Super Orchard

Chapter 176 Winter Solstice
Seeing Agua staring at his crotch, Shen Yangguang suddenly understood Agua's thoughts, broke out in a cold sweat, quickly covered his lifeline with his hands, and ran back to the bathroom to get dressed.

After a while Shen Yangguang remembered that it was late autumn and early winter, and the weather was very cold. After running around in the yard, he was already shivering from the cold, and he came out of the bathroom after putting on all his clothes.

Agua was still standing coldly on the back of the chair, and Duan didn't know when he would come out of its den, sniffing around Agua.

Shen Yangguang was very happy. He originally thought that Agua would go to the south for the winter like the other goshawks, and he would not be able to return until next spring at least, and he might even never see him again.

Unexpectedly, a few days after Agua disappeared, he would reappear at home again. Shen Yangguang couldn't help but think of the scene of a few goshawks flying south a few days ago, and wondered if it was after Agua sent his family away that he returned home again. came back.

However, it is very likely that Shen Yangguang thought too much. Although Agua absorbed a large amount of golden airflow and became much smarter, he was a goshawk after all, and it was hard to imagine that Agua could do such a thing.

Anyway, as long as Agua came back, Shen Yangguang quickly took out a piece of beef from the refrigerator, cut it into small pieces and fed it to Agua. He didn't go back to sleep until he had finished eating.

Day after day, what remains constant is the speed at which the temperature drops. A few days later, heavy snow falls, and the whole world is vast. The temperature in Jinquan Village has almost dropped to the lowest point of the year, reaching minus 20 degrees.

The entire Jinquan Village was covered by thick snow, and the vast expanse of whiteness was very beautiful. In this severe cold, the atmosphere in the village began to be lively, because this day was the winter solstice.

As a traditional festival, the winter solstice was highly valued in ancient times. There is a saying that "the winter solstice is as big as the year". There are a series of major celebrations both official and folk.

It's just that in modern society, the winter solstice is just a few numbers on the calendar, and few people will specially celebrate this festival.

Since ancient times, Jinquan Village has retained the custom of eating dumplings during the winter solstice. Shen Yangguang has long been used to this. When he was at home, he could always eat dumplings made by his parents during the winter solstice.

Later, when he went to college in the provincial capital, Shen Yangguang's parents would also call on the day of the winter solstice, reminding Shen Yangguang to buy some dumplings.

Now that I think about it, although I can still eat dumplings every year, but in the years since I went to college to now, I have bought and eaten them. Shen Yangguang plans to make dumplings by himself today.

Because today is not the weekend, all units are at work, including the school, so Shen Yangguang called Xia Yunxuan in advance and asked her not to go to the school cafeteria for lunch after school at noon, but to come home to eat dumplings.

After hanging up the phone, Shen Yangguang started to get busy.

Because the snow on the road was too thick, Shen Yangguang did not go to the county to buy dumpling wrappers and dumpling fillings, but prepared to make them by himself.

The first is to knead the noodles. Pour a few tablespoons of flour into a basin, add an appropriate amount of warm water, and then pour in some baking powder and yeast powder, and stir vigorously with chopsticks to form lumps.

The next step is to wash your hands, grab the dough and knead it repeatedly, just like washing clothes. This process is very important, not simply mixing several materials.

Instead, try to knead the dough as much as possible, so that the protein in the flour can fully absorb the water and form gluten, so that the dumpling skins made will have strength and will not break easily.

When kneading the dough, add a small amount of flour or a small amount of warm water according to the actual situation to ensure that the dough is moderately soft. Otherwise, too little water will cause the flour to agglomerate and lack flexibility, and too much water will make the dough Flour becomes unmoldable like a runny paste.

During this process, Shen Yangguang suddenly remembered an interesting incident when he was a child, that is, he offered to help knead the dough again, but the dough was too soft after adding too much water, and the dough was too hard as a result.

Then, water and noodles were added repeatedly. Before long, Shen Yangguang kneaded the dough, which weighed less than two catties, into a weight of eight catties. In addition to making dumplings, Shen Yangguang's family ate several meals of noodles in a row. Steamed bun.

After the dough is kneaded, it is placed in a basin for fermentation. Now because of additives such as baking powder, the fermentation speed of the dough is very fast. Unlike when Shen Yangguang was a child, the village used alkaline flour for fermentation. Not only is the speed slow, And the effect is not good, so every household will leave some fermented dough, called "noodles", for the next use, as an introduction to fermented flour.

Then Shen Yangguang began to prepare dumpling fillings again. He was going to make two kinds of dumplings, one was stuffed with leek and egg, and the other was stuffed with cabbage and beef.

The leek egg dumpling stuffing is relatively simple to make. Wash and chop the leek, then beat a few eggs into it and stir back and forth evenly, and it is ready.

Beef with cabbage is a little more troublesome, but Shen Yangguang just bought a home-use meat grinder not long ago, which is much more convenient. Cut the beef into small pieces and put it into the meat grinder to directly grind it into meat stuffing.

And when Shen Yangguang was young, he remembered that every time he made pork or beef dumplings at home, chopping the stuffing was a laborious task. A small piece of meat had to be chopped on the cutting board with a kitchen knife. After working for an hour, my wrists are sore and weak, and I may not be able to completely chop the minced meat.

After mincing the meat stuffing, Shen Yangguang took out another Chinese cabbage, removed the withered leaves on the outside, washed the inner cabbage leaves and cut them into cubes, and stirred them with the meat stuffing evenly, and the cabbage beef dumpling stuffing was ready .

At the same time, the dough in the basin had already fermented. Shen Yangguang took out the dough and put it on the panel, and cut it into strips with a kitchen knife.

Pick up the noodles the size of a rolling pin with both hands and start kneading. Knead the noodles into a long and thin cylindrical shape, and then cut them into slices with a kitchen knife. These noodles can be rolled into dumpling skins.

In order to prevent the dumpling wrappers from sticking to each other or to the panel, Shen Yang picked up a small pinch of dry flour and sprinkled it evenly on the panel, and then began to roll the dumpling wrappers on the dry flour.

This process is a relatively technical test. Shen Yangguang's level of rolling the dough can only be regarded as average, and he can barely roll the dumpling skin into a round shape.

For example, Shen Yangguang's mother is much better. Not only can she roll the dough much faster, but she can also roll out two dumpling wrappers at the same time under one rolling pin. Shen Yangguang is amazed to see it.

He does not have such a technique, so he can only roll them one by one.

In the process of rolling the dough, there are also some specialties, that is, try to roll the dough as round as possible, and ensure that the size is uniform and the thickness is uniform. Shen Yangguang sees that it is still early, so he believes in the dogma of slow work and meticulous work. Roll it slowly, don't ask how fast it is rolled, and don't ask how well it is rolled, as long as it can make dumplings.

With so many skins, Shen Yangguang didn't roll them all at once, because if the rolled dumpling skins were not made into dumplings in time, they would easily dry out or stick together, so Shen Yangguang started to make dumplings after rolling out some of them.

This part of the dumpling wrappers were all filled with leek and egg stuffing, and then part of the dough was rolled out and wrapped into cabbage and beef stuffing. In order to distinguish between the two different flavors of dumplings, Shen Yangguang specially squeezed out different flavors on the edges of the dumplings. modeling.

(End of this chapter)