035. THE PIZZA DREAMS OF XIAOLONGBAO, THE DUMPLING DREAMS OF NAPLES

Ming Shi’s qi erupted.

Without meridians this should have blasted him into a smooth purée.

He should have become a cautionary tale about Mortal Cooks who thought they could defy Heaven through chili oil, thoughts and prayers.

Amidst the roaring in his ears, and the hammering of his heart, and the feeling of being flung far, far away, Ming Shi should have been sent off to his next life—an actual reincarnation this time, wiped clean of all those memories and experiences that made a person who they were.

Death. Real death.

The soul might persist, but death is death.

It is the end of an existence.

Instead …

He was cooking.

“Pizza,” said Ming Shi, to no one.

“Dumplings,” said Ming Shi, to thin air.

Trance-like, thinking of nothing, Ming Shi reached for his flour.

It spilled from a sackcloth bag onto a worktop that had always been there.

“Cool,” said Ming Shi.

It was really cool. It was everything he wanted.

It was bread flour, pure wheat, Italian, high-protein for chewy crusts.

It was Pearl Harvest, his favorite dumpling wrapper mix, a finely milled blend of six spirit-grains and three refined starches.

Qi is the first ingredient, from which all things arise.

Where’d that come from? Him? Or the void he was in?

It was an impressive void: dark, silent, stretching out in all directions. The only light came from himself—from the blaze in his dantian.

“Anyway,” said Ming Shi.

His fingers touched the flour.

His qi happened in a direction.

It wasn’t going anywhere, mind you. It happened. Was happening. It just was.

It was, the way he was. Or was it the ways he was—plural?

He was measuring out bread flour, and he was sifting Pearl Harvest. He sprinkled yeast for pizza dough, and he flicked salt for dumpling dough. He was heading two ways to delicious, and it wasn’t through multitasking. He was simultaneous-tasking. Quantum cooking, if you will. Making pizza, making dumplings, both happening at once.

He brought his flour and water together into a shaggy, inchoate ball and laughed.

Therefore, all flavors are the same and not the same.

It was the pizza of times, it was the dumpling of times. It was everything. It just was.

Intent is that which shapes the first ingredient.

Ming Shi began to knead his dough—or was it doughs? The motion was singular but the doughs were multiple.

No, that’s not it. The motion was multiplied, but there was only one dough.

Wait, actually—

Never mind. Just knead.

He kneaded the push-fold-turn of pizza dough that developed long gluten strands. He kneaded the lighter-touch flip-nudge-twist of dumpling dough that kept it tender.

Those two kneads aren’t interchangeable, by the way. Swapping them will get you tough dumpling skins and a sad pizza crust that won’t rise.

But for Ming Shi both kneads happened and existed in every move.

And in every move there existed the happening of his qi.

And the happening of his qi ... was the happening of meridians.

Each push and nudge was a vector of qi down his arms. Each fold and flip equaled energy loops that doubled back and out again. Each twist and turn was an offshoot of qi, a delta splitting off larger flows.

Nothing was being forced or led. This was just how he was. That was all.

Let the dough rest.

In this space between spaces, relaxing and fermenting happened instantly and forever. Ming Shi could smell yeast working; that warm, beery scent of bread even before baking. And there was the clean, wholesome, wheaty smell of hot-water dumpling dough.

He turned to his other ingredients.

There was Iberico pork, nice and buttery, an 80:20 lean-meat-to-fat ratio. The pink, marbled haunch was cold, important for mince to mix and bind well and not stick to your hands. It was one of the things that made Snowy Swine suited for dumpling fillings.

His cleaver rose and fell, chopping and slicing and mincing all at once.

Shiitake mushrooms, fresh not dried, their caps firm and plump. Thin slices and a light, earthy scent rose up, the smell of the countryside after rain. He grinned, feeling a little mischievous. Mother always insisted on dried Bronze Gong Caps for fillings. The spirit-energy was more concentrated when mushrooms dried. But she’d be just fine with fresh shiitake because he was making pizza. So there.

Watersprite Tears, crisp like apples, their white flesh crunching under his blade. Dad had always said no to canned water chestnuts. They just weren’t as sweet or crunchy. He’d love this, though, he’d come back for seconds.

The crispy white softened in texture and shade: now he was slicing a wedge from a wheel of Celestial Cow Riches, a beautiful, semi-soft Fontina. The cheese was ivory-gold with shy eyelets, and it smelled of nuts and cream and mountain meadows. Instead of a grater he used his cleaver, skimming it over the wedge swiftly. The cheese fell in smooth shavings. He couldn’t resist sneaking a bite for himself, and for a moment he was stood in the cool, green Aosta Valley in Italy, where cows grazed on the Alpine grass that gave Fontina DOP its irreplaceable flavor.

What else? Ooh. Chives. Into fine bits, for later.

