twenty four
When they were almost at the yard, it started snowing again. Du Heng looked up at the sky and asked in confusion, "Does it snow often in the village?" Jing Nan replied, "It's like this in winter. In previous years, the snow was so heavy that we didn't go out. This year, you are here, so Xuan Yu didn't hibernate."
Du Heng: ...Hibernation? What kind of demon cultivator is Xuan Yu? Can he hibernate? He wanted to ask what kind of demon cultivator Xuan Yu was, but after thinking about it, he decided not to. If Xuan Yu was willing to tell him, he would tell him sooner or later.
Before they reached the gate, a flash of yellow appeared in the yard. Du Heng looked closely and saw Hun Yidao's big yellow dog barking at them twice, then wagging its tail and lowering its head as it slowly walked in front of him. Du Heng laughed, "This dog is great. It looks like a good guard dog. Can I pet it?"
Jing Nan said cheerfully, holding his hands in his pockets: "I didn't expect you to be the type who likes to tease cats and dogs." Du Heng said: "When I was in the countryside, every family had cats and dogs. Later, when I moved to the city, I only saw pet dogs, and it was rare to see such a majestic big yellow dog."
Jing Nan raised his eyebrows, and it seemed that Du Heng didn't realize what he said. However, Jing Nan would not ask questions about such things. He said, "Ask Lao Dao. This is his dog. If he says you can touch it, you can touch it."
Du Heng asked loudly: "Lao Dao, can your dog be petted? Will it bite people?" Hun Yidao's deep voice came: "Pet it, it's okay!"
Du Heng waved at the yellow dog, and the silly big yellow dog walked up to Du Heng with its tail wagging like a flower. Du Heng touched the yellow dog's big head and praised it: "You look so majestic! Can I treat you to some meat later?" The big yellow dog made a flattering sound and jumped around Du Heng.
Du Heng scratched Da Huang's head and chin, and rubbed its back and waist several times. He even scratched its big curly tail twice. Da Huang squinted his eyes and stretched out his tongue. It was obvious that he liked being rubbed by Du Heng.
Du Heng patted Dahuang's head and said to it, "Okay, go into the yard and lead the way." The human-like Dahuang turned around and walked towards the yard, turning back to look at Du Heng as he walked.
Jing Nan smiled and said, "This is the first time I've seen Hunyidao's dog be so enthusiastic towards people." Du Heng said, "All things have spirits, especially small animals. They can tell who is good to them." Xiaoxiao chirped twice, as if echoing Du Heng's words. Jing Nan narrowed his eyes and said, "I think some people have a harmless face, so they can get along well wherever they go."
Du Heng walked into the yard and put the basket on the ground. Half of the basket of winter bamboo shoots rolled to the ground with the smell of soil. Dahuang seemed to be very afraid of these winter bamboo shoots and only dared to circle around the bamboo shoots from a distance.
Du Heng went to the kitchen and got out a colander, and he also brought out two small stools.
Du Heng handed one of the small stools to Jing Nan: "Do you want to sit on it?" Jing Nan took the stool skillfully and sat down: "Do you need me to help you deal with the bamboo shoots?" Du Heng waved his hand: "It's just a few bamboo shoots, it can be processed quickly." Jing Nan and the others raised their eyebrows and looked at Du Heng as if they were watching a show.
Du Heng sat down on the stool, put the basket beside him, and then took a spindle-shaped winter bamboo shoot. He used the corner of the kitchen knife to cut a vertical cut on the outer skin of the winter bamboo shoot, and then turned the hand holding the knife. Only the crisp peeling sound came, and the white and tender winter bamboo shoot meat was revealed in the cut made by Du Heng.
Du Heng twisted his coat, and a whole bamboo shoot popped out of the hole. He grabbed the bamboo shoot and removed the bamboo shoot skin that had been stuck to the meat. After a slight snapping sound, Du Heng put a clean and whole bamboo shoot into a colander on the side.
