Chapter 37 Chapter 37 Winter milk tea red bean popular in Chang'an...
The snow outside the restaurant was falling heavier and heavier. The woman was wearing a straw raincoat with a thin skirt underneath, looking quite pitiful.
Duan Zhiwei was just about to stand up and welcome the guest when she heard the words "take the frozen one back to the mountain". She took a few steps back. Now she knew who Yuan Shenji meant by "only one monster left that has not been caught".
The Snow Girl lives in seclusion in the mountains all year round, wearing only a thin white dress. Her characteristic is that she likes to look for handsome men everywhere, freeze them and bring them back to the mountains to admire.
No wonder Chang'an is so cold today.
It was a cold and snowy night, so it was too late to call for help. Zhen Hui had already shrunk back in fear. Duan Zhiwei was considering the chances of successfully shutting the door and resisting the monster, but she didn't expect the Snow Girl to see through her thoughts and slowly said, "If you close the door, I can call on the wind and snow to break it open."
Duan Zhiwei was silent for a long time, then forced a warm smile and said, "How could it be? On such a windy and snowy night, there is absolutely no reason to drive the guests out." Then he warmly welcomed the Snow Girl in.
As soon as the Snow Girl stepped in, the temperature of the entire restaurant dropped sharply. Everyone was so panicked that they all put on their winter clothes. Duan Zhiwei quickly threw a few more pieces of charcoal into the brazier.
The Snow Girl looked at the charcoal basin with understanding, and said with a smile: "I am not a snowman, adding some heat will not hurt me at all."
Duan Zhiwei was exposed and put down the tongs with carbon in disappointment.
At the same time, Ah Pan had prepared a bubbling mandarin duck hot pot in the fire room and brought it to the table of the Snow Girl. The Snow Girl took a quick look at it and asked, "Do you have any wine?"
“Yes, yes, yes.” Aunt Duan also noticed something was wrong and nodded quickly, then went to the jar and filled a pot of Xinfeng tea and placed it in front of the Snow Girl.
So now the Snow Girl was sitting in the middle of the restaurant, eating hot pot and drinking wine elegantly, while everyone in the restaurant was huddled in a corner of the front hall, looking at each other.
The Snow Girl slowly began to eat a plate of fish balls, a plate of meat balls, a dish of pork tenderloin and tofu, and then bowed and said, "Thank you for your hospitality. I am very grateful."
Quite polite, Duan Zhiwei thought. So she stepped forward and poured another glass of wine for the Snow Girl, saying, "This is what we should do." Then she carefully inquired, "I wonder why you are wandering outside on this snowy night?"
The Snow Girl lowered her head and ate the hot pot while saying, "I came to Chang'an to look for my lover but couldn't find him. I was very desperate and wandered around Xuanyangfang for a long time. I had no choice but to end my life by eating the hot pot."
The direction of this conversation was beyond Duan Zhiwei's expectations. A dangerous monster in a folk tale attempted to commit suicide by eating hot pot in his own restaurant on a windy and snowy night?
Is this reasonable? Duan Zhiwei thought the other party was playing a strange joke, but he actually found that a large number of water droplets were dripping from the Snow Girl's hair, and her whole body seemed to be shrouded in a layer of mist, and her figure began to fade.
She quickly called Apan Putao and hurriedly moved all the hot pots on the food table back to the fire room.
At this moment, the Snow Girl began to cry with her hands covering her face: "What is the meaning of my living in this world?"
Duan Zhiwei was also helpless. Not only did he encounter a love-brained monster in the middle of the night, but the water droplets from the Snow Girl's body fell to the ground and soaked the sheepskin mattress he had just changed. Duan Zhiwei wandered around the East Market for three days before he saw a small vendor selling this mattress. It was very expensive.
The Snow Girl immediately told the whole story. It turned out that she had rescued a handsome merchant who was going to Japan to sell goods in the deep mountains, and she agreed with the merchant that the rescue must be kept secret.
After some time, the Snow Girl saw that the merchant was really handsome, and she couldn't help but feel itchy. So she transformed herself into an ordinary woman, fell in love with him, and married him.
The people in the restaurant were too scared to care and all came over to ask, "What happened next?"
Later one day, the merchant told his wife the story of meeting the Snow Girl in the mountains. His wife was very angry and said, "The monster you met was me! Didn't I tell you not to mention this to anyone? You broke our oath." Then his wife turned into the Snow Girl again and left sadly.
