While Shen Qing was chopping the filling, Gu Shi returned with her two children. "Zhao Zhao, we've found someone to sell eggs."
Meng Zhao poured a glass of water and stepped forward to ask, "Mother, how many have you found?"
Madam Gu took the water cup, took a sip, and replied, "Your Aunt Feng'e, her two neighbors, and your uncle's family, each of them gets seven or eight eggs a day. I've arranged with them to deliver them every three days, two eggs for one coin, the same price as eggs in the city."
“That’s great. We usually buy eggs in the city, which is not only time-consuming, but also risk of some breaking on the way. Buying directly from the village is convenient and saves trouble. Plus, with the eggs from our own farm, we can have enough eggs every day.”
Meng Zhao and his team currently make fifty servings of each dish, or six dishes in total, and can sell nearly one hundred boxed meals a day. After deducting the cost of ingredients and labor, Meng Zhao's daily profit is about two hundred and fifty coins, which is more than seven taels of silver a month.
This is the most they can do right now. The spoons they're using now are palm-sized; any more and it'll be too much to stir-fry, and they won't have the physical strength to keep up.
If the quantity can't be increased, we have to find ways to reduce costs. We can't reduce the amount of food, and we can't choose cheap ingredients, so we can only reduce costs through purchasing channels.
Nowadays, they buy vegetables and meat at the town's market street, mostly from roadside stalls. And those stalls are mostly people from the village who bring vegetables from their own gardens to sell in the city.
Since Meng Zhao lives in the village, he can buy directly from the village, saving them the trouble of going to the city, and the price might even be more favorable.
So Meng Zhao thought he would start with eggs. Almost every household in the village raised chickens. The eggs they laid could nourish the adults and children. Families with more chickens could also sell the eggs they had saved in the county, which was also a source of income.
The price of eggs was relatively stable, and Meng Zhao did not intend to lower the price. It remained two eggs for one coin, but they delivered them themselves to reduce labor and transportation costs, which was also a way to reduce costs indirectly.
After chopping for about half an hour, Shen Qinghe had chopped more than ten kilograms of minced meat. Meng Zhao then called Gu Shi over and taught her how to make lion's head meatballs.
Cooking is really hard work. After a long day of cooking, your arms ache, so Meng Zhao needs to find someone to take your place.
Add salt, pepper, chopped green onion and ginger, ten eggs, and an appropriate amount of cornstarch to the minced meat. Stir vigorously by hand until the mixture becomes sticky. Then take three pounds of water chestnuts, peel them, and cut them into cubes the same size as the meat. Stir them together with the minced meat until well combined.
After preparing the meat filling, grease your hands and shape it into small balls, placing them on an oiled cutting board. Each ball was about the size of Meng Zhao's fist, and more than fifty were made in total.
Heat oil in a pan, then fry the meatballs until golden brown.
Because it was for preparing food for tomorrow, it was fried first, then cooled, and then hung in the well with a rope to keep it fresh.
After frying more than fifty meatballs, it was time to make dinner.
Today, when she went to the Meng family's butcher shop to buy meat, Meng Dashan pulled her aside and stuffed a package wrapped in lotus leaves into her hand. Meng Zhao opened it and immediately knew it was beef. She then looked at Meng Dashan with surprise and delight.
In those days, cattle were important production tools, and slaughtering them at will could lead to imprisonment. Only cattle that died of natural causes or due to unintentional accidents could be sold, so it was not easy to eat beef.
Seeing his daughter happy, Meng Dashan was also very proud. "I went to the village to buy pigs. There was a family with an old cow that I had been eyeing for a while." Then he said regretfully, "Alas, I was too late. I only bought a few pounds. This is a portion I specially saved for you."
The beef was for his daughter, so Meng Dashan naturally didn't accept any money. Meng Zhao didn't stand on ceremony with him either; she now truly regarded Meng Dashan and Meng Zhao's parents as her own.
Aside from keeping clear accounts when making business purchases, she accepted all the snacks and treats that Meng Dashan and Xu Yunrong gave her, because she remembered them all and wanted to be more filial to them in the future.
Meng Zhao didn't plan to use this beef for boxed lunches. Firstly, the quantity was small, only two or three pounds, and secondly, the price was indeed expensive, estimated to be forty or fifty coins per pound, making the cost too high.
She plans to use half of the beef to make beef buns and the other half to make beef and vermicelli soup.
First, prepare the dough you need. In ancient times, there was no yeast, but most households would have a starter dough. Set the prepared dough aside to ferment.
Cut off half of the beef, soak it to remove the blood, then put it in a pot. Wrap the spices such as scallions, ginger, star anise, angelica root, and cinnamon in a clean cloth and put them in the pot to stew for half an hour.
Take out the other half of the beef, mince it, add minced scallions and ginger, Sichuan peppercorn water, pepper powder, salt and bean paste to the minced meat for seasoning, add chopped scallions, and stir together until it becomes sticky.
After the fermented dough was cut into small pieces, it was rolled into wrappers and then filled with meat filling. Meng Zhao was very good at making steamed buns. The buns she made were all white and plump, with even pleats, and looked like flowers.
Because there was not much beef, Meng Zhao only made five buns, one for each person. Fearing that it wouldn't be enough, she also made a few tofu and vermicelli buns and egg and green pepper buns.
The plump, white steamed buns filled an entire steamer rack, which was then placed in a pot and steamed.
When the steamed buns were almost done, I took out the stewed beef, sliced it, and spread it evenly in five bowls.
Remove the spice packet from the beef stew broth, add the homemade glass noodles and cook until done, then pour into a bowl lined with beef slices. A delicious beef and glass noodle soup is ready.
The beef soup had just been placed on the table when the steamed buns were ready to be taken out of the pot. Shen Qingze and Shen Qingyu were already circling around the stove, drawn by the aroma of the buns, just waiting for the lids to be opened.
Meng Zhao lifted the lid of the pot, and the aroma instantly spread. Luckily, his house was far from the other villagers' houses, otherwise the whole village would probably know that his family was steaming buns.
Meng Zhao took two clean cotton cloths and lifted the entire comb out onto the wooden tub to let the heat dissipate.
Once it wasn't so hot anymore, we each got a beef bun and ate it with the beef and vermicelli soup that wasn't so scalding hot anymore.
Even Gu Shi and her two children, who were already used to Meng Zhao's cooking, kept exclaiming in amazement.
"This is so delicious! The beef buns are so fragrant and tender. I've never had such delicious buns before!"
"Sister-in-law, this beef soup is so delicious! I never knew beef soup tasted like this. I love the beef soup you make so much!"
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