There seems to be a lot of rain at the end of March.
When I woke up, there was mist and rain outside the window, and water droplets were dripping from the eaves.
Jiang Yanyi walked to the window and looked at the grass and trees in the courtyard that were dyed a new green by the rain. The ripples stirred up by a beautiful dream in his heart faded away, and a faint sadness melted away in his eyes.
She stretched out her hand to catch the raindrops dripping from the eaves. The water droplets hit her palm, and the chill seemed to spread to the bottom of her heart.
"I hope that good news will come from Yuzhou soon."
Her voice was so light that it sounded like a sigh.
It was still early. When Jiang Yanyi walked out of the door, he found that there was no movement in Madam An's room next door. He guessed that she was still sleeping. When he walked to the front yard, he could hear the sound of Chu Yangui reading aloud in his room.
She stood under the eaves and listened quietly for a while before turning around and going to the kitchen.
Mrs. Liu had already started a fire and was boiling water for washing. When she saw Jiang Yanyi, she was quite surprised: "Master, why are you getting up so early? Why don't you sleep a little longer?"
Jiang Yanyi used a wooden basin to fetch some water to clean his face and said, "I'm used to it."
As her business grew, she bought many shops one after another and opened noodle shops in other states. She was dazzled by the various account books every day.
On weekdays, I have to inspect various shops during the day, and whenever there is a banquet, I have to socialize with people from the Chamber of Commerce. At night, I have to stay up late to check the accounts, and every account has to be checked before I can sleep peacefully.
Ever since she and Feng Shuo got engaged, her status as the future princess made others fearful of her when speaking openly, but the words they made up behind her back were still as unpleasant as they could be.
Jiang Yanyi had heard such remarks several times when she was out on business, such as she just had a coquettish face and was great in bed, which was why Feng Shuo was so bewitched by her.
There were also voices among the people who were indignant for the Princess of Xing'an, saying that if Feng Shuo had married a princess who could go to the battlefield, he would have no worries about conquering the world. On the other hand, she was a money-grubber, full of calculations, and it was probably because Feng Shuo used his private power to help her that her business was so big.
When the private school was established and Jiang Yanyi advocated that girls could also attend the school, many women in the community cursed her, saying that she had ill intentions and wanted to ruin the reputation of those girls. After all, how could girls go to school in a private school with boys
Having heard so many vicious remarks, Jiang Yanyi didn't take them seriously. She just thought it was pathetic.
This era has put heavy shackles on women. When others try to break the shackles on them, they will launch a crazy counterattack. It seems that only by wearing those shackles can they keep their chastity and make men feel satisfied when they choose them like goods.
And they are proud of this, and spend their entire lives studying how to put this heavy yoke firmly on their daughters.
As for those women who broke free from their shackles, they would rack their brains to point fingers and express contempt and spit on them, as if this would make them appear chaste and noble.
Jiang Yanyi did not feel any resentment. She knew clearly that things that were deeply rooted and passed down in a dynasty for hundreds of years could not be changed overnight or with just a few words.
But she often felt deeply sad and powerless. Did she say those foolish women were vicious? They didn't even realize that they were wrong.
Jiang Yanyi could refute those insults one by one, but he could refute hundreds or thousands of people, but not tens of thousands.
She must stand higher, and when every word she says has weight, more people will hear her voice and change the fate of most women of this era.
***
After Jiang Yanyi finished cleaning his noodles, he turned around to look at the snails that had just spit out the sand. He then found a box of candied dates and brown sugar steamed cakes on the table beside him. He asked Granny Liu, "Was this a gift from someone else?"
Granny Liu smiled from ear to ear: "The village head's wife brought it here early in the morning, saying she wanted to thank you for sending people to the village to collect snails."
The steamed cake is mixed with brown sugar, giving it a light reddish brown color. It not only smells like the unique fragrance of glutinous rice, but also seems to have the sweetness of brown sugar.
Jiang Yanyi picked up a piece and tasted it. The steamed cake was sweet but not greasy, glutinous but not sticky. The red dates had their pits removed and were steamed until soft. It should be because glutinous rice wine was added when kneading the dough. The light aroma of wine infused the steamed cake with soul.
