amaotonovel Chapter 225 Sweet Potato Vermicelli
Chapter 225 Sweet Potato Vermicelli
Good weather becomes increasingly rare as the year draws to a close. Xia Qingyue did not hold out much hope that the sun would come out in the next two days.
The slaughtered chickens, ducks and rabbits will be marinated for another day. If there is no sun tomorrow, they will be hung above the stove in the kitchen and some cypress branches will be burned to make bacon.
After breakfast, the two little ones curled up in their nest and fell asleep.
Xia Qingyue and Han Zhibai went to the fields to harvest sweet potatoes. Half of the vines were still left to be cut, so they dug sweet potatoes while cutting.
Most of the sweet potatoes are large, about half the length of an elbow, plump, and the small ones are larger than a fist.
She picked up two sweet potatoes and weighed them in her hand. "These sweet potatoes are big and good, much better than those grown in the tiankeng!"
Han Zhibai, who was digging with a hoe, said: "The soil is different. The soil in the tiankeng is fertile enough, but the soil here is more suitable for growing sweet potatoes."
"Such good sweet potatoes, we can make more sweet potato starch and use it to make sweet potato flour."
Speaking of this, she remembered something. "I guess the construction at the foot of the mountain should be almost complete. I wonder if there are any shops selling rice in the market. I want to buy more rice. We have a lot of honey at home, so we can bring it down the mountain to sell!"
Han Zhibai also thought about selling honey. He bent down and grabbed a sweet potato vine that he had just dug out. He shook it hard to get rid of the dirt stuck on the sweet potato. The dirt fell down. "We can use the money to buy some other things."
"Uh-huh!"
Immersed in the joy of the harvest, they dug so intently that they forgot about time until the sunlight from the sky shone down and they felt the bright light.
"Oh, the sun is out!" she said in surprise, "How about we make sweet potato noodles later? I just soaked some snails a few days ago, so let's make snail noodles!"
Although the noodles are not rice noodles, sweet potato noodles are not bad.
"Okay, I'll carry these sweet potatoes back. Tell me what you need and I'll prepare it."
She said them one by one.
Han Zhibai understood what was going on, so he picked up two hundred kilograms of sweet potatoes and walked back easily.
He carried it back several times, and Xia Qingyue put the cut sweet potato vines into a backpack and took it out. He cut the leaves and thick rhizomes separately. In this kind of weather, the leaves can be dried in a day under the sun.
Near noon, Han Zhibai, who had prepared everything, took the sweet potatoes he brought back to the well to wash and remove the mud, then washed and peeled them, keeping the skin to feed chickens, ducks and pigs.
After peeling a bucket and a half and processing the vines, Xia Qingyue came over.
He stood up and let her sit down to peel the potatoes. He carried the peeled sweet potatoes and poured them into a large stone mortar. He took off his thick outer clothes, put on a close-fitting long gown, and swung a thick wooden hammer with both hands, beating the sweet potatoes again and again.
Under the great force, the sweet potato cracked, and the more it was hammered, the more it broke, and gradually a lot of white juice seeped out.
The sun came out, and it was warm on her body. She was so hot from working that she took off her down coat and put on a thinner reed down coat. After changing, she came out and continued to work.
So she peeled the potatoes and he pounded them and used gauze to filter out the starchy juice.
After working for an hour, both of them were so hungry that their stomachs were growling.
She went back to get some snacks, sat under the eaves and drank some water and ate some snacks to fill her stomach.
You won’t be able to eat snail noodles at noon, but you can cook the snails first and let them sit for an afternoon to absorb the flavor.
She thought of using chicken soup to make the soup base for snail noodles. After stewing it, she could eat the chicken at noon and use the soup to make noodles in the evening, killing two birds with one stone.
After boiling the water, she went into the poultry room and caught three hens. She killed and cleaned them, stewed one in a pot with water without adding any seasoning, and boiled the other two in an iron pot with water. When they were cooked, she gave them to the two little ones.
At the end of noon, lunch is ready, and the staple food is dried sweet potato rice.
