Dangkang ham, coral salt (1) In ancient times, there was the story of Butcher Ding dissecting an ox...
Hearing what Wu Jianing said, Sangye was still unaware of what had happened, but Wu Huansheng and Mu An rushed over with expressions of surprise.
"Don't be afraid, Ningning, that's your little spirit talking to you," Mu An comforted her with a smile. "Respond to it in your mind."
Encouraged by her parents, Wu Jianing mobilized her spiritual power for the first time to try to communicate with Xiao Dangkang. Spiritual beings and their masters are often in perfect harmony, and both can accurately understand each other's meaning. In this era, spiritual beings are humanity's first soulmates.
When Uja Ning was born, the sound of her voice knew she was a guide. She was overjoyed.
Although the Sentinels are powerful, almost every Sentinel suffers from some degree of mental distress.
Guides are different. Guides have a very stable mental world. Few of them will have mental breakdowns. Under the Empire's preferential policies towards guides, most of them will live a peaceful and smooth life.
Three hours later, Wu Jianing's legs and feet had fully grown back. The doctors watching were amazed, their eyes also fixed on the remaining snakehead tofu soup and noodles.
Sangye could only pretend not to see it; he couldn't very well let someone eat leftovers.
Wu Jianing looked at her new legs and feet with curiosity, like a puppy that had just discovered it had a tail. Her little toes wiggled and occasionally lifted up a few times before putting them down heavily.
She was eager to get out of bed and walk, but Wu Huansheng and the others wouldn't allow it and kept dissuading her.
Just as the ward was filled with joy and noise, Sangye instructed the robot to clean up the leftovers and then walked out leisurely, like a chivalrous hero who did good deeds without leaving his name.
*
Arrange for the robot to return to the kitchen and clean up the dishes.
Kuwano stared blankly at the leftover food that was about to turn into swill.
What should be done with kitchen scraps here?
The Shifangwu Restaurant didn't have this worry; the leftovers in the restaurant weren't even enough to feed the livestock, so there wouldn't be any leftovers.
The food made from these spiritual plants and beasts, swill is just a collective term; it doesn't actually produce the rotten, fishy smell that mortals do.
How to deal with kitchen waste was indeed a blind spot for her.
But perhaps it can be ground up together with bone meal and used as fertilizer?
In the interstellar age, technological advancements are sometimes more effective than their magical arts.
So she asked the robot, "Can you break these into pieces? The smaller the better, like powder."
The robot remained silent, but a pair of arms resembling circular saws emerged from its side body.
It looks like it can.
Sangye stepped aside and watched as the robot crushed the most difficult-to-process bones, such as the pork bones that had lost their spiritual energy, in a few strokes, followed by the leftovers, such as fish bones, fish heads, and noodles.
It will automatically clean your arms after you're done.
Sangye gave a thumbs up: "What if you can't handle it all?"
The robot's chest display screen suddenly lit up, and a line of text appeared. Sangye leaned closer and said, "The base has a total of 2,700 domestic service robots."
Oh, as long as there are enough robots, there won't be any leftovers that can't be processed.
Sangye was satisfied and let the robot wash the dishes. After training it a few times in front of the robot last time, it had mastered the skill. Even if it fell, it wouldn't be a problem. Bowls from the interstellar era can't be broken.
She dragged the bucket of "fertilizer" into the garden. Each robot was equipped with a video surveillance function, but the authority to turn it off was not in Sangye's hands. She could order the robot to leave but could not turn off the surveillance.
So she decided to fertilize the plants herself.
She learned this skill from a senior female disciple who enjoyed helping humans build villages and start planting. She brought back the skill of composting, but it had no use in the Shifangwu spiritual vein. Unexpectedly, it came in handy here.
If you want to turn regular kitchen scraps into fertilizer, you have to pour them into a dug cellar, throw in yeast, and let them ferment in the sealed underground environment before you can use them. They smell terrible, but they are quite effective.
Because of the nature of the ingredients, Shifangwu doesn't need to go through this disgusting process. It just needs to be crushed into powder and buried in the ground. The soil, which contains spiritual energy, will automatically decompose it.
When she arrived at the soil that had just been filled in yesterday, she wondered if it was just her imagination, but the soil seemed to have risen a little.
With a hint of doubt, Sangye quickly sprinkled the fertilizer powder into the soil. After sprinkling it, he loosened the soil with his homemade hoe to help the fertilizer mix quickly.
They then used two long iron rods to tamp the soil in the field, roughly dividing it into four sections.
Then she took out a handful of seeds.
She had already decided what to plant on her way back.
There aren't many things that can be grown in her cave right now. Because of the high yield, she naturally prioritizes growing the fruits, vegetables, rice, and flour that consume the most food, otherwise she would be wasting a harvest season.
She wants to grow various kinds of chili peppers, black pepper, fennel, star anise, and other seasoning crops.
These are not worth planting in the cave, as the one-time yield is too large.
It would be suitable to plant it in this garden, which would be a good opportunity to test whether the soil from the cave can be used in the outside world.
The weather on this planet seems quite unpredictable, especially the black sandstorm that left a deep impression on Kuwano that day. But the base has a protective shield that maintains a constant temperature regardless of temperature changes, and even regularly raises an artificial sun from eight in the morning to five in the afternoon to supplement brightness and temperature.