Jiang Yanyi nodded appreciatively: "I had snail noodles and steamed cakes this morning."
Mrs. Liu had never heard of using snails to cook vermicelli, so she hesitated and said, "Boss, these snails are better fried."
"I'll fry it at noon." Jiang Yanyi picked up a snail and scrubbed it clean with a soft brush, then cut off the snail's tail with scissors. The snail's internal organs are at the tail, so they must be cleaned before eating.
The snails have been soaked in clean water for a day and a night. The water has been changed several times and sesame oil has been added. The sand has been spit out very cleanly.
Seeing this, Mrs. Liu went over to help. She had been doing farm work for many years and her hands were stronger than Jiang Yanyi's, so she had no difficulty in cutting the snail tails.
Jiang Yanyi went to get the soup.
The essence of snail noodles is almost entirely in the soup. After blanching the pork bones and chicken racks, she added water to the pot again, put in a few slices of ginger, a spoonful of rice wine, and threw in a knot of scallions.
After the snails are processed, blanch them in cold water, add onion, ginger and cooking wine to remove the fishy smell, and cook for another half a quarter of an hour after the water boils. Then take them out and the snail shells will basically be cooked off.
The smell of snail noodles does not come from the snails, but from the sour bamboo shoots.
The raw material for Jiang Yanyi's pickled bamboo shoots is the winter bamboo shoots that Madam Chen gave her during the Chinese New Year. Even now, when the lid of the pickle jar is opened, the stench is too overbearing. Sometimes it spreads to the front yard. Chu Yangui has to send Chu Zhong over to ask if something happened in the kitchen.
She washed the soaked pickled bamboo shoots and cut them into shreds. She also soaked a lot of chili peppers that she harvested before the New Year, but she removed the seeds before soaking them. The seeds have now become chili pepper seedlings in the field.
Chop the pickled pepper, dice the sour cowpea and sour radish, and cut the soaked black fungus into shreds.
Before frying the ingredients, Jiang Yanyi first extracted the scallion oil, then heated half scallion oil and half lard in a pan. Without putting anything else in the pan, the smell of the oil rising with the heat alone had a strong scallion aroma.
The flavor becomes even stronger after adding ginger and garlic. Add chili peppers and stir-fry until red oil comes out, then pour in the sour bamboo shoots and stir-fry. Then add more than ten kinds of spices such as star anise, cinnamon, angelica, perilla, etc., and stir-fry until the aroma comes out. Then pour in the blanched snails and continue stir-frying.
Mrs. Liu was watching the fire behind the stove, smelling the pungent aroma from the pot. She felt puzzled, thinking that Jiang Yanyi had just said that he would make soup with snail noodles in the morning, but how come he was frying snails in the blink of an eye.
However, Granny Liu had heard of her boss's cooking skills. Even though she had tasted Jiang Yanyi's cooking yesterday, she still drooled when she smelled the aroma of the fried snails in the pot this morning, praising him: "With the same spices, how can the boss cook something so delicious!"
Jiang Yanyi said as he stir-fried the food: "The order of adding ingredients, the heat of frying, and the time of taking the food out of the pot are all very particular. If there is any discrepancy in any step, the taste will always be different."
"The boss is right." Mrs. Liu smiled and agreed.
After the snails are fried, pour the prepared broth into the pot and continue cooking. Jiang Yanyi uses another small pot to fry peanuts and bean curd sheets.
Yuba is made of tofu skin. Mrs. Liu had heard that Jiang Yanyi and his group were coming to the farm, so she pushed some tofu in advance and picked up a few tofu skins.
After the oil temperature rises, turn to low heat. When the peanuts are poured in, there is a "sizzling" sound in the pot. Small bubbles roll above the oil layer and the color of the peanut skin gradually darkens. Jiang Yanyi pushes the peanuts with a spatula from time to time. When he estimates that the time is about right, he scoops up the peanuts and continues to fry the bean curd sheets.
