Chapter 83: Dried Sauce
After receiving the bamboo tube of sugar water from Chen An and Shen Ning, Shen Jin felt as if he had received an olive branch thrown to him by the brother and sister. He had not visited Chen An for many days, but after receiving the bamboo tube of sugar water, it was as if he had been unsealed. In the afternoon, he left Chen Tie at home to look after Shen Tian, and took Shen Yin to cut two bundles of ramie, and then happily carried the ramie up the mountain.
Of course, I also brought a clean bamboo tube.
He didn't see Chen An, but only saw Chen Ning sitting outside the yard peeling hemp. He was a little surprised. When he looked at Chen Ning, he still had some reservations and asked if Chen An was there.
Of course not.
"I went into the mountains with my sister-in-law."
As for what they were doing in the mountains, Shen Jin didn't dare to ask. If he asked, Shen Ning would definitely say, "We don't have any land, so how can we eat and drink if we don't go into the mountains to make a living?"
He would not ask until he was rejected.
After returning the bamboo tube to Chen Ning, he was too embarrassed to say thank you or anything, so he put down the ramie, sat on the stone-paved ground, and helped peel the ramie.
Of course, it was not only Shen Jin and Shen Yin who came to help peel the ramie in the afternoon. Those who had drunk sugar water in the morning all came. When Sang Luo and Shen An came back with two baskets of konjac, the children had already sealed the other side of the mountain spring pool that had been built with stones before with stones. When the water was full, it could flow out. The ramie soaked in it was slightly pressed down with stones so that it would not be washed away.
There was no shortage of knives for peeling hemp. The adults in several families knew that the children had each received a large bowl of sugar water at the Shen family's head house. When the men were chopping trees, the children went to help peel hemp without any hesitation. The family members simply asked them to bring their own hemp knives.
It only takes one or two hours to soak the hemp in running water. When Sang Luo and Shen An came back for the second time, the younger children were still peeling the hemp, while the older children had already taken a hemp knife and sat on the ground to scrape the hemp skillfully.
The shaved hemp needed to be hung out to dry. Sang Luo was wondering whether she should take the clothes that were hung on the thick hemp ropes tied between several trees on the other side of the yard. Erniu smiled and said, "Don't worry, Sister Shen. My aunt, Grandma Lu, and Grandma Chen have all told us to go home and fetch bamboo stalks after the hemp is shaved. We'll lend them to you for a few days while you dry the hemp. You can just hang them up by the wall when the time comes."
This saved Sang Luo a lot of trouble. She smiled and said, "That's great. Please convey my gratitude to your aunt for me."
Erniu's aunt is Shi Erlang's wife. Ever since they picked mushrooms together for a few days, she felt that she and Sang Luo had a deep friendship. She took good care of Sang Luo on weekdays and sent her many vegetables. Of course, tofu dregs and the like used to be provided by the Chen family, but now the Shi family and the Lu family also get some.
After hearing what Sang Luo said, Erniu scratched his head, smiled and agreed, then buried his head in his work.
Sang Luo didn't care about them. She had to rush to dig konjac and save as much dried konjac as possible. She dug two trips of konjac a day, picked sour dates and looked for jujubes, and then processed them when she came back. Her schedule was fully packed.
…
There were fifteen boards for pressing dried bean curd. Chen Youtian did not take a break at noon and asked Chen Ershan to deliver ten boards in the afternoon. He did not know what Sang Luo was going to use them for. As long as Sang Luo asked him to make this first, he would deliver as many as he had made so that Sang Luo could use them first.
When Sang Luo came back from the mountain, she was delighted to see the ten boards that had been delivered. For the first time ever, she soaked the beans in the afternoon, and took Chen An to find a few stone slabs that were about the same size as the wooden boards and carried them back home.
He sent Chen An to Chen's house to borrow a machete and scissors, and brought out some leftover bamboo from the drying rack at home. He chopped it into a pile of bamboo strips as long as the stove and as thick as fingers in the yard, then carefully shaved off the burrs, washed and dried them for later use.
After doing all this, I closed the door and took out the filter cloth that I had washed clean, dried and stored after stopping making the tofu, and cut it into square pieces not much bigger than the palm of my hand.
