Chapter 83 Ginger Duck

While Lu An and Yao Yuan were rushing to the salt fields by the sea, Zhao Xuan was leisurely riding her tricycle to Zhang Xiaohe's house.

A duck hung on the hood of the truck, and several bunches of freshly picked vegetables and large chunks of ginger were placed in the back—the items were so light they were practically nonexistent. She hummed an anime song with lyrics she had composed herself, enjoying the cool breeze, feeling incredibly relaxed.

A while ago, Zhang Xiaohe helped Zhao Xuan marinate a batch of soy sauce meat. When it was almost time, she went to pick it up. Since she was already there, Sister Xiaohe would definitely invite her to have lunch. She felt bad about asking someone to help marinate meat and then eating their lunch. So this morning, Zhao Xuan took out the last wild duck from the refrigerator and decided to bring her own ingredients to Sister Xiaohe's house for a free meal.

For the past two weeks, it has been sunny. Zhao Xuan has aired out all her bedding, clothes, dried vegetables, and rice noodles. When she went out today, she saw some wisps of white clouds in the sky. Based on her experience, she judged that it would be windy soon, and the temperature would drop a few degrees.

When the temperature drops, it's time to nourish the body.

During this period, Zhao Xuan would find excuses to eat something good every now and then. Ever since she enjoyed a hot pot with pork bones, she felt that she couldn't suffer herself.

—The bones she made were very popular with the Paw Patrol; in Yellow's eyes, she had become a god.

Today, she deliberately kicked 460 out of the house. 460 had been kept at home for so many days because of its mission to protect its owner. Today, she gave it a break and let it go to play with its friends. However, 460 was still worried and kept looking back. In the end, it still followed her tricycle for half the distance until it saw a corner of Zhang Xiaohe's village. Only then did 460 turn around and run away to find its friends.

Upon arriving at Xiaxi Village, where Zhang Xiaohe lived, she turned into the familiar little building with practiced ease. Just as when Zhang Xiaohe and the others came to her own home, she knocked first to avoid startling the people inside.

"Sister Xiaohe! I'm Zhao Xuan." Zhao Xuan's voice was loud and clear.

"Coming, coming!" Zhang Xiaohe wiped the water on her apron, came out to open the door, and Zhao Xuan, with his light brown eyes, was smiling and holding a duck, looking at her from behind the door.

The dog went to herd sheep, leaving only Zhang Xiaohe at home. Zhang Xiaohe took a few pieces of meat from the porch, put them in a large stainless steel basin, and handed them to Zhao Xuan.

Zhao Xuan didn't know how to make soy sauce pork. A while ago, Zhang Xiaohe came to visit her and said that her family had brewed a lot of soy sauce this year, so there was no need to be particularly frugal. The weather was dry and the sun was shining, so she decided to marinate some soy sauce pork. Zhao Xuan took out two pieces of pork belly from the freezer and asked Zhang Xiaohe to marinate one for her as well.

"You've come at the perfect time! Stay for lunch, and I'll steam some soy sauce pork for you to try first!" Zhang Xiaohe was already busy in the kitchen.

After more than a year of hard work, Zhang Xiaohe's home is already quite presentable.

The yard was very clean, and even the windows were bright. There were bamboo poles and bamboo strips in the yard, with a row of cured fish and soy sauce meat hanging on the bamboo poles, and beans and dried vegetables drying on the round bamboo strips.

The broken window in their kitchen was replaced with a new one, probably salvaged by Yao Yuan from some abandoned house and installed here. The kitchen was also very clean, even the large pot lid on the stove was polished to a shine.

Zhao Xuan still remembers the first time he came here. His family was so poor that all they had left were a few dried mushrooms in a basket, not to mention the drafty windows and doors.

Zhang Xiaohe was slicing meat, and the oil seeped out as soon as she made a cut. Compared to salt-cured bacon, soy sauce-braised pork has a richer umami flavor, and it doesn't need any other seasonings; it just needs to be steamed.

Zhao Xuan waved his hand and said, "I brought duck! Sister Xiaohe, I'll make you ginger duck today!"

