Chapter 15 Small Plan: A fair face peeked out from under the door, a tall, handsome young man with wet, disheveled hair.
Yao Ruyi stood by the stove and couldn't resist eating two more pieces, squinting her eyes and shaking her head.
She's amazing! She must have been a culinary genius in her past life!
However, crispy fried pork belly is not difficult to make, especially since frying things in a large iron wok is inherently delicious.
Before using an iron wok, you need to heat it up and then coat it with oil to season it thoroughly. Once seasoned, it will work just like a non-stick pan, and it won't stick no matter how you stir-fry. In her past life, Yao Ruyi's family always used an old iron wok hand-hammered by an old man in the village. It heated evenly and kept the heat stable. Her grandmother used it for more than ten years and only had it repaired twice. It was still very good.
Iron pots from the Song Dynasty already had round bottoms, and their shape differed slightly from later ones: deep in the belly and wide at the rim, somewhat like the inner pot of a rice cooker with a wide rim, fitting perfectly into the stove. They were also multi-functional; aside from frying and stir-frying, they could be used to steam rice at the bottom, and two bamboo steamers could be stacked on top to steam buns and soups. At the same time, the palm-width rim could be used to bake flatbreads and steamed buns. Most ingeniously, if the iron pot was lifted from the stove, there were usually three grooves on the bottom, allowing it to be placed on a makeshift earthen stove or a support, so it could even be moved to the yard for hot pot.
When Yao Ruyi first discovered it, she thought the design was ingenious! Now, after only two days of use, she has already mastered it and feels that it is no worse than the iron pots of later generations.
Aside from being a bit too heavy, it doesn't have any major drawbacks.
Moreover, the strong aroma from a wood-fired stove gives the dishes and rice a unique flavor that she feels is absent in dishes cooked on induction cookers and gas stoves. Perhaps it's because they carry the aroma inherent in the charcoal itself?
It is said that wealthy families at that time would use different types of wood to cook different dishes: roasted lamb and stewed meat were made with pine wood, as it was said that the fragrance of pine wood could neutralize the fishy smell of meat; roasted duck and fish were made with fragrant fruit woods such as lychee wood, jujube wood, and longan wood, which would give them a sweet aroma; and rice was cooked with rice husks in a wood fire to increase its sweetness and elasticity.
Yao Ruyi wasn't so particular; she just used whichever was cheapest.
Moreover, the families living in the alleys near the Imperial College use coal briquettes more often than hers. Not only her family has them, but in the past few days, I have often seen piles of burnt coal ash in front of every household. Coal ash can also be sold at a low price to peddlers who collect scrap. They will transport the burnt coal ash to the outskirts of the city and mix it with livestock manure for composting, making the most of everything.
In Bianjing (Kaifeng), every trade had its share of people, even the most sordid professions. Yao Ruyi had often read about the "prosperity of commerce in the Song Dynasty" in books, but her understanding mostly remained at the level of the Song Dynasty breaking down the "fangshi system" and the emergence of morning and night markets. When she actually arrived in this world, even if it was a fictional, less authentic Song Dynasty, she could still glimpse the true prosperity of the Song Dynasty in these subtle details.
Thinking about this and that, Yao Ruyi divided the crispy fried pork into three dishes. She kept one large dish for herself and gave the medium-sized dish to Cheng Niangzi. She remembered how Cheng Niangzi had helped her bargain, taken her to a good value grocery store, treated her to almond tea, and gently encouraged her to live a good life.
Although she was no longer the original owner, if she put herself in the original owner's shoes, she would feel comforted if she could hear Cheng Niangzi's gentle words. Her heart, which was tormented by rumors and prejudice, would be filled with pain.
Yao Ruyi sighed, looked at the plate of meat, and slowly encouraged herself.
She will carry on the legacy of the original owner and strive to live her life to the fullest.
She bought the pork belly with her own money and cooked it herself, making it the perfect gift to reciprocate.
She carried the last dish, containing five pieces of meat, to the side gate, intending to add it to the meat porridge she had left there earlier for the dogs, though she didn't know if they would ever return.
But as soon as the side gate opened, she was surprised to find that the meat porridge had been completely eaten! There were still a few dog hairs stuck to the plate, so it seemed that the mother dog hadn't gone far and they were probably hiding nearby!
Overjoyed, she put the meat back into the plate, then skipped happily back to her own home to set out the bowls and chopsticks before calling out to Grandpa Yao to come out for dinner.
Besides the crispy pork, she also cooked a pot of vegetable porridge. Although she forgot to stir the bottom and it burned, the light and salty porridge was just right with the meat and it wasn't greasy at all.
Yao Qizhao, leaning on his cane, pushed open the door and smelled the aroma of meat filling the courtyard. He exclaimed in surprise, "You little cook, you have quite a few fresh ideas for cooking! You can even make pork smell so good. Not bad."
Now I'm a cook again.
However, Yao Ruyi was also relieved.
