Flowers in full bloom

Chapter 242: Dishes with a Long Storage Life

While the people in the village were busy making lotus root powder, Hua Lei was not idle either. She first went to the pottery workshop under the name of Hou Mansion in Beicheng District to customize hundreds of small one-pound pottery jars. She required that the mouth of the jar be slightly smaller than that of ordinary pottery jars, and the body of the jar be larger than that of ordinary pottery jars. Finally, the fired small pottery jars were close to pear-shaped, with a large bottom and a relatively small mouth.

A few days later, she brought several newly made pottery jars from the pottery workshop to the down jacket production team, and asked someone to weave diamond-shaped pockets with the remaining strips of fabric from cutting down jackets according to the size and depth of the jars.

Finally, she went to the tofu shop again. Hualei wanted to make a batch of fermented bean curd to send to the soldiers in Xinjiang.

Hualei asked the tofu shop to specially make a batch of hard tofu, which was cut into blocks of appropriate size. A large shallow ceramic basin was prepared, and clean straw was spread on the bottom of the basin. The cut tofu blocks were placed flat in the container, leaving a certain space between each block of tofu.

Then cover the container and place it in a cool place for fermentation. After a few days, white mycelium begins to grow on the surface of the tofu, which is a sign of the growth of Mucor. After about seven or eight days, Mucor has grown all over each piece of old tofu.

At this time, the first round of fermentation of fermented bean curd has been completed. When all the old tofu is covered with long white hairs, Hualei carefully takes out the tofu blocks, gently separates the sticky mycelium with hands, and applies a thin layer of salt on the surface of the tofu. These salts can not only help remove excess water in the tofu, but also inhibit the growth of miscellaneous bacteria and increase the shelf life of the fermented bean curd.

In order to enhance the taste, Hualei also added pepper powder, chili powder and other seasonings to the salt. Then the tofu cubes coated with salt were placed in a clean, specially customized small ceramic pot, and a layer of seasoning was sprinkled on each layer of old tofu.

When the old tofu is filled to within a finger's distance of the mouth of the clay pot, pour the marinade made of rice wine, spices, brown sugar, etc. into the small clay pot until it covers the tofu cubes.

Finally, seal the mouth of the small pottery jar with clean oil paper, cover it with a lid, and place it in a cool place for secondary fermentation. The secondary fermentation time is generally one month, of course, if the temperature is low, it will generally take more than one and a half months. Fortunately, it is September in Shangjing City, and the temperature is still very high every day, so the tofu ferments very quickly.

After more than twenty days, the fermented bean curd had gradually fermented successfully. Hualei opened one of the small ceramic jars and smelled the rich aroma of the fermented bean curd in the jar. She carefully picked out a piece with clean and oil-free chopsticks and tried it. It had a slightly salty taste, soft texture, and a slight spicy flavor.

Hualei specially made non-spicy white fermented bean curd and red fermented bean curd with a little chili. At this time, Hualei tasted the slightly spicy red fermented bean curd and was very satisfied. Fortunately, it was very successful. In addition to hundreds of one-jin cans of fermented bean curd, Hualei also made 400 jars of five-jin fermented bean curd.

In another five or six days, this batch of fermented bean curd should be ready. Then pour a layer of soybean oil on the fermented bean curd to seal it, and it can be stored for a long time. Then we will send one batch to Western Xinjiang and another batch to Mobei.

During this period, Hualei also took the time to make a lot of wormwood columns and wormwood mosquito repellent incense pills. Because she read the regional annals, which said that the temperature in Western Xinjiang is high during the day, but there is a lot of dew and moisture at night, and there are many mosquitoes.

Hualei thought that these soldiers probably didn't sleep well at night. After all, no one could sleep well when mosquitoes were buzzing around them. Mugwort emits a special smell that can repel mosquitoes.

Hualei didn't buy the mugwort, but exchanged it for the feces of chickens, ducks, geese and pigs in Yuanying Village. In the past two years, around the Dragon Boat Festival, large tracts of mugwort grew in the mountains and fields. Last year, some villagers asked if they could exchange mugwort for fertilizer. Hualei agreed, and then some of the mugwort was used to make mugwort soap. The unused mugwort was placed in the warehouse. With the mugwort exchanged this year, there was a lot of mugwort in the warehouse. Unexpectedly, it came in handy now.

She had people carefully crush the dried wormwood with a stone mortar into wormwood fluff, and then use mulberry paper to roll the crushed wormwood fluff into wormwood sticks that are smaller than a rolling pin. In this way, before going to bed at night, the wormwood sticks can be lit to fumigate the room, and then hung in the upwind direction to repel mosquitoes.

Many farmers in Yuanying Village are also using it themselves. When there are a lot of mosquitoes, they even use these mugwort pillars in the pigsty to let the piglets sleep well. The mosquito repellent effect is very obvious. The piglets sleep soundly every day and grow very fast.

Then, Hua Lei beat the better mugwort leaves into fine moxa fluff, added some calamus, mint and other ingredients, and made mugwort mosquito repellent pills. Each pill is the size of a grape, which can be put in the purses of patrolling soldiers, or directly strung into bracelets and used to repel mosquitoes in the wild.

When everything was almost finished, Hualei asked Uncle Fu to tell Butler Bai that he could come over to check the goods at any time. During this time, Lord Bai had sent Butler Bai to the farm several times to ask about it.

The next day, Lord Bai came with Butler Bai early in the morning. Unexpectedly, Bai Yunhe also followed them this time. Why did he skip class again?

Hua Lei took out the lotus root powder from the ceramic jar, scooped a spoonful of light white lotus root powder with a clean spoon and put it into a porcelain bowl, rinsed it with warm water, and then stirred it slightly with the spoon. It was visible to the naked eye that the light white lotus root powder turned into a bowl of slightly transparent, sticky and uniform paste in a few minutes.

Hualei handed the bowl to Lord Bai, who took it carefully, picked up the soup spoon, stirred it, and scooped a spoonful into his mouth. For a moment, he felt that the lotus root powder was delicate and smooth, melting in his mouth, and had the natural fragrance of lotus root.

Because a little bit of honey was added to the flower buds during brewing, the whole lotus root powder tasted fragrant and sweet, and was very delicious. Lord Bai felt that the flower buds were not brewed enough, and after a few spoonfuls, the bottom of the bowl was upside down.

"Miss Hua, this lotus root powder tastes so good, sweet and smooth, it's really good stuff. By the way, how much lotus root powder do you have? I want all of it, the price is negotiable."

Hua Lei smiled and said, "There are only more than 2,000 kilograms in total. I guess Lord Bai still thinks it's not enough. How about this, I'll give all of this batch to Lord Bai, what do you think? I'll think of other things to send to Lord Pei in Mobei later."

After making the lotus root powder, Hua Lei felt that it was a little too little. Two thousand kilograms of lotus root powder might sound like a lot to ordinary people, but for Xinjiang, which has an army of 200,000, these two thousand kilograms of lotus root powder would probably be like a drop in the ocean.