Zhang Xiaohe glanced at the duck, paused, and said, "Then let's cook them all and eat them!"

The soy-sauce-braised pork was sliced ​​and arranged on a plate, which was then placed on top of the rice. They were steamed together until cooked. After that, Zhang Xiaohe watched Zhao Xuan chop the duck.

Zhao Xuan's knife skills have always been poor, and she is not very strong. She often cannot cut through the bone with one cut, so she needs to make a second cut. However, her second cut never lands where the first cut was; it always falls a little bit off.

With a loud "bang," the cleaver swung down, creating a powerful impact, but the duck was also chopped into a mess.

Zhang Xiaohe frowned as she watched: "Move aside, I'll chop it." Anyone who didn't know better would think Zhao Xuan was slicing cucumbers.

Zhao Xuan chuckled and stepped aside to wash the ginger.

Ginger duck, as the name suggests, requires a lot of ginger. This ginger was two years old and grown by Zhao Xuan herself. It wasn't pretty, but it was spicy. She sliced ​​the ginger, stir-fried a large handful of ginger in sesame oil until fragrant, then poured in the chopped duck and stir-fried it continuously.

Zhang Xiaohe watched curiously from the side, and suddenly asked, "Does this ginger duck have to be made with a female duck?"

“You’ve punctuated it wrong,” Zhao Xuan explained earnestly. “It’s not ‘ginger, mother duck.’ It’s ‘ginger mother, duck.’ ‘Ginger mother’ means old ginger.”

"Oh—" Zhang Xiaohe exclaimed in a slightly exaggerated manner, as if suddenly realizing something.

Zhao Xuan also made a mistake regarding the punctuation of this dish. The first time she ate ginger duck, she asked her roommate in a silly way, "Does this dish have to be made with female ducks? Where do you find so many female ducks? Can't male ducks be used? Why discriminate against male ducks?"

Her roommate rolled her eyes at her and said, "Is it possible that this dish absolutely requires ginger?"

Zhao Xuan attended university in the southern part of the province. In the university village where her university was located, there was a long-established ginger duck restaurant. The duck was cooked by a withered old man in his sixties or seventies. Although he was old, he had a bad temper and a loud voice. His Mandarin was not very standard, and if customers asked a few questions, he would raise his voice and shout. However, his ginger duck was just too fragrant. The duck was stir-fried in a clay pot outside, usually five pots at a time, all by himself, and he seemed to handle it with ease. As soon as the duck started to be stir-fried, the aroma could fill the entire university village, so fragrant that people couldn't move away.

Zhao Xuan often went to eat there with her roommates. They even suspected that this duck restaurant might be imitating the aromatherapy used in bakeries to smell like toasted bread, and that the duck restaurant also used duck-scented aromatherapy.

After visiting more often, the old man became familiar with them and their group. They then learned that the old man wasn't actually short-tempered; he just had hearing problems and didn't realize how loud his voice was. When customers asked him a few more questions, he would get anxious and answer even louder.

Zhao Xuan watched the old man stir-fry duck every day and eventually learned how to make it himself; the ingredients for ginger duck weren't complicated. After graduation, Zhao Xuan and Lu An bought their own small house, and Zhao Xuan tried to recreate the old man's recipe several times, but no matter how he tried, it never tasted as good as the old man's.

"Let me tell you, you're just missing duck scented oil," the roommates who came to freeload said jokingly.

Later, Zhao Xuan specially took Lu An to that ginger duck restaurant. The old man recognized her and was very happy. Zhao Xuan thought that the old man would be so happy and touched that he would give her a 20% discount. But the old man was sober-minded that he didn't give her a penny less.

Zhao Xuan told Zhang Xiaohe about these things as if they were just casual conversation, and the two of them chuckled as they talked.

The sesame oil itself was very fragrant, the ginger slices were fried until crispy, and the duck meat's own fat was rendered out, filling the whole house with a delicious aroma. Zhao Xuan transferred a pot of duck to a clay pot, added some soy sauce, white wine, and sugar, and continued to simmer it on the stove. During this process, the wine and soy sauce would evaporate, so the duck meat had to be stirred occasionally to prevent it from sticking to the pot.