"I saw the shopkeeper frying meat when I went to buy eggs. I thought it wasn't difficult, so I learned how to make it myself. How is it? It looks pretty good, right?" Yao Ruyi put the meat on the table, still finding a good excuse for herself. She also added the vegetable porridge that had been cooked to a burnt bottom, feeling a little embarrassed. "But the porridge was ruined and a bit burnt at the bottom. Fortunately, the burnt smell isn't too strong, so please bear with it."
When Yao Qizhao saw the bowl of porridge, which had turned slightly yellow due to the burnt bottom and had a faint burnt smell, he suddenly laughed: "Your skills aren't up to par. You'll have your pay docked next month."
Yao Ruyi handed him bamboo chopsticks, ladled some porridge, and pretended to be unconvinced, saying, "What? Tomorrow I'll go to the bookstore to buy a cookbook, and I guarantee I'll come up with even more variations for you. You can expect a raise then."
Yao Qizhao was amused by her and chuckled as he lowered his head to eat the meat and drink the porridge. He didn't mind that the porridge wasn't cooked very well and still ate it with the meat. After finishing, he praised, "The meat is fried really well. If it could be paired with two ounces of cypress leaf wine as an appetizer, it would be even more enjoyable."
"Stop! You can't touch alcohol anymore! Not a single drop, understand?" Yao Ruyi immediately straightened her face when she heard the word "alcohol"—she had thought about why Grandpa Yao had a stroke before. Being angered by tutoring students was just the surface; it was actually related to Grandpa Yao's old age and improper eating habits.
Yao Ruyi, who spends most of her time in hospitals, has seen all sorts of hospitalized patients and heard about all kinds of causes of illness, so she has a wealth of general medical knowledge.
As Cheng Niangzi had mentioned before, the Yao family grandfather and grandson never knew how to cook. They spent all their time eating out at Shen Ji Restaurant and had gained over ten pounds! Although the soup noodles they ate looked light, the broth was mostly thick meat and bone broth, which could easily lead to elevated uric acid levels. Not to mention, they often ate high-fat foods like roast duck and roast fish. Now that he mentioned drinking alcohol with his meals, it's likely that eating duck with a little wine was a common occurrence for them in the past.
Well, with a diet high in salt, fat, and sugar, excessive alcohol consumption, a high-purine diet, and insufficient dietary fiber intake, plus Grandpa Yao's bad temper, his blood pressure would suddenly rise, his heart rate would increase, his intracranial pressure would rise sharply, his cerebral blood vessels would become unbalanced, and he would form a thrombus or suffer a cerebral hemorrhage. If he didn't have a stroke, who would?
Yao Qizhao, however, was both indignant and defiant, expressing a strong protest against the idea of quitting drinking: "Why can't I drink? I'm already this old, if I don't drink now, when will I? Am I supposed to drink in my coffin?"
That makes a lot of sense, but Yao Ruyi didn't know how to explain this from a traditional Chinese medicine perspective, so she could only insist: "Anyway, you can't drink it! If you want to live a few more years, don't drink it!"
Yao Qizhao glared at her, and Yao Ruyi immediately put her hands on her hips, widened her eyes, and glared back.
The only similarity between the original owner and Yao Qizhao was their eyes; both were large and round. The two stared at each other with their big, bell-like eyes, neither willing to back down. In the end, Yao Qizhao's eyes tired and he couldn't take it anymore, so he turned his face away angrily and ate his porridge.
Taking it as his agreement to quit drinking, Yao Ruyi picked up another plate of meat: "Grandpa, you eat first. I'll take this to Sister-in-law Cheng's house while it's still hot. Thanks to her kind words and encouragement the other day, otherwise I wouldn't have had the courage to buy chickens, and I wouldn't have been able to cheer up so quickly."
With rice grains stuck to his face, Yao Qizhao asked blankly, "Who is Sister-in-law Cheng?"
However, in the blink of an eye, he had forgotten why he was angry, so he was no longer angry.
"My neighbor in the alley, he runs a tailor shop."
Yao Qizhao tried hard to control his chopsticks so they wouldn't shake, and with his other hand he picked off the grains of rice from his face and ate them. After thinking for a long time, he still couldn't remember: "I don't recognize it."
Yao Ruyi knew this, so she didn't say anything to him, because the meat would get cold soon.
So he told her to eat well and not to run around, then, carrying the plate, he hooked his foot to close the door and hurried toward the Cheng family's house.
As soon as she stepped outside, she saw that the gate of the Yu family's courtyard next door was wide open, and the Yu couple were sitting in the courtyard drinking porridge. When they saw her come out, the plump Aunt Yu and Yu Shouzheng, whose head and shoulders were perched with several birds, both turned to look at her.
Even the birds turned their heads, several pairs of bean-like eyes staring at the plate of meat in her hand.
Yao Ruyi was startled. She quickly searched her memory to find out who lived next door, then stopped and hurriedly bowed, saying in a low voice, "Hello, Aunt Yu...Hello, Uncle Yu."
