Chapter 1845 Bait Block
This is a very interesting fishing method. It only requires a branch, a thin fiber, and a small piece of earthworm to become a toy for children to play for a day.
There are many species of loaches in the Anning River. In the album "Composition of Fish Community and Current Resource Status of Anning River", a total of eighteen species are recorded, including eleven species of plateau loaches.
Many of these loaches are only about the size of a little finger, but their eating habits are very ferocious. They usually hide in the cracks of rocks near the water. Once they encounter food, they will swallow it whole. They are much better than catfish and yellow pepper. Even more ferocious.
After they swallow the earthworms as bait, the children can quickly pull them out of the water. By this time, it is too late to spit out the bait. By the time they escape, there is already galangal underneath. A small dustpan made by Ye is waiting.
No one eats these small fish here. The children mainly do it for fun. At most, they take some home to feed the chickens and ducks. The Yi people naturally reject these small fish with weird colors and bright stripes.
Zhou Zhi believes that this is the same reason why Dajing Township did not eat loaches and eels in the past. The main reason is that these foods require oil to taste, and oil is a good thing that poor people are reluctant to waste in their homes.
But when Zhou Zhi saw the children playing like this, the glutton in his stomach was completely aroused.
This thing is fried in oil, and then sprinkled with pepper, salt and chopped green onion. It is so fragrant...
In the past, the Yi children would rather eat roasted grasshoppers than eat this. But when Er Xia mustered up the courage to eat one for the first time, she became Zhou Zhi's number one fan.
If mixed with a little fried chicken fir, Zhou Zhi thinks this dish is a good dish that should be served at a state banquet.
“Coming up, coming up!” There are too many small fish of this kind in the Meigu River. Basically, if you put the fishing line down for a few seconds, you will catch the fish. Even a novice like Li Lu You can catch fish with ease.
Two hours later, there was a bucket of Shigang loach, red-tailed loach, and plateau loach, which was estimated to weigh five or six kilograms.
On the other side, Erxia and Liang Guangping also caught fish one after another. There were a bunch of fish there, four or five every time. Now there are more than 20 fish of various sizes in the fish guard.
"That's enough, fishing is fun for a while, let's clean up the crematorium." Zhou Zhi couldn't help but feel his scalp numb when he saw the small fish in the bucket: "No one is allowed to run away for a while! Clean up the fish with me!"< br>
"Hey, why did you bring so many back?!" When the children carried the fish buckets and fish guards back to the grain station, Gillette Abby was already fishing for bait blocks.
Talk about the origin of bait cubes. In the ancient book "Jijiupian", there is a record of "cake, bait, wheat rice and sweet bean soup". The great scholar Yan Shigu made a note below - " Steaming rice noodles can be used as bait." In Xu Kai's "Shuowen Jiezi Biography" of the Five Dynasties, it is said that "bait" is "steamed flour rice crumbs", and the rice is broken into pieces. The method is to soak the rice, steam it, then put it on a hammer to pound it, and pound it thoroughly to become the bait.
It sounds like this method is similar to rice cakes, but it is actually different. The same process is used to make glutinous rice. In southern Sichuan, it is called "獍粑" and "rice cake" is two different things, while the rice cakes in Jiangsu and Zhejiang are It is also made from glutinous rice flour, which makes it even more different.
Bait lumps specifically refer to rice dumplings made from a kind of rice, the common "tuanke rice" commonly grown in southern Sichuan. It has long been famous in Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan, and has been passed down for at least a thousand years.
Tuanke rice is of good quality, fragrant and not as sticky as glutinous rice, but better than japonica rice. Drain the soaked rice dumplings and 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 cook it over high heat. When the rice is steamed until it is sixty-seven mature, take out the water and soak it once, then drain the water, steam it for the second time with high fire until it is cooked, and then prepare to pound the bait. In the past, pounding bait blocks was a laborious job. The traditional pounding of bait blocks required the cooperation of more than 20 people: six to eight people stepped on the pot, one person pulled the pot, three or four people kneaded it, four or five people did miscellaneous work, and six others Until the eight-person shift is stepped on.
From the tenth day of the twelfth lunar month every year, large classes begin and are divided into three shifts. Two more people are added to each class to step on the clay pots. They take turns to process and produce. They work in three shifts day and night. The rice was rotten.
The pounding process should be done while it is hot, and the faster the better, because if it takes a long time, the rice will cool down, making it not only difficult to smash, but also impossible to knead the bait pieces with your hands.
In addition, when pounding bait blocks, you have to use your hands to pry up and turn the bait blocks on the mallet from time to time. Otherwise, there will still be rice grains in some places that are not hit, which will affect the taste when eating.
Therefore, when pounding bait blocks, it is necessary to cooperate tacitly and grasp the rhythm. Otherwise, the mallet will hit the hand of the person pulling the bait, and it is easy to cause injury.
And not everyone who has the strength can pull out bait. This job requires both strength and skill. After a bait block is knocked down, you will be out of breath and your arms will be sore and red.
After a period of "bang-dong, bang-dong" beating, the smashed rice was dug out of the stone while it was still hot. The people who were making the bait immediately gathered around the upper table and each person pulled a bunch of bait. Rub it together.
Of course, there is a skill in kneading the bait. The skilled Dan Jian flipped it with both hands, working with his right hand and left hand, and kneaded it several times. A round, white, steaming rice ball was placed on the table. If you are not skilled, not only will you not be able to make a round shape, but you will not be able to knead it into a shape for a long time, and you will also burn your hands. After the bait block is kneaded, it can be made into various shapes, or it can be pressed into specific patterned "bricks" with a grinding tool while it is still hot, and placed in a cool place until it cools down and becomes very hard. , it’s just a bait block.
Therefore, it is almost a big event in the village to eat bait cubes during the New Festival every year. Usually several neighboring families cooperate together. This is also a good opportunity to enhance neighborly relations.
However, this year's situation is a bit special. There is a machine for making bait cubes in the grain station, so there is no need to be so difficult. Gilliam Abi organized the women to steam the rice and put it into the machine after steaming. In the mixing barrel, the mixing barrel will twist and crush the bait pieces into bait balls, and then come out from the discharge port, two kilograms one by one.
So this year, all the work is done by women, and the rest of their work is not too heavy. They put the bait balls spit out by the machine into a wooden mold lined with plastic film, press it with a board, flatten it, and pour it out, and they are beautiful. The printed bait pieces are gone.
For the sake of beauty, a skillful woman was arranged to stand at the end of the team and decorate the bait pieces with red flowers, making the bait pieces more beautiful.
Because it has a long storage time and is easy to eat, bait cubes are a very favorite food in the ethnic minority areas of Sichuan, Yunnan and Guizhou. They can be eaten almost any way, fried, fried or grilled. They are also used to visit relatives and friends during the New Year and festivals. A must-have gift.
Some people have researched and said that the bait block was not called bait block at first, but should be called "bait feed", which means "bait used to give gifts to each other".
The most famous ways to eat it are "chicken shredded with fire", "Dajiujia" and "roasted bait cubes".
Dajiujia is made of ham, eggs, meat, radish, tomatoes, etc., stir-fried together in a pot. Emperor Yongli ate this when he fled to western Yunnan and thought it saved his life, hence the name.
Chicken hot shredded chicken is made from chicken soup with shredded chicken, shredded ham and shredded bait. It is the most common breakfast in many counties in Liangshan Prefecture. Zhou Zhi is full of praise for eating it in Meigu.