Finally, you can rinse it with warm water. Remember to use warm water, as cold water will damage the pot.
Summers in Lingnan are very hot. If you want warm water, you don't even need to burn firewood. Just put two buckets of water in the sun in the yard and let them sit for a few hours until they get warm.
Pei Yao used to do this when she was little, often taking a bath in the summer. She would fill a bucket with water during the day and use it to bathe at night. The water would be warm, unlike the freezing well water.
Rinse the pot with warm water, and the pot is ready to be seasoned.
The large iron wok, after being seasoned, looks shiny and beautiful.
Pei Yao felt a sense of relief upon seeing this.
Pei Yao is a food blogger and also a chef, so she is very picky about pots and pans.
She pays great attention to detail when it comes to seasoning the pot, and she does every step herself. After all, seasoning a pot well directly affects how well she enjoys cooking afterwards.
It was almost lunchtime, and wisps of smoke were already rising from the kitchens of several houses in the village.
Pei Yao decided to test how well the pot worked.
I quickly cleaned up the shrimp and octopus I had just caught in the yard that morning.
I plan to eat this tonight.
The Pei family courtyard is bustling with activity right now.
Chen Fang and the others were in the yard using the scales they had borrowed from Niu Qingshan to collect seafood from the Liu family. The Liu family was large, and when they heard that the Pei family was collecting seafood, the whole family went to the beach to pick it up.
Niu Qingshan also brought some over. His family had found them when his second uncle and his wife were at home. They originally planned to give them directly to Pei Yao and the others, since they paid their grandson a considerable amount of money every day.
People in the countryside always like to give and take.
However, Chen Fang and Yun Niang did not want to take advantage of others, and firmly insisted on charging the normal price.
If Niu Qingshan refuses to accept money, they will not accept his goods.
Niu Qingshan couldn't argue with the two of them, so he had no choice but to accept the money.
Liu Yu's rabbit cage wasn't finished yet, so Pei Yichen and Pei Xuan had to continue keeping the rabbit in that small bamboo cage.
Then the two of them went out with their baskets on their backs. Pei Yichen still needed to go find kudzu worms to sell tomorrow and cut some kudzu leaves to feed the rabbits.
Pei Yao told her that rabbits love to eat kudzu leaves. Pei Yao had seen it in a video before, saying that tender kudzu leaves are not only loved by rabbits, but can also treat diarrhea in baby rabbits.
During that time, Pei Yao was obsessed with spicy rabbit heads. She heard from others that rabbits were easy to raise, so she planned to buy a few rabbits and keep them in the yard. However, Pei Yao was always busy and never got around to it.
Pei Yao removed the heads and legs from the shrimp, then deveined them by cutting along the back.
The octopus rips off the gills, two hearts, and other internal organs from its head and discards them. It then cuts off the teeth under its suckers.
Then grab a handful of wood ash from the bottom of the stove and scrub vigorously, because the octopus's suckers easily accumulate some mud and sand, and this scrubbing will make it cleaner.
After cleaning the shrimp and octopus, Pei Yao took out some dried chili peppers, cut them into sections, and prepared some side dishes.
Since there was no cilantro, wild celery was used as a substitute.
Yunniang happened to have finished her work and came over to help Pei Yao start the fire.
Pei Yao glanced at Yun Niang and said with a grin, "Mother, we need to light fires on both stoves, and the fire in the big pot should be bigger."
"Okay." After saying that, Yunniang started to use a flint and steel to start a fire.
Since there was no pot on the stove, Pei Yao used the old earthenware pot as a substitute, and boiled a pot of water to blanch the octopus.
Put lard directly into the iron wok on the stove and stir-fry the shrimp over high heat until they change color, then pan-fry both sides of the shrimp.
Because Pei Yao had already seasoned the pan, the shrimp didn't burn at all when she was stir-frying them.
This made Pei Yao very happy.
Octopus blanching is quick; once it's almost done, you can take it out.
Yunniang took the earthenware pot to wash it clean, and then washed some of the newly bought old rice and put it on the stove to continue cooking the rice.
Pei Yao rinsed the octopus in cold water and set it aside. She continued to fry the shrimp until both sides were golden brown and looked crispy and dry. Then she took the shrimp out and set them aside with the octopus for later use.
Using the oil left over from frying the shrimp, Pei Yao added dried chili peppers, minced wild garlic, and salt and stir-fried them for a while.
Quickly add the shrimp and octopus in as well, and stir-fry over high heat until fragrant.
Then add Sichuan peppercorns, wild scallions, wild celery, fresh chili flakes, and mint leaves, and stir-fry over high heat for a while.
Then you can take it straight out of the pot.
This spicy octopus and shrimp dish is delicious, fragrant and spicy, and goes perfectly with rice.
Especially the fried shrimp, which are so delicious that you don't even want to spit out the shells.
After finishing this dish, Pei Yao prepared to make another cold seaweed salad, using the large piece of seaweed she brought back from the beach this morning.
Pei Yao cleaned the kelp, then cut it into roughly the same size strips. She blanched it in hot water, and the dark kelp instantly turned bright green, looking very beautiful.
Pei Yao used the same sauce for the cold seaweed salad as she did for the spicy snail salad.
With readily available ingredients, there's no need to go through the trouble of researching new ones.
Finally, they used the wildflower vegetables that Pei Yichen and the others had just brought back from the mountain to make a vegetable soup with lard.
That should be enough to start the meal.
Pei Yichen helped serve the dishes, calling out to the others still busy in the courtyard, "Dinner's ready!"
The family, smelling the aroma of food and hearing the boy's cheerful shouts, all stopped what they were doing and went to the well to fetch water to wash their hands.
Chen Fang wiped the water from her hands with a handkerchief, smelled the delicious aroma coming from the yard, and asked, "What are we having for dinner today? It smells so good!"
Pei Yao came out of the kitchen carrying two bowls of rice: "Today's dishes are spicy shrimp and octopus and cold spicy seaweed salad. They're so good with rice, Auntie, you'd better eat more rice later."
Upon hearing this, Chen Fang smiled and pinched her cheek, teasingly saying, "With Yao's cooking skills, of course I have to eat more. I just feel like I'm getting fatter lately, and my clothes are getting tighter."
The whole family was amused by Chen Fang's words.
Just as we were getting ready for dinner, there was a knock on the gate to the courtyard.
Pei Yichen had just picked up a shrimp with his chopsticks and was about to eat it when he heard a knock on the door.
Under his mother's prompting gaze, he had no choice but to quickly stuff the shrimp into his mouth, put down his chopsticks, and go to open the door.
"Who is it?!" Pei Yichen asked, his mouth agape. "Why aren't you home for dinner? Why are you knocking on my door?"
"Xiao Chen, it's me." Niu Qingshan's voice came from outside the courtyard.
Upon hearing that it was Niu Qingshan, everyone tacitly stopped eating, wondering if Niu Qingshan had some urgent matter to attend to.
Otherwise, given Niu Qingshan's personality, he wouldn't have come looking for them at dinner time.
Upon hearing this, Chen Fang quickly told Pei Yichen to open the door: "Chen'er, quickly open the door for Brother Qingshan."
"Okay." Pei Yichen's anger subsided when he heard it was Niu Qingshan, and he quickly opened the door.
When Niu Qingshan came in, a tall, thin boy was following behind him.
Pei Yao and Yun Niang recognized him at a glance.
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