Chapter 47 Preparing for Dinner
When the meat turned from its previous red color to a slightly charred brown, the kitchen where Jiang Zhi was located was filled with the aroma of meat!
She took a deep breath, very satisfied!
Jiang Zhi squatted down and turned down the heat a little, having a premonition in her heart.
Now it's time to add the sauce.
Jiang Zhi took a bowl from the side, then worked together to add three circles of sake, four circles of soy sauce, and about the right amount of salt. Then she stirred it with warm water, and that was the sauce needed for this dish.
By this time, the minced meat in the pot had already turned a slightly brownish color. Jiang Zhi saw this and dared not continue frying it, otherwise it would burn!
She immediately poured in the sauce she had just prepared, and it bubbled and bubbled instantly, the residual heat in the pot causing the sauce to rise to small bubbles.
She then broke the rice noodles she had just bought into appropriate sizes and put them into the soup.
After that, there wasn't much else to do. Jiang Zhi took the long chopsticks and slowly turned the rice noodles over to make sure they didn't stick to the pot.
When the broth in the pot has reduced to almost nothing, this "Ants Climbing a Tree" dish, a Song Dynasty version, is finally almost ready.
While waiting, Jiang Zhi went to process the pig's foreleg that she had just bought: singeing off the hair, rinsing, blanching, and then soaking it in water with chopped scallions and ginger to remove the blood. She spent the rest of her time praying that the pig wouldn't have a strong, unpleasant smell.
She plans to cook pig's trotters for dinner, but how should she cook them?
Give her time to think about it at noon.
Thinking this, she took the ants climbing a tree and the white rice she had steamed before falling asleep that morning out and placed them on the dining table.
Dinner is ready!
*
Little Twist soon emerged from the room as well.
As Jiang Zhi expected, a little tail was indeed following behind.
Zuo Tianyuan gave Jiang Zhi a rather embarrassed smile, then sat down at the table rather unceremoniously but obediently, drooling over the dishes on the table.
Little Twist sat obediently on the stool and took the food that Jiang Zhi had prepared from her hands.
The two little ones were just waiting for Jiang Zhi's command to prepare to show off their food.
But to everyone's surprise, Jiang Zhi hesitated to give the order, which made the two hungry boys anxious. They held their bowls and chopsticks and kept turning around to see what Sister Jiang was doing.
Meanwhile, Jiang Zhi, who was waiting patiently, was feeding Da Huang?
That's right. When cooking, Jiang Zhi specially set aside a portion with very little sauce, which was meant to be fed to Dahuang.
*
When Da Huang walked up to the food bowl that Jiang Zhi had specially prepared for him, head held high, and began to devour it with gusto.
Jiang Zhi felt relieved and walked back to the table. She gestured with her head towards the two hungry cubs, indicating:
Dinner's ready!
*
When it was served, Zuo Tianyuan smelled the enticing aroma. He had been wondering if Jiang Zhi had done something else besides the vermicelli she bought today.
But seeing that there was only one dish on the table, he was clearly a little disappointed.
That's right, although Zuo Tianyuan is a foodie, he is actually a picky eater.
Yan Mo was busy with his career for a while, and Zuo Tianyuan was taken care of by his father during that time, and then ate plain rice noodles for a while.
By the end of the meal, Zuo Tianyuan had only one thought: he never wanted to see vermicelli again in his life.
But this was made by Jiang Zhi.
This idea made her hesitate, especially considering that Yiran had tasted the delicious food made by Jiang Zhi many times before, especially from Zuo Tianyuan.
He hesitated, picked up a piece with his chopsticks, then hesitated again, put it in his mouth, and then...
He took one bite, chewed it only twice, and then squinted his eyes in bliss.
The golden-yellow rice noodles, soaked in broth and coated with oily sauce, slid into my mouth without lingering on my chopsticks for long. Having been stewed in the pot for a while, they were soft and chewy yet still had a slight springiness.
He picked up another chopstick, took a couple of light bites, and the minced meat that had been wrapped around the golden vermicelli fell off, mingling with the aroma of minced garlic, creating a new world on his tongue. The minced meat was chopped perfectly; when chewed, you could taste the unique fat and meaty flavor of pork, yet it wasn't so mushy that it was practically nonexistent.
There was only one problem: after Zuo Tianyuan had shown off his skills for a dozen or twenty times, he felt something was off—
greasy?
Jiang Zhi had already thought of this:
After all, this is a heavily seasoned dish, and even if you use it to eat with rice, you might still find it a bit salty and greasy.
Seeing that the two children were eating slower and slower, and even preparing to jump off the table to gulp down water, she smiled and pushed out the food she had prepared for them.
That's right. While feeding the dogs, Jiang Zhi gave the two little ones an instruction: to wash a cucumber each. After each picking and washing their own, they casually placed them in the vegetable basket Jiang Zhi had prepared, having momentarily forgotten about Kuang Kuang showing off his food.
At that moment, when Jiang Zhi pulled out the vegetable basket from the small table behind her, the two children couldn't control their facial expressions; they were incredibly surprised!
Zuo Tianyuan was initially confident that the cucumber would be of no use.
Upon seeing this, he didn't hesitate to grab the cucumber he had chosen earlier, and with a "whoosh," he bit off the top of the cucumber and spat it out.
"It's so bitter!"
The little boy, still with a childish look on his face, pouted, clearly unhappy.
Jiang Zhi smiled faintly at his expression, then casually picked up the small twisted dough stick that had been eyeing her eagerly before she even started eating it. With a deft movement, she...
The pointed cucumber head and the cucumber tail fell to the ground.
Zuo Tianyuan wanted to pick it up again, but Jiang Zhi stopped him. She smiled, pinched his soft, white cheek, gestured in that direction, and said:
"Who told you to bite into that cucumber top? Look, that's the source of the bitterness!"
As she spoke, she casually pinched off the ends of both her own and Zuo Tianyuan's cucumbers, then put them directly to her mouth and took a bite.
The cucumbers of this dynasty are all natural crops, much tastier than the various organic cucumbers of Jiang Zhi's previous life. One bite, and the crisp juice bursts in your mouth, carrying a refreshing coolness and a hint of sweetness mixed with ice.
Paired with the dish "Ants Climbing a Tree" and rice noodles soaked in the broth, it's an incredibly refreshing and cleansing combination!
*
After eating and drinking her fill, Jiang Zhi began to process the pig's trotters that had been soaking in the bloody water.
In this dynasty, the hind leg of a pig was far more popular than the foreleg. The reason was simple: the working people of ancient times preferred the fatty and juicy hind leg to the skinny foreleg!
Therefore, when Jiang Zhi arrived at the butcher shop, all that was left was a small, thin hoof with an unusually large amount of lean meat and tendons, but very little white fat.
When the butcher heard that she was willing to buy all the remaining meat, he felt embarrassed and cut the price down for her, even giving her a piece of pork belly as a bonus.
Little did he know that what was difficult for him to sell was actually a source of great joy for Jiang Zhi when she saw it, so she took out her money without hesitation!
Goodness! More lean meat means the soup won't be too oily. More tendons and membranes mean more collagen, making the soup thicker and sweeter!
This is the perfect pork hock for making soup!
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Author's note: Does anyone have any recommendations for foods that cut through the richness of food? Preferably those that appeared around the Song Dynasty.
If he really doesn't appear, I'll sideline him (doge emoji).
The main reason is that I realized I'm really lacking in ways to cut through greasiness, and thinking about it made me think of cucumbers.
I can't think of anything else.
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