Chapter 144 Malt

If eaten as a staple food, the original owner's notes mostly record the making of tsampa and barley cakes.

Tsampa needs butter tea to be made. The cows at home are not pregnant yet, so there is no milk, and there is no butter tea.

The low-end version is made by mixing it with water. You can also add salt or sugar to make it, but it’s not as fragrant.

The simplest thing we can make now is barley cake.

To make barley cakes, you need to grind barley into flour first. The stone mill in the warehouse is not small and is quite heavy to move out. The two of them have never used it for a long time because they find it troublesome to move it in and out, so they mostly use stone to grind anything.

It is still a bit difficult to grind flour with a stone pestle now, so we can only move the stone mill out first.

I don’t know how the original owner managed to move all these things at such an old age. The image of the original owner in her mind suddenly changed from a white-haired old grandfather to Schwarzenegger on the grassland.

Cooked flour is used to make tsampa, while raw flour is used to make barley cakes.

Raw flour is made by grinding barley directly into powder, while cooked flour requires the barley to be fried first and then ground into powder.

The fried barley can be eaten directly.

Zhao Yeqing wanted to make a little of everything, but it was a little troublesome because highland barley was very easy to burn when fried, so it had to be mixed with mud and sand and fried together in the pan. The mud and sand could act as a heat insulator.

To get mud and sand, you have to go to the lake.

The two men moved the threshed barley into the original owner's house, and bundled the remaining straw into the hay room.

Before it gets dark, go to the lake and get the mud and sand back.

The two of them were very familiar with the road from home to the lake, and there weren't too many bumps along the way, as most of the road was flat.

The two hadn't been to the lake since it snowed. Now the lakeside was covered with snow, and there were no more geese or ducks on the lake.

The bamboo raft made by the two men was also covered with snow.

When we reached the lake, the shallow water had already begun to freeze, but the ice was still thin and could be broken by poking it with a finger.

The mud and sand near the lake contained moisture and was frozen hard.

The two took some that were not too frozen and took them back.

After all, it was going to be used to stir-fry the barley, so Zhao Yeqing washed and filtered out the mud and sand in advance.

Mu Xi wiped the millstone clean with a towel, but did not dare to wet it with water to clean it directly, for fear that the entire millstone would freeze.

The washed mud and sand were first dried to dry them. Zhao Yeqing also cleaned the highland barley to be made into cooked flour and dried it together with the mud and sand.

Taking out the original owner's big wok, which was a little yellow inside, Zhao Yeqing cleaned it, brushed it with oil, heated it over the fire, and then wiped the oil dry.

Pour the mud and barley into a large pot, and start frying the barley while waving the spatula.

Mixed with mud and barley, it was extremely heavy when I scooped it up, and my hands felt sore after just a few stir-fries.

As the heat rises, the barley in the pot gradually gives off an aromatic aroma, and the rice grains crack slightly due to the heat, revealing their white interior.

Zhao Yeqing scooped out the barley mixed with sand and poured it into a sieve to separate the barley and sand.

The sand after sifting and washing is very fine, and there is almost no sand left on the barley after sifting.

Zhao Yeqing waved the barley vigorously, throwing it up and down several times. When no dust was visible in the air, the barley was considered to be sieved.

She picked up a grain of barley and put it in her mouth. It was crispy and fragrant, a bit like popcorn, with the most original fragrance of wheat.

It's delicious as a snack.

She grabbed a handful and walked to the yard, stopping Mu Xi who was grinding flour, "Open your mouth."

Mu Xi opened his mouth obediently, and Zhao Yeqing poured half a handful of roasted barley into his mouth, "Is it delicious?"

He swallowed the whole mouthful of barley, savored it for a while, and then said, "It's good. Add some sugar and it can be made into rice candy."

Zhao Yeqing exclaimed in surprise, "Don't say it, you really shouldn't say it."

She thought of her basketful of malt, which was now almost ripe.

If it had been grown in the summer, it would have taken two more days, but now the temperature is a bit low.

She took out most of the fried barley for Mu Xi to grind into flour, and kept the rest for making rice candy.

Zhao Yeqing walked into the room, went to the fireplace and took down the hay covering the winnowing basket. The wheat seedlings underneath had grown to ten centimeters high.

It is crisp yellow-green in color, and the rhizomes underneath have grown all over the entire winnowing basket. The rhizomes have penetrated deep into the cracks of the winnowing basket and have taken root firmly.

After bringing the wheat seedlings into the kitchen, Zhao Yeqing used a knife to cut the bottom of the winnowing basket so that the wheat seedlings in the basket could be slightly lifted.

She first lit the fire and steamed the glutinous rice. In order for the malt to become maltose, it had to be mixed with the glutinous rice and fermented together.

The sound when the malt was torn off the winnowing basket was extremely refreshing, like peeling off a whole piece of grass.

Zhao Yeqing added a large ladle of hot water to the large basin used for washing things, then added cold water to adjust the water temperature to the appropriate level before putting the malt in to wash.

Drain the cleaned malt and chop it with a knife.

The glutinous rice was not cooked yet, and Zhao Yeqing thought about going to help Mu Xi and grind the flour.

Next to the stone mill in the yard, there is a small bag of raw noodles, and now the noodles are being ground into cooked noodles.

She walked over, grabbed a handful of cooked barley and put it in her mouth. The taste was a little worse because it was cold.

"You take a break and let me take over."

Mu Xi disagreed, "No, you'll sweat if you grind this, and you'll get cold if you're sweating in this weather and the wind blows on you. You're about to have your period and you don't know how to count it."

Zhao Yeqing obediently walked aside and watched, "Then you won't grind the cornstarch anymore?"

"Try it first. If you are not used to eating highland barley cakes, you can mix highland barley with rice and steam it."

By the time the glutinous rice in the kitchen is steamed, the cooked flour is almost ground.

Zhao Yeqing poured the glutinous rice into a basin and let it cool.

In this weather, if you leave the glutinous rice outside for three minutes, half of it will be cold.

Add chopped malt to the warm glutinous rice, mix well, cover with a lid and let ferment.

Fermentation is slower in cold weather. Normally it takes about five or six hours in summer and autumn, but now it is estimated to take eight or nine hours.

It is seven o'clock in the evening now, and it will be early morning when the fermentation is completed.

She hadn't stayed up late for a long time, and planned to stay up late tonight and wait until the malt was fermented before going to bed.

Mu Xi brought in the barley flour and made barley cakes and barley paste tonight.

Barley paste is like sesame paste, which is made by mixing barley flour with water and adding some sugar.

Barley cakes can be made sweet or savory.

Zhao Yeqing said that he wanted to eat salty food, as he always felt uncomfortable without having something salty for his main meal.

The barley cake was rather bland, so she wanted to find some side dishes with a stronger flavor to go with it.

His eyes swept up and down the kitchen, fixing on the jar in the corner.

This is the sour meat she pickled more than a month ago, and she hasn't opened it to look at it in such a long time.

Remove the stone covering it, open the jar, and the sour aroma will hit your nose.

The originally red meat inside has turned white after fermentation. Before it is even put into the pot, just the sour smell makes people salivate rapidly.