Chapter 133

There seemed to be a lot of rain at the end of March.

When I woke up, the mist outside the window was hazy, and water was dripping from the eaves.

Jiang Yanyi walked to the window and looked at the grass and trees in the courtyard that were dyed with a layer of new green by the rain. The ripples of a dream that stirred up in my heart faded away, and a faint sadness melted from my eyes.

She stretched out her hand to catch the raindrops dripping from the eaves. The water drops hit the palm of her hand, and the coolness seemed to spread to the bottom of her heart.

"Let's hope that Yuzhou will send good news soon."

Her voice was so light that it sounded like a sigh.

It was still early, and when Jiang Yanyi walked out of the door, she found that there was no movement in the room of Madam An Shao next door. She was probably still sleeping. When she walked to the front yard, she could hear Chu Yan reading aloud in his room.

She stood under the eaves and listened quietly for a while before turning back to the kitchen.

Mrs. Liu had already started a fire, and the pot was boiling water for washing. When she saw Jiang Yanyi, she was quite surprised: "Why do you get up so early? Why don't you sleep a little longer?"

Jiang Yanyi used a wooden basin to get some water to wash the noodles, and said, "I'm used to it."

The business was getting bigger and bigger. She bought a lot of shops one after another, and the noodle shops were also opened in other states. She was dazzled by the various account books every day.

During the day, she had to inspect the shops everywhere. Whenever there was a banquet, she had to socialize with people from the Chamber of Commerce. She had to stay up late at night to check the accounts. She could not sleep peacefully until every account was in balance.

Since she and Feng Shuo got engaged, her identity as the future princess made others jealous of her in public, but the words they made up behind her back were still as unpleasant as they could be.

Jiang Yanyi had heard such remarks several times when she was out on business, such as she just had a seductive face and was good in bed, which was why she made Feng Shuo so infatuated.

There were also voices among the people who felt sorry for the county lord of Xing'an Marquis, saying that if Feng Shuo married a princess who could go to the battlefield, he would have no worries about conquering the world. On the other hand, she is a scoundrel with a heart full of calculations. I'm afraid that the business can be so big because Feng Shuo used his private power to help her.

When the private school was established and Jiang Yanyi advocated that girls could also go to school, there were still many women in the community who cursed her, saying that she had bad intentions and wanted to ruin the reputation of those girls. After all, how could girls go to school in the academy with men.

Having heard too many vicious remarks, Jiang Yanyi didn't care. She just thought it was pathetic.

This era put a heavy yoke on women. When others want to break the yoke on them, they will retaliate wildly, as if wearing that yoke can keep their chastity and make men feel satisfied when they choose them like goods.

And they are proud of it, and spend their whole lives studying how to put this heavy yoke firmly on their daughters.

As for those women who broke the yoke, they would rack their brains to point fingers, despise and spit on them, as if this would make them appear chaste and noble.

Jiang Yanyi never resented it. She knew clearly that the things that had been deeply rooted in a dynasty for hundreds of years could not be changed overnight or with a few words.

But many times she felt deeply sad and powerless. Did she say that those ignorant women were vicious? They didn't even realize that they were wrong.

Jiang Yanyi could refute those curses one by one, but she could refute hundreds or thousands of people, but not tens of thousands.

She must stand higher, and when every word she says has weight, more people will hear her voice, and she will be able to change the fate of most women in this era.

After Jiang Yanyi finished cleaning the noodles and turned to look at the snails that had spit out the sand, she found a box of red date and brown sugar steamed cake on the table beside her, and asked Mrs. Liu: "Did someone give this to you?"

Mrs. Liu smiled and said: "The village chief's wife brought it early in the morning, saying that she was thanking you for sending people to the village to collect snails."

The steamed cake was mixed with brown sugar, showing a light brown-red color. It smelled not only of the unique fragrance of glutinous rice, but also of the sweetness of brown sugar.