In his thighs and calves, Ming Shi’s meridians rose and fell. Up, down, up they ran, like the up-down-up of a cleaver. They’d always been this way, just as they’d always hopscotched from toes to shins to hips, like the side-to-side-slice and the taptaptap of itty-bitty quick julienning.

The pork was minced now. So was the garlic. And he’d grated ginger so fine it was almost a paste, the sharp star-root juice making his sinuses tingle. He mixed them into the mince, then added white pepper, with its aromatic heat—or was it moonpepper? Both. Soul soy, dark and salty-sweet. Shaoxing wine. A nice splash with an easy flick of the wrist.

But that flick was also his hands tearing mozzarella. He could smell the fresh milk, the cream and salt and lactic tang. Shining Horn Buffalo made the best fresh pulled cheeses; low-moisture, a beautiful balance of protein and fat.

San Marzano tomatoes appeared, their flesh darker and sweeter than regular tomatoes. Their flavor could even compare to Vermilion Bird’s False Fruit. He split them. The seeds had to go; they were too wet. The flesh he diced, then salted and set aside, drawing out excess water that would make the dumplings soggy.

While the tomatoes released their moisture, he turned to his Fresh Thought leaves, bright green and peppery. Tearing, no cutting. You should never cut basil unless you were into the bruising of cell walls and the blackening of leaf edges. In other words, the inferior release of essential oils.

In his torso his meridians swirled round and round in wide, criss-cross circles and spirals. He was stirring a creamy white sauce as it bubbled in a pan. It had a roux base, butter and flour in equal measure, cooked until it smelled nutty but hadn’t browned. Whole Holy Cow milk went in, alongside concentrated pork bone broth, the liquid cloudy-gold and rich with collagen. With the stock, the sauce became more like a velouté, but it thickened decadently again as he reduced it. He melted in parmesan, some mashed roast garlic, a bit of star-root juice, and white pepper. Sacrilegious, these additions. Creamy, porky, divine.

Meanwhile, in a pan that had always been hot, his meatballs seared.

Oh, yeah! I made meatballs. Awesome.

He’d rolled his seasoned Iberico pork mince into large marble-sized meatballs, and now they rolled and sizzled in salted butter with a few drops of sesame oil as he shook the pan so they browned evenly. The smell—Maillarding meat, warming garlic, ginger, white pepper, wine, soy, butter—filled the void.

In another pan, he was reducing Chaoxiang black vinegar with sugar and star-root juice until it transformed into a glossy glaze. Once that was done, he tossed his seared meatballs in the glaze, coating them so that they shone with sticky, sweet-sour promise.

And the toss of seared meatballs was, of course, the toss of his hands in a mixing bowl, mingling together cubed mozzarella and seasoned tomatoes and torn basil. Next to him appeared a head of roasted garlic, glistening with olive oil. He mashed it into paste and worked it into the mixture too. A pinch of Southern Sea salt, a handful of grated pecorino for both tang and umami, dried oregano and black pepper and a tiny bit of nutmeg that—

Oooh, nice!

He’d kneaded those last four ingredients into the dumpling dough too. Now he was pinching out small doughballs and rolling them into flat, thin circles with a wooden dowel no longer than his hand.

And he was, simultaneously, working out his pizza dough. It was elastic and alive, fragrantly yeasty. He hand-stretched it out into a generous, rustic round, then draped it over his knuckles and pulled it some more until he had his pizza base.

Big circles, small circles, same difference. Delicious.

Like the roundabouts in his meridians, where his qi flows chose their adventures—where some nodes were major intersections, with fifty ways to spin off. Others were neighborhood turnabouts, linking just three streets. Point is, there were a lot of them. His qi liked to have options; it liked scenic routes and detours. It liked ways that turned into other ways as often as they could.

He spread the rich, pork-broth-enhanced garlic velouté sauce onto the pizza base, then scattered handfuls of grated Fontina on top. Nestled in the golden cheese shavings were the glazed ginger-wine meatballs around which he lay the fresh water chestnut and shiitake mushroom slices before spooning around mini-dollops of ricotta. The chives would come later.

And the placing of toppings of course occupied the same moment and space as his filling of the dumplings. Each round dumpling wrapper received a dignified tablespoon of tomato-cheese-basil-herb filling—not too much or they’d burst, not too little or they’d pout and sag.

He was making plump, bun-shaped dumplings like the xiaolongbao on Earth, not crescent-shaped jiaozi. Crescent shapes were nice, but he wanted dumplings that were dainty yet gluttonous water balloons, stuffed and bursting, exploding in your mouth when you bit in. He pleated eighteen folds and closed each dumpling.

But the pleats were also the raised edge of his pizza’s cornicione, and the dumpling’s dainty palm-size was also a hefty circle, and none of this made sense but it was cooking and it was delicious.