It's quite suitable for these ancestors who love warmth.
There's no need to worry about the order or quantity of sowing; just scatter the mulberry leaves anywhere, as the soil has the ability to self-regulate.
As the seeds were sown, the mulberry fields seemed to already smell the spiciness of millet peppers, the numbing sensation of Sichuan peppercorns, and the pungency of black pepper. The first batch of green peppercorns can be harvested and ground into black pepper; some can be left to grow into red berries and then picked, soaked in water, and further processed to become white pepper.
Different stages of life yield different fruits.
Black pepper with salt is good for marinating steak. White pepper is good for flavoring soups.
After finishing all this, Sangye patted the dirt off his hands and put the hoe back in the storage room behind the kitchen.
The robot has finished washing the dishes and is now in standby mode next to the charging port in the storage room. It will wake up and come running whenever Sangye calls it.
After tidying up a bit, Sangye prepared to make a ham.
Kuwano felt that she would probably never have the chance to get Dangkang meat again in her life, so she wanted to cure one of the hind legs into ham, so that she could cut off a few slices whenever she wanted to eat it. Whether it was stewing, making soup noodles, or adding it to hot pot, it would blend in very well.
After the age of 150, Dang Kang's legs have four joints, which can support a huge amount of pork weight, with each leg weighing over 200 kilograms.
A single marinated leg can last for a long time, since there aren't many people eating here.
This is what Kuwano was thinking at that moment.
The curing of ham is extremely laborious and time-consuming. It involves adding salt six times, with varying intervals between each addition, and finally, it undergoes two to three months of high-temperature drying and one to two months of resting and turning. In a purely natural environment, curing a single ham can take about a year. Therefore, ham is quite expensive in the general public.
Shifangwu actually has its own little tricks for dealing with this.
The numerous tedious salting processes before hanging the ham to dry are simply to draw out the moisture from the ham, which is closely related to the precision of the salt used.
In the era in which Sangye lived, customs and habits varied greatly from country to country. The only thing they had in common was that salt, iron, tea, and horses were all state-monopolized industries. The first three were related to people's livelihoods, while the latter had strategic significance.
Most of the salt that ordinary people use is coarse salt, and they need to process it themselves to extract fine salt for daily cooking. However, no one is willing to use fine salt to cure ham, no matter how big the processing plant is.
However, the salt used in Shifangwu does not come from any lakes or seas; their salt is produced by a spiritual plant called Coral Beast.
Coral salt is delicious and contains a unique marine flavor; it is also highly concentrated, so a fingernail-sized amount of coral salt is enough for a large pot of soup.
Coral beasts are extremely demanding in their living environment. They live by absorbing spiritual energy and have always lived only near spiritual veins rich in spiritual energy. Once they lose spiritual energy, they will die in no time.
In other words, as long as there is enough spiritual energy to nourish it, the coral beast can continuously produce coral salt of extremely high purity.
Sangye dug a small pond under his paulownia tree, raised four or five coral beasts, threw in a piece of chalcedony, and had the paulownia tree occasionally infuse them with spiritual energy. They then worked diligently to produce coral salt.
When the water surface is covered with insoluble coral salt, the sycamore tree uses its leaves to scoop it up, let it sit, drain the water, and collect twenty leaves before knocking on Sangye's door to call her in to pack them up and take them away.
Using this method to extract water not only reduces the number of steps but also cuts the time in half.
Local shops or banks would take advantage of the height of summer to hang hams to dry quickly in the high temperatures.
Shifangwu doesn't need them; they support the outer sect fire-type disciples.
They built a stone house about five feet off the ground, with ventilation on two sides and the other four sides heated by fire continuously for a week.
The stone house creates a dry, well-ventilated environment, much like a waterless steamer. The stone itself also has insulating properties, effectively preventing the ham from burning.
Ham only needs a week to be fully cured.
Although there are no stone houses or fire-wielding disciples here, there is surprisingly a walk-in oven with a temperature that can be set to 40 degrees Celsius or heated to 300 degrees Celsius. It's perfect for hanging hams to dry.
In ancient times, this would have been a torture device.
Kuwano placed the huge Dangkang pork hind leg on the processing table. Two of the four joints of the Dangkang were parallel, and although it had a lot of meat, it was only about the length of Kuwano's arm.
There's a knives to remove the bones from a Dangkang pig; a regular boning knife is all you need.
Slicing through the thick, fatty skin, the meat slid to either side under gravity, but due to the rich fat and the elasticity of the meat, it surprisingly wobbled twice. The tip of the knife quickly pierced the central joint bone, and with a flick and pull along the direction of the joint bone, the front half was removed as if it were a lock.
In ancient times, there was the butcher Ding who skillfully dissected an ox; today, there is the butcher Sang Ye who skillfully dissectes a pig.
The same method was used on the other three joints, and the entire Dangkang pig leg was then divided into four appropriately sized parts.
Kuwano pulled out a spray gun.
A note from the author:
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The weight of the ham and the coral salt are artistic interpretations, after all, they are both fantastical creatures.
Has anyone noticed I changed my cover photo? [Thumbs up][Thumbs up][Thumbs up]
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