11 Delicious Mushroom and Pig Heart Soup
◎A green "little hedgehog"! ?◎
"Oh! County Magistrate Ye, the crucian carp and mushroom soup we had last time was so delicious!" Aunt Wang smiled innocently and said embarrassedly, "I won't hide it from you, at first I was thinking I would never drink it!"
Ye Yunzhao also narrowed his eyes, remembering what Aunt Wang said about the poisonous tricholoma, and asked with a smile, "Do you really think that mushroom is poisonous?"
"That's right! But the fish soup smelled so good, I couldn't resist. I thought the county magistrate was educated and must know more than me." Aunt Wang covered her mouth and laughed secretly, her face filled with joy. "Thank goodness I drank it. If I see it again when I go up the mountain this time, I'll pick some and make soup with it!"
Aunt Wang has a cheerful personality and a kind face. What she said made Ye Yunzhao laugh.
Although the people of Lingnan County were poor, they were close to the mountains and could always find some food. The two walked side by side, heading towards the hilltops near Xixiang. The deep mountains had already taken on a slight chill during the White Dew season. Today was another overcast day, a perfect day for picking wild vegetables, mushrooms, and fruit.
"County Magistrate Ye, is this the mushroom you picked last time?" Aunt Wang pointed at a green mushroom with bright eyes and agile movements.
"This is chestnut mushroom, it's not poisonous and can be eaten, but it doesn't taste as good as the blue-headed mushroom." Ye Yunzhao said, his eyes scanning around, "Auntie Wang, this lighter one is the blue-headed mushroom."
"Okay, as long as it's edible."
Ye Yunzhao wanted to imitate Aunt Wang and pick mushrooms and throw them into her backpack blindly, but she was not very skilled and was always afraid of throwing the basket out, so she could only raise her hand nervously and put it behind her back.
The two walked around and looked around, and suddenly a group of motionless "little hedgehogs" appeared in front of Ye Yunzhao. She was about to ask something, but Aunt Wang spoke first.
"Oh! So many chestnuts have fallen again. County Magistrate Ye, pick them up quickly." Aunt Wang exclaimed in surprise, then squatted down and threw them into the backpack.
The name of Hairy Chestnut reminded Ye Yunzhao of the sugar-roasted chestnuts he had eaten in his previous life, but don’t chestnuts have brown hard shells?
She squatted down, looked at the "little hedgehog" on the ground, and asked doubtfully: "Mao Lizi?"
When Ye Yunzhao asked this, Aunt Wang knew that the county magistrate in front of her must have never tasted such delicious food.
She picked up a branch from the grass beside her, held a small stone in her left hand to press down the hairy chestnut on the ground, and used her right hand to push the branch hard, then pried it to the side, and a chestnut wrapped in a light yellow hard shell appeared in front of Ye Yunzhao.
Yeah! It really is a chestnut.
Ye Yunzhao was extremely surprised by this. In her previous life, there were no chestnut trees where she lived. Only in late autumn and early winter every year would sweet and sticky sugar-roasted chestnuts appear in front of the dried fruit shop.
She never expected that the sweet and sticky chestnuts would grow inside a "hedgehog shell", and she never expected that the shell of the raw chestnut would be light yellow.
Aunt Wang thought she had never eaten one before, so she deftly took a chestnut out of the shell and handed it to Ye Yunzhao, saying with a smile, "County Magistrate Ye, peel it open and try it. It's delicious!"
Ye Yunzhao had never eaten raw chestnuts before. She took the chestnut, rubbed it hard on her clothes twice, put it directly into her mouth, and took a serious bite.
A crack appeared in the hard shell of the chestnut. She peeled out the chestnut kernel inside, which looked like egg yolk. It was round and slightly wrinkled, with the unique aroma of chestnut and the unique oily luster of chestnut.
Ye Yunzhao couldn't wait to put it in his mouth and took a bite. It was crispy, fragrant and sweet.
It has a completely different taste from the soft and chewy cooked chestnuts.
"Delicious!" Ye Yunzhao's eyes lit up and he looked at Aunt Wang in surprise and joy.
Ye Yunzhao put another one into her mouth as she spoke. She looked like a young girl.
Aunt Wang smiled kindly and peeled another chestnut for Ye Yunzhao with a branch. Then she threw the green chestnuts into the backpack, and Ye Yunzhao followed suit.
"When you get home and peel the chestnuts, don't throw away the hard shell outside them," Aunt Wang said patiently, pointing to the "green hedgehog shell" outside the chestnuts. "The shell is good. After drying, you can burn it as firewood. It also has the aroma of chestnuts and is not choking at all."
Ye Yunzhao suddenly realized, but she was pricked several times by the sharp thorns on the shell. However, Aunt Wang was like an iron arm and a bronze hand, picking up a lot and quickly, as if she was not affected at all.
The two of them were like a swarm of locusts. In a short while, more than half of the chestnuts on the ground were gone.
“Pah.”
“Ouch!”
Ye Yunzhao cried out in pain.
"County Magistrate Ye, what's wrong?!" Aunt Wang spoke hurriedly, turning sideways to see Ye Yunzhao covering his head.
Ye Yunzhao took the hairy chestnut off his head and said with a grin, "It's okay, I was hit by a hairy chestnut."
"Let me take a look." Aunt Wang came over immediately, brushed off the green thorns on Ye Yunzhao's head, and after making sure everything was right, she said, "Fortunately, everything is fine."
"The bad thing about picking chestnuts is that you get hit... Ouch!"
Before Aunt Wang could finish her words, a hairy chestnut fell from the sky and hit her on the head with a "bang".
Ye Yunzhao hurriedly looked over and felt relieved only after confirming that nothing was wrong.