When making old duck soup yesterday, Jiang Yanyi kept the duck feet. She fried the duck feet twice in the remaining oil in the pot before putting them into the snail soup and cooking them together. She also added a little sugar to enhance the flavor.
The braised eggs were braised last night, so just put them directly into the soup and cook together.
If you want snail noodles to taste refreshing and smooth, the noodles have to be made with aged rice. The masters in the noodle shop are good at making noodles and their skills are also good. The vermicelli that Jiang Yanyi brought to Zhuangzi were made by the noodle shop masters.
Soaking in cold water can retain the elasticity of rice noodles to the greatest extent. Put the softened vermicelli directly into the pot with clean water. After it is cooked soft, scoop it into a bowl, pour the soup on it, top it with a few blanched vegetable leaves, put the cut braised eggs on it, then put in the soft and fragrant duck feet, garnish with sour cowpeas, sour bamboo shoots, fried peanuts, bean curd, and a few pieces of coriander.
Jiang Yanyi was so greedy that she wanted to pick up the bowl and take a bite immediately, but Mrs. Liu, who was helping her, looked as if she wanted to say something but hesitated.
This noodle looks delicious, why does it smell so weird
She was too embarrassed to say that Jiang Yanyi's cooking was not delicious, and when Jiang Yanyi urged her to send it to Chu Yangui and Chen Guogong, she hesitated and said, "This... Boss, do you really want to send it over?"
Jiang Yanyi nodded: "Send it quickly, otherwise it will get cold in a while."
Then she seemed to have thought of something and said, "If they are not used to it, you can make them a bowl of noodles and I will send it to Madam An Shao."
Mrs. Liu thought that Jiang Yanyi had also realized that he had messed up the noodles, and she didn't want to embarrass Jiang Yanyi, so she quickly agreed.
When the snail noodles were delivered to Chu Yangui and Duke Chen's residence, Chu Yangui did not say anything, but Duke Chen pinched his nose and asked, "What is this? Why does it smell so bad?"
Mrs. Liu smiled awkwardly and said, "The boss got up early in the morning and cooked the noodles with the soup made from snails. If you two are not used to it, the boss specifically asked me to go to the kitchen and cook some noodles."
When Chu Yangui heard that it was made by Jiang Yanyi himself, he said, "Bring it here."
A bowl of noodles has a lot of small ingredients added to it. The soup is bright red, but the oil floating on the surface is not heavy. It looks delicious, but the smell is a bit hard to swallow.
Chu Yangui hesitated for a while, but still picked up a piece of bean curd that had absorbed the soup and softened it and ate it.
He frowned, with a rather strange expression. After finishing the bean curd, he put down his chopsticks, scooped a spoonful of soup with a spoon and drank it. After tasting it carefully, he said, "It's very fresh and sweet, and the sour and spicy taste is very appetizing."
After hearing what he said, Duke Chen also wanted to try something new. He ate the duck feet first. His eyes lit up and he exclaimed, "It tastes so good!"
The skin of the duck feet that are fried and then stewed is soft and tender, and it is very easy to absorb the flavor. You almost don’t need to chew it. The meat is in your mouth with just the tip of your tongue, and it has a strong gelatinous texture.
That afternoon, the people from Ruyilou rented a horse-drawn carriage to come to the village to collect snails. The next day, snail noodles, which smell as stinky as stinky tofu but taste as delicious, had a special small area in Ruyilou. Business was slow at first, but later people flocked to eat snail noodles.
The people in the village also made a lot of money by selling snails, and they were all grateful to Jiang Yanyi.
Mrs. An originally planned to stay for two days and then go back to the An family, but the dishes cooked by Jiang Yanyi were so delicious. Sometimes when Jiang Yanyi was checking the accounts, Mrs. An could learn a lot from him, so she gradually forgot about going home.
So when An Yongyuan came to pick her up in person, he was stunned to find that Mrs. An had gained weight compared to before she left home.
The author has something to say: Mrs. An Shao: I accidentally forgot about going home.
An Yongyuan: Today is such a sad Valentine's Day.
Feng Hanhan: I am even sadder because I can’t even see my wife!
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