Jiang Yanyi picked up a piece and put it in his mouth to taste it. The steamed cake was sweet but not greasy, glutinous but not sticky, and the red dates were pitted and steamed soft. It should be because glutinous rice wine was added when kneading the dough. A light aroma of wine infused the steamed cake with soul.

Jiang Yanyi nodded in appreciation: "We had snail noodles and steamed cake this morning."

Mrs. Liu had never heard of using snails to cook vermicelli, and hesitated: "Boss, these snails are better fried."

"Fry them at noon." Jiang Yanyi picked up a snail, brushed it clean with a soft brush, and cut off the snail tail with scissors. The dirty inside of the snail is at the tail, so it must be cleaned before eating.

This snail has been soaked in clean water for a day and a night, and the water has been changed several times in the middle. Sesame oil has also been added, and the sand is spit out very cleanly.

Seeing this, Mrs. Liu came over to help. She had been doing farm work for many years, so her hands were stronger than Jiang Yanyi's, and it was not difficult for her to cut the snail tail.

Jiang Yanyi went to make the soup.

The essence of snail noodles is almost entirely in the soup. After blanching the pork bones and chicken racks, she added water to the pot again, put in a few slices of ginger, added a spoonful of rice wine, and threw in a knot of scallions.

After the snails were processed, they were blanched in cold water, and scallions, ginger, and cooking wine were added to remove the fishy smell. After the water boiled, they were boiled for another half a minute and then picked up. The snail shells were basically cooked off.

The smell of snail noodles does not come from the snails, but from the sour bamboo shoots.

Jiang Yanyi used the winter bamboo shoots that Mrs. Chen gave her during the Chinese New Year. When she opened the lid of the pickle pot, the stench was so strong that it sometimes spread to the front yard. Chu Yangui had to send Chu Zhong to ask if something had happened in the kitchen.

She washed the soaked bamboo shoots and cut them into strips. She also soaked a lot of peppers harvested before the New Year, but she only soaked them after removing the seeds. The seeds have now become pepper seedlings in the field.

She chopped the pickled peppers, diced the sour cowpeas and sour radishes, and shredded the soaked black fungus.

Before frying the ingredients, Jiang Yanyi first refined the scallion oil, and heated half of the scallion oil and half of the lard in the pot. Without putting anything in the pot, the smell of the oil rising with the heat was full of the aroma of scallions.

The smell became even stronger after adding the ginger and garlic, and then adding the chili peppers to make red oil, pouring in the sour bamboo shoots and stir-frying, followed by adding star anise, cinnamon, angelica, perilla and more than ten other spices, and frying until they were fragrant, and then pouring the blanched snails in and continuing to fry.

Mrs. Liu was watching the fire behind the stove, smelling the sizzling aroma in the pot, and she was confused for a while, thinking that Jiang Yanyi had just said that he would use snail noodles to make soup in the morning, but how come he was frying snails in the blink of an eye.

However, Mrs. Liu had heard of her boss's cooking skills. Even though she had tasted Jiang Yanyi's cooking yesterday, she still drooled when she smelled the aroma of fried snails in the pot this morning, praising him: "How come the same spices are so delicious when used by my boss!"

Jiang Yanyi said as he was frying the food: "The order of adding ingredients, the heat of frying ingredients, and the time of taking the food out of the pot are all very important. If there is any discrepancy in any step, the taste will always be different."

"That's right, boss." Mrs. Liu agreed with a smile.

After the snails were fried, the soup was poured into the pot to continue cooking. Jiang Yanyi fried peanuts and bean curd in another small pot. Bean

curd is made of tofu skin. Mrs. Liu heard that Jiang Yanyi and his group were coming to the manor, so she bought tofu in advance and also picked up a few sheets of bean curd skin.

