As night fell, the "Mountain and Sea Restaurant" flag was hung up again. In the dim light, the scattered candlelight resembled a beacon, enticing passersby to come.
"Madam Xu~ Madam Xu~"
Xie Bi'an, the White Impermanence wielding a mourning stick, let out a few eerie cries. Beside him was Fan Wujiu, the Black Impermanence who was always by his side.
The two ghosts, still dressed entirely in white and one entirely in black, drifted into the shop. One had a long tongue hanging down to the ground, while the other was bloated from being soaked in water. If an ordinary person saw them, they would surely be scared half to death.
"Madam Xu, my brother and I have come from the Yellow Springs today, on a mission to collect souls in Chang'an. The winds have been chilling all the way here, and we are starving. Is there anything we can eat to fill our stomachs?"
The White Impermanence's scarlet tongue rested on his shoulder, and he spoke with a slight lisp, but it was still audible.
Xu Milu smiled as soon as she saw the two of them:
"It turns out to be Seventh Master and Eighth Master. It's been a long time. You two are in for a treat today. I've made crab roe xiaolongbao and crab roe noodles. The side dishes are cold radish salad and tea-boiled eggs."
"Very good, very good."
The White Impermanence happily chose a place to sit down, and expertly pulled a bag of seeds from his sleeve:
“I used to drive away wronged souls along the road to the underworld, and these small Chinese toon trees were everywhere. Every October, when the cold winds blow, the seeds of these trees are blown all over the underworld, and they are very easy to find. Today I brought some more for Madam Xu.”
"Thank you for your concern, Seventh Master. Why are you two here to collect souls today?"
Xu Milu collected the seed of the little toon tree, casually put it aside, picked up an apron, put it on, and started boiling water.
White Impermanence took a breath and slowly said:
"It is Lu Xiaomei, the youngest daughter of the Lu family in Tongji Lane. She was born with a deficiency and has walked through the gates of hell several times. However, she was spoiled by her family and kept alive with many rare herbs. She has not died. Tonight is the day when Lu Xiaomei's life will end. The judge is worried that something might happen, so he specially asked my brother and me to come up and take a look."
The Lu family of Tongjifang?
Xu Milu paused for a moment.
Isn't that the family where Hu's Eleventh Daughter married into Lu Wenshan's household?
Is the youngest sister of the Lu family going to die tonight?
But since they weren't acquaintances, Xu Milu could only sigh at the tragic fate of beautiful women.
Take a lump of dough and knead it on the work surface. Then stretch it into thin strips, fold it, and stretch it again. Repeat this process more than ten times until the dough becomes a fine, dense curtain of dough.
Cook the noodles in water. While the noodles are cooking, remove the peeled crab meat and crab roe. Add a small piece of lard to the pot and sauté the crab meat and crab roe until fragrant. In a porcelain bowl, add aged vinegar, a little soy sauce, and half a fresh and crisp bok choy. Pile the cooked noodles in the bowl and then pour a generous spoonful of golden crab roe sauce over them.
The cabbage was lush and green, the crab roe was golden and shiny, and the noodles were plain white. When you gently stir it with chopsticks, the sticky sauce evenly coats every noodle. The aroma of the crab roe sauce is so strong that it makes the two ghosts and one dragon in the store swallow their saliva.
As soon as the noodles were served, Bai Wuchang couldn't wait to grab a chopstick and stuff it into his mouth. The savory flavor exploded in his mouth, and he couldn't help but mumble:
"This peeled crab meat can even be used to make soup dumplings, it's incredibly delicious, Madam Xu has excellent cooking skills!"
Mo Xuan's mouth watered as he looked up, and suddenly there was a bowl in front of him too.
"Eat up, you peeled so many crabs, I can't go back on my word."
As soon as Xu Milu finished speaking, Mo Xuan opened his mouth wide and took a big gulp of crab roe noodles, as if he wanted to bury his head in it to eat:
"Delicious...delicious...smack...mmm, what's this other thing?"
"You could taste that?"
Xu Milu was somewhat surprised: "To enhance the texture of the crab roe, I added some salted eggs. This gives the stir-fried crab roe sauce a more granular texture and makes it more layered in flavor."
Mo Xuan couldn't understand at all; he just kept burying his head in his food.
Xu Milu was speechless, feeling like she was talking to a brick wall.
Making crab roe soup dumplings is much more troublesome, but fortunately, Xu Milu is quick and efficient, and many of the ingredients were prepared in advance, so it wasn't difficult to make them.
The biggest difference between "soup dumplings" and "xiaolongbao" lies in the filling. If you want to make the soup filling, you have to rely on another ingredient - pork skin jelly.
Remove the hair from the pig skin, put it in a pot with soy sauce, scallions, and plenty of water, and simmer over low heat until the water evaporates and the pot is reduced to about half full and the broth is thick. Then filter out the impurities and pour the broth into a container to cool.
Cooled pork skin jelly is similar to jelly; it melts when heated. When Xu Milu was little, she liked to steam a bowl of white rice, then put the pork skin jelly on top of the rice and watch it slowly melt before mixing it with the rice and eating it.
Mix the crab meat and minced pork with salt in a 1:1 ratio. Cut the solidified pork skin jelly into cubes, add it to the mixture while it's still cold, and stir it all together. This is the soul filling of crab meat soup dumplings.
Mix high-gluten flour with water while stirring. Divide the dough into equal-sized pieces, then roll each piece into a thin wrapper that is thicker in the middle and thinner on the sides. Wrap the filling inside while it is still cool, and then steam until cooked.
The steamed crab roe soup dumplings have such thin skins that you can almost see the filling inside. The aspic has melted into juicy meat under high temperature and is firmly locked in the dough. Xu Milu is very skillful. The palm-sized soup dumplings are full inside, but not a single one has any soup inside.
"What a handsome steamed bun!"
Bai Wuchang couldn't resist reaching out to touch it, but fortunately, he himself had no temperature, thus avoiding the danger of being burned by the high temperature.
"Seventh Master, don't be in a hurry. Let me demonstrate how to eat this soup dumpling."
Xu Milu turned around and took out a bunch of reeds, all of which had been boiled in hot water and were the perfect thickness.
She leaned over and approached the crab roe soup dumplings on the plate. She gently pinched the edge of the dumpling with her index finger and thumb, and bit a hole along the edge. Instantly, a steaming, delicious aroma burst out.
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