Chapter 31 Processing Vegetables
After a day of rest, I'm full of energy. The next day, I'll continue processing the vegetables.
The temperature has remained around -6 or -7 degrees Celsius for the past few days.
The east room has a heated kang (a traditional heated brick bed), and the doors and windows are kept tightly closed, so the indoor temperature can reach between 21 and 25 degrees Celsius.
The other rooms weren't as warm; the breeding shed and the small west wing were only six or seven degrees Celsius.
The kitchen is warmer when there is a fire, but it's only about 10 degrees Celsius when there's no fire.
Especially when I get up early in the morning, the kitchen temperature is only about seven or eight degrees Celsius.
I put on an old lady's cotton-padded coat, which she wore specifically when cooking in the kitchen.
They are durable, keep you warm, and are very comfortable to work in without restricting your movements.
I still need to decide the order in which I process the vegetables based on their shelf life.
First, the chili peppers were processed. The chili peppers were prepared to be processed in various ways. After the chili peppers were washed, different processing methods were used.
The first method is to cut it into pieces, pack it in plastic bags, and freeze it in the back compartment.
Frozen chili peppers taste almost the same as freshly stir-fried chili peppers when stir-fried, but they can't be stored for very long, so I only froze 20 kilograms.
The second method is to string them together to dry. Use a needle and thread to string the chilies from the stem end, and when they are long enough, tie the ends together to form a loop, and then hang them up.
Whether it's completely dried or not, you can eat it anytime—stir-fried, dipped in sauce, or eaten however you like.
This method preserves the food the longest, so I strung up 420 jin (210 catties) of it and hung it to dry.
Spicing chili peppers is a slow process; it can be tedious and boring if you can't rush it. I watched a period drama while doing it, and it took me three whole days to finish skewering them all.
The third method is to make chili sauce by chopping all the chilies into small cubes the size of corn kernels, and then chopping five or six tomatoes into small cubes.
Heat oil in a large iron wok. Once the oil is hot, add a generous amount of chopped scallions and garlic, stir-fry until fragrant, then add all the chili peppers and tomatoes and stir-fry.
Then add plenty of thirteen-spice powder, oyster sauce, sugar, salt, MSG, soy sauce, and vinegar, along with enough water to cover the chili peppers, and stir-fry and simmer continuously.
Once the chili sauce becomes increasingly viscous and you can no longer see a significant amount of water, it is ready.
Simply scoop the chili sauce into a large bowl and let it sit; a layer of red oil will float on top.
This chili sauce is incredibly fragrant after being cooked, with a sweet, sour, and spicy flavor. It can be eaten directly with rice, or used in sandwiches or wraps.
All the remaining 60 jin of chili peppers were boiled into chili sauce. I filled three large basins with the chili sauce, filled a small jar, and put the rest in the back room to freeze. It won't spoil for a long time.
After the chili peppers and all the greens were processed, the kitchen suddenly felt much emptier, and I no longer had to hold back when starting a fire.
Next up is cauliflower. Actually, I don't really like fresh cauliflower; I prefer dried cauliflower.
So I have to dry all the cauliflower into dried cauliflower. I cut 200 jin of cauliflower into small florets, blanch them in a large pot of water for one minute, and then take them out.
Then, put away the kang table in the east room, move the bed to the far east side, and cover the rest of the kang with a layer of plastic, then spread the drained cauliflower evenly on it.
Turn it over from time to time, waiting for the cauliflower to dry on the heated kang (a traditional heated brick bed).
The proper way is to dry it in the sun, but the temperature is very low now and there is no sun, so we can only dry it on the heated brick bed.
The taste of cauliflower dried on a heated kang (a traditional heated brick bed) is similar to that of sun-dried cauliflower. In fact, the heated kang helps the cauliflower dry faster, giving it an advantage.
The cauliflower was drying on the kang (heated brick bed), and I started processing the green beans.
There are two ways to prepare green beans.
One method is to blanch the beans and then freeze them directly. The next time you stew them, they will taste exactly the same as fresh green beans.
Another method is to string them together like chili peppers and dry them. However, the processing of green beans is more troublesome. You need to use scissors to cut the green beans into thinner strips, which makes the dried green beans taste better.
Since I love both frozen and dried green beans, I froze 200 jin (100 catties) and dried 300 jin (150 catties) of green beans.
First, I made frozen green beans.
After freezing the green beans, I didn't finish drying them all at once because it's a very time-consuming task.
Since the remaining vegetables can be stored for a relatively long time, and the kitchen temperature is low, the storage time will only be longer.
So cutting green beans and stringing dried green beans is something I do every now and then. I do it for a while whenever I remember, and I rest when I get tired.
When I didn't want to eat green beans, I disposed of the tomatoes instead.
The simplest way to prepare tomatoes is to wash them and freeze them directly.
Frozen tomatoes can be used directly in soups or stir-fried with tomatoes and eggs. They are even more likely to become mushy and taste better than fresh tomatoes.
Green onions and radishes can be stored for a long time, so just move them all to the small west room and store them at a cooler temperature.
Potatoes and sweet potatoes have a long shelf life, and I want to keep some as tubers and seeds, so there's no rush to process them.
To make more room in the kitchen and facilitate movement, some parts were moved to the small west room, and those that couldn't fit in the small west room were placed in the kitchen.
By this time, the cauliflower had dried, so we packed it all up in burlap sacks.
Only the eggplant remained to be prepared. There are many ways to prepare eggplant, but I only chose the two most convenient ones.
One method is to cut the eggplant directly into chunks and dry it into dried eggplant. Another method is to steam it in a pot, add a little oil and salt, and then freeze it.
Since dried eggplant can be stored for a longer time, I cut all 400 jin of eggplant into pieces and laid them out to dry on the heated brick bed.
We kept 20 jin of fresh eggplants to eat, and steamed and froze the remaining 80 jin.
The only things left to process are the potatoes and sweet potatoes. The potatoes are to be stuffed into dried potato chips and dried potato strips, and the sweet potatoes are to be made into dried sweet potatoes.
Because the house was piled with supplies and there was basically no empty space, and eggplants were drying on the heated kang (a traditional Chinese bed-stove), there was nowhere else to dry them.
Potatoes and sweet potatoes have such a long shelf life, and the long, cold winter days are so far away, let's save them for later and deal with them slowly.
While waiting for the eggplants to dry, I decided to find something to do.
After hoarding supplies for so long, even though I was very careful when organizing the goods, in the end, the rooms and basement still became a bit messy as the supplies piled up.
So I started preparing to thoroughly clean and tidy up the entire house.
First, they went to the basement to bring their usual food and tools into the house.
Then, gradually move out the excess space and put the misplaced items back in according to their categories.
In the end, although the entire basement was very full, it was neat and tidy.
Once on the ground, put all the items in their proper places, and then wipe all the tables and the heated brick bed clean with a rag.
Finally, sweep and mop the floor, and the whole room looks clean and tidy.
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