Put the chopped rabbit meat into a pot of cold water, add scallions, ginger, salt and a little wine, blanch it and then take it out. Then marinate it with soy sauce for about ten minutes. Although I didn't use any dark soy sauce, light soy sauce, five-spice powder or oyster sauce, this is a mythical beast, and its own meaty aroma is absolutely incomparable to any earthly seasoning.
After the oil is hot, add ginger, scallions and garlic and sauté until fragrant. Then add the rabbit meat and stir-fry until it is flavorful. Add a spoonful of salt and rock sugar, pour in Shaoxing wine and enough water to cover the rabbit meat. Cover the pot and simmer over low heat for 45 minutes.
Rabbits are so cute, how can we not make them a delicious soup?
Ruyi had been craving this soup since she first started raising rabbits. In her previous life, as a southerner, she often ate various kinds of soups and broths. Unfortunately, she was born at the wrong time and had no opportunity to make soup.
Now that things are better and the main ingredients are no longer lacking, it's time to put making soup back on the agenda. So, when exchanging supplies some time ago, she intentionally collected various seasonings and medicinal herbs needed for making soup.
The last missing medicinal herb was found a few days ago in a box in the Wei family's storeroom next door. Now that's all there is to it! We can finally get started!
After blanching the chopped rabbit meat with wine and ginger slices, remove it from the water, then stir-fry it with ginger, scallions, and garlic until the surface is slightly browned. Then, put it into a large earthenware pot, add ingredients such as Solomon's seal, sand ginseng, ophiopogon japonicus, red dates, lotus seeds, and goji berries, and finally add water. Simmer over low heat for about an hour and a half.
Rabbit soup is fragrant and delicious, with a milky sweetness. It is also nourishing, beautifying, moisturizing, and good for the spleen, making it suitable for men, women, young and old, and the whole family.
The third dish was home-style radish stewed with rabbit. We had just harvested a batch of radishes, and we also added the pork belly that Yang Liuer had given us a few days ago. Finally, we added other miscellaneous green vegetables and stewed them all together in one pot. It was a big hodgepodge. After stewing, the vegetables absorbed all the meat juices and tasted even better than the meat!
The last dish was roasted rabbit. This was a piece of cake for Ruyi, who loves barbecue. She simply tied half a rabbit to a homemade grill and slowly turned it over to roast. The key was the marinating process and the patience required during grilling. Although she didn't have honey, she had homemade osmanthus syrup. The fragrant osmanthus combined with the crispy outside and tender inside of the rabbit meat created a unique and delightful flavor.
Two rabbits, each weighing over ten kilograms, were used to make three dishes and a soup. The portions of each dish were surprisingly large, shocking the Cheng family members who hadn't had a proper meat meal in months.
"What are you all standing there for? Hurry up and sit down and eat while it's hot!" Seeing everyone standing there dumbfounded, Ruyi couldn't help but laugh and tease, "Do you think you can get full just by looking? That would save you a lot of food in the future~~"
Xu Cui swallowed hard and said, "This is too lavish! I've lived so many years and never eaten so much meat in one meal!"
Although Huai Shan County was considered a third-tier city in the Great Yue Kingdom, the country had been at war for decades, leaving the national treasury empty and the government in chaos. The economy of the entire country had not developed much, so apart from the real high-ranking officials, powerful clans, landlords and wealthy merchants, the lives of ordinary people were mostly quite poor.
Before the city was locked down, the Cheng family would only eat meat every few days, and they could only eat a slightly more lavish meal during the Lunar New Year. So, the three large plates of meat and the big pot of meat soup in front of them were quite a visual shock to the Cheng family, both in terms of quantity and quality.
"Sit down, everyone!" The patriarch, Cheng Yan, spoke up after sitting down first. "Everyone has worked hard these past few days, especially Ruyi and Acui. You've both lost weight, so you need to eat more to make up for it."
"It's not hard work at all. I'm not thin, I'm just more toned. And it makes me more flexible and easier to work. It's actually quite good!" Although I didn't intentionally lose weight, who would want to gain weight back after being thin? Besides, being 1.65 meters tall and weighing around 100 pounds is just right, not too fat and not too thin, which is very healthy.
Xu Cui immediately nodded in agreement, "Speaking of which, I also feel that I feel more comfortable after losing weight, and I even have a lot more strength, hahaha!"
"Your increased strength isn't because you've lost weight..." Cheng Ruyi thought to herself as she ladled a bowl of soup for Cheng Yan. "Dad, try it and see how it tastes?"
As soon as Cheng Yan picked up the bowl, he smelled a sweet aroma mixed with a unique medicinal scent. He took a sip out of curiosity and his taste buds were quickly won over. "Good, good, good! I never thought that rabbit meat and these medicinal herbs could taste so good together!"
Lacking language skills, he was really not good at expressing himself. He could only finish a bowl of soup in one gulp, then ladled out another. After finishing the two bowls, he immediately felt warm and comfortable all over, and couldn't help but close his eyes to savor the taste.
Seeing this, the other members of the Cheng family also served themselves a bowl of soup. The meat was fragrant but not greasy, and it was sweet with a lingering aftertaste. It was no surprise that it was praised by everyone. If there hadn't been so many meat dishes, everyone would probably have had a few more bowls.
The whole rabbit feast was indeed well received by everyone. The braised rabbit meat was fragrant and delicious, the rabbit soup was nourishing and refreshing, the radish stewed rabbit meat was tender and flavorful, and the osmanthus-roasted rabbit meat was sweet, crisp and tender. In short, everyone ate until their mouths were full of oil and their bodies and minds were greatly satisfied.
After a whirlwind of activity, more than half of all the dishes were left, which was simply unheard of.
"Mommy, there's so much food! Yunle doesn't know how many days it will take to finish it all. Is this the trouble of happiness?" After finishing her soup, little Cheng Yunle said with a troubled look on her face. She even sighed in agreement, and her deliberately mature tone made everyone burst into laughter.
Ruyi gently tapped Yunle's little nose and said affectionately, "Where did you learn to talk like that, you little one? Did your brother show you some strange storybook again?"
"Mother! I'm innocent! I've returned all my storybooks to you. I don't even have any to read myself!" Cheng Yunping wanted to continue explaining, but suddenly turned around and saw his wife, Xiaoman, looking at him with a smile. He changed the words he was about to say: "Besides, besides, I'm a grown man now. I... I don't like reading these storybooks anymore!"
There's no necessary connection between being a man and reading storybooks. Who says a mature man can't read storybooks? Cheng Ruyi found it quite amusing to see Yunping, who still looked so childish but was trying so hard to act like an adult.
As I looked at him, I suddenly realized that my adopted son seemed to have grown quite a bit taller, his shoulders were broader, and his frame was more sturdy. This child has actually grown up without me even noticing!
“Yunping, there’s nothing shameful about liking to read storybooks. A real man can have his own hobbies too. As long as he’s responsible and has a sense of duty, can protect the people most important to him, knows what he wants and works hard to achieve it without regrets, then he’s a true man.”
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