Free Web NovelChapter 1099: Chapter 448: Buy Some Winter Bamboo Shoots Before My Sister-in-Law Takes Them All! [Subscription Request]
While chatting with Geng Lele at the dining table and eating fried skin residue, Shen Jiayue didn’t pay attention to the conversation of the others. When she heard Chen Yan mention bamboo shoots, she said:
"We’ll have bamboo shoots to eat tomorrow at noon. My cousin Wenqing is about to give birth, so Xu Bao and I are planning to take a meal to the hospital, making stewed bamboo shoots and braised pork belly. If you want to eat, you can sign up early."
Stewed bamboo shoots?
Braised pork belly?
Aren’t these dishes from the Jiangnan region?
They sound quite good.
Zeng Xiaoqi said:
"Make a little more. While the bamboo shoots haven’t all been snatched up by certain people, I’ll take a cab home for lunch tomorrow."
The group chatted chirpily while starting to eat more fried skin residue.
To prevent everyone from feeling overwhelmed by just having skin residue, Lin Xu specially took some frozen youtiao from the refrigerator, fried them, and mixed half a bowl of lettuce with them.
After eating and drinking to their fill, Chen Yan initially planned to go back but decided to stay upon hearing that Chen Yuanyuan and Zeng Xiaoqi wouldn’t return.
The next day.
After breakfast, when Lin Xu had just arrived at the shop, he saw a whole basket of yellow mud placed at the entrance of the kitchen.
Old Huang saw Lin Xu and smiled, saying:
"Brother Lin, I heard you wanted bamboo shoots, so I had some premium yellow mud bamboo flown in overnight. The quality of these shoots is exceptional; they were unearthed just at dusk last night, absolutely delicious."
Is this large chunk of yellow mud bamboo shoots?
It was quite unexpected for Lin Xu.
He picked up a large piece, peeled it open, and indeed saw the brown bamboo sheath inside.
Old Huang continued:
"Once unearthed, these yellow mud shoots age quickly when exposed to the wind, so they need to be sealed immediately with yellow mud. That way, they remain tender even when shipped to Beijing. We Northern folks can only enjoy good bamboo with this method."
"Thank you, Boss Huang. The quality of these shoots is really good."
"Oh, it’s what we do... Brother, are there many people eating bamboo shoots at noon? Could I join in and have a taste? If you like, not only winter bamboo shoots but also thunder bamboo shoots, spring bamboo shoots, smoked bamboo shoots... whatever you want, there’s plenty to choose from."
Lin Xu said:
"Let’s eat together at noon. These bamboo shoots aren’t on the menu for the shop; they don’t store well. Let’s enjoy them together at noon, like a panda savoring bamboo."
Besides this whole basket of yellow mud bamboo shoots, Old Huang also delivered around twenty pounds of Huangshan salted meat. frёewebnoѵēl.com
Braised pork belly comes from Hui cuisine, so naturally, the ingredients are chosen based on Hui standards.
For example, this salted meat, which people in Shanghai call South Wind Meat, is actually the cured meat made in every household in the Hui region.
This salted and air-dried meat, compared to the bacon from Southwest regions, is subtly milder, without the smoky taste or excessive cured flavor, has the right saltiness, and is richly fragrant.
There’s no need to cook it; even a simple steam makes for an excellent meal.
The famous Hui dish, Sword Board Fragrance, refers to this kind of meat. When it’s steamed and sliced on the board, the aroma can even seep into the board itself, hence the term "sword board fragrance."
With this cured meat, Lin Xu felt more at ease in making the braised pork belly.
At 9:30 in the morning, after finishing all the kitchen work, Lin Xu moved the whole basket of bamboo shoots wrapped in yellow mud to the kitchen and began preparing lunch.
Bamboo shoots cannot be prepared in advance; otherwise, they quickly age.
They are to be peeled only when they’re about to be cooked. ƒгeewёbnovel.com
To minimize the time the bamboo shoots are exposed to air, Lin Xu preemptively cut five pounds of salted meat into pieces slightly smaller than mahjong tiles, placing them in the basket for later use.
To enhance the flavor of the salted meat, he also added about a pound of Jinhua ham, sliced into large chunks as well.
Then he chopped seven to eight pounds of pork ribs, blanching them together with the salted meat and ham in boiling water.
Braised pork belly involves salted and cured ingredients like salted meat and ham, while the fresh part refers to the bamboo shoots, fresh meat, or even tender chicken — anything fresh works.
Braising refers to cooking cured meats with seasonal ingredients, originally called braised fresh. Due to the Jiangnan region’s accent, braised fresh became braised fresh.
But the word "braise" adds a touch of poetry to the dish.
It also evokes a unique sense of nostalgia for people in Jiangnan and the entire Yangtze River Delta.
With the salted meat and pork ribs ready, Lin Xu also soaked some tofu skin in hot water, which is a common cooking habit among Shanghai people, adding a few tofu skins to enhance the soybean aroma of the dish.
With all ingredients prepared, Lin Xu finally picked up the bamboo shoots, peeled off the yellow mud wrapped around them, and stripped away the outer layer to reveal clean, tender winter bamboo shoots.
The peeled bamboo shoots cannot be washed. After cutting off the roots, they are first vertically sliced with a kitchen knife and then cut into oblique chunks.
A total of ten pounds of bamboo shoots were chopped. By the time they were ready, the water in the pot had just begun to boil. He skimmed off the foam with a spoon and then added the bamboo shoots for blanching.
The bamboo shoots contain a lot of oxalic acid, and eating too much can cause stones, which is also responsible for their bitterness, so it’s best to blanch them before eating to remove the water-soluble oxalic acid.
A few minutes later, there was no more foam from the pork ribs and other ingredients, which were then taken out and rinsed with hot water.
Lin Xu put a soup pot on the stove, brought it to a boil, and added the bamboo shoots, pork ribs, salted meat, and ham into it, stirred in a ladle of rice wine, added scallion and ginger, and then brought back to a boil to skim foam.
He then turned the heat down, letting it simmer gently.
The preparation of braised pork belly is straightforward; it doesn’t require complex seasoning or even any seasoning at all. The salt from the salted meat and ham is enough to make the flavor delicious.
This dish cannot be boiled over high heat, or else the fat in the meat will render out.
It must be slowly simmered over low heat, so that while the meat is thoroughly cooked, its texture is retained, and the bamboo shoots, despite long cooking, remain crisp and tender.
If the resulting braised pork belly has a milky white broth, it means the heat was too high and didn’t quite achieve the desired quality.
The most delicious braised pork belly has a clear soup.
Seeming thin and watery, yet it’s incredibly delicious, with all the freshness of the plants and meat gathered in the clear broth, mesmerizing upon tasting.
With the braised pork belly simmering, Lin Xu initially wanted to make stewed bamboo shoots.
But braised pork belly takes over an hour to cook, so making stewed bamboo shoots now would be premature.
He glanced at the leftover skin residue from last night and decided to make a hometown delicacy his mother Chen Meijuan often made during childhood — steamed skin residue with meat!
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Having gone several days without eating staple food, whatever I write makes my mouth water. But I’ve lost four pounds, which gives me some motivation to persist... Bro, please subscribe. It’s rare to get recommended, hoping for a full subscription so it ranks higher on the sales chart. This Chapter is 5100 words long, asking for monthly tickets!
