Riding the wind of rebirth

Chapter 1845 Bait Block

This is a very interesting way of fishing. All you need is a branch, a thin fiber, and a small piece of earthworm, and it can become a toy that will keep children entertained for a whole day.

There are a lot of loaches in the Anning River. In the atlas of "Composition of Fish Community and Resource Status of Anning River", a total of 18 species are recorded, including 11 plateau loaches.

Many of these loaches are only the size of a little finger, but they are very ferocious eaters. They usually hide in the cracks of rocks by the water. Once they encounter food, they will swallow it whole. They are even more ferocious than catfish and yellow croaker.

After they have swallowed the earthworms as bait, the children can quickly pull them out of the water. It is too late to spit out the bait at this time. By the time they get out, there is a small winnowing basket made of galangal leaves waiting for them below.

Originally, no one eats these small fish here. The kids eat them mainly for fun, and at most they take some home to feed the chickens and ducks. The Yi people naturally reject these small fish with strange colors and bright stripes.

Zhou Zhi believes that this is the same reason why people in Dajing Township did not eat loaches and eels in the past. The main reason is that if these things are to taste good, they need to use a lot of oil, and oil is a good thing that poor families are reluctant to waste.

But when Zhou Zhi saw the kids playing like this, his appetite was completely aroused.

This thing is fried in oil, sprinkled with pepper and salt and chopped green onions, it is so fragrant...

In the past, the Yi kids would rather eat roasted grasshoppers than this, but when Erjia mustered up the courage to eat one for the first time, he became Zhouzhi’s number one fan.

If mixed with some fried chicken mushrooms, Zhou Zhi thought this dish would be something worthy of being served at a state banquet.

“It’s coming up, it’s coming up!” There are so many small fish like this in the Meigu River that you can catch a fish in just a few seconds of just lowering the fishing line. Even a novice like Li Lu can catch fish one after another with great ease.

Two hours later, the bucket was filled with stone loach, red-tailed loach and plateau loach, which was estimated to be about five or six kilograms.

On the other side, Erjia and Liang Guangping were also catching fish one after another. They caught a string of fish each time, four or five each time. Now there were more than twenty fish of all sizes in the fish basket.

"Enough, enough. Fishing is fun, but cleaning up is a nightmare." Zhou Zhi felt his scalp tingling when he saw the small fish in the bucket. "No one is allowed to escape! Help me clean up the fish!"

"Wow, how come you got so many back again?!" When the kids carried the fish buckets and fish baskets back to the grain station, Gillette Abi was already making bait.

The origin of bait kuai can be traced back to the ancient book Jijiupian, which records a dish called "bingbai, wheat rice and sweet bean soup". The great scholar Yan Shigu made a note below: "steamed rice flour is bait". In the Shuowen Jiezi Xichuan written by Xu Kai of the Five Dynasties, it is said that "bait" is "steamed rice crumbs". The rice is crushed. The method is to soak the rice, steam it, and pound it in a pestle. When it is pounded thoroughly, it is bait.

This method sounds similar to rice cake, but it is actually different. Using the same craftsmanship, it is made with glutinous rice. In southern Sichuan, it is called "ciba" and "erkua", which are two different things. The rice cake in Jiangsu and Zhejiang areas is also made from glutinous rice flour, which is even more different.

Erkuai refers to a kind of rice dumpling made from the common "tuan ke rice" commonly grown in southern Sichuan. It has a long-standing reputation in Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan, and has been passed down for at least a thousand years.

Tuangu rice is of good quality and fragrant. It is not as sticky as glutinous rice, but better than polished rice. After draining the soaked Tuangu rice, place a wooden steamer on a large iron pot. After the water in the pot boils, scoop the rice into the steaming wooden steamer and steam it over high heat. When the rice is steamed to 60-70% cooked, take it out and soak it in water once, then drain the water again, and steam it over high heat for the second time until it is cooked through, and then prepare to pound the bait. In the past, pounding bait was a strenuous job. The traditional pounding of bait required the cooperation of more than 20 people: six to eight people stepped on the pestle, one person pulled the pestle, three or four people kneaded it, four or five people did miscellaneous work, and another six to eight people took turns to step on the pestle.

Starting from the tenth day of the twelfth lunar month every year, the big shift begins and is divided into three shifts. Two more people are added to each shift to pedal the pestle. They take turns to process and produce the rice. The three shifts work day and night, and they use the wooden pestle to mash the rice in the stone pestle.

The pounding process should be done while the rice is hot, and the faster the better. If it takes too long, the rice will cool down and become difficult to pound. It will also be impossible to knead the bait with your hands.

In addition, when pounding the bait, you have to use your hands to pry up the bait on the wooden mallet and turn it over from time to time. Otherwise, some places that are not hit will still be rice grains, which will affect the taste when you eat it.

Therefore, when pounding bait, you need to cooperate well and control the rhythm. Otherwise, the wooden hammer will hit the hand of the person pulling the pestle, which may easily cause injury.

Moreover, not everyone who is strong enough can pull the pestle. This job requires both strength and skill. After beating all the bait pieces, you will be out of breath like a cow, and your arms will be sore and red.

After a burst of "bang, bang" noises, the beaten rice was scooped out of the stone pestle while it was still hot. The people who were kneading the bait immediately gathered around the square table, and each person pulled out a strand of bait and started kneading it.

Of course, kneading the bait requires some skills. A skilled person can turn the rice with both hands, with the right hand coordinating with the left hand, and after a few kneading, a round, white, steaming rice ball is placed on the table. If you are not skilled, not only will you not be able to knead it into a round shape, but you will also be unable to knead it into a round shape after a long time, and you will also burn your hands. After the bait is kneaded, you can make various shapes, or use a mold to press it into a "brick" with a specific pattern while it is still hot, and place it in a cool place. When it cools down and becomes very hard, it is a bait.

Therefore, making bait cakes during the New Year's Festival every year is almost a big event in the village. Usually several neighboring families work together, and it is also a good opportunity to enhance neighborhood relations.

However, the situation this year is a little special. The grain station has a machine for making bait blocks, so it doesn't have to be so difficult. Gillette Abi organizes the women to steam the rice, and then puts it into the mixing barrel of the machine. The mixing barrel will crush the bait blocks into bait balls, and then they come out from the discharge port, two pounds at a time.

So this year all the work is done by women, and the rest of their work is not hard. They just put the bait balls spit out by the machine into a wooden mold padded with plastic film, press them with a board to flatten them, and then pour them out. They will become beautiful printed bait blocks.

In order to make it look better, a skillful woman was arranged to stand at the end of the line and dot small red flowers on the bait blocks that were sent over, making the bait blocks more beautiful.

Because of its long storage time and easy consumption, bait kuai is a very popular food in ethnic minority areas in Sichuan, Yunnan and Guizhou. It can be eaten in almost any way, such as frying, stir-frying, cooking, deep-frying or baking. It is also a must-have gift for visiting relatives and friends during festivals.

Some people have researched and said that baitkuai was not originally called baitkuai, but should be called "baitkuai", which means "bait used for giving to each other".

The most famous ways to eat it are "Chicken Fire Shreds", "Da Jiujia" and "Roasted Bait Blocks".

Dajiujia is made by stir-frying ham, eggs, meat, radish, tomatoes, etc. together in a pan. Emperor Yongli ate this when he fled to western Yunnan and believed that it saved his life, hence the name.

Chicken shredded rice is made of chicken soup with shredded chicken, ham and bait. It is the most common breakfast in many counties in Liangshan Prefecture. Zhou Zhi ate it in Meigu and praised it highly.