Upon hearing this, Ye Zi poured herself a bowl, blew on it, took a small sip, and tasted it, saying:
"It's really not very good. Maybe it's because we didn't have any seasonings. It's barely enough to be fish soup, but it's better than plain water."
Reba nodded; it was indeed better than plain water.
After the meal, Ye Zi broke the remaining shark meat into pieces, packed them into several empty wooden crates found on the shipwreck, and then put them into seawater to keep them fresh and prevent them from spoiling too quickly.
However, this method can only guarantee that the food will not spoil within one day; it won't work if the spoilage continues for any longer.
When trying to survive, unless there's absolutely no other way, don't eat any food that might have gone bad. If you get diarrhea or something similar, you'll basically lose the chance to continue.
The fish fins were only skinned, and the rest were put into wooden boxes and released into the sea. However, these fish fins were not intended to be eaten; they would be used as bait the next time we went to the shipwreck site to fish.
After processing the fish meat, only the fish skin was left. As for how to process shark skin, I really didn't know.
The only thing you can do is try scraping off the excess fat and leftover bits of meat from the shark skin, rubbing it with wood ash, washing it, then sprinkling wood ash on it again, rubbing it, and washing it.
Due to limited resources, this is the only way to use the leaves. As long as they aren't crushed, it's half the battle won.
Ye Zi used a piece of fish skin cut from the neck of a shark for her experiment. The rest of the fish skin was soaking in seawater. Once the first piece of fish skin was successfully tanned, the rest could be processed later.
Before coming into contact with sharkskin, Yezi didn't know that sharkskin was just as thick as cowhide.
It wasn't until they were skinning the shark that Ye Zi discovered this. After removing the hair from the cowhide, the remaining pure skin was about this thick.
The thickest part is a full centimeter thick, but of course, there are also thinner parts of sharkskin, about two millimeters thick.
Moreover, shark skin is not as smooth as it looks; the surface is very rough. It is coarsely tanned with all-purpose wood ash and dried, making the shark skin almost usable as sandpaper.
It wasn't rough, and it was quite hard. To satisfy her curiosity, Ye Zi used dried sharkskin to polish her eating bowl. Although the effect wasn't as good as sandpaper, it could indeed be used as sandpaper.
In ancient times, sharkskin was used to make scabbards and sword sheaths. Some weapons even had their handles covered with a layer of sharkskin to prevent them from slipping.
Moreover, shark skin is quite protective; after being dried, Reba couldn't even cut it with a machete and could only chop it.
After witnessing all this, Ye Zi finally understood why some ancient weapons used sharkskin.
After learning about some of the characteristics of shark skin, Ye Zi began to rub the shark skin.
Living on an island, there's nothing else usable besides wood ash, and as for tanning leather, leaves are the only thing we know how to do.
With limited technology and resources, wood ash is the only remedy.
The task of kneading the sharkskin could only be done by Ye Zi herself; Reba couldn't help at all, simply because the sharkskin was hard and thick.
Dinner was shark meat again. I cooked a pot of it to try it out, and grilled the rest.
After all, grilling is a proven method of cooking, and the taste is alright.
I was half full from the barbecue; now it's up to the cooking process to see how it tastes.
Ye Zi tasted it first, and although he had said that sharks have a complete urinary system, Reba still had a tiny bit of doubt.
Ye Zi picked up a piece of boiled shark meat and put it in her mouth. She chewed it a few times and then pursed her lips. Although it didn't smell like urine, it was surprisingly a little sour.
After telling Reba the result, Reba, surprised, also picked up a piece, put it in her mouth, chewed it a few times, and swallowed it, saying:
"This sourness must be due to our incorrect processing method, but it's too late now. We'll just have to bake it from now on."
Ye Zi asked in confusion:
"Is the processing method wrong? Instead of boiling it directly, are you suggesting blanching it?"
Ye Zi didn't really understand this, but he knew that beef and mutton needed to be blanched before cooking, otherwise there would be blood foam in the soup.
Dilraba shook her head and said:
"No, it seems to be a problem with the shark itself. It's like these athletic sharks have blood-filled flesh and high calories. After hunting them, the muscles should be cooled down by soaking them in water for a while before taking them out."
That's roughly it; I don't know the specifics.
Reba spoke the truth: she had never heard of anyone eating shark meat before, let alone processing shark meat properly. Most importantly, Reba hadn't expected that Yezi, who had only recently escaped being unable to swim, would have the ability to hunt sharks.
Before coming here, I never imagined that something like this would happen, and I didn't pay attention to how to process shark meat.
Ye Zi suddenly realized that he didn't know how to handle sharks, but he had seen how to handle tuna, as they were similar in size.
It's understandable that swimming champions would use similar methods to handle the situation.
However, Ye Zi disagreed with Reba's suggestion to grill the shark meat in the future, because they wouldn't be able to eat it for many more meals. They could eat it again at most tomorrow morning, and the rest of the fish would spoil.
The remaining shark meat can then be used as bait for chumming or fishing.
Unless they can hunt another shark, shark meat is basically off their menu.
"In the future, just in case, I think we should bring a gun and a few dozen bullets when we go out to sea."
Although bullets have limited underwater impact, they are still far more powerful than harpoon guns.
Dilraba's eyes lit up, and she nodded:
"That's right. If we had guns when we went out to sea today, we could have tried to shoot the shark from the boat. Even if we couldn't kill it, it would have been good to drive it away."
We were too passive today.
Ye Zi grinned and said:
"It's settled then. From now on, we'll bring a gun whenever we go to sea."
Ye Zi said this mainly because she was worried that today's events would leave Reba with psychological trauma, making her afraid to go into the sea or even swim in the water in the future.
As cold weapons faded from the ranks of mainstream weapons, and firearms became prevalent, nothing made people feel safer than a gun, or two if they could.
If there is still a problem, it's a fear of insufficient firepower, which is not something that can be solved by quantity, but by caliber.
After finishing her meal, Ye Zi continued to rub the shark skin. This was an experiment; if wood ash could achieve the purpose of tanning shark skin, then the remaining shark skin would be treated in the same way.
If that doesn't work, Yezi plans to collect some seashells, burn them, grind them into powder, and then continue the tanning process.
From after dinner until bedtime, Ye Zi kept rubbing the sharkskin in her hands, and it even became oily, which was expected. She sprinkled a layer of wood ash on it and continued rubbing.
Then dry it, and then continue kneading.
If it has oil, sprinkle it with ash and rub it; if it doesn't have oil, rub it dry. In short, just polish it, and polish it continuously.
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