Chapter 81080. A Fire in Winter
December.
The first snow in Qingmi County fell lightly, covering the entire county with a layer of white gauze, making the plants look even greener.
The temperature hovered around zero.
The peppers in Lei Li and Zhou Yi's yards no longer bore fruit and slowly withered and died.
However, Zhou Yi planted a lot, and he could make a lot of chili sauce from dried chilies. When the chilies can be harvested next year, he won’t have to worry about running out of them.
——As long as he doesn’t sell too many spicy dishes in the store.
The big river in the port was not frozen.
But the number of returning ships has become smaller and smaller, and most of the workers have left. Only a small number of them, who want to earn every penny, will come to the port every day to look for work.
The store is deserted.
Lei Li and Zhou Yi closed the shop after celebrating the full moon of Zhu Zhuer's child Zhu Shuo, bought a lot of New Year's goods, hired an ox cart, and took all the chili sauce, chili powder and dried chilies back to the village.
Lei Dashan and Liu Ye'er received the letter a day in advance, cleaned Lei Li and Zhou Yi's room, laid out mattresses made of old quilts, and put new quilts on them.
Liu Ye'er also roasted the quilt by the fire all morning, making it warm, soft and thick. When Lei Li and Zhou Yi come back, if they are tired, they can take a nap to warm themselves up.
There are no small pots or stoves at home.
If you want to warm yourself by the fire, you can just make a fire and burn firewood in the main room. If you want to boil water, you can only use the large kettle on the stove. It is convenient to boil water for bathing, but you cannot use it whenever you want.
Because it is a waste of fire to keep the water temperature burning.
When Zhou Yi passed by the town market, he specially bought two small pots and a stove, as well as a big carp, some meat, winter melon, wild vegetables, mushrooms and tofu.
After arriving home.
Zhou Yi washed the vegetables, cut the fish and meat, marinated the fish, moved the roasting fire to a stove, set up a small pot, and boiled water.
Then stir-fry the fish bones, add winter melon, and cook a pot of thick white soup. Then remove the fish bones and cooked winter melon, add the fish fillets, and some wild vegetables and mushrooms.
The firewood crackled under the small pot.
The soup of the fish bone hotpot is gurgling.
The fish fillets and wild vegetables were flipped up from the bottom by the boiling milky white soup. The fresh and sweet aroma filled the whole house, and the heat from the firewood drove away the cold air.
I poured another bowl, blew it to cool it down, took a sip, and my stomach and whole body felt warm.
“It’s really delicious…”
Willow Leaf sighed.
Because the fish bones have been marinated in advance, the soup is not fishy at all. It is full of the freshness of the fish bones and the sweetness of the winter melon. Soak the hot white rice in it, and it is delicious even without any side dishes.
"This stove is great for both warming yourself by the fire and cooking."
Lei Dashan said this and took two more sips. Seeing Zhou Yi scooping fish fillets for him, he even moved the bowl closer and lowered the rim.
"I made the sauce."
Zhou Yi was dividing the fish fillets between Lei Li and Liu Ye'er while saying, "This dish has garlic chili sauce with soy sauce, lard, vinegar, and chopped green onions. This dish has chili powder, salt, crushed peanuts, and white sesame seeds. This is crushed peanuts, sesame paste, fermented bean curd, soy sauce, vinegar, oil, and chopped green onions."
"There's also minced garlic, chopped green onions, soy sauce, and salt. Mother and Lei Li don't like spicy food, so they can dip them in this."
"I only added a little chili to the first two dishes, so you can try the flavor. If you find the spiciness too much, I've prepared lemonade, with or without ice."
The local lemons here are in season from April to November. When Zhou Yi is not at home, he asks Liu Yeer to pick the local lemons, cut them and dry them into dried lemon slices.
But these glasses of lemonade are filled with fresh lemon slices, the green color is in the bamboo tube cup, and there is unmelted rock sugar at the bottom, which looks quite elegant and beautiful.
"Are there any fresh lemons now?"
Lei Li tried dipping the fish fillets in all three sauces. All three were quite to his liking, but he still felt that it tasted best without any sauce.
The fish fillet is the most delicious when eaten alone.
“It’s gone now.”
Zhou Yi said, "But I asked my mother to pick some last month. Now that the weather is cold, the lemons won't spoil easily, so they should be able to be kept for more than a month."
"When the fresh ones are gone, soak them in dried lemon slices. Didn't the beekeeper harvest several boxes of honey? Honey lemonade is also delicious. Drink it warm and it's good for your stomach."
"Then you make me some tomorrow."
"good."
Zhou Yi nodded, echoing Lei Li's words, and then asked, "We have taro at home, and Zhu Zhuer also gave me a water bag of goat's milk. Can I make you some goat's milk taro balls later?"
After Zhu Zhuer gave birth to a child, the Chinese dangshen and crucian carp were not enough to increase her milk production, so Zhu Qingshan bought a ewe that had just given birth as a snack for the baby Zhu Shuo.
Zhu Zhuer knew that Lei Li liked sweet food, so she squeezed a water bag of goat milk for him.
——Although Zhu Zhuer thinks goat milk is sweet, Lei Li thinks it is not sweet.
Zhou Yi drank a little and felt... It was neither sweet nor not sweet. Anyway, it tasted very good, delicate and smooth, and had a different flavor from milk.
