Chapter 31 Chapter 31 The Moon Cultivator Stewed Pork Knuckle with Rock Sugar…
On the eve of the Mid-Autumn Festival, Duan Zhiwei found a carpenter in advance to order a batch of gift boxes for mooncakes. The boxes had to be made of mahogany and round, with a hollow-carved reunion pattern on the top layer.
The inside should be divided into independent small compartments for mooncakes, and the box should be equipped with a delicate and small handle to make it convenient for people to give gifts.
Then I went to Yunxiang Jiaxi in the East Market to pick up the ruqun that I had given to A Pan. I happened to meet the painter of Jiaxi there, and ordered a set of paintings of Chang'e flying to the moon and Wu Gang cutting osmanthus, to put on the Mid-Autumn Festival gift boxes.
As for the mooncakes themselves, Duan Zhiwei chose to give up temporarily.
Competition among the pastry shops in the East and West markets was already fierce. There was a shop that specialized in making mooncakes with Baoxiang patterns. These were large, bright yellow, and oily, with delicate Baoxiang patterns engraved on the surface. They were extremely popular among the ladies of Chang'an.
The other one specializes in delicious crispy mooncakes filled with a mixture of pine nuts, walnut kernels, melon seeds, and rock sugar. It sounds like the predecessor of the five-nut mooncake, but Duan Zhiwei has never liked five-nut mooncakes.
Especially the green and red threads made by rubbing candied winter melon, icy meat and tangerine cake together, which had a strange smell and was simply inedible.
However, the mooncakes made by this shop are soft, fragrant and have a rich taste. No wonder there are long queues outside the shop every year on the eve of the Mid-Autumn Festival.
The shopkeeper was instructing his apprentice in the store. Duan Zhiwei pricked up his ears and listened. He only heard that Shandong flying noodles should be used, the filling should be ground into fine powder, and a little rock sugar should be added.
As for the mooncakes in the Daming Palace, they are even more exquisite. Yuan Shenji has been rewarded by a saint. The mooncakes are filled with candied fruits and orange sand. Each mooncake has its own name, such as "Golden Flower" and "Hibiscus", and they are particularly exquisite.
Under such fierce competition, Duan Zhiwei could only admire the wisdom of the ancients, and then deeply reflected on his naive remarks that "modern people will definitely defeat the ancients."
After walking around the East Market for a long time and finishing most of the mooncakes of various colors, Duan Zhiwei staggered back to the restaurant. The mooncakes were still too sweet, so she quickly went to the backyard to get a bowl of cold water to drink.
When she looked up, she found a furry rabbit staring at her under the osmanthus tree.
Duan Zhiwei asked curiously, "Where did the rabbit come from?" She walked up to the front and pulled up the rabbit's ears. The rabbit did not struggle and let her check it obediently.
Pu Tao rushed over and held the rabbit in his arms: "My wife, this is my little rabbit. You must not use it to make roasted rabbit legs or something like that."
Duan Zhiwei: “…” Am I that kind of person?
It was the golden autumn season, and the young lady from the Guosi family across the street came early in the morning to invite Pu Tao to pick chestnuts at the foot of Mount Zhongnan. The two of them happily carried their baskets and left.
When he came back, there was a little white rabbit in Pu Tao's basket. He said he picked it up in the woods.
Duan Zhiwei just let her do what she wanted. It was just a little rabbit, and at most it would cost some cabbage leaves. It was not like he couldn't raise it, unlike a big fat cat that had to eat fish every day.
Candied pork elbows were bubbling in the stove at the entrance of the restaurant. Duan Zhiwei went to the butcher's shop this morning and found that pork elbows were much cheaper and still very fresh, so he bought some.
First, place a bamboo basket in a deep soup pot, then put the pork elbow, onion, ginger and various spices into the pot and cook them together. In another large iron pan, use oil to fry sugar color, add sugar and fry until it becomes sticky.
