Chapter 15 Pork Offal Soup A large pot of hot soup instantly filled the room...
Craftsmen do heavy work, so their meals should be plentiful and filling, preferably with meat and oil. Even though they receive money, if they are not shortchanged in their food, they will feel comfortable and will work more carefully.
Therefore, Shen Miao had carefully planned when she went grocery shopping yesterday. She specially asked Zheng Tuzhu, the butcher on the street, for a set of pig offal. Shen Miao couldn't afford proper meat, but she could still make a soup of pork offal and lean meat, brown rice, and a big pot of stir-fried minced meat with white cabbage.
Shen Miao bought three catties of pork and one catty of rendered pork fat. Zheng the butcher then gave her a whole set of pig offal from his meat stall, selling it to her half-price and giving it away for free. Pigs in the Song Dynasty were not castrated, so the offal smelled much stronger than in later generations. It was often hard to sell, and it spoiled even faster than pork, hence the low price. But Shen Miao had a good way to get rid of the smell.
In her past life, Shen Miao was a chef and a scientific person. In order to make a good Dongpo pork dish, she even studied the source of the pork's fishy smell and developed a scientific and effective method to remove the smell.
The gamey smell of pork mainly comes from two sources: First, pigs have relatively weak kidney function, resulting in a significant amount of ammonia residue in their blood that they cannot fully metabolize. This smell is easy to remove by bleeding the pig during slaughter or by washing away as much blood as possible and blanching the pork during processing. Second, if the pig is not castrated, the large amount of male hormones secreted by it will remain in the pork. Shen Miao, who studied Western cuisine and baking abroad for two years, was deeply affected by the gamey smell of pork from pigs that were never castrated in the West, and almost vomited the first time she ate it.
Only then did she realize what pork from uncastrated pigs tasted like. If she had to describe it, it would be like soaking pork in pig urine overnight and then cooking it without washing it properly.
But thanks to his extensive knowledge from his previous life, Shen Miao handled the dish of smutty pork with surprising ease in the Song Dynasty.
The lingering odor from the failure to castrate is very difficult to get rid of and requires a lot of effort.
Shen Miao summarized it as "three key moves":
The first step is to cut the pork open and rinse it with cold water to fully release and clean the blood inside.
The second method is to soak the pork in water with ginger, scallions, and cooking wine for at least 15 minutes, then blanch it.
When blanching, always start with cold water, then add white vinegar and rice wine. The male hormones in pigs are mainly found in the fat. Blanching in cold water allows the pork and water to heat up slowly at the same time, so the surface of the pork is not cooked instantly by the hot water, which would cause residual blood and odor to remain inside the meat.
Adding vinegar can accelerate the decomposition and dissolution of fat, allowing the fishy smell to evaporate with the steam.
At this point, there's one crucial detail: never cover the pot! Leave the pot wide open for any unpleasant odors. Also, rinse the meat with boiling water after taking it out. Rinsing it with cold water at this stage will cause the meat to become tough due to the temperature difference, which would be counterproductive.
The third method: marinating. Use chopped scallions and ginger to extract the juice, then soak and marinate again.
Scallions and ginger are the nemesis of pork with an unpleasant odor. Pork soaked in scallion and ginger water will not only absorb the juice and mask the odor, but will also make the blanched pork juicy again and tender.
Old Man Yang was sawing the shoulder joints and trimming the edges of the door frame, while his apprentices helped chisel out the frame holes, leaving space for the board grooves and the frame openings. Just as he was working intently, he caught a glimpse of Chen Miao processing pork with lightning speed. Her hands moved so fast they were almost blurry, and she didn't even need to watch him as she chopped and cut the meat. All he could hear was the loud thud of the chopping board, and soon the meat was soaking in water and then going into the pot.
Soon, the aroma of meat, with a slightly fishy or gamey smell, wafted out.
Old Man Yang's eldest apprentice sniffed the air and whispered to another junior apprentice, "This Madam Shen is quite generous. She even makes hot soup and hot meals for us at noon. Unlike Manager Wei, who runs a pastry shop across the street, when we repaired the door of his house, he only gave us a few dry cakes and cold water at noon."
The junior apprentice, whose family was slightly better off, nodded, but looked troubled: "It's a pity about pork... I really can't get used to it. Last time my wife bought two ounces because it was cheap, and I almost threw up my dinner from the night before just from the smell..."
"You complain even though you have food to eat!" Old Man Yang hit him on the head with a chisel. "You're lucky to be born into a good world. You've never gone hungry since you were born. Otherwise, you'd be eating clay and chewing tree roots, let's see if you'd still vomit!"