Just as Du Heng said, he processed the winter bamboo shoots very quickly. Before Jing Nan could even sit down, Du Heng had already processed half of the bamboo shoots. The basket was full of bamboo shoots, tender and white, with a fresh scent.
Du Heng walked towards the kitchen with a basket in his hand: "This bamboo shoot looks like a sweet one." There is a kind of bamboo shoot that is neither bitter nor astringent, and tastes like fruit. Du Heng was lucky enough to have tasted such bamboo shoots. The fresh bamboo shoots do not need to be blanched or braised, and it takes less than ten minutes from digging them out to serving them on the table. Just peel off the skin and cut them into slices, and you can eat them with sauce. The taste is fresh and sweet, just like eating fruit.
However, that kind of bamboo shoots can only grow in certain places, and the time requirement is very strict. After a certain time, you can no longer eat them without food.
In order to verify his idea, Du Heng washed a winter bamboo shoot and cut it into pieces. He pinched a piece and put it in his mouth. It was indeed a little sweet, with a fresh fragrance of bamboo shoots. Du Heng took out a plate and cut two winter bamboo shoots to make a plate. He shouted to Xuan Yu: "Xuan Yu, come and try the delicious food."
Jing Nan said sourly: "Look at this kind of differential treatment. It was me who accompanied you to pick bamboo shoots, but you summoned Xuan Yu the first time you got something delicious. Hey..." Du Heng laughed: "I'm just embarrassed to ask you to do something."
Xuan Yu was summoned. He held the bamboo shoots and looked at the thinly sliced bamboo shoots: "Is it edible?" Du Heng nodded: "Yes, you can try it. Please ask Jing Nan and Lao Dao to try it. I'm going to start making wontons here." As Du Heng spoke, he stuffed half a bamboo shoot into Xiao Xiao's open mouth: "Go and play. I'll call you when the meal is ready.
The water in the big pot in the kitchen had already boiled, and the bones of the mountain gourd sank to the bottom of the pot. There were a lot of oil floating on the white soup. Du Heng opened the lid of the pot and took a look. There was basically no foam in the soup. Du Heng put wine that could remove the fishy smell and a handful of spiritual plants that could replace onions and garlic in it.
When spring comes and flowers bloom, Du Heng will go to the mountains to look for onions, ginger and garlic. Using spirits to cook is indeed a luxury, but the main problem is that the taste cannot be controlled.
Du Heng took out half a basin of flour from his storage bag, and he skillfully poured water and kneaded the dough. His movements were as smooth as flowing water, and when the dough became a smooth round ball, Du Heng put it aside to let it rest. He was not idle while the dough was resting, as he had to start preparing the filling.
The stuffing to be made today is winter bamboo shoots and pork... ah, winter bamboo shoots, mountain jelly and pork stuffing. With the experience of cooking in the past few days, Du Heng can already use spiritual plants to soak in wine instead of onions, ginger and garlic. He skillfully crushed the spiritual plants and put them in a bowl for later use. When pouring the wine, his heart was bleeding.
This is a bottle of wine worth 13,000 yuan, but it's a pity that he can't afford it. He will get drunk and crazy after drinking it. This is the only way to realize the value of the spiritual wine.
While the spirit wine was soaking the spirit plants, Du Heng cut the winter bamboo shoots into fine dices. This was a delicate job. Winter bamboo shoots were delicate, and to make them into slices or dices according to the chef's ideas, it required extreme knife skills. Although Du Heng's knife could not kill large livestock and split huge bodies like Xuan Yu, it was no problem to slice and dice them.
There was a sound of frequent tapping in the kitchen. When Lao Dao held the bamboo shoots in his mouth and put his mind into the kitchen, he saw the fist-sized bamboo shoots being cut into slightly transparent pieces in Du Heng's hands. After a while, the pieces turned into thin threads. After a while, the bamboo shoots became thin bamboo shoot cubes, which were clean and white in the wooden basin, waiting for the arrival of the mountain fat meat.