Aunt Wang held the chestnuts that she had just taken off her head in her hand, and looked at the chestnuts in Ye Yunzhao's hand.
The two people facing each other suddenly burst into laughter.
Ye Yunzhao returned home carrying a large bamboo basket full of harvest. She poured the chestnuts all over the ground and took out half a pig's heart wrapped in broken lotus leaves, which was just enough to make lunch.
When Liu Dazhuang was plastering the stove roof, Ye Yunzhao asked him to build a clay stove in the yard. Wang Cuihua also told her that the clay stove should be sun-dried for two or three days, and then fired up to cook a few meals, so that it would be quite sturdy.
Ye Yunzhao first filled half a bucket of water in the vat and put the pig's heart in. She used a kitchen knife to cut the thicker blood vessels in the pig's heart, and a red blood clot appeared in front of her eyes.
The pig heart has a bit of fishy smell, and the best way to remove the fishy smell is to wash it with flour or fine salt, but Ye Yunzhao does not have the conditions for this now, so he can only use the most primitive method.
She soaked the pig's heart in water, scrubbing and squeezing it until the coagulated blood clots were expelled. Then she changed half the bucket of water and threw the pig's heart in, waiting patiently for half an incense stick of time.
During this period, Ye Yunzhao was not idle either. She divided the mushrooms she picked into two piles. She used the smaller pile to make soup, and dried the larger pile to make soup in winter.
Mushrooms that were to be dried couldn't be washed; they would spoil easily if exposed to water. Ye Yunzhao wiped her hands clean and found a large, though broken, bamboo dustpan from the kitchen. She knocked it against the wall twice, shaking off a lot of dust and making the mushrooms look cleaner.
Ye Yunzhao took the small bamboo knife given by Sun Ning, curled up on a small wooden stool, cut the mushrooms into slices, and placed them one by one on a bamboo dustpan.
After cutting open three or four of the mushrooms, she found black holes inside that had been eaten by insects. She didn't want to waste them and threw them all to the chicks that were having fun in the chicken coop.
She "eats the meat" and the chicken "drinks the soup".
After temporarily placing the bamboo dustpan filled with mushrooms on the wooden bench, Ye Yunzhao began to wash the tricholoma that he would use later and a few honey balls that he had picked up.
The honey marble is small and round, with a woody outer layer covering the fruit. You can smell a faint sweet fragrance before you bite it open.
In Ye Yunzhao's eyes, it is no different from longan.
After the tricholoma and honey balls were washed, Ye Yunzhao took out the pig heart from the wooden barrel, placed it on the chopping board in the kitchen, and roughly cut it into slices with a kitchen knife.
Without even adding oil, she simply put the chopped pig heart in the pot, threw the tricholoma and honey balls into the pot, then scooped three bowls of water, and waited for high heat to make them into a delicacy.
It just took a little longer to wait, so Ye Yunzhao added a little fine salt and turned around to stand beside the chicken coop to look at the chicks. The fluffy, tender yellow chicks were so cute.
But... Ye Yunzhao wanted to eat eggs.
She observed and thought, it takes at least four months for a chick to lay eggs. She returned from Yuezhou City too quickly. If she had known earlier, she would have bought two hens.
Oops, missed it...
Ye Yunzhao was filled with emotion here, while the mushroom and pig heart soup over there was gurgling and emitting a faint fragrance. After about half an hour, Ye Yunzhao served the soup.
Ye Yunzhao squatted over the pottery bowl and smelled the meaty aroma of pig heart and the sweet aroma of honey marbles.
But once you eat it, it becomes a rich, salty, and savory dish. The sliced pig heart is incredibly chewy, the meat firm and tender, and the tricholoma is saturated with juicy meat. Add a few soft-cooked honey balls, and the salty and savory flavor is tinged with a hint of sweetness, creating a rich, flavorful dish.
Ye Yunzhao drank two earthenware bowls of soup and meat, her stomach soothed by the food. Seeing that the sky had cleared up, she sat happily in the yard to bask in the sun, thinking that when Sun Ning was free someday, she would ask her if she could make a recliner for her.
Leisurely, leisurely, just thinking about it makes me feel comfortable~
Ye Yunzhao was basking in the warm afternoon sun and felt a little sleepy. Just as she was about to fall asleep, a voice pierced through the courtyard door...
"County Magistrate Ye! Many of the vegetable seeds we received are old!" County Magistrate Han said anxiously with an embarrassed look on his face.
Traditionally, the vegetable seeds we receive each year should be new seeds from this year, which maximizes the germination rate. Older seeds are not incapable of germination; they simply require more careful care and frequent application of fertilizer, and they may not grow as quickly as newer seeds.
The officials at the government office knew that people had died of starvation in Lingnan County, yet they still used these old vegetable seeds to deal with them. You know, in winter, every vegetable and every grain of rice is extremely precious. Therefore, County Magistrate Han didn't dare to think too much about the officials' motives.
"What?!" Ye Yunzhao suddenly opened his eyes and asked, "What's going on?"
"It must be that cabbage seed bastard who is cheating us! I was wondering why he was so kind and even gave us some winter melon seeds... Haha, bah!" County Magistrate Han said in a firm tone.
"It's my fault too. I didn't open it and take a closer look at it at that time." Ye Yunzhao said apologetically.
"Well, if he wants to trip us up, he'll surely have a way to do it even if he sees it." County Magistrate Han sighed. "County Magistrate, what do you say we should do now?"
Ye Yunzhao immediately said: "Are there any seeds that can be used?"
County Magistrate Han nodded and said, "You still have some conscience. The seeds of sweet potato, radish and radish are new seeds."
"You can take out the new seeds and distribute them to the people first. I will take the remaining old vegetable seeds and go to the government office again."
"Can……"
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