The junior brother immediately fell silent, but he still touched his stomach, thinking that he would rather eat pancakes. This Madam Shen was quite good at making pancakes. The scallion pancakes she made for them in the morning were crispy and crumbly, and the millet porridge was also fragrant and delicious. It would be better to eat the leftovers from the morning!
Thinking this, he continued working, helping his master hold the ladder. Old Man Yang climbed up and installed the upper railing under the eaves. At this crucial moment, he was suddenly drawn in by an irresistible aroma of meat, and he craned his neck to catch it.
The woman then sliced the pig intestines, liver, kidneys, and lean meat into paper-thin slices, coated them with salt and cornstarch, simmered them briefly in boiling water with ginger slices, added a little salt and rice wine, sprinkled on goji leaves, and garnished with chopped green onions before serving.
A large pot of hot soup instantly filled the room with its delicious aroma.
His eyes widened, and he sniffed and sniffed like a puppy. Strangely enough, the fishy smell that he could still smell a little earlier had disappeared!
Overwhelmed by the rich aroma, he couldn't help but swallow hard, his throat bobbing.
***
Pork offal soup must be made with boiling water over high heat, and the meat should be added and removed quickly. This prevents the starch from disintegrating, makes the meat so tender it almost melts in your mouth, and gives the small intestines a crisp texture.
Shen Miao ladled out the pork offal soup, and the five-colored brown rice that had been steaming in the wooden bucket was also ready. She quickly chopped some minced meat and made a stir-fried cabbage dish. Then she called on Old Man Yang and the others to eat: "Take a break and eat."
A large pot of meat soup, a bucket of rice, and a large pot of stir-fried cabbage were served in basins. Because the portions were so large, Shen Miao had to use basins to hold them all. The small square table that she had bought from Old Man Yang was too small to fit all three basins of food, so everyone had to stand or squat around the table to eat.
While in the kitchen, Shen Miao served herself, Ji Ge'er, and Xiang Jie'er first, and the three of them sat on round stools by the stove to eat. Since the kitchen door hadn't been installed yet, Shen Miao slowly drank her soup while watching the craftsmen and apprentices work. Before long, they had devoured all the food on the table.
Old Man Yang also had a young apprentice who was only a teenager. After drinking a bowl of soup, he scooped up a bowl of rice porridge and ate it while sweating profusely and mumbling, "Brother... leave some for me..."
Fortunately, Shen Miao cooked a lot, and the dozen or so strong laborers managed to finish the whole bucket of rice.
In the end, the young apprentice sat on the ground, clutching his belly, still savoring the bouncy, tender, and smooth texture of the food.
Even Old Man Yang, still savoring the taste, smacked his lips and stepped forward, saying to Shen Miao in surprise, "Madam Shen has such a skill in cooking pork... She could probably go to any of those places, like Liu Lou under Jinliang Bridge, Fan Lou outside Jinming Pond, Cao Men Man Wang's place, or Ba Xian Lou in the north of the prefecture! Why did she choose to be a street vendor?"
Shen Miao had certainly considered this. Although she was a woman, the Song Dynasty at that time did not look down on women going out to make a living. There were many cooks, embroiderers, and women selling wine on the street. She could probably find employment by showing off her skills at any famous restaurant or tavern.
But she already has a small noodle shop, so why should she work as a laborer?
Pointing to the gradually fading desolation of the small courtyard, she laughed and said, "Father-in-law, you flatter me! My culinary skills are all family heirlooms. Now that my family has fallen on hard times, even though I am a woman, I can't help but think about how to revive the family. You see, life is slowly getting better, isn't it?"
These words filled Old Man Yang with awe, and He Daizhao also glanced at them frequently.
Shen Miao spoke from the heart. She never thought about building a great family business or climbing to great heights. Having a small courtyard and a small restaurant to make a living, and being able to live a peaceful and tranquil life in this world, seemed to be enough for her.
In the afternoon, perhaps because of the good food provided by Shen Miao, Old Man Yang and his men worked exceptionally hard. He Daizhao and his five apprentices worked from morning till night with almost no rest, and finished building the wall in just one day.
Then you just have to wait for the clay mixture on top to dry.
Old Yang finished work earlier than him, and the doors, windows, and kitchen roof were all brand new before dusk.
Shen Miao had arranged with He Daizhao to come back early the next morning to build the earthen kiln and repair the stove, so she lay down in the kitchen and didn't move. Xiang Jie'er walked behind her sensibly and massaged her back.
Ji Ge'er then took the initiative to clean up the wood shavings and ash scattered all over the yard, and washed a large basin of dishes and chopsticks.
