Culinary God in Wilderness

Chapter 351: Chapter 225: Migration Frenzy

"Good thing I brought two bamboo baskets, or I wouldn’t have been able to carry all this."

As the first basket threatened to overflow, he silently congratulated himself on his foresight. He separated the second basket, which had been nested underneath the first, and continued gathering the peppers from the ground.

After he had finished gathering all the fallen peppers within a twenty-meter radius, the ground finally looked much cleaner and tidier.

But he wasn’t done yet. After resting for a few minutes, he squatted down again and started collecting the relatively fresh and whole leaves from the ground.

’Chili leaves are edible too. They’re rich in calcium, iron, vitamin C, and various amino acids—even more nutritious than the peppers themselves. The only thing to remember is that you can’t eat them raw; they have to be blanched or boiled first.’

Chili peppers are native crops of the Central America and Mexico region. This was their place of origin. After countless years of evolution and development, the existing varieties were all relatively high-quality types.

Of course, they were also usually quite spicy.

Chili peppers are a food source for many birds and small animals. To avoid being eaten to extinction, wild chilies had to evolve sufficient spiciness to prevent being wiped out.

He hadn’t noticed it the last time he was here picking, but this patch of peppers didn’t just have one type of chili; it was a mix of three.

Besides a strange-looking, twisted variety, there were also jalapeños—the most common chili in Western cuisine—and the famously spicy Havana peppers.

The jalapeños were about the length of a finger, plump and cylindrical, with thick flesh. Their round shape was actually a little cute.

The ones you find in markets usually aren’t very spicy. Once you remove the seeds, they’re similar to eating a bell pepper—crisp, tender, and sweet. Eating them with the seeds is a matter of luck, but even then, their heat is generally on par with the common chilies used in Chinese stir-fries.

The Havana peppers were shaped differently, like small, wrinkled, irregular lanterns, and came in red, yellow, and green.

The pepper plants all looked similar; only the shape of their fruit was distinctly different. You wouldn’t necessarily notice them unless you got up close.

’The heat from a single Havana pepper could probably match the spiciness of this entire basket of other chilies combined. This is fantastic!’

He had originally thought the peppers he’d gathered weren’t potent enough, but now, the potent ones had arrived.

Although he was from Jiangsu and Zhejiang, he had a remarkable tolerance for spicy food.

The very thought of these little peppers being spicy enough to make him break out in a sweat and his mouth water made him start to salivate uncontrollably.

After he had gathered most of the chili leaves from the ground, he could finally see the soil underneath.

"Hm?"

As his gaze swept the area, he was surprised to spot the corner of a metal can next to a few tattered chili leaves.

"I see!"

He excitedly brushed the dirt from the surface, revealing the entire bottom of the can. Then, grabbing it with both hands and wiggling it back and forth, he quickly pulled it out of the ground.

He had intentionally buried it with the bottom facing up to prevent soil from accumulating inside and adding to its weight.

’The soil I used to bury it must have been too loose, not as compact as the surrounding earth. The heavy rain must have washed it away, exposing the can I’d buried underneath.’

This was a pleasant surprise, saving him a lot of effort.

After looking around the vicinity and finding no other unnatural objects, he continued on toward the summit.

’Finding a bamboo forest is actually simple. You just have to get to a high, open area, and you’ll spot it. It’s much harder to find one by just searching within the woods.’

This pepper patch wasn’t far from the summit and the terrain was relatively open, which was why it received plenty of sunlight.

A short while later, he found a relatively high spot, climbed onto a tree branch, and looked around. As far as the eye could see, there were lush green trees, with a few exceptionally tall ones towering over the canopy.

The view from this position was excellent. He could not only overlook the entire coastline but also take in half of the nearby mountain range.

"There it is!"

Not far below his current position, a very conspicuous bamboo grove was hidden among the trees.

He roughly estimated the distance from the bamboo grove to Bartel’s shelter to be about a twenty-minute walk.

He didn’t leave right away, but continued to scan the forest below.

Unfortunately, as good as the view was, from this bird’s-eye perspective, he could only see the crowns of most trees. From this distance, he couldn’t make out any specific species.

But it wasn’t a total loss. Further down the coast from the rocky beach he frequented, there was another sandy beach. The edge of this beach was densely packed with coconut trees—an important source of fresh water.

If he kept picking from the original area, it would mean three people splitting the coconut resources. This discovery would allow him to survive for much longer.

He spent the next few hours immersed in the bamboo grove. After chopping down ten stalks, he began dragging them back the way he came.

’Once I pickle the peppers I gathered this time, they should last me a long while. I probably won’t need to come back this way for a bit. I’ll keep some fresh ones for a change of pace. Pickled peppers are certainly tangy and easy to store, but their flavor is one-dimensional, lacking the fresh, sharp heat of raw chilies. As a cook, the more flavor profiles I have for seasoning, the better.’

The noise from dragging so many bamboo stalks at once was impossible to hide. Bartel, who was particularly sensitive to sound, quickly noticed Lin Chen passing not far from his shelter.

"Lin?"

He glanced at the bamboo stalks Lin was dragging, then at the two full baskets of peppers, unknown leaves, and wild grasses slung over his chest and back, and looked toward the mountain in surprise.

"There are peppers up by the bamboo grove?"

"Yeah, about a ten-minute walk away. There’s a big pepper patch."