The dishes include a whole braised chicken, a large bowl of snails with pickled bamboo shoots, stir-fried dried shrimp with garlic sprouts, steamed dried fish, and a small bowl of hot and sour dipping sauce made with garlic, chili sauce, soy sauce, dried mushroom powder, sugar and rice vinegar.
After working hard for a whole morning, they were so hungry that they ate their food in big gulps.
The chicken was stewed for an hour, and the meat was soft and tender. It was dipped in the bright red sauce and was easy to bite. It was so soft and tender that Xia Qingyue couldn't stop nodding as she ate.
After dinner, I took a short rest and then went to prepare sweet potatoes.
Extracting sweet potato starch involves many steps and is complicated, so they simply took the opportunity to do more and obtained more than 200 kilograms of sweet potatoes to extract starch.
After going through several rounds of water, the filtered starch was spread out in a winnowing basket to dry in the sun. It was dried for more than an hour in the afternoon and was about 60% dry.
Han Zhibai was busy until the evening, when the sky got dark. He was finishing up in the front yard. There were several large basins of starch water that needed to sink overnight. Tomorrow he would pour out the water and take out the white starch at the bottom and the work would be done.
Xia Qingyue came to the kitchen with 60% dry sweet potato flour.
Pour chicken soup into a medium-sized ceramic pot and add two large spoonfuls of the stone snails fried at noon. The clear soup will immediately be stained with the chili oil on the stone snails. The bright red chili oil floats in the soup, making it look more appetizing.
Bring it to the back stove to cook to make the soup base taste richer.
Divide the sweet potato starch into two portions, one large and one small. Boil an appropriate amount of hot water in a pot. Add a little water to the small portion of sweet potato starch and stir it. Slowly pour the starch water into the hot water, stirring constantly with your hands, and fry it into a dough that does not stick to the pan or the spatula.
Put a large portion of sweet potato starch in a large bowl and place it on one side of the bowl. Put the fried dough on the other side. Pour water into the starch side in small amounts several times and stir it. Knead it together with the dough until it is of moderate hardness and does not stick to your hands.
Last year, she brought over the magic tool she used to make rice noodles. I dug it out, washed it, roughly wiped it dry with a clean cloth, and stuffed the kneaded dough into it.
The half-pot of water boiling in the iron pot was smoking slightly. She held the artifact in one hand and used the other hand to push the bamboo handle into it. The squeezed dough came out from the dense round holes at the bottom of the artifact and formed long strips of flour.
The squeezed powder is light gray, and its color darkens when heated by hot water.
She only made the amount for tonight, and would have to wait until the weather got better to make more dried vermicelli.
After cooking for a while, take out the shaped sweet potato vermicelli and rinse it with cold water for later use.
"How can we have snail noodles without fried eggs?"
She beat five eggs, added a little salt, heated the pan and oil, and let the egg liquid slowly flow down through the colander with small holes, while her hands moved in circles clockwise at the same time.
Sizzle, the golden egg liquid is cooked when it comes into contact with heat, and it blooms and expands like a flower, with some small holes on the surface like honeycomb holes.
I made two fried eggs that were bigger than my face and fried them until golden and crispy.
After a while, she cooked two large bowls of oil-free and salt-free egg and sweet potato noodles, one bowl each for the two kids, and a large pot of snail noodles.
When eating noodle soup or something like that, she liked to use a large bowl. She scooped out two bowls and brought them to the main room, putting fried eggs on top and garnishing them with green vegetables and snails on the sides, which made the dish look, smell and taste great.
She stuck her head out of the main door. It was too dark outside to see anything. She shouted to the faint light in the poultry room, "Come back for dinner."
Han Zhibai was busy feeding the poultry in there.
Hearing her words, he quickly put away his clothes, went into the kitchen to wash his hands with warm water, walked into the main room, sniffed and said, "What a special fragrance."
She stuffed the chopsticks into his hand and said, "Try the snail noodles."
The strange aroma comes from the sour bamboo shoots. In fact, this sour bamboo shoot is not as smelly as the previous one, but the taste is definitely not bad.