By the time Si Jin woke up, the others had already compiled their grand masterplan. Si Yi was waiting in front of his door and handed him a copy as soon as he stepped outside. "We have compiled short-term, middle-term, and long-term goals to ensure that Bright Yellow Water will get the fame it deserves and not be taken advantage of by that cooking show and the media. Several materials have already been compiled, ready to be posted at your cue, Master."

Si Jin nodded and then handed the copy back after reading through it. "Proceed."

Si Yi nodded and then stepped away, informing the others of their Master’s decision. Meanwhile, Si Jin went back to the living room and sat down at the table, opening the laptop that was standing on the desk. He immediately navigated to Xiao Ming’s channel and then waited for the live stream to begin. Now, there was not much time left.

At that time, Xiao Ming was once again nervously standing behind the counter, trying to calm down while he double-checked that he had all the ingredients in front of him that he needed, and hadn’t forgotten about anything.

Qian Huang had already opened Weibo, as well as their channel, and gave him a sympathetic look. "Just be calm, you have done this a hundred times already. You can definitely do it." Each time before the live stream, he had to say this very same thing.

It didn’t actually help but at the very least, he wouldn’t feel completely useless. While they all had their own tasks in the live stream and the work around it, he sometimes felt that they were leaving way too much to Xiao Ming. After all, they couldn’t help him cook, and also couldn’t help him with preparing the dishes. At most, they could go and get the ingredients but then again, Xiao Ming was particular about getting fresh ones so he normally preferred going himself and only taking one person along to help him carry them. Qian Huang really couldn’t help but feel apologetic toward him.

Xiao Ming still nodded at the encouraging words and finally, it was time for the next live stream.

Li Shui turned on the camera, Qian Huang started off the stream, and Xiao Ming gave a bright smile.

"Welcome to Bright Yellow Water. Today, we are going to make four different dishes that will allow me to show you a variety of cutting techniques and explain some of the key points. The dishes are yam with blueberry sauce, radish salad with sesame dressing, hot and sour soup, and — as a special dish — cucumber salad.

"We’ll start with the first one since the yam needs to steam for half an hour." Saying so, Xiao Ming picked up the vegetable, showed it to the camera, and started to explain. "This dish is really simple to prepare and cutting the yam is a vital step in the process. Naturally, this is also what we will focus on in today’s live stream."

He put the yam down on the cutting board and then lightly put his hand on the table, looking up again.

"You first have to peel the yam but after that, we are going to get right to the cutting techniques. If you want to give it a try but are a little slower with peeling, you can just peel half of it first and give the cutting a try.

"Anyway, we’ll have to cut the yam into cubes. This is to allow the yam to steam more quickly afterward. I’ve already mentioned that it will take half an hour for just the cubes to be steamed. If we left it in one piece, this would take even longer. Also, the inner part would hardly be steamed by the time the outer parts are already overdone. So cutting it is an important step.

"To do this, we will use a knife, for example, a chef’s knife or a cleaver. Personally, I wouldn’t recommend taking anything smaller because it will be more difficult to cut through a vegetable of this size without problems." Saying that, Xiao Ming actually took the cleaver.

"Now, the first step to make dice is to cut the yam into planks." He demonstrated and then put all of them flat down on the cutting board. "Now, you can cut each plank into sticks. Try to have them be roughly of the same size. Of course, with the outer parts, that won’t work as well but it should at least be roughly about the same size. That will make sure that the dices will be evenly steamed later."

Once again, Xiao Ming demonstrated and then turned the sticks ninety degrees. "I probably don’t need to say that you can just turn them around now and then cut the sticks down into the dices. And with that, we are already done."

Xiao Ming looked up at the camera and smiled. "Now, I am going to put this in the steamer." He did so and then turned back to the counter. "In the half an hour that the yam needs to steam, we will prepare the blueberry sauce, as well as the other three dishes. In this case, I will do the other dishes first since they are the ones where we will need to use our cutting techniques again and they will need some more time anyway. First off, there’s the radish salad with the sesame dressing.

"For this dish, we will also start with the radish first. Now, the steps are really similar. We first have to peel the radish. Then, we’re going to make sticks out of them very much like we just did with the yam."

While talking, Xiao Ming already started to do as he said. Since the cutting techniques were today’s special content, he reiterated the smaller steps again as well. "For that, first cut the vegetable into planks again, then place it on the cutting board with the flat side down and cut it into the sticks.

"Since we are making a salad, I would suggest making them a little smaller than we did before. Because of that, both the planks and the sticks would be cut a little thinner." Soon enough, half the radish had been prepared and Xiao Ming put it to the side.

He looked back up at the camera without picking up anything else for now and continued on with his explanation.

"Now, we’ve already cut two of our vegetables into the right shape. With this, you now already know two of the three most common shapes that you will have to cut while cooking. Other than the dices and the sticks we just did, you will also cut some vegetables into a round form. For example, cucumbers or maybe an onion.

"Doing this will usually be done in a very similar fashion, no matter what it is that you actually cut. So if you are able to cut the radish and the yam like this, you will likely be able to do so with any other vegetable as well. The differences are more in how finely you cut them which will depend on the dish you are making or your own preference."

Saying this, he picked the uncut half of the radish up. "Now, I’m going to demonstrate this as well. Please remember though that I said before that the pieces you cut should be about the same size. So this is really just for demonstration purposes."

He winked at the camera and then motioned at the radish, slowly starting to cut while he explained further. "In cooking, we actually have names for the different sizes. For example, when you cut something into these sticks, then you could call that a batonnet cut if the stick is about five to maybe six centimeters long and point six centimeters on both of the other sides. On the other hand, shorter sticks that are only between three and five centimeters long and half as wide as well would be called julienned.

"When doing this at home, it’s likely not necessary to pay attention to this. If you want to take part in 'Golden Spoon' though, I would advise you to take this into consideration. The judges will definitely pay attention to whether your cuts are uniform and adhere to these standards. While there might be some leeway at the beginning of the show like in the casting, you would definitely get fewer points if you aren’t able to do this in the following rounds."

Xiao Ming sped up after having said this part and then put the finer cut strips into the bowl with the others. "Now, to continue with this dish, we will put some salt onto the radish and have it sit for about a quarter of an hour.

"In the meantime, we are going to continue with the rest of the dish. Since there aren’t any other cutting techniques required for this, I’ll be speeding this up again. If you are curious about how exactly to do this dish and can’t follow along fast enough, Qian Huang will once again put the link for the video where we previously did this in the description."

With that, Xiao Ming really sped up and, soon enough, everything was ready and he moved on to the next recipe.