However, the merchants and woodcutters that the Snow Girl met in the mountains later were uglier than the other, so she became angry and secretly boarded the ship of the Tang envoys to look for her ex-husband.
Duan Zhiwei was stunned, then asked: "But he mentioned this to his wife, and his wife is you, and you are the Snow Girl, so this doesn't count as a violation of his oath, right?"
The Snow Girl had not thought of this statement, and after a moment of confusion, she said, "So..."
Seeing her relax, Duan Zhiwei felt relieved and advised her: "There are as many handsome men as you want in our dynasty. You can choose from the Qujiang Lake and Leyouyuan, whether they are scholars or warriors, old or young. You may forget about him after you find so many handsome men. Why do you have to hang yourself on a tree if you want to be a demon?"
Snow Girl stood up and bowed to Duan Zhiwei to thank her. "In that case, thank you for your advice, madam."
Then, the Snow Girl stood up and left, her figure dissipating outside the restaurant like mist.
The people in the restaurant breathed a sigh of relief. Duan Zhiwei quickly picked up the wet sheepskin mattress of the Snow Girl, hung it on a hemp rope, and moved it to the brazier to dry it.
Zhen Hui really thought that he was going to be frozen and taken away, but now that he was safe, he sat on the bed and wiped the sweat off his face.
After resting for a while, they worked together to seal the door, keeping the wind and snow out, and then went back to their rooms to sleep.
After such a bizarre night, no one seemed to sleep well, and there were dark circles under their eyes. But Duan Zhiwei didn't have time to care about this, she had more important things to do.
In the cold winter, many villagers raise dairy cows. After taking a few bites of Hu pancake to fill his stomach, Duan Zhiwei squatted at the street corner and waited for the villagers to come to the city to sell fresh milk. After some bargaining, he bought all the fresh milk from the villagers.
Fresh milk can be used in many ways. For example, there is a shop in the West Market that specializes in making crispy flowers and milk cakes in winter. The crispy flowers are heated until they are almost melted, and then mixed with honey to make the shape of a white jasmine flower. Because of its unique and elegant shape, it is very popular among dignitaries.
As for milk cakes, they are even simpler. Just use fresh goat milk and white vinegar to make goat milk cakes, and then bake them in a stone kiln or fry them in an iron pan. You can add sugar, pepper and salt as you like. It's also good to mix them with fermented rice wine.
But after Duan Zhiwei carried a jar of fresh milk back to the restaurant, he had already decided to use it to make milk tea.
In fact, there is also milk tea in our dynasty. Since Princess Wencheng married Songtsen Gampo, it has become popular in our dynasty to boil tea with goat's milk or cow's milk. The poet Li Mi also praised it in his poem: "The swirling foam turns into a jade pool, and the addition of butter spreads out glass eyes."
This dynasty's milk tea is simply milk and tea, but Duan Zhiwei plans to make something creative.
The first thing he did was to go to a folk kiln shop and order some pots, ceramic pots and small charcoal stoves, so that diners could sit around the stove in the restaurant and make tea. If diners didn't want to sit in the restaurant for a long time, that was fine, they could take the food away. Duan Zhiwei also ordered some bamboo tubes.
In winter, you can’t order the green bamboo that’s grown in summer, and the remaining ones are all slightly yellow. These big bamboos are too thick to be used for clothes-drying poles, and cannot be used for cooking. I'm afraid even pandas wouldn't like to eat them. They are very cheap, and Duan Zhiwei spent almost no money to drag a donkey cart of big bamboo poles back to the restaurant.
Saw the bamboos into bamboo tubes, carefully remove the burrs on the openings, and then brush a layer of clear oil on the outside.
Pu Tao picked up the bamboo tube and looked around and said, "But my lady, this bamboo tube has many cracks and is withered."
Not very elegant.
Duan Zhiwei had her own way. She asked Zhen Hui to write some auspicious words on flowery paper, such as "Orchid and osmanthus are in full bloom" and "Bears and bears enter dreams", and then use glue to stick the flowery paper on the crack of the bamboo tube. The bamboo tube immediately looked brand new.
Red beans and acacia honey are boiled together to make sand, old red pumpkins dried in summer and chestnuts in autumn are steamed together and then pressed into paste, glutinous rice flour is rolled into small balls and boiled in milk...
