Chapter 135 Clam Soup

"Ningning, did you thank Mr. Shi just now?" Sister Ge asked Yue Ning, "He brings a piece of meat to Dahei every day."

In Sister Ge's mind, it was natural for a dog to catch a mouse or a dog to chase a thief, but that was a piece of meat! When they were in the northwest, they could not eat meat once a year, but now a dog eats meat every day.

Yue Ning touched the dog's head. Mr. Shi proposed to buy Dahei, just like offering a high salary to poach talents, because he also likes Dahei.

At this time, Dahei started barking "woof woof woof". Two people stood at the school gate, one carrying a net, the other holding two fish in his hand, and a wooden barrel, looking around.

"Those two locals usually catch fish. They know the people at the feed factory next door are rich, so they catch fish and come here to sell them," said Sister Ge.

"Then I have to go check it out." Yue Ning lowered his head and said to Dahei, "Stop shouting."

The people from the feed factory next door waved their hands and said they didn't want it today. Yue Ning walked over. They had a bunch of small crucian carp and a bream in their hands. The bream was very big, but that was not the point. The point was that Yue Ning took a fancy to the clams in their wooden barrel.

Yue Ning asked: "How much are the river clams?"

"You want this?" asked the man with the bucket.

"Yes!" Yue Ning said.

"Three...five cents each." said a middle-aged man.

Yue Ning didn't care about one or two cents, even if he really gave five cents, they all thought that the people here didn't understand the market, and if the price kept getting higher in the future, they would all become fools.

Yue Ning looked at the clams of different sizes and said, "This bucket is five cents, and these two fish are three cents a pound. I estimate that these fish are more than three pounds, so four pounds is one dollar and two cents, which makes a total of one dollar and seventy cents. How do you think it is?"

"There are more than twenty clams in here! And why is this fish only three cents a pound? It should be at least five cents a pound. This fish must be more than three pounds..."

"Forget it. I don't want it." Yue Ning waved his hand and said.

Sister Ge saw her buying fish and said to her, "Ningning, Master Zhang has bought chicken and meat. Don't buy any more."

The two men originally thought she was bargaining, but now that the woman said she didn't want to buy it, they quickly said, "One dollar and seventy is one dollar and seventy, I'll sell it to you!"

Yue Ning took out the money, handed it to the person who was talking, and said to Sister Ge, "Go get a basin."

She bought everything. Sister Ge went in to get a basin and kept talking to her: "There are only ten of us in total. There must be enough food!"

When Yue Ning saw Mr. Shi coming out, she greeted him, "Mr. Shi, come over for lunch. I want to thank you for your care on behalf of Dahei."

"How can I do this?" Mr. Shi waved his hand, "No thanks."

"Come on, my cooking skills are very good." Yue Ning continued to invite.

Qiao Junxian's supervisor just walked out of the workshop. "Mr. Shi, don't miss it! Our Miss Yue is one of the best chefs in Hong Kong. It's not easy to eat the dishes she cooks."

Seeing their earnest invitation, Mr. Shi said, "Sorry to bother you then."

Sister Ge went into the kitchen, took a knife to kill the fish, and Xiuxiu came over to help.

Sister Ge killed the fish while Yue Ning opened the river clams. Yue Ning instructed Xiuxiu to clean all the gills and dirt inside the clams, leaving only the clam meat.

The two mechanics who were debugging the machine in the school building looked at Yue Ning who was busy outside the glass window and said to Qiao Junxian, "Boss, we are in for a treat today. The dishes made by Miss Yue herself, even in Hong Kong City, at Baohua Building or Ningyan, you have to rely on luck to eat them."

"That's right! There are still people in the factory who don't want to come. They don't know what they are missing."

Qiao Junxian walked to the door, and the three of them were passing by, talking and laughing. Yue Ning said to him, "I'm going to make clam soup."

Yue Ning entered the kitchen and saw chopped chicken and sliced ​​meat on the table, and dough that was rising covered with white gauze next to it.

"I made chicken pad rolls once, and everyone loved it. They kept asking me to make it." Sister Ge felt very happy when she talked about how everyone liked the dish.

"Look, you don't have nothing to do. You have to clean and cook. Isn't this work?" Yue Ning asked her.

"In my hometown, if this can be considered a job, wouldn't people laugh at me and call me a lazy woman?" said Sister Ge.

In my hometown, all the housework is done by women, and men have almost nothing to do. Women are used to it. Yue Ning said: "If this is not work, what is it? I cook, but people call me chef!"

"That was in the restaurant. I'm in the factory, and I'm not a cook." Sister Ge went to the stove and started a fire. "Boil water first, right?"

"Yes, I'll blanch the clams first." Yue Ning turned around to look for onions and ginger.

When Sister Ge saw this, she said to Xiuxiu, "Xiuxiu, go get some onions, ginger and garlic for your sister Yue Ning."

Xiuxiu arrived at the door and placed pieces of ginger on the windowsill, and strung garlic and chili peppers on the window.

Yue Ning cut the green onion and ginger and put them into the pot to boil with water, then put the clam meat in to blanch it.

After the river clams were blanched in water, Yue Ning asked Xiuxiu to loosen the clam meat with the back of a knife.

If the clam meat is not handled properly, it will have a muddy smell and will be as difficult to chew as a rubber band.

"Does Big Sister have any lard?"

"Yes, there's still half a bowl in the cupboard!" said Sister Ge.