This afternoon, while people were working in the yard, Shen Miao was also busy.
It was late at night, and the kitchen was already filled with marinated and dried sausages—she planned to set up a small stall to sell hand-pulled pancakes and grilled sausages.
Hand-pulled pancakes actually evolved from scallion pancakes, and are said to have originated from Taiwan in later times. They are a specialty snack from the south, so they didn't exist in Bianjing (Kaifeng) during the Song Dynasty. That day, Shen Miao wandered through all the food stalls in the night market but didn't see a single stall selling similar pancakes, so she became interested.
Like the people of Henan in later generations, the people of Bianjing loved to eat carbohydrates and noodles. They didn't even eat much rice on a daily basis. Their three meals were either steamed buns with pickled vegetables and millet porridge, or a bowl of hot soup noodles. If they wanted to be a little more extravagant, they would have a meal of mutton-filled steamed buns.
In addition, the people of the Song Dynasty also loved to drink "boiled tea" and wine, so the wine shop run by the Gu family across the street was also very prosperous, with a constant stream of people coming to buy wine every day.
Shen Miao felt that using a novel flavor of "cake" should be able to capture the appetite of the people of Bianjing.
As for grilled sausages, they are even harder to find in an era where pork is discriminated against, making them a novelty. Moreover, Shenmiao plans to make inexpensive starch sausages so that they can be sold cheaply and deliciously, hoping to achieve high sales volume with low profit margins.
In the past, Shen Miao really loved eating starch sausages, which her parents considered "junk food," and it was a childhood memory for her. However, after the source of the starch sausages sold outside in her later life became unclear, and she would have diarrhea every time she ate them, she started trying to make them herself, and thus became very skilled at it.
She uses her "three-pronged approach" to prepare the pork: chop it into small pieces and marinate it, and the gamey smell is almost undetectable. Adding more starch not only controls costs but also enhances the flavor.
Shen Miao tried it out and found that one pound of pork could make dozens of sausages.
Although calling this kind of sausage a "meat sausage" is a bit of an exaggeration, it seems cleaner and more conscientious compared to the technologically advanced sausages of later generations!
But as Shen Miao worked on it, she realized that the most expensive part of the sausage wasn't the meat itself, but the spices and salt used for marinating it. Salt was really expensive at that time! She also had to process the coarse noodles she bought herself and sift them nearly ten times before she could use them. So, the total cost was higher than she had expected.
But since she had already started, she could only grit her teeth and finish it, and see how well it sold tomorrow!
She spent half the day making the sausage casings and the minced meat, which was mostly flour. After dinner, she stuffed the sausages into the casings and then kneaded the dough for the hand-pulled pancakes. She divided the dough into portions, brushed them with oil, and let them rest.
The dough for hand-pulled pancakes is similar to that of scallion pancakes, but Shen Miao adds a small amount of sugar, salt, and sesame seeds while kneading the dough to give it its own flavor. Once the sausages are stuffed and the dough has rested, the most crucial step is to achieve a pancake with thousands of layers that are crispy and crumbly.
Shen Miao rolled each dough ball thin, folded it into the shape of a folding fan, stretched it into a long strip, and then rolled it into a coil like an incense stick. After rolling it up, she let it rest for half an hour, then rolled it into a thin sheet and it was ready.
It's not that simple, it's not difficult; the difficulty lies in the technique.
After preparing the dough pieces one by one, sprinkle them with dry flour and stack them in a basket, separating them with parchment paper. Then you can start preparing the side dishes. Cut cucumbers into small pieces, wash and tear spring greens into pieces, add fried chicken cutlets, pork cutlets, pickled radish cubes, fried dough sticks... She plans to offer several tiers of these hand-pulled pancakes: all vegetarian, with meat, and with both meat and eggs, to cater to customers with different economic conditions.
Most importantly, she also made a small jar of salad dressing with the eggs!
Shen Miao had made salad dressing countless times in her past life. It's extremely simple to make, requiring only egg yolks, oil, salt, sugar, and vinegar. Once the proportions are right, it's very easy to replicate. The main thing is that you can't guess the recipe for salad dressing just by looking at it. With such a soul sauce, hand-pulled pancakes are not easy for others to imitate or surpass, ensuring a unique and uninterrupted sales market.
It's a pity there weren't any tomatoes at that time, otherwise it would have been nice to make some tomato sauce to go with the scallion pancakes.
And black pepper sauce... Come on, pepper is as precious as gold, she can't afford it!
With everything ready, Shen Miao went to bed early, not wanting to miss the bustling morning market tomorrow!
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