"want."
Lei Li agreed first, then asked, "Is this sweet? How is it made? Is it delicious?"
"It's steamed taro, added a little goat's milk, a little sweet potato starch and sugar, mashed into a paste, then added glutinous rice flour and kneaded together, then rolled into small balls... like this."
Zhou Yi demonstrated with his hands, "Wrap it with a layer of glutinous rice flour, pour in goat's milk, add a little honey and eat it together. It's sweet and sticky."
"Sounds delicious."
Lei Li became interested. Seeing how much he liked taro, he deliberately asked him, "Besides taro balls, what other sweet foods can you make with taro?"
"a lot of."
Zhou Yi said, "For example, taro paste purple rice cakes, taro paste cakes, egg yolk taro paste pie, taro paste mochi, taro paste egg tarts, taro paste pudding, taro paste sago, taro paste cake..."
"But there are some things we can't make because we don't have the corresponding ingredients or oven..."
etc.
Zhou Yi suddenly had an idea.
——Since an oven is a sealed high-temperature baking container, wouldn’t it be enough to make an “oven” with yellow mud?
It’s like roasting sweet potatoes in the summer, but that one is made of lumps of earth, and this one is like a small earth fort.
Zhou Yi's enthusiasm instantly soared, and he said to Lei Li eagerly, "I'll try to make an oven tomorrow and see if I can bake bread for you."
—
Zhou Yi is very proactive.
He said he would make an oven tomorrow, so he drew the design with charcoal strips tonight. The next morning, he disappeared, neither in bed nor at home.
There is basically no farm work in winter.
Lei Li didn't get up too early, around 8 o'clock in the morning. He didn't see Zhou Yi and was not as worried as before. He washed up slowly, drank the honey lemon water that Zhou Yi had left for him, and then had breakfast.
Breakfast is steamed taro, white porridge and radish belly.
Lei Li went to the yard for morning exercise and saw the residential land behind Zhou Yi's house. There was a lot of yellow mud, and there was a pile of fine soil and straw next to it.
"What are you doing?"
Lei Li walked over and saw that Zhou Yi's hands were covered in mud and there were spots of mud on his clothes.
"Make an oven."
Zhou Yi showed him the design he had drawn on red paper. The red paper was used to cut window decorations, but Zhou Yi couldn't find any other paper, so he just made do with this.
"Look, roll the mud into long strips and stack them up one by one. When the stack is this high, add clods of earth and continue stacking them into a semicircle."
"Leave two small holes for ventilation, a hole for storing things, and a door so it can be closed. When you bake it, light a fire and burn it until it's red hot, then spread the charcoal on both sides."
"Put the raw bread in, seal the door, and after a while, maybe half an hour or an hour, it will be ready to eat."
The design is clearly drawn.
Lei Li took a few glances, nodded, and understood. He imitated it and said, "Is it built like this?"
“Yes, yes…”
Zhou Yi nodded repeatedly, "But it may not succeed in one go, we can try more."
That's what I said.
With the two of them working together, the earthen fort was quickly completed. They lit a fire to dry it, observed the sealing and ventilation holes, and Zhou Yi decided to make a few loaves of bread to try.
There is flour at home.
Liu Ye'er used the flour to make buns. The buns she made were more resilient and chewy, not so soft. She felt that they were not easy to use, so she kept them in the kitchen.
Zhou Yi felt that it was like high-gluten flour, so he kneaded the dough and made a few raw breads, and put them into the newly built earthen oven to try.
The temperature of the earthen oven was uncertain, so for safety's sake, Zhou Yi opened it half an hour later, and immediately a fragrant aroma filled his nose.
The surface of the bread is golden, and the bottom is a bit hard and crispy. When you break it open, the inside is fragrant and soft, and it looks about 70% like modern oven-baked bread.
"Are you okay?"
Zhou Yi thought it was good, but he didn’t know if it would suit Lei Li’s taste.
"good."
Lei Li ate one in just a few bites. "It's different from steamed buns, it's crispy and fragrant, very delicious. I'll give two to my parents."
Liu Ye'er and Lei Dashan also found the food fresh and delicious, especially the bread when it was hot, which was very fragrant. They also suggested having bread for dinner.
This won't work.
Bread is a garnish, rice is the main dish.
Zhou Yi prepared another sumptuous meal in the evening, consolidating the status of white rice, and began to think about how to make bread in different ways.
Croissants, pumpkin buns, taro bread, sweet potato bread, red bean bread, scallion bread...
After making bread as breakfast dessert several times, Zhou Yi got a little tired of it. After all, he was not a foreigner and could not eat bread every day.
So he used the oven to roast the meat.
Large pieces of pork belly and whole chicken wings are marinated with ginger, garlic, soy sauce, peppercorns, etc., and then roasted until they are sizzling, crispy and fragrant. The aroma is so strong as soon as you open the earthen oven.
Lei Li's house has been filled with an alluring fragrance these days, so fragrant that the neighbors can't sleep, and the biting cold wind can't stop them from coming to the house.
Be reserved and polite, bring over your homemade delicious food, and then ask in a roundabout way, "Wow, why does your house smell so good?"
Impolite, come to the door with bare hands, squeeze in while chatting, "What delicious food have you made? Let me try it..."
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