Yunmeng Ballad: I opened a restaurant in the Warring States Period

Chapter 13 Spices

Another night, seeing off the diners, recalling the past few months of waking up, Chu Yunmeng sighed again.

"Master, master! The vegetable orchard has a good harvest, when will you teach me how to cook new dishes!" Wugu's excited voice came from afar.

After getting along for a while, he has become a lot more cheerful.From time to time, he will act coquettishly.

Hearing Wu Gu's voice, Chu Yunmeng chuckled: This Wu Gu is really more insane than himself!
The first time Chu Yunmeng met Wugu was when he went back to the wild forest to visit the little tigers and wild wolves.

At that time, Wugu was shrunk in the place where he had stayed in his torn clothes.There was a pile of wild vegetables and fruits beside the fire, many of which were unexpected and unearthed by myself.

"How do you know that these things can be eaten?" Chu Yunmeng cut to the chase.

At that time, there was no look of shrinking or fear on the face of Wu Gu, and he was calm and composed: "My family is poor, and I have been digging wild food to satisfy my hunger since I was a child." After speaking, he added: "My sister should be an expert in eating."

Chu Yunmeng was surprised, raised his eyebrows and asked, "Why did you say that?"

"This place is remote and inaccessible, but my sister rushed here with cooked food. It can be seen that this place belongs to my sister." Wugu's face is still calm and calm that this age does not have: "The residues around at that time are clearly It is a wild vegetable that I have never seen in the market. Thanks to my sister's inspiration, my little brother can live a few more days."

Chu Yunmeng was amazed by the other party's ability to infer other cases from one instance and observe minute details, as well as his calm and calm posture, so he took him back to Yunmeng Residence and named him Wugu.

Afterwards, she learned that Wu Gu was originally from a poor family with no fertile land and no money to buy food, so she could only rely on digging wild vegetables to feed herself.In addition, Wugu barely managed to get some corn with his cleverness, and the family barely made ends meet.

But both parents were sick a while ago, unable to treat and died.However, Wugu's petty theft and even food deception by relying on cleverness were found out, people were beaten half to death, half crawled into the wild forest, and managed to survive with some venison left by Chu Yunmeng. Inspired by the food remains left behind, I spent my days picking wild vegetables and fruits around.

"Master! Master! Elder Sister Yunmeng!" Seeing that Chu Yunmeng should not respond, Wugu simply changed his address, finally waking Chu Yunmeng from his contemplation.

"Five grains...we are not in a hurry to put these new vegetables into the vegetables. The most important thing is to expand the scale of planting and production."

Looking at the five grains holding all kinds of wild vegetables, Chu Yunmeng smiled: "It's already spring, and all kinds of fresh wild vegetables and green vegetables have grown. It's just time to study some new methods, so that diners can eat old vegetables and try new ones. Try it out."

Chu Yunmeng looked at the wild yam in Wugu's hand, and said, "The mushrooms we cultivate are almost ripe, so don't rush to introduce these new varieties, especially the ones that are not easy to spoil."

"And if you put it out all at once, it will be imitated by others soon. The most important thing at present is to develop some sauces. These days, you can take the time to come with me."

During the period when he stopped making new dishes, Chu Yunmeng had a further in-depth understanding of the food culture of this era.

She found that she was narrow-minded.

This era is far from being as backward as I thought. Many food cultures have a long history, and they have already had clues in this era.

For example, a while ago, she had been complaining in her heart that minced meat and shredded chicken had no chili and vinegar, so they were not tasty enough.

But after in-depth understanding, I realized that the two flavors of hot and sour have long existed in this era.

It's just that it hasn't been popularized, and ordinary people don't know it; public officials know it, but not everyone is concerned about their appetite.

And restaurants are also doing mass business, and they don't want to spend too much time on seasoning.This is also the reason why the diet of this era seems very backward.

For example, the practice of "using 藙 for three animals" is recorded in "Book of Rites Nei Ze". "藙" means Cornus officinalis, a plant with a spicy taste.

It can be seen that cornel, as a spicy seasoning, has been popularized in the court at least in the Zhou Dynasty.

In addition to cornel, there are already three "five spices" in the ancient traditional diet, "garlic, onion, xingqu, leek, and scallion".

It's just that in this era when ingredients are relatively scarce and new ingredients have not been discovered, these condiments are simply eaten as vegetables.

What Chu Yunmeng has to do now is to fully extract the spiciness he needs from the known ingredients.

And the sour taste is not unavailable in this era.Rice vinegar has existed as early as the Zhou Dynasty, but it also faces the problem of not being popular among the people.

And she will be the messenger who spreads all kinds of flavors from the court to the people, uses the asymmetry of knowledge to get rich quickly and expand her influence, and obtain the intelligence and information she wants.

There is a shortage of ingredients in this era, so Chu Yunmeng does not want to use "scallions, leeks, and scallions" as the main spicy seasonings.

What's more, she has also tasted the taste of these kinds of dishes, and they are far from the spiciness she wants.

Only Zhuyu, after trying it, she found that the spiciness is far from inferior to the chili pepper she experienced in her dream.

It's just that in this era, although cornel can be seen in the fields, cornel that can be used for seasoning is not easy to get among the people.

The method of serving cornus as a vegetable has not been introduced to the folks, so most of the folks only regard it as an ornamental plant or as a medicine, and let it grow in the countryside.

It took Chu Yunmeng a lot of hardware to cobble together two catties of dried dogwood from the major medical clinics in Yingdu.

While asking the medical center to help her grind the dried dogwood into powder, she transplanted dozens of dogwood plants into the field near Yunmeng Mountain.

At the same time, she also started making rice vinegar.

First buy fifty catties of glutinous rice, two catties of wine and medicine, eighty catties of fresh distiller's grains, fifty catties of bran, fifty catties of rice bran, twenty catties of koji, and six catties of salt.

Then I bought more than 100 catties of wheat, milled all of them into starch, and took ten catties of wheat to ferment to make yeast.Take another [-] jin of starch and add water.

While grinding the starch and preparing the yeast, soak the glutinous rice for six to eight hours; pick it up and put it on the steamer to steam until the steam rises, and after a quarter of an hour, sprinkle an appropriate amount of water on the rice layer, and steam for less than a quarter of an hour.

After putting in the retort, rinse the rice with clean water to cool down; drain the water, pour it out and spread it on a bamboo mat, and mix in the koji medicine.

Pour the mixed koji raw materials into the prepared pottery jar, and add a sack or straw mat to keep it warm.

In order to maintain a certain temperature, Chu Yunmeng put the jar in the back kitchen where the temperature was relatively high, and made a special fire to raise the temperature.

Eighteen hours later, the saccharification and alcoholization of the glutinous rice are normal, and the wine gradually oozes out, golden in color, sweet and slightly sour.

Continue to ferment for three to four days. When the wine starts to sour, add four times the water.

In this way, after one and a half months to two months, two hundred catties of rice vinegar can be released!
　I want to try double update in the past two days.But it doesn't seem to work very well.code silently
　　Overhaul version, please collect, please recommend tickets.

　　


(End of this chapter)