The next morning, Grandma Xixin's family came over very early. Grandma Xixin was holding a large rectangular iron plate, while Gao Zhuang was holding a rack made of bamboo strips, which would be used to dry the sweet potato flour later.
The aqueous solution filtered from the sweet potato residue has settled overnight. There is a white starch at the bottom of the basin, and clear water on top.
Looking at the sweet potato residue wrapped in cloth, it is already relatively dry.
These sweet potato residues will not be wasted, but can be used to feed livestock.
After having breakfast, Duo Duomei went to her second sister's house to help take care of the child. She was inexperienced at this time, but Duo Yu and Zhang Chengyuan were also inexperienced. The three of them got together and were overwhelmed by the newborn child. light.
Zhang Chengyuan had to take care of the work in the fields, not to mention that a grown man could not take care of a newborn child. When the child was held in his arms, he did not dare to move for fear of touching the child.
Newborn babies poop and pee the most. At this time, apart from feeding, they poop and pee, and the rest of the time they sleep.
If a child cries, it is either because he is hungry or because he has peeed.
Duoyu prepared some diapers in advance, and Duomei also made some diapers out of old cotton cloth and sent them over, but the diapers were still not enough, because the child would cry when it wets, and you had to change and wash it.
Fortunately, the weather is not too cold now, so washing diapers is not too strenuous. However, washing diapers is Zhang Chengyuan's business. Many beauties are responsible for taking care of the children and making confinement meals for her second sister.
Seeing Grandma Xi's family coming, Gao Mingcheng hurriedly greeted them and said, "The weather is nice today, it's a good time to make sweet potato flour."
"Yeah, it's been sunny lately, just a couple of days in the sun will be enough. Mingcheng, have you had breakfast?" Grandma Xi asked with a smile.
"After eating, Duomei has also cleaned the pot. Now you can make sweet potato flour. Grandma Xixi, you will mix the paste, and I will fetch the water. Gao Zhuang, you will light the fire!" Gao Mingcheng assigned tasks to everyone, and then Carrying the bucket tied with a rope, I went to the well.
The bucket for carrying water was not very big, so it took three buckets of water in a row to fill the big iron pot with two-thirds of the water.
Gao Zhuang had already sat on the wooden pillar at the entrance of the stove and lit the fire in the stove.
Recently, the Gao Mingcheng family has no shortage of firewood. Twigs are piled together, and chopped wood is also piled together. When lighting a fire, burn the twigs first. This will burn quickly. When the fire is strong, you can add more firewood. Large pieces of firewood are more resistant to burning.
If a person wants to cook and make a fire, he has to burn large pieces of firewood. Otherwise, if he stir-fries the vegetables, he has to add more firewood. When the time comes, he will be in a hurry and the taste of the food will definitely not be good. .
Grandma Xi took He Xiuman to make the paste. While making the paste, she told her granddaughter-in-law the secret.
He Xiuman studied very seriously. Her family had never made sweet potato flour before. Because her family had a large population and a poor family background, all the sweet potatoes she grew were eaten. How could she have the luxury of making sweet potato flour? Woolen cloth.
Making a paste is easy, it's just a matter of adding how much water.
Because sweet potato flour made at home does not add anything, but if you buy it from outside, alum may be added.
Because sweet potato paste can only be made into a paste but cannot be shaped, adding alum can increase the gluten of the sweet potato flour and help the vermicelli to be shaped into strips. Furthermore, with the gluten, it will not be easily broken during transportation. It will fall off, and the taste will be better, and it will not become chewy after being cooked for a long time.
However, alum contains aluminum, which cannot be metabolized after consumption. Eating too much may damage the brain, so it is best not to eat it. If the sweet potato flour you buy in the market keeps folding in half and is even elastic, then in all likelihood, it contains a lot of alum and gelatin.
Because it is difficult to shape without adding alum, the homemade sweet potato flour here does not use a funnel to drain the vermicelli and set it in warm water. Instead, the paste is spread on an iron plate, and then the iron plate is boiled in hot water. After cooking for a minute, tear off the vermicelli and place it on a bamboo strip rack to dry.
Leave it in the sun for an hour. When the surface of the sweet potato vermicelli is dry but not completely dry, you can peel it off. After folding it in half, cut the vermicelli into vermicelli. After the vermicelli is dried in the sun, you can save it and eat it slowly.
If kept dry, it can be stored for a year or two without going bad.
The water in the large iron pot has been boiling. Grandma Xiao took a round spoon to stir the paste, then scooped out a spoonful of the paste, poured it on the iron plate, and shook it to spread the paste evenly.
At this time, you can place the iron plate on the water surface of the iron pot. This iron plate is less than the diameter of the large iron pot and is specially made so that it can just fit in. When it is put in, it will float on the boiling water.
Grandma Xi put the lid on the pot so that it would cook faster. She said to He Xiuman beside her: "Cook for about a minute and it will be almost done. I didn't have a watch before, so I could only estimate the time by myself. If I was not sure, Just lift the lid and poke it with chopsticks. Now it's okay, you all have watches, you can check your watches."
As he spoke, a minute passed quickly.
Grandma Xifeng opened the lid of the pot, and a burst of hot air hit her face.
