The Garden Life of a Little Gardener

I don’t know whether Chairman Wang’s tofu dishes are enough for Zhou Quan, but it can be seen that he can come back to the homestay, whether it is the waiter, the cleaning aunt, or the kitchen helpers are very happy and welcome, which shows that Uncle Wang is really a very friendly person.

Chef Bao knew that he was back, and he stayed for a month, so he took the initiative to give him a [-]% discount on the off-season room rate, and invited him to a welcome banquet.

There is an old saying in Northeast China that welcomes guests with dumplings and sends them away with noodles. If guests come to the house, the first meal that a particular family will cook must be dumplings.

Old man Wang was lucky today. Chef Bao found some good beef when he went to the wholesale market in the morning.

When I came back in the morning, Chef Bao had already packed up most of the beef.

Cut the beef brisket into dice-sized cubes, wash the blood and put it in a pressure cooker, take it out when it is cooked to seven maturity, and put it into an iron pot with adjusted taste together with potato cubes and white radish cubes.

This pot should be stewed at least until the evening, until the beef brisket is soft, the potatoes and white radish are full of soup and the taste is soft and rotten.

Tendon meat and beef intestines, Chef Bao cleaned them up and threw them into the brine pot, intending to make them into braised beef and braised beef sausages with sauce flavor.

Beef sirloin, tendon and those offal accounted for 90.00% of the total weight of the beef this time, and the remaining [-]% was beef ribs and beef neck.

These two kinds of meat are very distinctive. The beef rib meat brought back by Chef Bao this time is the part of the beef breast, which is the beef breast in the cut meat.

The meat of this part is on both sides of the sternal cartilage, mainly the pectoralis major muscle. The meat quality is characterized by slightly thicker fibers, but covered with a certain amount of fat.

The sweetness of the meat is high and the gum content is high. The most suitable way is to stew, especially stewed soup. It is fat but not greasy, fresh and sweet, and the taste is particularly good.

The meat of the neck of the beef is also called the collar or the neck. Because this part is the most active part of the cow, it is both fat and thin, and the meat is firm. Great for grilling and sautéing.

Beef neck meat is most suitable for making stuffing, or making beef balls. It is chewy and has a strong ability to hang juice. After the meat stuffing is cooked, it is all big meatballs wrapped in dough. Thinking about it, I feel happy.

Chef Bao didn’t bring much beef brisket this time, but it still weighed four or five catties. He personally made the stewed beef soup, and planned to use this dish to nourish the employees in the cold early winter.

There is less beef neck meat, only a catty and a half, whether it is made into balls or chopped to make dumplings, it is not enough for so many people.

Originally, Chef Bao planned to make these beef neck meat into hand-made meatballs, and save them for Ah Quan to eat in the hot pot, but now that there are guests, he can simply make them into dumpling fillings.

After looking through the ingredients in the kitchen, Chef Bao quickly confirmed that the dumplings for welcoming guests today are stuffed with beef and onion.

After making the noodles, the dough was put in the basin to wake up, and the beef neck on the red case had been chopped into minced meat by Uncle Wen.

The onion on the other side was also chopped into pieces. The aunt who helped the cook waved her hand, and went out to relieve the symptoms with slightly red eye sockets stimulated by the onion.

The old-fashioned beef and onion stuffed dumplings in Northeast China are very easy to make. The ratio of beef and onion is [-]. The onion is fried in advance, and then the fried onion is poured into the beef filling.

Add an appropriate amount of salt and thirteen spices to the stuffing, put the old soup into the stuffing and stir vigorously in one direction until the strong beef stuffing blends the old soup and seasonings, and the beef and onion dumpling stuffing is ready.

As long as there is good beef and old soup, this kind of dumpling is not difficult to make at all.

So at the welcome dinner that day, next to the hot beef soup, there were two more steaming dumplings.

Probably because there is only one soup and one staple food, it seems negligent when entertaining guests, so the newly stewed beef brisket with potatoes and radishes, as well as the chopped beef tendons and beef intestines in marinated sauce were served on the table.

Of course, for that special guest, a steaming tofu dish on the table is definitely indispensable. Chef Bao said that tofu is still free for him to eat.

As an invited guest, Chairman Wang brought a souvenir, a specialty of their hometown, wine in a bamboo tube, which is said to be called bamboo tube wine.

It was really a bamboo tube, a whole section of moso bamboo, sealed up and down, and there were no obvious scars on the bamboo joints, it was obviously a well-sealed bamboo joint.

But when Zhou Quan picked it up, he felt that the weight of these bamboo joints was unusual, and when he put it sideways to his ear and shook it, the sound of liquid vibrating inside and the feeling of water waves touching were very obvious.

There is indeed wine in the bamboo joint, but the bamboo joint itself cannot find the wound. How did the wine get poured in?

