In the last couple of days leading up to the Lunar New Year, my mind is filled with fond memories of the past. I've also been feeling quite down, and I can't seem to muster any interest in anything.
On Lunar New Year's Eve, I still got up early. After all, it was the last day of the year, and I had to make the most of it.
Today I plan to invite all the monkeys to my residence as guests. Since it's the Lunar New Year, we still need to prepare the New Year's Eve dinner.
I took out some of every kind of food from the warehouse: pine nuts, chestnuts, moorhens, wild ducks, rabbits, beavers, dried fish...
I started preparing these ingredients in the morning. I soaked all the dried goods in water first. To make the dishes more diverse, I also added steamed dishes.
I poured all my energy into cooking, and it helped me forget some of the disappointment I felt during the Lunar New Year.
These dishes aren't many, but my pot is a limited size, and today there are a lot of dishes and a large quantity, plus I'm the only one cooking, so Top can only help out a little.
We started preparing the ingredients this morning. Top and I worked together for most of the day to cook some basic dishes. We can just heat them up and plate them when we eat them tonight.
After lunch, I started preparing the main dish for this year's Lunar New Year's Eve dinner: the smoked beaver meat that was still mostly left.
This time I'm planning to make a hand-grabbed roasted beaver, a real hearty dish for those who want to eat meat in big bites.
The beaver started washing and soaking early in the morning, and now it is soaked until it is red and translucent, and the meat has become more elastic.
However, I wanted to make this dish even more perfect, so I used a cleaver on a wooden cutting board to cut the beaver's joints and then made a few cuts along its spine.
After processing, the beaver can now be coiled into a ball, making it easier for me to put it into a large pot for steaming.
I made the steamer myself out of bamboo. There's nothing special about it, as long as it works, I don't care too much about its appearance.
I steamed this beaver for a full two hours, adding water three times during the process to thoroughly cook it.
After it was steamed, the aroma made Top's mouth water. I smiled and patted Top on the shoulder, saying, "Top, don't rush, there's still one more step."
Top stared longingly at the beaver meat in my hand, nodded as if he understood, and then went to fetch some wood from the woodpile.
Now, after steaming, the beaver's meat has fully expanded and regained its original elasticity; you can feel its robust muscles when you press it with your hand.
I put the beaver in a bamboo basket to cool it down first, and there was also a side dish that I added at the last minute. This ingredient can be said to be a free delicacy.
This morning, when I moved the firewood, I found some white worms on it. These worms were quite plump, each about the size of my little finger.
These are beetle larvae. They lay their eggs inside tree bark in the fall, and the eggs hatch when the temperature is right.
Beetle larvae can overwinter inside wood, where the constant warm environment allows them to continue feeding during the winter. After a few more months the following year, they pupate into adults and continue to reproduce.
I only found a few at first, but as the wood was moved, I found more and more of the white larvae. In the end, I had to use a bowl to collect them.
After a thorough search, Top had collected a large bowl full of white larvae.
I poured out the water from the pot, washed it, and heated the oil. When the oil was bubbling and smoking, I poured all the washed white larvae into it.
"Sizzle..."
The sound of frying meat rang out, and the insects' bodies began to stretch and expand under the high temperature of the hot oil, like popcorn.
These insects naturally possess a fragrance, and many of them originate from pine branches. In addition to the insect's inherent smoky aroma, they also possess a pleasant, refreshing scent of pine.
Top had never smelled anything so fragrant before; it felt that this was much better than the scent of the beavers it had smelled before.
I scooped up the golden-brown, crispy worms, sprinkled them with a little fine salt, and mixed them well with chopsticks. My salt and pepper worm dish was ready.
Top could resist the temptation of the beaver before, but this time it really couldn't resist the temptation of the salt and pepper larvae. It stretched out its palm to me and looked at me pitifully with its big eyes.
Actually, I couldn't resist either. These larvae only need simple cooking to bring out their delicious flavor. In some ways, they are more fragrant and delicious than animal meat.
I scooped some salt and pepper larvae from a plate with a spatula and handed them to Top, smiling as I warned, "Eat slowly, be careful not to burn your mouth."
Top grinned and nodded at me, then eagerly popped a charred larva into his mouth.
The moment Top took a bite, a slight crisp sound rang out. The burst of flavor in his mouth made Top's eyes widen, and he was momentarily stunned.
My worldview keeps being challenged by it. I never imagined that the insects I usually eat could become so delicious after I processed them.
Immediately afterwards, I saw Top hop hop and skip up to the top of a branch, seemingly to share it with its little brothers.
When I was a child, my sister and I lived in the countryside. Back then, we didn't have much to eat, and meat was a rare treat. These larvae were a delicious snack for us during our childhood.
Back then, wasn't I just like Top now, sharing good things with my closest friends and family?
Thinking of this, I pictured my younger sister's gentle smile. She had also happily accepted the insects and shared them with her playmates back then.
A smile played on my lips as I picked up two larvae and put them in my mouth. The crispy, caramelized taste was just like the one I remembered from my childhood.
Now that the beaver has cooled down a bit, I took out a kitchen knife and made some cuts on its surface. Then I took out a jar of brown sugar water and added a little salt to it.
A bamboo brush dipped in brown sugar water was used to scrub the beaver inside and out, and then it was propped up on a frame with a wooden stick underneath, with charcoal fire burning underneath.
I gently fanned myself with a fan in one hand while slowly turning the beaver on the grill.
At this moment, the beaver's muscle fibers have fully relaxed after steaming, and the sugar water seeps into the skin through the cuts.
Before long, the beaver's skin turned an enticing color, like braised pork, and a unique, mellow aroma, sweet with a hint of smoke, wafted out.
I flipped it over for a while, then brushed on another layer of brown sugar water. The sizzling, oily surface of the beaver became even juicier and redder after being soaked in the sugar water.
The aroma wafted through the air, and as I looked at the roasted beaver meat in front of me, I smiled and nodded. This kind of hearty dish is what makes it feel like Chinese New Year.
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