While the fish was soaking in the onion and ginger water, Su Qingluan went to fetch another bucket of oil.
Ever since the Su family started using soybean oil as part of their cooking oil, in order to remove the specific bean smell in the soybean oil, Su Qingluan would always collect fresh peels and soak them in soybean oil barrels when everyone ate citrus fruits.
This can not only absorb the beany smell in the soybean oil, but also leave a light fruity aroma.
After preparing the soybean oil, Su Qingluan took out the remaining fruit jam from making the "Four Seasons" series, because Su Qingluan did not see tomatoes for sale on the market, and the sauce that would be used later was originally to fry the tomatoes until they were soft, using the sour and sweet tomato juice as the sour and sweet base flavor of the dish.
There was no other way. Su Qingluan had thought of many substitutes since she came up with the dish of squirrel mandarin fish. Later, she found that as long as the sourness and sweetness were adjusted later, the orange-yellow fruit jam would be an excellent choice to replace tomato sauce, both in terms of taste and color.
Therefore, Su Qingluan decided to use the leftover semi-finished jam to replace the tomato sauce.
Considering that it takes a cup of tea to boil the sauce to the appropriate thickness, and that the squirrel mandarin fish will lose its crispness and deliciousness if the sauce is not poured on it immediately after it is taken out of the pot, Su Qingluan planned to throw the mandarin fish meat into the scallion and ginger water to continue "bathing" and start boiling the sauce herself.
Su Qingluan first chopped the garlic and ginger into minced garlic and ginger flakes. After the meal, she poured out the boiling water from the oil pan on the stove, waited for the water droplets to be evaporated by the residual heat, added the soybean oil at the bottom of the pot, and immediately poured in the minced ginger and garlic that had just been chopped.
Instantly, the ginger and garlic, cooked in the oil, took on a unique aroma, quickly turning a slightly browned color in the swirling soybean oil. Su Qingling saw that the heat was almost right, so he added two handfuls of sugar and then poured in half a bottle of rice vinegar.
"Cough cough cough cough!" The moment the rice vinegar was added to the pot, it was cooked in the oil pan and released a strong and pungent sour smell, which sprayed Su Qingluan, who was right in front of the stove, in the face. The strong taste made Su Qingluan cough violently.
The pungent sour smell rushed up to the top of her head. Su Qingluan felt that the phrase "lifting your skull" was not a joke, and her tears were choked by the "refreshing" sour smell and flowed all over her face.
At this moment, she really misses the range hoods of the 21st century!
Su Qingluan's violent coughing, which seemed to be coughing out all her internal organs, startled Yang, who was about to cook noodles with the boiled fish soup. She quickly dropped the raw noodles in her hand and ran over: "Daya, what's wrong with you? Why are you coughing so hard all of a sudden..."
Seeing this, Su Qingluan quickly waved her hands, struggling to stop another victim from joining in: "Ouch, cough cough, mother, please don't come over here, cough cough cough... It's choking here... cough cough cough..."
However, she was still a step too late. Yang was still surrounded by the "rice vinegar steam" and sneezed twice.
Only then did Yang realize why her eldest daughter was desperately waving her hands to tell her not to come over.
"Ouch, what did you add? Why is it so choking?" Yang turned around and started cooking noodles again.
"I added rice vinegar to the wok... cough cough... I don't need sweet and sour sauce to season it, it won't have the same effect cough cough cough..." Su Qingluan said, adding the jam. When the jam was stir-fried and began to bubble, Su Qingluan tasted it with a small spoon.
The sauce tastes sweet and sour. Although it doesn’t taste like tomato sauce, the wild fruit sauce used as a substitute has its own flavor and is in no way inferior to tomato sauce!
The sauce was almost cooked, so Su Qingluan scooped out all the sauce and placed it in a bowl next to her. She went to the backyard to fetch well water and brushed the oil pan with mud.
Although the mud looked dirty, it could absorb dirt—after all, with both stoves burning, it was impossible to remove the ash. Originally, the ash was used to remove the grease.
The grease and dirt in the pot are all organic matter, a valuable fertilizer for the soil. It's autumn now, and the crops are ripe, but by the next spring, the organic matter inside will have decomposed and degraded, making it more conducive to growing fresh crops.
Su Qingluan washed the pot, turned around and put the iron pot on the stove again.
During this gap, Yang had already pulled all the noodles and put them into the pot.
However, the birthday noodles made for birthdays are different from the usual thin noodles. Each person gets a bowl, and each bowl contains only one noodle, which is about two fingers wide.
The noodles are not cut off, which means "longevity", and the noodles are much wider than usual, which means "peace of mind", so the alias of longevity noodles is called "peace of mind and longevity noodles".
This kind of "Kuanxin Longevity Noodles" is much wider than ordinary noodles, so it is not as good as the original thin noodles. It can be cooked in a cup of tea.
But in a quarter of an hour at most, the noodles will be ready.
If the noodles are not eaten as soon as possible after being cooked, they will absorb a lot of soup and stick together, and the taste will be much worse, no matter how delicious the soup base is.
So when Yang saw Su Qingluan put the oil pan back on and the fish soaked in the ginger and scallion water was obviously still raw, she couldn't help but ask, "Daya, my longevity noodles will be ready in a quarter of an hour at most. The other vegetarian dishes have already been served. How long will it take for your fish to be ready?"
Su Qingluan looked over at the situation at Yang's side and nodded with a smile: "Don't worry, mother, we will definitely serve the dishes to the table at the same time!"
As she spoke, Su Qingluan poured half of the oil into the wok that had already dried up the moisture.
While waiting for the oil to heat up, Su Qingluan took the fish out of the scallion and ginger water and carefully squeezed out the moisture to prevent the "fish strips" that had been cut into pieces from falling off the fish skin.
Then soak the dried fish meat in water starch again, so that the fish meat is evenly coated with a layer of water starch.
In fact, when she made this squirrel mandarin fish in her previous life, she did not dip it in water starch at first. She had tried water, egg white, and whole egg liquid. However, she found that water starch was the best. When dipped in dry starch, it was the most evenly distributed and the frying effect was the best, so she continued to use the step of coating with water starch.
Originally, Su Qingluan was worried that the effect of mung bean starch might not be as good as that of potato starch and corn starch, so she was a little nervous.
But when she put the "fish fillets" that she had pinched into the shape of a "squirrel" into the frying pan, she felt relieved - the effect was just as good!
As the fish covered with dry starch was put into the oil pan, the originally calm oil pan suddenly began to produce dense golden bubbles, like layers of golden waves.
The fish meat rose and fell in the "waves". After a while, the fish meat that had been cut into pieces stood upright, showing a golden and brown color.
At the same time, the fish head and "fish neck" that had just been thrown into the onion and ginger water were also thrown directly into the oil pan and fried, gradually forming a golden shell.
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