And now it all went into the oven that was also a wok. It baked and pan-fried and steamed. It got wok-hei and woodsmoke. It rose, crisped, puffed, sizzled, melted, firmed, browned, softened, cooked and filled the void with smells. Salt, soy, butter, sesame oil, meat, cheeses, baking bread, frying dough, sweet-smoky glaze, warmed tomatoes and herbs …

Two minutes and ten minutes happened at the same time.

When it was done, Ming Shi plated his creation.

It was a pizza with a puffed outer crust like the spine of an undulating dragon, encircling an empire of melted Shining Horn cheese beneath which a thick, creamy-garlic-baconesque velouté sauce plotted. The glazed ginger Iberico meatballs scattered throughout the empire sat majestically atop kingdoms of fresh shiitake mushrooms and crisp discs of Watersprite chestnuts. In between the factions, secret enclaves of ricotta remained pure. On top of everything: a scattering of verdant chives.

It was a plate of dumplings, plump, golden and round, joined together at the bottom by the crispy lace of fried starch. The pleated tops looked like doughy crowns, but the skins on the curved sides were so thin you could see the shadows of the riches within. And there was light too, casting those shadows. The Vermilion Bird’s False Fruit inside gave off a ruby glow so that the gold dumplings shone like soft lanterns. It smelled addictive; a snack-flavored meal—you know the kind: bite-sized, condensed flavor bombs that punch outrageously above their weight, hitting your palate with obscene satisfaction equal to any full plate.

“Pizza,” he proclaimed to his dumplings.

“Dumplings,” he declared to his pizza.

“You dare?” he exclaimed, fondly, to the food that defied Heaven.

He took a bite.

It was everything.

He took a bite and the dumpling wrapper shattered between his teeth, the golden crispy-fried bottom like a fat-sizzled cracker meeting the tender chew of soft oregano-scented dumpling skin above. It was smooth with aromatic basil oil; he’d drizzled it over to serve. Then the flood: molten mozzarella stretched in long strings when he pulled away with his bite. It mixed with the sweet acidity of San Marzano tomatoes, the robust flesh and flavor made still denser by salting. The fresh basil was so herbaceous, so green and alive as it flitted vivaciously over the deep roasted garlic he’d smashed in. Then, embracing the rest—or was it being embraced?—there was pecorino’s salty, meaty tang, giving a fullness, an oomph to the whole mouthful. It was Naples in a dumpling, a pizzeria captured in the cosmic pocket of a crispy fried-steamed full moon.

He took a bite and the pizza crust crackled, a little smoky with char, before giving way to a soft, satisfying chew. Melted and browned Fontina cheese slid off the crust to fill his mouth, all buttery and hazelnutty. It was joined by a burst of meat juice, the fat of the Iberico meatballs running rich with its ginger-garlic-wine-soy seasoning. This was, of course, after the tongue had first met the sharp-sweet sticky glaze around those meatballs. Or was it before? Either way, the acidity of the sweet black vinegar glaze wove in and out of the decadent richness, all brought together by the creamy velouté sauce that was the second coming of tonkotsu made pizza-sauce-thick, garlicked and parmesaned. He crushed a crisp water chestnut between his teeth, relished the firm texture of the shiitake mushrooms and the clean, fresh taste of ricotta. He felt so alive. Juicy. This pizza was so juicy, with its bodacious sauce and bursting meatballs and delight-textured toppings—it had the soul of soup dumplings.

The pizza dreamed xiaolongbao dreams; the dumpling dreamed of Naples.

Ming Shi chewed.

He swallowed.

He was consumed by the tastes of his everything.

They swallowed him, and Ming Shi fell from the void into the void.

Therefore, which flavor came first: Intention, qi, or Dao?

He saw meteors streaking by as he plummeted, so bright they made his eyes water.

Or maybe he was crying a bit, because he’d wanted another bite of his pizdumpzalings.

As he plunged, near-blinded by the trails of light, he realized: That’s my qi. That’s my qi flowing—

And he slammed back into his body and the meteors turned to stars. His vision filled with bursts and flashes as his head snapped back, disoriented, gasping.

He felt bruised and battered all over. His body could only take so much frenzied spiritual activity. If he did not resolve things, it would fail soon. He knew it.

One cycle. If he could hold on just long enough to guide his qi for one conscious cycle through his meridians, he’d succeed.

Except, there was …

Pressure.

Ah, yes.

There’s still Eighty-Eight Hells.

And I’m still shit at meditation.

Dimly, Ming Shi recalled Liu Baozi saying, “My qi cycles itself! I don’t see why I need to sit down and think about it.”

This is why, asshole. This is why.

Well, the cooking had been the fun part.

The nameless Intent in him rose again.

Once more unto the breach, it said, he said. We’ve prepped. We’ve cooked. Now, we serve.

Ming Shi breathed in.

He breathed out.

And in and out again.

Then he plunged his consciousness into his brand-new network of meridians.

This was the starting line that he’d cooked into existence.

The last course lay ahead.