Apart from wasting some time, everything else is fine. Watching the big pot bubbling at the door, the mellow aroma of meat and the sweetness of rock sugar blended together, filling the air, attracting passers-by to come over and take a look from time to time.
A layer of cabbage was placed under the plate, and the elbow was taken out of the pot. The meat was stewed until it was crispy and golden in color. Duan Zhiwei drizzled a spoonful of oil on the dish when he plated it, making it look more oily.
The diners were also very happy. The pork elbow in rock sugar had a soft and glutinous texture, the skin was fat but not greasy and melted in the mouth, and the tenderness of the meat blended with the rich marinade made it even more delicious.
Thanks to this pork elbow, I sold an extra jar of rice than usual. I poured a layer of gravy on the rice and stirred it with a spoon. Every grain of rice was soaked up with the rich gravy. I stuffed it into my mouth in big mouthfuls and ate it so happily that I sweated.
After noon, all the pork elbows were sold out, so I had no choice but to say "Please come earlier tomorrow" to the customers behind me.
Taking advantage of the free time in the afternoon, Duan Zhiwei called A Pan, and the two of them spread oil paper under the osmanthus tree, preparing to collect the osmanthus flowers that were in full bloom on the tree.
The two of them gently shook the osmanthus branches, and golden osmanthus flowers fell all over the ground. These osmanthus flowers are excellent for making osmanthus cake, osmanthus honey, and osmanthus winter wine.
Especially the osmanthus winter wine. Early in the morning on the winter solstice, I would carry a clean oil barrel to get five pounds of winter wine. There were scattered osmanthus flowers floating on the surface of the wine. The first sip of this wine tasted like a sweet drink with a strong osmanthus fragrance. On the second day, it tasted like alcohol and was very delicious.
Duan Zhiwei was just holding a sip of winter wine when Aunt Duan walked in leisurely. She looked around and asked, "Where's the rambutan?"
That little girl loved to join in the fun, but why is she nowhere to be seen?
"Maybe she went out to play." Duan Zhiwei replied. Why would a young girl of her prime be stuck here working all day? It would be nice for her to go out and play.
Just as she was mentioned, Pu Tao walked in dejectedly.
Several people asked her what was wrong.
Pu Tao pouted, holding back tears, and said, "My rabbit is gone."
"Oh my." Aunt Duan was a soft-hearted person who hated to see her cry. She quickly squatted down and wiped her tears: "I'll go with you to look for it. If you can't find it, go to the East Market and buy another one. It's just a rabbit, right?"
The two walked away holding hands.
Duan Zhiwei then started to busy himself with the mooncakes.
Traditional Cantonese mooncakes include lotus seed paste and egg yolk, and red bean paste. Their advantages are that they are easy to preserve and look beautiful. Su-style mooncakes have fillings such as rose, various fruits, and of course there are also ham and scallion oil ones. They can be sweet or salty, you can choose whichever you like, but they are easy to fall apart, making them inconvenient to give as gifts.
Duan Zhiwei had never tasted the Beijing-style red mooncake, but he had eaten a kind of glutinous rice cake in Chaoshan. The thin skin and loose filling were very novel, but the filling was mostly made of old fragrant yellow and black bean paste, which were difficult to buy and the process was extremely complicated. It took a long time to wrap the pastry so that the thin layers could be formed. So Duan Zhiwei gave up.
Finally, she decided to try making lotus seed paste and egg yolk first. After all, she had the foresight to already have several jars of salted egg yolks pickled in the warehouse.
At the beginning of autumn, dried lotus seeds that have been dried for a day are ground into paste, poured into a pot, added with sugar and stir-fried until the lotus paste clumps together. The salted egg yolks are cut and put into the Hu Bing oven for low-temperature baking. After the fillings are prepared, you can start making mooncakes.
