eggs, put them in his own bowl, and then tasted them carefully.

He thought to himself that this was not right, because he had hired the two master chefs for this small kitchen at a high salary.

One is from Dengyinglou, the first of the eight major restaurants in Tianjin. After the Japanese occupied Tianjin in 37, this chef went south and later ended up in the rear. He specializes in Shandong cuisine and Tianjin cuisine.

The other one is a descendant of Jiang Kongyin, a gourmet in the late Qing Dynasty. You should know that Cantonese dishes such as Taishi Snake Soup and Dragon and Tiger Fight were all created by Jiang Kongyin. His descendants' disciples can be regarded as representing the pinnacle system of Cantonese cuisine in the Republic of China.

With these two master chefs in charge, it’s impossible that even a small plate of scrambled eggs for lunch on a weekday would go wrong, right?

As soon as the scrambled eggs entered his mouth, the salty and fresh taste immediately burst out in Zhang Guangsong's mouth. The eggs were fried to the perfect temperature, tender and smooth but not loose, and the aroma of eggs was everywhere.

After several people tasted the scrambled eggs, they all felt that it was worthy of the master chef's craftsmanship. Even the most ordinary and common scrambled eggs were flavorful and showed the aftertaste of the chef.

They glanced at each other covertly, neither of them noticing anything unusual, and didn't know why Zhang Chi frowned.

After a few people had lunch with heavy hearts, Zhang Chi casually mentioned:

"I saw a report from the army saying that a large number of soldiers reported that the boiled eggs rationed per person for breakfast had a slightly fishy taste."

Chen Zhenchuan subconsciously continued, "It smells fishy. Has it gone bad?"

"That's what's strange." Zhang Chi shook his head. "After internal review, it was found that all military units purchased fresh eggs from chicken farms, and no issues with substituting inferior eggs for good ones were found.

What's going on? How did you guys enjoy the scrambled eggs we had for lunch today? Was it fishy?

Everyone shook their heads.

"On the contrary, it tastes delicious."

"This lunch is much better than what my chef made."

"I didn't find anything unusual in the food."

"I had these scrambled eggs for lunch, and they didn't taste fishy at all," Zhang Chi said as he wiped his mouth with a tissue. "Are we using special supply eggs here in our small kitchen? Could it be that the ones the army got were substandard?"

"Or are the soldiers just picky? Or is there something else going on? This is really strange."

Zhang Chi has a lot of things to take care of every day. It was only when he had a plate of scrambled eggs at noon today that he thought of asking casually.

However, the speaker did not mean it, but the listener took it seriously, and soon a major investigation into why eggs smell fishy began.

Sure enough, in the afternoon, Zhang Guangsong knocked on Zhang Chi's office door and walked in with a thick stack of documents.

"I've found out." He lowered his voice. "I had someone do an urgent survey. The eggs reported to have fishy smells mostly came from Nanhua's Fifth, Seventh, and Twelfth Poultry Farms, Darongji Poultry Farm, and Taihe Poultry and Egg Company."

"Are you talking about the problem with our Nanhua system's own chicken farm?" Zhang Chi put down the document in his hand. It was a plan for attracting investment, preparing to invite Republican capitalists stranded in Chuncheng and Shancheng to go south to invest in Southeast Asia.

They have capital and management experience, and some of them, like Chen Liuzi in the TV series "The Dye House", have one or two unique skills that are not passed on to others. Instead of leaving them to the White Party to exploit, Zhang Chi thinks it would be better to let them come to Nanyang to open factories.

"The first few are state-owned chicken farms under the Nanhua system, and the last two are private enterprises." Zhang Guangsong replied.

To be honest, he was just a college student before he traveled through time, and he had never eaten any fine food. Later, he traveled through time and became a defeated soldier of the expeditionary force. Although he had the system and had never been hungry, the food he ate was just so-so.

The real improvement in food was from the special meal that Zhang Guangsong arranged for him recently.

Therefore, in his heart, he always stood with the officers and soldiers of the Anmin Army.

This required that even the most basic army kitchen must ensure that every soldier had an egg in the morning to ensure protein supply, which was what he insisted on.

In later generations, eggs can be found everywhere, but in Asia at that time, eggs were a very rare thing.

In the Republic of China era, large-scale chicken farms were still a very new thing. More than 90% of eggs still came from free-range chickens raised in the backyards of rural families. Each household usually raised 5-20 chickens, and after becoming self-sufficient, the remaining chickens were sold.

These eggs are circulated through a chain from the countryside to the egg market and then to the city/export. They are an important "small treasury" for ordinary farmers. They need to be exchanged for oil, salt, sauce, vinegar, tea, or urgently needed needles and thread.

Therefore, most peasant families are reluctant to eat the eggs laid by their own chickens. Instead, they save them and sell them to people who collect eggs, or sell them themselves at the market.

After the 20s, foreign companies discovered the huge profits they could make by purchasing eggs cheaply from rural areas near ports and then shipping them back to their home countries.

John Hutchison alone purchased over 1 million eggs every year in the Republic of China, but this still failed to stimulate the development of large-scale professional farms and egg production companies.

As for Pegu, where industry and commerce were even more backward, the early supply of fresh eggs to the An Min Army relied entirely on White Eagle and purchases from the countryside.

In order to ensure the protein intake of the army and the people, Zhang Chi signed a special contract to introduce white Leghorn breeder chickens from Baiying that can produce more than 200 eggs per year, replacing the local chickens that only produce about 100 eggs per year.

Although the White Eagle breed of laying hens at this time were not as good as the specially bred laying hens before Zhang Chi traveled through time, they were still much more productive than the local native chickens.

He then sent people to order a large number of constant temperature incubators, and under the Nanhua system, established a large-scale mechanized breeding farm that met the White Eagle standard, and introduced vaccine and feed technology.