Jing Nan commented: "Your knife skills are good. With such a speed, it shouldn't be used only for cutting vegetables." If this speed is used to chop people, most people really can't resist it. Xuan Yu looked at Jing Nan disapprovingly, and Jing Nan shrugged: "Just ignore what I said."
After cutting the bamboo shoots into cubes, the next thing to do is to prepare the mountain meat. Du Heng chose the front leg meat which was 30% fat and 70% lean. This kind of meat was soft and tender, and was the most suitable for stuffing. He looked at the bamboo shoots in the basin, and then took out a ball of meat that was about the same size as the bamboo shoots.
In Du Heng's opinion, this amount is just enough to make a bowl of meat stuffing, which can be made into wontons, enough for four adults. Of course, for Xiaoxiao, the little one who never knows when he is hungry or full, Du Heng prepared three bowls of food for him.
The same is true for the meat filling. First cut the meat into slices and then into dices. Du Heng can also use a more rough pounding method to process the meat filling, but that is too time-consuming. The diced meat is a circle larger than the bamboo shoots, so it needs to be chopped finely until the meat becomes soft, mushy and sticky.
After Du Heng chopped the meat several times on the chopping board, it met his requirements. He poured the meat into a wooden basin filled with bamboo shoots and added the spiritual plant wine that had been soaked with juice.
The quality of a pot of meat filling depends on the mixing process. Du Heng added salt, wine, sugar and some pepper to the meat filling. In fact, he tasted all the spices he found in Zhou's shop. Even without MSG, it would not be a problem for Du Heng.
After putting the seasoning in place, Du Heng washed his hands and then began to stir the ingredients carefully in the basin. It only took a few minutes for the bamboo shoots and the mountain meat to go from being clearly separated at the beginning to being inseparable later.
By the time Du Heng took his hand back, the bamboo shoots and meat in the basin had become so sticky that they were indistinguishable from each other. Du Heng arranged the meat in the basin so that it was high in the middle and low around, making it look like a round hill, and the red and white looked pretty.
The stuffing was ready at this point, and the dough was ready to rise. Du Heng skillfully rolled out the dough and cut it into trapezoidal wonton wrappers, and then placed each piece of wonton wrapper on the chopping board after being coated with fine flour.
The extra scraps would not be wasted. Du Heng kneaded them into dough, rolled them into dough sheets, and cut them into hand-rolled noodles of uniform thickness. If he made a mistake in his estimation and there were not enough wontons, he could still eat some noodles as a staple food.
The next step was to make wontons. Du Heng held the wonton wrapper in one hand and chopsticks in the other. The chopsticks turned in the basin and brought a piece of filling onto the wrapper. Du Heng gently rolled and pinched it with his fingers, and wontons in the shape of big-bellied ingots appeared in his palms.
Lao Dao was amazed: "It's hard to imagine that this is Mr. Du who was frightened by the mountain jelly before." Jing Nan said: "He was just unprepared. Look, isn't he full of energy now?"
The kitchen smelled of a rich bone soup. Du Heng opened the lid of the pot and poked the meat on the bones with chopsticks. The meat was easily pierced through by the chopsticks. Du Heng took out a large plate and put all the bones in the pot aside.
There was still half a pot of soup left in the pot, and the broth seemed a bit thick. Du Heng added a few scoops of water to the pot and covered it. When the water in the pot boiled, the wontons could be cooked.
Du Heng looked at the rows of wontons on the chopping board and was happy: "I have eaten wontons twice in just a few days in the village. My life in the village will definitely be stable in the future."
Du Heng picked up a piece of bone with evenly distributed flesh and bones, put it in a wooden bowl and came to the yard. He called out to Da Huang, "Da Huang, come here, eat the bone."
Dahuang had been circling at the kitchen door for a long time, and jumped up and down when he heard Du Heng's call.
Jing Nan's mouth twitched as he said to Hun Yidao, "Is this all you can do?" Hun Yidao touched his head and laughed, "Isn't it because Mr. Du's craftsmanship is too good... he can't control it."
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