After cutting one piece of filter cloth, he still felt unsatisfied, so he found another piece of new, unused cloth and cut more than a hundred pieces in the same way before he stopped.
Chen Ning watched her scissors clicking, and several large pieces of cloth were turned into pieces of cloth, which made her feel so distressed.
Sang Luo smiled: "It will be very useful. You will know it in the evening."
It is undeniable that the preparations she made aroused Shen An and Shen Ning's curiosity to the fullest.
After dinner, she prepared the sour jujube cake and the vegetarian tripe to be sent to Dongfulou the next day and waited for them to solidify. Sang Luo calculated the time and looked at the soaking of the beans. When she saw that it was almost ready, she started grinding the beans.
Shen An and Shen Ning both knew that their sister-in-law was going to make new food today, and they were very excited. They followed along and helped out, step by step, and were a little confused.
"Sister-in-law, isn't this still tofu?"
Sang Luo laughed.
It was not until she took out the brine she had bought during the day and broke off a small piece, then took a small piece from the small piece and put it into the stone mortar to pound it into fine powder that Shen An and Shen Ning's eyes widened: "Sister-in-law, do you want to order tofu with something else?"
The brother and sister did not recognize brine, but they saw that gypsum was used in mulberry every day, so they could still see the difference between the two.
"Yes, this is called brine. If you use this to make tofu, the texture of the tofu will be different. It can be called old tofu. However, we don't have many tofu boxes, and we have a certain amount of tender tofu to be produced tomorrow morning. So we won't make old tofu tonight. Let's make dried bean curd."
Of course, tofu coated with gypsum can also be made into marinated tofu, but the taste will be slightly different. Sang Luo is going to make old tofu, so she also bought brine.
When Shen An and Shen Ning heard the name of the new food, they watched intently to see how the sauce was made.
The previous steps were exactly the same as making tofu, except for the ingredients used to make the tofu. After the tofu was made, the tofu frizzles should have been put into a tofu frame covered with gauze. Their sister-in-law did put that in, but the next step was not to press the tofu. Instead, she used the tofu frame as a temporary container to filter water.
The gauze that had been cut earlier came in handy at this time. The two younger ones had washed their hands when they came to help. Now they followed Sang Luo and imitated her, scooping the floc-like tofu into the gauze, kneading it into balls, and wrapping it into square, solid little cubes.
The newly delivered boards came in handy at this time. The wrapped small squares were stacked on the boards one by one. When they were all wrapped, two large boards were full, with sixty-four squares on each board, for a total of one hundred and twenty-eight squares.
Then, under the puzzled gazes of Shen An and Shen Ning, Sang Luo added layers of boards on top of the two boards, adding four wooden boards on each side, and then put the clean stone slabs on top.
Although it is called a slate, it is actually still a large piece of stone, but it is relatively regular, like a board, so the downward force is also uniform.
I also took a few empty buckets and empty pottery and placed them at the four corners of the bottom plate to prevent the pressed water from dripping onto the ground. It would not be fun if water dripped onto the muddy ground.
When everything was ready, Sang Luo smiled and said, "Okay, wait for three quarters of an hour."
Although it is said to be three quarters of an hour, there is actually no specific timer and it all depends on experience.
Chen An and Shen Ning squatted aside, watching the gauze wrapped around the tofu cubes being squeezed to produce soy juice, which dripped along the wooden board and into the empty bucket.
Chen Ning was a man who knew how to live. Ever since he started making tofu, he had paid attention to the juice squeezed out of the tofu. At first, he asked Sang Luo if this was drinkable like soy milk. These things were boiled, and if tofu pudding was edible, this could naturally be eaten as well. But Sang Luo denied it.
It doesn't taste good and it's easy for gypsum water to remain, so it's not recommended.
In the end, this thing had to be poured out. Of course, after she poured it out, the chickens and ducks would rush to drink some. Shen Ning specifically asked Sang Luo about it, and was relieved when she heard Sang Luo say that it was okay.
When they saw that the gauze bag was getting thinner and thinner and thought that the time was almost up, the brother and sister called Sang Luo to come and see.
Sang Luo felt that it was about enough, so she removed the layers of stone slabs and boards and the square cloth that covered it. The brother and sister saw something that had a completely different texture from tofu, as if they were witnessing a miracle.