A big wooden sign was hung at the entrance of the restaurant, with words like red bean honey milk tea, pumpkin and chestnut white jade balls, beauty rose milk tea...
At that moment, two Chang'an ladies wearing veils walked into the restaurant curiously and asked, "Can milk tea really improve your complexion?"
"Of course." Duan Zhiwei was busy mixing brown sugar water and tapioca flour. Hearing that there was a guest, he hurried out and said, "The red dates, longans, wolfberries, and roses in this milk tea can nourish the skin. Ladies, haven't you heard that the imperial concubine uses rose water after bathing, which can make the skin smooth and moisturized?"
The two ladies looked at each other, then sat down at the table and said, "Then give me a cup of beauty-enhancing rose milk tea."
"Okay." Duan Zhiwei brought a basket of things over, set up the charcoal stove first, then put some tea leaves and brown sugar in to roast to stimulate the aroma of the tea, and then poured in milk, rose and other ingredients.
Needless to say, the taste of this milk tea is a warm caramel color with a layer of bright rose petals floating on top. It is so beautiful that it has already touched the hearts of the ladies in Chang'an. Take another sip and you will find that the milk is delicate and smooth, the tea leaves have a caramel aroma due to being roasted, and the sweetness is just right, not too sweet and not too bland.
At that moment, more and more people flocked to the restaurant to drink this milk tea. If there were those who could not queue or did not want to wait, they could pack the milk tea in a bamboo tube and take it away.
If it were just that, the milk tea at this restaurant wouldn't be that famous. But it just so happened that a few scholars with plenty of leisure time bought the charcoal stove pottery and various ingredients together and went to the Qujiang River to sit around the stove and enjoy the snow.
Such an elegant act immediately attracted the imitation of the children of wealthy families, and all the pottery jars in the Duan family restaurant were sold out. Seeing the business opportunity, the kiln shop immediately started firing a new batch of pottery jars, which attracted many restaurants to scramble for them.
Aunt Duan was extremely angry about this and wanted to run to those imitating restaurants to have a fierce argument with them, but was stopped by A Pan and Duan Zhiwei, each grabbing one of their arms.
There are only so many people in the restaurant and only a few tables. If diners are kept waiting for a long time, it will not be good and will also affect the reputation of the restaurant. It would be better to divide some diners among other restaurants.
After Duan Zhiwei's earnest persuasion, Aunt Duan finally stopped chattering.
Although other restaurants have also launched various milk teas, Duan Zhiwei has a creative idea and they offer jasmine matcha, osmanthus milk, polygonatum odoratum and sherry, and chrysanthemum and astragalus tea repeatedly.
In addition, Duan Zhiwei started talking about the benefits of milk tea, such as moistening the lungs and quenching thirst, calming the nerves and promoting sleep, and beautifying the skin, which stunned the diners.
Yuan Shenji had been very busy with the winter solstice affairs recently and had not had time to go to the restaurant. However, he did hear people talking about the elegant activity of "sitting around the fire to enjoy the snow" when he left court.
When he learned that this new style of milk tea came from the Duan family restaurant, he found it quite funny. The lady of the Duan family was quite interesting, and he didn't know what new ideas she had in her mind all day long.
But it was too late today and curfew was approaching, so he really didn't have time to go to the restaurant, so he could only go home first.
The old housekeeper had heated the room early. He took off his armor and sat at the dining table to prepare for his evening meal, but saw the old housekeeper walk in with a small charcoal stove and a clay pot.
First, bake jasmine tea in a ceramic pot, add brown sugar, and finally pour in the tea powder and milk. After waiting for a while, the aroma of tea and milk will waft out of the pottery jar and linger around your nose.
The old housekeeper said, "Mrs. Duan from Xuanyangfang said that this milk tea is popular in Chang'an recently. Seeing that the captain didn't have time to go to the restaurant to taste it, she specially sent a food box over."
Yuan Shenji nodded, and after the old butler left, he poured himself a glass and drank it.
In fact, he doesn't like sweets, but he had just returned home from the snow and ice, and this cup of hot milk tea did bring him a little warmth and comfort in the cold winter.
Just like that year outside Liangzhou City, he lay in the ice and snow, unable to move, and thought that his life would pass like this, but a pair of gentle hands wiped the frost and snow off his face.
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