Chapter 204 Tanglu
Next came Jiang Shuyi. Zhou Zhi was more prepared this time. He put the chili in a small bowl and the salt and sugar in small plates according to the portions. The rest was to listen to Zhou Zhi Add oil according to the command, add shrimps, stir-fry, add leeks, stir-fry, add chili, salt, sugar, stir well and finish.
Although he was a swindler, Jiang Shuyi did all the cooking work independently. Compared with He Shiqing's plate, there was a little more sugar to enhance the freshness. For this fresh river dish, it is almost equal to It's cheating.
This dish is very appetizing and goes well with rice. Later, Zhou Zhi also used the baked dried fish to make a stir-fried dried fish with green pepper and black bean sauce, which is also an excellent side dish.
Food cakes are made by mixing flour and cornmeal into a slurry, then heating the pan, smearing oil and pouring the slurry, and then scraping it flat with bamboo chips.
The recipe is similar to that of northern pancakes, but the only ingredient added is chopped green onion.
This is also simple. After just a few glances, the girls felt that they were almost good at it and started to take the initiative.
While cooking, the boys also discovered a fun thing here - Shilu.
This is an ancient tool for squeezing sugar cane juice and making sugar on Zhongba Island, also known as "Tanglu".
The structure of Tanglu is very peculiar. At the bottom is a stone basin, with two cylindrical "luqi" standing side by side on the stone basin.
Luqi is about two feet high and about a foot in diameter. There are square holes at the top, into which two bearings made of hardwood wedges are inserted.
There is a circle of square holes with the same shape on the right, deep and left, drilled in the middle of Luqi. When a hardwood wedge is inserted, it becomes a "gear".
There is a long wooden shaft on the top of one of the Luqi, which can be pushed and pulled with the power of oxen. This Luqi is the driving wheel.
When the driving wheel rotates, another wheel will also be rotated, and that wheel is the driven wheel.
The gap between the two pots is very small. Insert the sugar cane between the two pots. The sugar cane will be squeezed into the gap as the pots rotate. The sugar juice will flow down and flow into the groove of the stone basin. In the barrel.
The process of making local sugar is quite complex. The second process is to boil the sugar.
Boiled sugar needs to go through three large iron pots, which are divided into the head pot, the middle pot and the tail pot.
The sugar cook pours the sugar cane juice into the first pot and cooks it over a high fire for more than 30 minutes.
While cooking, use a slotted spoon to remove the bagasse and sugar bubbles from the cane juice. Sugar bubbles can be used as raw materials for shochu.
Then ladle the sugarcane juice cooked in the first pot into the middle pot, cook for about twenty minutes, continue to remove debris and sugar bubbles, and then pour it into the final pot.
Still cook over high heat, and use a wooden stick to stir the sugarcane juice constantly to prevent it from sticking to the pan and burning. After another twenty minutes of cooking, the water in the cane juice gradually evaporated and slowly turned into yellow syrup.
At this time, add an appropriate amount of lime powder, mix well, immediately scoop it into a large wooden barrel, quickly lift it outside, pour it onto the sugar grid paved with straw mats, smooth it, and finally slice it, which is called "Yellow candy".
If it is poured into small bowls and solidified, it is called "small bowl sugar".
If it is purer, it will no longer be called brown sugar or brown sugar, but solid sucrose. In ancient times, pure liquid sucrose was called "sugar cane", while solid sucrose was called "stone honey" .
Therefore, a general Tangfang requires three masters, one is a presser, who needs to know presser skills such as feeding, pressing, and tipping;
The second position is the fire head, which requires knowledge of techniques such as hoisting the stove, burning the head and tail pots, and letting the fire go.
The most important person is the sugarmaker, who is equivalent to the chief engineer. He must know everything, including blowing water, playing with leaves, putting ashes, lighting sugar, and killing sugar. He must also know how to make a fire. and the press's work.
To produce good sugar, it is necessary to coordinate the upper and lower processes with "ash enough, fire fastening, and soaking clear". Sufficient lime means that the lime used as a coagulant must be applied just right.
Fire buckle means that the heat of the syrup should be just right, and the ratio of sugar to water in the syrup should also be just right.
Paoziqing means that the syrup has a clean texture without too many impurities.
So a really smart sugar maker, no matter what kind of land grows sugar cane, only needs to chew a few mouthfuls to know whether and how much ash will be eaten by the sugar water that day.
After the sugar water in the first pot is boiled and combined into the pot, control the amount of ash and put it down at once. The sugar sand that comes out must be fine in texture and good in color.
So, like traditional Chinese medicine, they also have the four skills of seeing, smelling, listening and sensing.
Watching means observation, checking whether the sugar water eats dust;
Smell is to judge the maturity of the syrup through the smell of sugar;
Listen, listen to which pot is out of water, add sugar water over high heat, and listen to whether the sound of the bubble is just right;
Cut It is the acceptance inspection. Once the sugar comes out of the bowl, you can touch it with your hand and you will know the texture of the sugar and the approximate price.
These are one of the "essential tasks" of thoughtfulness, collecting and sorting out local intangible cultural heritage.
Like dialect research, this was something Zhou Zhi found for himself. He did not dare to use such a weird and overly Westernized term as "intangible cultural heritage", but used the simpler "traditional skills" "Four words, telling his godfather that these things have cultural value and need to be sorted and protected like cultural relics.
Then the godfather said that this idea is very good. Since it is your idea, let’s start with you.
This is also the consistent education method of godfather Wu Lingjun, who encourages you to speak freely, but since you think you have mastered the truth, I would trouble you to prove it through your own practice before explaining it.
Because practice is the only criterion for testing truth, you can't just be responsible for judging yourself, but leave the work of proving yourself right or wrong to others, right?
Zhou Zhi is also convinced by this, because after the advent of the Internet age in later generations, there will be such a large group of people who always just judge easily but never prove it through their own serious research and practice. .
In the end, there was no need to judge or think, just forward it.
For example, all kinds of fruits, as long as they appear in unprecedented shapes and sizes, are genetically modified; for example, KFC's chicken wings come from chickens with wings; for example, the high-speed rail will be built to Indonesia...
They will never go there Thinking about important technologies such as genetic modification, they will only be used to solve the big issue of the world food crisis first, so they will definitely be used in staple food and oil crops first;
They will never go there either Think about how much of a breakthrough it would be in organ tissue culture and transplantation in human medicine if there were chickens with wings like that. Such technology can never be used only to make KFC have chicken wings;
They also will never We will not check how deep the trench is from China to the Strait of Malacca, and whether it is possible to build such a high bridge pier with current technology; or whether there is such floating bridge technology that can withstand ocean currents and storms.
Whatever, just turn it over.
That kind of people also have feelings for their family and country, and eventually they turned into the kind of people who only judge but don't prove; they only criticize and never reflect on themselves - Internet losers and mobs.
In order to prevent himself from becoming such a person, Zhou Zhi had no choice but to obey his godfather's instructions honestly.
Making sugar is a traditional craft on the island. Although it is a neighboring county, Zhou Zhi still collected and recorded it carefully.
In fact, these things are not of much interest to my friends, but the teenagers who are in the second grade of middle school have their own set of ideas, that is, since they have discovered a "novel" thing, then You must gain a certain sense of accomplishment by mastering it.
So the junior high school students had a complete conflict with this "Tanglu" - without this Shilu to squeeze out sugar cane juice, this trip to Zhongba would not be perfect.
(End of this chapter)