Zhang Xiaohe finally understood why the old man Zhao Xuan mentioned was frying duck at the shop entrance. It smelled so good! The sesame oil mixed with the aroma of the meat, but it wasn't greasy at all because there was a hint of ginger in it. This aroma was incredibly attractive to passersby.

As the wine and soy sauce evaporated, the duck meat, mixed with the sesame oil, began to sizzle beautifully.

The dog, having finished herding the sheep, rushed into the house. Seeing Mom tending the fire and my sister cooking, then glancing at the steamed pork in soy sauce and the stir-fried duck, its eyes clearly said: "Are you planning to die tomorrow?!" How could it possibly survive like this?!

He was about to offer some advice to the two ladies when he almost choked on his own saliva.

In the end, the dog shut up and silently placed the dishes on the table.

During dinner, Zhang Xiaohe and Zhao Xuan discussed the harvest of the second crop of rice. The rice of both families was greatly damaged by the typhoon, and each family had less than three mu of rice left. Zhao Xuan could harvest the three mu of rice by himself. Zhang Xiaohe wanted to take the dog to Taiping Town after the rice harvest. She knew that there was a town library in Taiping Town, where she should be able to find some teaching materials.

At this point, Zhang Xiaohe sighed. She glanced at her son, who was engrossed in eating. The dog was already eating his second bowl of rice. If she calculated that before the apocalypse, the dog would be a first-year junior high school student, but his theoretical knowledge was not up to the level of a fourth-grade elementary school student. He didn't even know the slightly more advanced idioms. Zhang Xiaohe thought a lot and felt that she should change the supplementary textbooks, since the dog was currently reading fairy tales and picture books.

The dog's current knowledge is all geared towards the post-apocalyptic world. He can pickle and brew various foods, grow crops, raise livestock with ease, and his fishing skills are unparalleled. He can even deliver lambs. Zhang Xiaohe thought that decades from now, if the world is still like this, and he and his wife are both gone, leaving only the dog, he could live a long time, but merely existing without a rich inner world. Alone, the dog would become more and more like a savage.

The only thing the dog was interested in was drawing, but in the past two years, the heavy farm work reduced the number of times the dog drew. The crayons were no longer produced, and the dog treasured his crayons very much. Even though those crayons had gone bad, the dog hid them away like treasures and was reluctant to use them again.

Zhang Xiaohe decided to go to Taiping Town again to find some books and paintbrushes for the dog.

They were already very familiar with the road to Taiping Town, so they no longer needed to be wary of other deserted villages along the way, nor did they need to take safe detours. They could travel directly and quickly, returning in two days.

Zhang Xiaohe asked Zhao Xuan if he could take care of the sheep for them for the next two days, and Zhao Xuan readily agreed.

But as they were almost finished eating, Zhang Xiaohe felt something was amiss, and she suddenly changed her mind, saying, "How about we leave the dog here and I go to Taiping Town with you?"

Zhao Xuan and the dog, who were engrossed in eating, both looked up at Zhang Xiaohe.

Zhao Xuan instantly understood Zhang Xiaohe's inner thoughts: she was afraid that she would die if she stayed in the village alone.

Zhao Xuan immediately retorted, "You're comfortable leaving your son alone in the village, but you're not comfortable leaving me?!"

She felt insulted by her ability to survive. She turned to look at the dog, who nodded. Zhao Xuan thought the dog was going to speak up for her, but the dog said, "A-Mian's belly is big, and I'm worried about her. I'll stay and take care of A-Mian, and also feed my sister's pigs."

Amian, Ajiao, and Xiaoxue are all the ewes of the Yao family; these are the names the dog gave them.

Zhang Xiaohe added, "We'll bring 460 along; it'll be safer that way."

The decision to change was made hastily yet firmly. On the way back, Zhao Xuan rode his tricycle while comforting himself. He figured he might as well go to the town library to see if there were any books he needed, such as agricultural books on planting and animal husbandry. Although he had been farming for two years, he had mostly relied on memory and intuition, which had led him astray. If he could refer to books to grow crops, it might be much easier.