Yue Ning took out the snow-white lard, scooped a spoonful, added rapeseed oil, added onion and ginger, and fried the small crucian carps until both sides were golden brown. She used a spatula to mash all the fish and stir-fry a few times.

"Sister, what are you doing? Crucian carp has a lot of bones. Now all the bones are mixed in. How can we still eat it?" Xiuxiu looked at it with heartache.

"I only drink the soup, I don't eat the meat." Yue Ning added rice wine to the pot and then added two large spoonfuls of water.

"Ah? You don't want fish meat?"

"Yes! The smell inside has been cooked out, and the fish meat has no taste anymore." Yue Ning said.

Xiuxiu's face was trembling with pain. She said, "Sister, your capitalist and decadent lifestyle is so wasteful."

Yue Ning wondered whether he should tell her that the restaurant used old hens, pork bones, Jinhua ham and other good stuff for making soup, but after the soup was made, all those ingredients were thrown away. It's better not to tell her! Xiuxiu couldn't accept it.

Yue Ning cut the bream open from the spine, leaving the belly still attached, and made cuts on both sides. Mr. Shi came from Thailand, and Thai food is sour, spicy, and has a strong flavor.

Several others said they liked the chicken pad rolls made by Sister Ge, and they probably can eat something spicy. This bream was braised with a bit of spicy flavor.

There is no range hood here. As the fish soup boiled, steam came out of the pot lid and the fresh aroma of the fish soup wafted out. Xiuxiu exclaimed, "It smells so good!"

When she was in Xiaoyanggou, Xiuxiu had also eaten the dishes cooked by Yue's father and daughter, but a good cook cannot cook without rice. How could they be willing to use so much oil at that time? The oil was used to make spicy oil, and even if it was put into the rice noodles, it was used sparingly.

Under such restrictions, the father and daughter can only use less than half of their cooking skills.

She then cut the clam meat that Xiuxiu had softened into pieces.

Yue Ning opened the lid of the pot and stirred the fish soup with a spatula. The fish soup had turned snow-white. She filtered the soup.

Sister Ge came out from behind the stove and said, "Ningning, don't throw away these dregs."

"Don't eat anymore. Sister, we really don't need a bite to eat right now." Yue Ning said to Sister Ge.

Sister Ge smiled and said, "I had nothing to do, so I dug a piece of land with Xiuxiu, went to the town's agricultural station to buy some seeds, and planted some vegetables. I put these things in a bucket and used them as fertilizer after they matured."

"That's fine."

Yue Ning cleaned the pot, added some oil, and sautéed the scallions, ginger, and garlic. Then he added the clam meat and a little rice wine. Then he poured in the fish soup, and asked Sister Ge to add a piece of firewood and simmer it on low heat.

Sister Ge was already kneading the dough. Yue Ning went to chop the green onions. Sister Ge said, "There's spice powder in the jar on the left side of the cupboard. I brought it from my hometown."

Yue Ning took it out and said, every household in the Northwest grinds their own spices. There are only a few kinds of ingredients, but each household has its own recipe, so the taste is always slightly different.

Sister Ge’s spice powder is just like her, the smell is not strong but long-lasting.

Add spice powder, oil, salt and green onion, mix well and roll it into the steamed bun later.

Sister Ge took out a rolling pin and rolled the dough thin, spread scallion oil on the dough, rolled it up, and cut it into pieces.

Xiuxiu went over to plug in the rice cooker, turned on the switch, turned around and said, "Sister, I just learned after I came out that you don't need to go miles to get water, and you don't need to use firewood to cook. This rice cooker can cook by itself. Master Xiang said, should we also make this rice cooker in the future?"

"Yeah! Junxian is considering it."

"Isn't it? After we got off the train, we realized that the outside world and our mountain village are two different worlds." Sister Ge said, "I used to think that I was educated in the city, but coming here can be considered seeing the world."

"The TV here can show the TV stations in Hong Kong." Xiuxiu remembered something, "Sister, I saw you on TV!"

"when?"

"There's some cooking competition. I don't understand what you are saying, and I can't understand what it is about?" Xiuxiu said with a pout.

Yue Ning reached out and scratched her face, saying, "After a long time, you may not be able to speak it, but you will definitely be able to understand it. Let me tell you, this is where the most opportunities will come from in the future. You'd better all learn to speak Cantonese, so that you will have more opportunities in the future."

Yue Ning went behind the stove to light the fire.

"Yeah! But the gatekeeper told me that I was a 'foreign girl' from the mountains, and that we came from poor places."

Sister Ge was frying chicken nuggets and said, "I told you, don't bother with that old man. We are migrant girls, we don't steal or rob, we earn money with our own hands. Why do you care what he says?"

"You have a high school diploma. If you want to study hard, go learn English. That old man will be a janitor in the future. But you may have the opportunity to enter Orpheus and become an Orpheus lady." Yue Ning said to Xiuxiu.

Xiuxiu was puzzled: "What? What Miss Orpheus?"

"Working in an office. Since you can watch TV in Hong Kong, take a look at those TV shows, those fashionable girls in offices wearing suits and having their hair permed."

"I dare not think about it. If I do that, my mother will beat me to death if she sees it." Xiuxiu said she dared not think about it, but her eyes were shining.

"You see after two or three years, you are different."

"What's that smell! It smells so good." A head poked in through the window. He was a young repairman from Hong Kong City. This young man had gone to Hong Kong City with his parents to live with relatives last year. He also spoke Mandarin better than Cantonese.