Curious, Zhouquan shook the bamboo joint in his hand back and forth, left and right. He felt that if there was a secret drinking port that he hadn't discovered, then wine would definitely flow out from there while shaking.

But the fact is that no matter how he fiddles with it, those bamboo tubes are still intact, nothing leaked out.

Having lived here for more than two months, the old man Wang, who has already adapted to the living habits here, sat cross-legged on the other side of the kang table, squinted his eyes and allowed himself to study for a long time before he asked, "How is it that you found the wine?" How did you pour it into the secret?"

Zhou Quan, who used all methods, put down the thick bamboo joints in his hands, and said in admiration, "No, all the bamboo tubes are intact, and the wine seems to be brewed directly from the bamboo. of."

Old man Wang, who was cleaning up his bowls and chopsticks, nodded with a smile and said, "It's very savvy, and it tells the truth. These bamboo tube wines are brewed in bamboo."

"Bamboo can still make wine? But the inside of the bamboo joints should be clean and hollow. How can wine be made without fermentation bacteria?"

"It doesn't exist in bamboo, so people can put it in. The moso bamboo used for wine in these bamboo tubes is injected with the puree of high-quality sorghum wine when the seedlings are very young. After three to five years, the puree grows together with the bamboo. , absorb the essence in the bamboo liquid, brew and strengthen yourself. The wine has been subdued quietly for several years, silently absorbing the aura of the world. When the bamboo tube wine is brewed successfully, split the bamboo joints to get out the wine inside, and the sweet fragrance is wanton. Mellow and long, this is the essence of the bamboo forest, a gift from the mountains.”

Although he hadn't successfully drank the bamboo tube wine in Wang Lao's mouth, Zhouquan could already feel a burst of fresh breath coming from his face just based on his current description.

Finding an awl and a hammer, Old Wang gently tapped a round hole on the upper side of a bamboo tube, then poured wine for Chef Zhou Quan and Bao, and the amber wine slipped out of the round hole of the bamboo tube When it came out, the clear bamboo fragrance and the sweet wine fragrance came to my face.

As if being bewitched, Zhouquan involuntarily took a deep breath, and suddenly felt like he was in a forest of bamboo mountains.

Carefully picked up the wine cup, took a sip lightly, only to feel the elegant bamboo fragrance, the mellow and sweet wine, soft and clean, pure and natural.

Wine, this kind of thing that can invigorate the blood and warm the body, in Zhou Quan's impression, it should be a violent liquid, which is hot in the mouth and irritating in the stomach.

But this glass of bamboo tube wine has refreshed Zhou Quan's understanding of wine. It turns out that there is another kind of wine that can make people drink the taste of morning dew and ice and snow.

Like an opera idiot who is obsessed with opera, enjoying the three-day sweetness in his mouth, he knows that he likes this bamboo tube wine just by taking a sip.

Seeing Zhou Quan's enjoyment, Elder Wang chuckled a few times, and then took the initiative to pick up the staple food on today's table, the dumplings stuffed with beef and shallots specially made by Chef Bao.

The dumplings made by Chef Bao are very similar to himself, they are all big, but they are boiled dumplings, but they almost catch up with steamed dumplings.

At first glance, this piece looks like it has thin skin and big stuffing. Thinking of the big meat stuffing inside the dumpling, Mr. Wang's eyes narrowed, and his saliva began to secrete involuntarily.

After picking up a big fat dumpling and putting it into his own bowl, Mr. Wang gently bit the top of the dumpling skin, and the hot air came out of the opening immediately.

I scooped up a little bit of dipping sauce, and slowly poured it in along the opening of the dumpling wrapper. Seeing that the clumps of meat stuffing inside and the soaked meat juice were all stained with the color of soy sauce, I put down the spoon in satisfaction. .

Picking up his own bowl, he blew on the processed dumplings in the bowl, not sure whether it was hot or cold, and bit off more than half of it in one bite.

Just like eating soup dumplings, Mr. Wang first sucked up the soup inside the dumplings, and then the dough wrapped with meat stuffing fell into his mouth.

Chewing the meatballs in his mouth, the fragrant beef is mixed with spicy but sweet onions. The delicious gravy makes the dumpling filling moist and crispy. It feels like eating Chaoshan beef balls .

"Ah~~~, I'm so happy to be able to live here, and I'm even happier to be able to eat the food that you cook yourself. I don't want to leave, I don't want to leave at all. Do you know that after I leave here, I don't think about food anymore I don’t want to, the food I ate at the B&B stays in my mind every day. It’s such a hassle to go back and forth like this, if only I could apply for a piece of land in your village and just live there.”

It's a pity that the old Wangtou's remarks did not resonate with the public, because one of the two people sitting opposite the kang table was still immersed in the fragrance of bamboo wine, and the other was frowning and chewing on a platter of braised beef sausage. It seems that I am not very satisfied with the taste of this dish.