There is already a layer of light brown powder on the iron plate. The sweet potato starch is white, but it will change color after being cooked. This is like a fresh sweet potato. After it is cut, white juice will emerge from the cut surface, but after a while Afterwards, the juice will turn into light brown, and the same reason applies to the discoloration of sweet potato flour.
Grandma Xifeng used chopsticks to take the iron plate out of the hot water, then skillfully lifted up the vermicelli inside and spread it on the bamboo strips shelf prepared next to it.
Immediately afterwards, Grandma Xiao mixed the paste with a spoon, and poured another spoonful into the iron plate.
Every time you make vermicelli, you have to stir the paste because the starch will precipitate. If you don't stir it, there will be thick starch at the bottom and clear water at the top.
Grandma Xixi taught He Xiuman all the skills while doing it.
He Xiuman also listened carefully and memorized it carefully.
Gao Mingcheng was also watching. At this time, he started to place the bamboo strips outside in the yard to dry in the sun. It was best to find a position with the back of the wind and the sun, so that the dust would not be blown.
In this way, Grandma Xi took He Xiuman to make the noodles, Gao Zhuang lit the fire, and Gao Mingcheng helped to dry the noodles in the yard.
After the surface of the vermicelli was dry, he went to get a knife and a cutting board, folded the vermicelli in half, and then cut it into strips.
The gluten of pure sweet potato flour is not good. If it is dried too much, it will break into pieces if you fold it in half. So when it is half dry and half wet, cut the vermicelli into strips.
After cutting into strips, just put them in a large dustpan to dry.
Gao Zhuang's family has about 700 to 800 kilograms of sweet potatoes, plus more than 100 kilograms from Gao Mingcheng's family, so there is still a lot of sweet potato starch. Now it is made into vermicelli, and the whole process is quite long.
When many Americans came back to cook lunch, they found that their sweet potato noodles were still not ready.
The stove at home is in the shape of two large and one small, with two large iron pots and a small iron pot. The small iron pot is used for steaming rice, and the large iron pot can be used for cooking rice and stir-frying.
Most people only have two pots, one big and one small. However, when new houses were built later, because the conditions of the villagers improved and every household fed pigs, the stove became two pots, one big and one small.
When building a house, the craftsman asked Gao Mingcheng how to build a stove. He instinctively said this, so the craftsman made him a large stove.
There is a pot that is mostly empty on weekdays, but now it comes in handy to cook pork vermicelli.
Today is the day of Junling Old Market. Early in the morning, Duomei rode her bicycle to Junling and bought fresh pork. Half of it was given to her second sister and the other half was kept at home to eat.
The fat meat was minced to make lard, and then the well water was poured in. Because there were so many people, the pot of water was half filled.
After the water boils, you can put the chopped sweet potato vermicelli in and cook, and then put the lean meat in. When it is almost cooked, add some green vegetables.
After seasoning, it is ready to serve and is a simple lunch.
Gao Mingcheng was holding a bowl of noodles and eating it happily. Although this vermicelli is not particularly chewy, it is smooth and delicious and has a unique flavor.
"It's delicious! This sweet potato flour is delicious!" Gao Mingcheng praised generously, not only praising Grandma Xi's sweet potato flour for making it well, but also praising Duomei's cooking skills.
Duo Mei pursed her lips and smiled, lowering her head to eat her fans.
It was also rare for her to eat sweet potato noodles. This sweet potato noodles had pork in it and it tasted really good. So, several people ate all the sweet potato noodles in the bowl, not even the soup was wasted.
Seeing that He Xiuman likes to eat sweet potato noodles, Grandma Xi immediately said to Gao Zhuang: "I told him that Xiuman would like to eat sweet potato noodles. This year, we planted some sweet potatoes."
Gao Zhuang smiled, thinking of the conversation he had with his grandma when they were planting sweet potatoes.
Gao Zhuang was tired of eating sweet potatoes and didn't want to eat more. Naturally, he didn't want to eat more varieties, but Grandma Xiao wanted to eat more varieties. The reason was that she wanted to make sweet potato powder for He Xiuman to eat.
Who would have thought that in the second half of the year, the weather would be dry, not only would the sweet potato production in the fields be reduced, but there would also be no well water for making sweet potato flour.
Fortunately, Brother Mingcheng’s house has a well!
This sweet potato vermicelli took a day to make, mainly because the production efficiency was too low! Only one sheet of vermicelli can be made at a time. Although it only takes one minute to cook, it will take a long time. Moreover, after the water evaporates, the water level in the pot drops, so you have to add water and boil it again.
By the afternoon, all the sweet potato noodles were ready.
Because he needed to collect medicinal materials, Gao Mingcheng had a scale at home, weighed all the sweet potato flour, and then divided the sweet potato flour according to the proportion of sweet potatoes produced.
Grandma Xi asked Gao Mingcheng to share more because she used water and firewood from Gao Mingcheng's family.
The stove that had been burning for a day did use a lot of firewood.
Gao Mingcheng naturally gave in, but he couldn't help Grandma Xi, so she ended up collecting a few more kilograms of sweet potato flour.
As for the sweet potato residue, all of it was given to Xi Nainai’s family. Gao Mingcheng’s family didn’t raise pigs, and their cattle and sheep didn’t eat much of it.
Although these sweet potato residues have lost some of their nutrients, they are still good feed for pigs.
(End of chapter)