Two days ago, Duan Zhiwei wanted to find a carpenter to carve a set of mooncake molds. He specifically requested the styles of Chang'e flying to the moon and Jade Rabbit pounding medicine. As it turned out, because the Mid-Autumn Festival was approaching, the molds were in stock.
The master said that customers at Chang'an Pastry Shop lined up to order this mold, and he and several apprentices worked overtime to carve dozens of sets and left them there.
Duan Zhiwei felt the competition was fierce.
Stuff the dough with lotus seed paste and egg yolk, push the dough upwards with the palm of your hand, close the mouth, press it into the mold, brush it with a thin layer of egg yolk water, and then put it in the oven to bake.
Finally, a plate of successfully baked mooncakes was served. The color is golden like a full moon, the skin is delicate, and it exudes a slight wheat aroma and oily sheen. The pattern of Chang'e flying to the moon on the front of the mooncake is also engraved very clearly.
Take a knife and cut the mooncake, you will see clear layers inside, delicate and dense lotus paste, and a round orange-yellow salted egg yolk in the middle, which makes you appetizing at first sight.
Duan Zhiwei was quite satisfied. He shared a piece with A Pan, and put the rest on plates and placed them on the stove to cool.
She wanted to try Su-style mooncakes again, and Aunt Duan came back with rambutans. Seeing how dejected both of them looked, Duan Zhiwei knew that they must have failed to find the rabbit.
"Forget it." She wanted to comfort the two of them, so she went to the stove to get the mooncakes: "The mooncakes baked today are very delicious, you can each try one."
The stove was empty.
"Where's my mooncake?"
She strode to the backyard, where the Jinhua cat was lying on the eaves, basking in the sun with a comfortable look on its face.
"I said, did you steal a plate of mooncakes?" Duan Zhiwei was not very polite.
This cat eats and drinks for free. A cat can eat a basket of fish a day. It doesn't matter if you don't give him money for food, but you can't rely on him when something big happens. For example, the last time he encountered the cicada monster, the man and the cat hugged each other and shivered under the tree.
Jinhua Cat was furious: "I'm not to the point of stealing mooncakes, okay? That thing is too sweet, who would eat that?" "Oh," Duan Zhiwei took out the plate that still had a slight scent of mooncakes on it, "Then please find where my mooncakes are."
"You think I'm a dog, I'm a noble Jinhua cat!"
"Two grilled fish tonight."
"......make a deal."
The Jinhua cat sniffed the plate, sniffed the air and said, "I smell..."
"The scent of mooncakes?" Duan Zhiwei asked quickly.
"It's the breath of a monster." Jinhua Cat said mysteriously.
As a result, it looked around the hall, warehouse, backyard and even the well, but didn't see any trace of the monster.
Duan Zhiwei felt cheated: "Your roasted fish is gone."
A man and a demon were bickering when a clump of dense grass under the grape trellis in the backyard suddenly moved. Duan Zhiwei thought it was the missing rabbit, so he ran over and pushed the grass aside.
A cute little girl, the size of a thumb, was holding a piece of mooncake and chewing it with great effort. She had a pair of long rabbit ears that trembled from time to time. She was wearing a white robe, which was soft and white, with a luster as soft as moonlight.
Seeing Duan Zhiwei, he was not afraid, but picked up the remaining small piece of mooncake and gave it to her: "Do you want to eat it?"
Although it's a monster, it's so cute, Duan Zhiwei thought.
Wait...could this be the rabbit that Pu Tao picked up from Mount Zhongnan?
Thinking of this, she raised her hands and lifted up Thumbelina with rabbit ears.
Pu Tao was very surprised and touched her ears carefully. Ah Pan had been through a lot, so he just took a look and went back to drying the osmanthus flowers. But Aunt Duan was yelling, "Why is there another monster? That Qingfeng Temple must be a liar. I offered so many incense sticks but it was of no use at all."
Unexpectedly, the bunny-eared Thumbelina put her hands on her hips and said dissatisfiedly: "I am not a monster, I am a moon repairer."
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