Hard work

Chapter 149 Making Fermented Bean Curd

After steaming the glutinous rice wine, Lan Hua'er was so tired that she almost collapsed.

The steaming of wine does not require much effort, but it is troublesome and requires someone to watch the fire.She often only burns for a while, and then feels a little unable to hold on.

It was hot and stuffy, and the room was full of the smell of alcohol, which made her feel that after steaming the wine once, she would not have to drink for several years.

Zang Lang felt sorry for her, and often took her outside to get some air.But the smell of alcohol was really heavy, and Lan Hua'er was also afraid that Zang Lang would not be good if he stayed in there by himself for a long time, so the two of them still took turns to make fire for each other.

After the batch of wine was finally sold, Lan Hua'er was not only blushed from the smoke, but also had a backache from exhaustion. She couldn't help walking with her waist every day at a young age.

This time the Zhao family sold the wine outside, and everyone in the village knew about it.

Sure enough, Mai Qing asked the person who had been receiving goods in the village to drive a donkey cart to the village.He said that he heard people outside saying that Aozi Village sells cheap glutinous rice wine, so he begged to come to the door.

The people in the village naturally watched and discussed again.Seeing Zang Lang carrying thirty barrels of wine out of the house, he couldn't help being a little surprised.

At the beginning, they still thought behind their backs that Lan Huaer bought wine cheaply from somewhere, and then sold it to them at a higher price.As a result, after looking at it now, the Zhao family actually kept so much wine, and finally believed that the Zhao family had learned how to steam wine.So a lot of people went up to get close to Lan Hua'er, and Lan Hua'er was taken aback.

But she told those people right away that this was a method her elder brother learned by chance from the town, and she could only distill this kind of wine.And if you want to distill wine, you first need something called distiller's yeast that you can't buy in the town.

The people in the village still didn't believe it, so Lan Hua'er simply told them the method of steaming wine, and asked those familiar villagers to go to their kitchen to see the steamer.

There is no sense of secrecy in this village. If you refuse to talk about it, you will offend others in the end.Lan Hua'er showed them the steamer, but didn't say anything about the koji and the fermentation time in detail, only that it was something her elder brother brought back from the town, and they couldn't buy it.She ran out of it this time too.

"Or," Lan Hua'er said to the neighbor with regret, "can I brew so little this time? If I can sell it, I naturally want to sell more to make money."

Sure enough, someone went back home and tried to steam the wine.But they don't have distiller's yeast, and what they steam is unfermented wheat or rice, which is just like rice, which is edible and doesn't waste food, but they can't make wine.

Only then did the people in the village believe Lan Huaer's words, and lamented that it was really not easy to earn money, but no one thought about Lan Huaer's wine-making technology anymore.

After finishing the wine making work, Lan Hua'er rested hard for two days, and then prepared to make some fermented bean curd for the family.

She bought a lot of tofu before, but when she put it back at home, she felt that she had bought too much.She and Zang Lang, Zang Lang doesn't like tofu very much, and they built it in the back yard in the open air. Looking at it this way, they really bought too much, and it was frozen like a small tofu mountain in the back.

Lan Hua'er wanted to learn how to make tofu by herself, but later she found that she couldn't do it at home.Because she didn't have a mill at all, so she couldn't make tofu.So when she saw tofu being sold in the village next door, she couldn't help but bought a lot of them.

Now I feel like I can't finish eating.

Because they planted beans in their own homes, soy beans, mung beans, red beans, and black beans. Lan Huaer saw that the mountains were going to be covered by heavy snow in winter, so they no longer let Zang Lang go to the back mountain, instead. Er asked him to grind a stone himself.

Zang Langkong has a lot of strength, but he has never made such a thing as a stone mill. He scratched his head for a long time after listening to Lan Huaer's request, and went to Yan Dalang and Lan Du to discuss it again.

It turned out that Lan Huaer wanted a stone mill at first, but after Guan Ju heard about it, he said he wanted one too.

So the number of stone mills became two.

Zang Lang and Yan Dalang visited the house of the man with the stone mill for a while—and gave him some wine—and finally figured out what kind of structure it might be.

But just knowing the structure can't just make a stone mill out of it.Stone is different from wood, there is no way to carve a shape directly with a knife.With a hammer, chisel and ax, you can slowly chop the stone into a shape. This is the work of water grinding.

Orchid doesn't care about these.

She didn't ask Zang Lang to move the stone mill in a short period of time, but just gave him something to do so that he wouldn't be so idle in winter that he couldn't help but run up the back mountain.