He hurriedly left again.
As soon as her figure disappeared from the Yu family's door, Yu Shouzhen couldn't help but sniff the aroma wafting from the doorway: "This meaty smell really is coming from the Yao family! It's strange, the Yao father and son actually know how to cook?"
"Didn't we eat at Shen's before? Fried meat isn't hard to make." Although Aunt Yu said this, she secretly swallowed and whispered to her husband, "By the way, Widow Cheng also said that Ruyi's braised chicken is good! I guess she just doesn't like to talk, but she's not stupid. It's not surprising that she's learned a few dishes."
"That's what they say..." Yu Shouzhen subconsciously took a sip of his own porridge, but found it tasteless and even difficult to swallow. Strange, although the food his wife usually prepared was also unpalatable, he could usually manage to eat it by holding his nose. Why did it taste so particularly bad today?
Aunt Yu didn't want to drink the porridge anymore. She put down her bowl and thought about what Widow Cheng had said. She was tempted: why not buy two to try tomorrow?
**
Yao Ruyi brought meat to Cheng Niangzi as a way of thanking her, but mainly she wanted to ask her if there were any good potters or carpenters. She remembered that there was a carpenter named Old Man Yang who worked with the female lead in the book and was very skilled and inexpensive. However, when Yao Ruyi bought eggs these past two days, she passed by Jinliang Bridge and found that "Yang's Woodwares" had become a large business with three storefronts, and the wages must have increased significantly.
Let's find another one.
Besides making shipping containers, she also wanted to find a potter to fire a double-burner clay stove. It should be tall, cylindrical, like a coal stove from later times, with legs on top, so the ceramic baking pans could be made interchangeably. She also wanted to fire several baking pans with narrow grooves for starch sausages, round concave molds for egg burgers, a griddle for cold noodles, and a deep, nine-compartment square ceramic pot for later use.
In the past, when my grandmother went out to buy goods, she would look after the small shop by herself. The shop sold basic snacks such as grilled sausages, oden, egg burgers, and grilled cold noodles.
She's really good at baking.
Moreover, the starch sausages at her house weren't from outside; they were made by her grandmother herself. In the beginning, her grandmother also bought sausages from others, but she was ripped off. Those starch sausages produced by unscrupulous factories gave her severe diarrhea, and she had to be hospitalized for three days on IV drips. Fortunately, they weren't being sold outside at that time.
But I lost a lot of money.
From then on, Grandma preferred to do it herself.
By sheer luck, the snacks from her family's convenience store gradually became famous, and even people from outside the school would try to come in and buy them.
My grandmother's starch sausages were made with real chicken meat. They didn't need casings. She would grind chicken breast meat into minced meat using a meat grinder, mix it into a well-mixed starch paste, add garlic powder, nutmeg, sugar, salt, soy sauce, and other seasonings, and then mix it again in the correct proportions. That's how she prepared the meat paste.
The key ingredient in starch sausage is nutmeg. Adding it gives it the fragrant flavor of later sausages and luncheon meat. Unfortunately, nutmeg originated in Indonesia. Although it was introduced to China via maritime trade during the Tang and Song dynasties, its status was comparable to pepper, and even gold and silver, making it unaffordable for Yao Ruyi.
She plans to use local cinnamon instead. Cinnamon has a more assertive and intense aroma than nutmeg, but it is equally rich and warm. Although it cannot completely mask the smell of nutmeg powder, they will still smell somewhat similar.
As for the shape of the sausage, as long as the ratio of meat to starch is right, the sausage won't fall apart when fried. Pour the thick chicken starch batter into a mold, poke a bamboo skewer into the half-set meat mixture, flip it over and fry until golden brown. Brush it with the secret sauce, and the aroma can waft half a street away...
It's quick to make, and with a mold you can make seven at once; the method is also simple.
Therefore, the mold furnace is extremely important.
She had thought a lot on the short journey, and by the time she stood in front of the Cheng family's door with the freshly fried crispy pork belly in her hand, her mind was made up. She cleared her throat and knocked on the door knocker. Just as she was rehearsing her words, she heard the faint sound of wooden clogs clattering behind the door. The moment the door opened, a cold complaint rang out: "Lin Da, why are you so late..."
The sound stopped abruptly.
She was taken aback, and so was the other person.
A fair face peeked out from the crack in the door. The tall, handsome young man with his wet hair disheveled had clearly just taken a bath, and water dripping from his hair was sliding down his collarbone and into his clothes. He wore only a plain cotton undergarment, with a loose, dark blue long robe over it, half-open, the lapels hanging diagonally at his waist. Beneath the hem of the robe, he wore wooden clogs on his bare feet.
Upon seeing Yao Ruyi, his face flushed red, and he hurriedly slammed the door shut again.
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Ruyi discovered that the dog was still there:
(Spinning, jumping, and starting to dance)
Do you want to dance? ~~ [Cat emoji]
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