Chapter 150: Making Zongzi, T Making Qingtuan (multiple pictures)
The first step is to make rice dumplings.
Jiangning prepared to make two kinds of rice dumplings, one is the southern alkaline rice dumpling, and the other is the local bacon rice dumpling.
The alkaline rice dumplings in the south are made with brown and yellow leopard-patterned bamboo leaves.
This type of leaf is larger and stronger.
It is the bamboo shoots that fall off from the roots after they grow into bamboo.
There are a lot of bamboos on the nearby mountains, so Jiang Ning picked up some when he went out earlier.
Soak them in water first, then wash them one by one.
The glutinous rice needed for the rice dumplings was naturally harvested by Jiang Ning from the Lingbao space.
Each grain of glutinous rice is round and crystal clear.
Soak in cold water the night before.
After soaking for a long time, the glutinous rice absorbs water, becomes plumper, and its color turns off-white.
After pouring out the excess water, you can add alkali powder.
However, alkali powder was rare in this era, and alkali blocks were more commonly used.
Jiang Ning broke the alkali into small pieces and put them in a small bowl.
Add water and the alkali block will quickly begin to melt.
Then add the melted alkaline water to the glutinous rice according to the ratio of glutinous rice.
Use your hands to mix the glutinous rice and reduced water evenly.
The alkaline water in the rice dumplings can promote the gelatinization of glutinous rice starch, making the taste softer, more chewy and also making the rice dumplings more firm.
After a while.
After coming into contact with alkaline water, glutinous rice will lose its off-white color and become slightly yellow.
Just like that, the glutinous rice is ready.
Jiang Ning picked up the washed bamboo leaves, overlapped two of them, and placed them in the palm of his hand.
Hold the other end of the bamboo leaf in your other hand.
Then with a slight turn of the wrist, an inverted cone shape appeared.
Next, you can put the glutinous rice into the bamboo leaf cone.
Press carefully to make sure there is no hollow space inside.
The glutinous rice bowl cannot be too full, otherwise the rice will fall out.
Next step.
That is, press the overlapping leaves downwards to seal the cone.
This step is the most difficult in the process of making zongzi.
The key to whether you can make a beautiful square rice dumpling lies in this step.
But for Jiang Ning, it was just a piece of cake.
After breaking off the bamboo leaf, she pressed down with the thumb of her right hand and twisted her left hand, and a beautiful triangle appeared on the top.
Finally, take a piece of cotton thread, wrap it around and tie it tightly.
A beautiful water-reduced rice dumpling is ready.
The good-looking square-cornered rice dumpling can stand steadily on a horizontal surface.
And no matter from which angle you look at it, it looks like three corners connected to form a standard isosceles triangle.
What Jiang Ning did was just so perfect.
She wrapped more than thirty alkaline water dumplings in one breath and used up all the bamboo leaves she had prepared.
Immediately following.
It’s time to start making bacon dumplings.
This time, Jiang Ning no longer used the brown and yellow leopard-print leaves, but green fresh raw rice dumplings leaves. ⊿
Still soak in water and wash it clean.
Stack the two long pieces together to increase the width, so that the rice dumplings can be wrapped bigger.
The glutinous rice needed for bacon rice dumplings does not need to be added with alkaline water, just simply soak it in water.
The way of wrapping zongzi is no longer the previous conical or square shape.
It is a round bundling method.
First add glutinous rice into the raw rice leaves, and then place a piece of bacon with fat and lean texture in the center.
Then add some glutinous rice to cover the bacon.
Fold the front and back ends of the bamboo leaves in half and cover the left and right sides like wrapping a small pillow, and the round bacon rice dumpling will be formed.
Then use white cotton rope to wrap the dumplings together in circles.
Perfect~
This method of making rice dumplings is simpler and more convenient, and you can learn it just by watching a few times.
Jiangning’s packages are also faster.
In a short while, more than thirty large rice dumplings were ready.
Next is to boil water.
Divide into two pots.
Cook one pot of alkaline water dumplings and one pot of bacon dumplings.
As long as the water doesn’t dry up, you can have a delicious meal.
You can also wrap many other things in zongzi and add them inside.
For example, salted egg yolk, pork belly, red bean paste...
Jiangning doesn’t have enough time, otherwise I would like to do something.
While the rice dumplings were being cooked, Jiang Ning had already started making green rice dumplings.
The most important raw material for Qingtuan is mugwort.
Mugwort is a seasonal weed that is only available during the Qingming Festival.
Mugwort has a very distinctive look. From the front, the leaves are green, but from the back, they reflect a layer of silver.
Moreover, mugwort has a special smell, making it a wild vegetable that is difficult to mistake.
The mugwort in Jiangning is not picked from the mountains.
Instead, they dug up some seedlings, planted them in the Lingbao space, and carried out large-scale cultivation and reproduction, which is how they increased.
The mugwort taken out from the Lingbao space is clean and does not even need to be washed.
Put the cleaned mugwort into hot water and boil it over high heat.
After blanching, take the mugwort out of the water and squeeze out the moisture.
The mugwort that originally seemed to be a lot will become clumps.
The next step is to crush the mugwort, preferably into a paste.
There are no modern machines in Jiangning, so people first cut the mugwort into powder with a knife, and then chop it up carefully.
Purely manual operation.
Now that Qin Jiulie is not around, there is no one to help her, so she can only keep working hard.
Once the mugwort mud is ready, you can mix it with glutinous rice.
Add water and seasoning.
Knead into a green dough.
To make green rice balls, you don't need to knead the dough like you do with steamed buns and dumplings. Just form it into a ball, beat it a few times and make sure it will not fall apart, then you can shape it.
Then divide the large ball of dough into small doughs of even size, about 40g in weight.
Cover the dough with a wet white cloth.
And then.
These were the two fillings that Jiang Ning had prepared long ago.
One is winter bamboo shoots and snow vegetables, a salty green dumpling.
This is a very common way of eating among people in the areas around Shanghai.
Since Grandma Qin likes to eat pickled plums and bamboo shoots, she must also like to eat winter bamboo shoots and snow vegetables.
The other one is sesame filling.
After the sesame seeds are blanched, crush them, add white sugar, and mix them together to make sweet green dumplings.
After the green rice dumplings are cooked, the white sugar inside will melt, and the shiny sugar juice will wrap the sesame seeds, and the aroma of sesame seeds will be perfectly blended in it.
It is suitable for all ages, and both men and women like it.
Making Qingtuan is also simpler than making buns. Flatten the small dough into a round shape, put the filling in the middle, and then wrap it up.
Making glutinous rice balls is one way.
Placed in both hands
Rub it left and right in the palm of your hand until it becomes a ball, and it's done easily.
One by one, oval-shaped green balls appeared from Jiang Ning's nimble hands as if by magic.
After a while.
It's a full table.
After finishing all this, the rice dumplings are cooked and can be taken out of the big iron pot and set aside to cool.
Immediately following.
Just put the green rice dumplings in hot water and steam them.
On this day, Jiang Ning was busy from noon until eight or nine o'clock in the evening, and the fire was always burning in the small kitchen.
That slender figure was always busy.
Even the green rice dumplings were steamed in the end.
Jiang Ning still couldn't stop, there was one extremely important step left -
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