However, although this stone mill will not be able to be made for a while, it can still be moved home after giving Zang Lang three or four months.Lan Huaer thought that there were still two sacks of soybeans at home, and they would definitely be made into soy milk and tofu by then.Doubanjiang is also delicious, but she doesn't know how to make it, so if she wants to make it, she can only try it slowly.

She has seen fermented bean curd made by others, and she also thinks that it is not difficult to make, and it is delicious to eat, so she decided to dump this thing out.

Naturally, she would not dare to sell something as vivid as fermented bean curd, but it did not prevent her from eating it at home.

Because it was the first trial, Lan Huaer didn't dare to do too much.

She cut six or seven of the tofu bricks into small squares and spread them out on a wooden board.

Originally, it was only necessary to put these small tofu cubes in a dark and humid place, cover them with gauze, and let them moldy by themselves.But Lan Hua'er always felt that the weather in the north was too dry, and she was always worried that if these tofu were left outside, they might not grow moldy, but instead would be air-dried and the hard tofu would dry out.So she specially placed two buckets under the wooden planks, filled with water, so that the environment where the tofu was located would be more humid.

The temperature outside the house was a bit too low, which was not conducive to the fermentation of tofu. Lan Huaer put the bean curd in a warm place in the corner of the kitchen to ensure that the tofu would grow crooked in the end.

It takes about half a month for these tofu to grow mold from being thrown there.During this period, it is best not to flip through or look at it frequently.

Lan Huaer threw all the tofu there, and then asked Zang Lang to make a wooden jar, and then went to the mountain behind to dig wet river mud for future use.

She herself started to prepare the pickled chili and chili water, which can be used to make fermented bean curd.

After the incident of her chopping the peppers, Zang Lang never let Lan Huaer cut the peppers, but this time he snatched the knife, chopped the peppers, stuffed them into the jar, sprinkled them with salt, You can cover the lid and let the peppers ferment in the jar.

At that time, when the tofu is fermented, it can be put directly into the jar, covered with a lid and then sealed with mud, and it can be taken out after a period of time.

The reason why the mud is sealed is to give the fermented bean curd an airtight environment so that it can slowly ferment and mature inside.

This thing is not difficult to make, and the process is not complicated, but it takes a long time to wait.Most people make fermented bean curd in batches.

But Lan Huaer thought this was the first time she did it, and there were not many people in the family, even during the Chinese New Year, there were only four people.She didn't know whether Gaihua and Goudan would like to try something as weird as fermented bean curd, so she didn't make many.

If it can't be done, it's not a waste of food.

Zang Lang was very curious. Seeing Lan Huaer finished tossing the tofu and tossing the chili water, he couldn't help but poked his head to look at the tofu, and asked hesitantly:
"Little lady, what are you going to do?"

"Of course it's delicious. I think you should be happy with this food. It's salty and spicy. I tasted it when I went to the mountain this time. I thought it tasted good, so I came back and thought about it." Let’s do it and see. It may not be possible to make it... Hey, don’t touch those tofu, they just need to be left.”

Zang Lang originally wanted to reach out to flip through the tofu cubes, but when Lan Huaer called out, he quickly stretched out his hand back, touched the back of his head, and said:
"Just leave it like this...don't put it outside? It's warm in here, and it's so hairy."

Lan Hua'er thought for a while, and thought that Zang Lang would come and go in and out of the house every day, and it was inevitable that he would see the tofu grow hairy.Instead of letting him make a fuss and throw away the tofu cubes, it's better to scare him now.So he turned to Zang Lang and said:

"That's what makes it grow fur. It doesn't taste good without hair."

Zang Lang was taken aback, "If the hair grows, it will ruin your stomach."

"No, I already ate it when I was on the mountain, and I asked carefully about how to make it. The aunt made a lot of it, and I ate it deliciously, so I came back to learn how to make it. The hair can't grow less, The first step is done if you have to wrap the whole block of tofu. If you don’t dare to eat it, you don’t have to. It’s okay, I’ll just eat it myself.”

Hearing what Lan Huaer said, Zang Lang immediately became anxious and said quickly:

"No, no, I'll eat. Little lady, let me eat first."

Lan Hua'er pursed her lips and smiled, knowing that he was worried about making this thing after it grew hair, and wondered if it would eat bad people.He didn't dare to say that this thing must be bad, but he was worried in his heart, so he planned to use himself to "test the poison".

"Okay, I'll let you eat first. But you must be happy when you eat, and you have to leave some for me. Otherwise, if you finish eating, I'm not working in vain."

Hearing what she said, Zang Lang felt aggrieved and said:
"Little lady, how can I be so greedy."

(End of this chapter)