After the oil temperature rises, turn to low heat. When the peanuts are poured in, there is a "hiss" sound in the pot, and small bubbles roll up above the oil layer. The color of the peanut skin gradually darkens. Jiang Yanyi pushes it with a spatula from time to time. When she thinks it's about time, she picks up the peanuts and continues to fry the yuba. When

making duck soup yesterday, Jiang Yanyi left the duck feet. She fried the duck feet twice with the remaining oil in the pot, and then put them into the snail soup to cook together. She also added some sugar to enhance the flavor.

The halved eggs were halved last night, so just put them into the soup and cook together.

If you want to make snail noodles refreshing and smooth, you have to use aged rice. The old noodle masters are good at making noodles, and the vermicelli that Jiang Yanyi brought to Zhuangzi was made by the noodle masters.

Soaking in cold water can preserve the elasticity of rice noodles to the greatest extent. Put the soaked vermicelli directly into the pot with clean water, and put it into a bowl after it is soft. Pour the soup on it, put a few blanched and dried vegetable leaves on it, put the cut salted eggs on it, and then put in the soft and fragrant duck feet, garnish with sour cowpeas, sour bamboo shoots, fried peanuts, bean curd, and a few pieces of coriander.

Jiang Yanyi was so greedy that she wanted to take a bite of the noodles right away, but Mrs. Liu, who was helping her, seemed to be hesitant to speak.

The noodles looked delicious, but why did they smell so strange?

She was embarrassed to say that Jiang Yanyi's cooking was not good, and when Jiang Yanyi urged her to send it to Chu Yangui and Chen Guogong, she hesitated and said, "This... Boss, do you really want to send it?"

Jiang Yanyi nodded: "Send it quickly, otherwise it will get cold in a while."

Then she seemed to think of something and said, "If they are not used to it, you can make them a bowl of noodles and I will send it to Madam An Shao."

Mrs. Liu thought that Jiang Yanyi also realized that she had ruined the noodles, and she didn't want to criticize Jiang Yanyi, so she quickly agreed.

When the snail noodles were delivered to Chu Yangui and Chen Guogong's residence, Chu Yangui did not say anything, but Chen Guogong pinched his nose and asked: "What is this? Why does it smell so bad?"

Mrs. Liu smiled awkwardly: "The boss got up early in the morning and cooked the noodles with the soup made from snails. If you two are not used to it, the boss specifically asked me to go to the kitchen to cook some noodles."

When Chu Yangui heard that it was made by Jiang Yanyi himself, he said: "Bring it here."

A bowl of noodles has a lot of small ingredients, the soup is bright red, but the oil floating on the surface is not heavy. It looks delicious, but it smells a bit hard to swallow.

Chu Yangui hesitated for a while, and still picked up a piece of bean curd that was soaked in soup and softened to eat.

He frowned with a rather strange expression. After eating the bean curd sheets, he put down his chopsticks, scooped a spoonful of soup with a spoon and drank it. After tasting it carefully, he said, "It's very fresh and sweet, and the sour and spicy taste is very appetizing."

Since he said so, Duke Chen also wanted to try it. He ate the duck feet first. After eating it, his eyes lit up and he exclaimed, "It tastes good!"

The duck feet that were fried and then stewed had a soft skin and were very easy to absorb the flavor. You almost didn't need to chew them. With a touch of the tip of the tongue, the meat was in your mouth, and it had a very gelatinous texture.

That afternoon, the people from Ruyi Building rented a horse-drawn carriage to come to the village to collect snails. The next day, the snail noodles, which smelled bad but tasted delicious like stinky tofu, had a special small area in Ruyi Building. The business was slow at first, but later people flocked to eat snail noodles.

The people in the village also made a lot of money by selling snails, and they were all grateful to Jiang Yanyi.

Madam An originally planned to stay for two days and then go back to the An family, but Jiang Yanyi's cooking was so delicious that sometimes when Jiang Yanyi was checking the accounts, Madam An could learn a lot from him, and she gradually forgot about going home.

So when An Yongyuan came to pick her up in person, he found that Madam An had gained weight compared to before she left home, and he was stunned.