“Is this the sauce?”
“Is this delicious?”
Sang Luo smiled: "This is white dried meat, not dried meat in sauce."
After handing over the task of removing the square cloth to Chen Ning, Sang Luo called Chen An to help light the fire, took out the marinade ingredients bought in the county during the day, and began to prepare the marinade.
Chen An had eaten braised meat before, and knew how delicious it was. His eyes lit up when he saw this: "Sister-in-law, does this sauce taste the same as braised meat?"
“The scent will be somewhat similar, but it won’t be the same.”
Meat is meat, and dried sauce cannot really replace it.
“But it’s delicious.”
Under the cover of night, a very tempting aroma began to waft from the kitchen where several people were, to the small courtyard, and then to the sky above the courtyard. However, they lived far away, and the villagers could not smell it, so only Shen An and Shen Ning were tempted.
Chen Ning took off the square cloth, and pieces of white dried tofu were hung on the bottom plate to dry. They were put into the pot to stew after the marinade was ready.
One pot couldn't hold so much, so while the first batch was stewing, Sang Luo asked Chen Ning to light up another stove and control the fire to a low level, just slightly stronger than charcoal fire.
The bamboo strips that had been washed and dried in the afternoon came in handy. Sang Luo brought them in and arranged them on the stove. When the first batch of dried bean curd was stewed well, Sang Luo scooped them up and spread them flat on the bamboo strips placed on the stove top, baking them over a low fire.
The taste of dried meat in sauce depends on two factors: first, the braising process, and second, the baking temperature.
We worked until late at night and finally finished this thing.
The brother and sister looked at the baked dried bean curd with great curiosity and were eager to try a piece.
Sang Luo was amused. It was cooked anyway, so she cut a little for the brother and sister and said with a smile, "Try it if you want, but it tastes better when fried with garlic sprouts."
Chen An smiled: "We are just curious, sister-in-law, our family has a new way to make a living, right?"
It's just one more way to make a living.
Sang Luo nodded.
Shen Ning said, "This is much more tiring than making tofu, and it is pressed harder, more materials are needed, and it also needs to be marinated with spices. How can this be sold?"
That's a good question.
Sang Luo calculated the cost and said, "We haven't weighed it yet, so let's just sell it by the piece. The cost of this thing is much higher than tofu, and the price of rice has risen so much now. I think we can't make it too cheap."
At this point, he paused for a moment and said, "If we give you aunts ten yuan, it will be fifteen cents, and we can sell it at two cents a piece at the market."
I can make five cents for every ten pieces I sell, which sounds like the same as selling tofu, but in fact, for most people, one piece of tofu is enough for a plate, but the same is not true for dried bean curd. Those who are more frugal can make a plate of two or three pieces with some garlic sprouts, and those who are more generous and have more people can make a plate of four or five pieces by cutting them up and stir-frying them.
But no matter whether you buy it for two or three yuan or four or five yuan, the sales volume of this dried bean curd is definitely larger than that of tofu.
For the residents of the county, spending four, six, or eight cents on a dish was a bit of a luxury, but nearly half of the families could afford it and could afford it often.
Thinking of this, Sang Luo felt relieved: "It's settled. This thing is too labor-intensive to make. If we sell it cheaply, the effort we put in is not worth it. Our craftsmanship and time and energy are also costs."
When Shen Ning heard that he could get fifteen cents for just delivering ten pieces of dried tofu, his eyes lit up.
"Two boards cost one hundred and twenty-eight yuan! We ate one of them just now..." He felt heartbroken when he said this, and continued to mutter: "One hundred and twenty-seven yuan, one hundred and twenty-seven yuan..."
"Sister-in-law, how much is one hundred and twenty-seven dollars?"
Shen An also calculated silently on the side. When he heard his sister's question, he said, "In decimal system, one hundred and twenty yuan is twelve tens, twelve tens..."
Finished, still doesn’t count.
He was a little confused. The brother and sister looked at each other and then looked at Sang Luo together.
Sang Luo: ...
It seems that in addition to writing, math classes also need to be arranged. Great, how about teaching the multiplication table before going to bed at night?
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