I went to my aunt's house in autumn and winter. At that time, new potatoes were planed home, the big ones were put in the cellar, and the small ones were powdered (starch) by machine. Potato noodles, spread on plastic sheets in the yard, are dried day by day by the soft sunshine in autumn, white and dazzling, and smooth and delicate to the touch. If the weather is bad, you have to dry it on the kang for three days and five days, and slowly dry it. Rub it repeatedly with a thin bamboo pole, separate out the pimples, roll it with a salt water bottle, roll it again, and roll it again until the potato noodles are all powder and there are no pimples. Finally, wrap the bag and put it on.
New potato flour, hand-rolled flour, delicious. My aunt and uncle make powder, and sometimes I help to add firewood to the stove, and sometimes I wander around the kitchen.
Hang a bowl of boiling water until it is warm. Alum is ground into powder in advance. Dig two bowls of potato noodles, evenly mix in alum powder, then knead the noodles with water and knead them repeatedly until 100 times. It is much more difficult to mix potato flour with wheat flour. If the harmony is not good, it won't work. Even if it is rolled open, it will turn into pieces. Sometimes rolled into a whole piece, all broken, half, half. Potato noodles have low viscosity and poor elasticity, and can be rolled into good vermicelli, which is rare among rural women. These are all based on patience, a feeling, and kneading and holding in the depths of memory.
My aunt can always roll out long and even vermicelli.
The water from the wood fire turned into white flowers in the pot. Make vermicelli Add two fires. Soon, the vermicelli is cooked, fished out and put in a bowl. Never drink cold water. A bowl of hot vermicelli, sprinkled with salt, a few drops of soy sauce, topped with vinegar, pepper and pepper are essential, and the amount should be large. It's best to grow peppers yourself. When they are cooked, the oil will turn red. Pepper and Zanthoxylum bungeanum are the soul of a bowl of vermicelli, which completely determines whether you can eat refreshing, enjoyable and sigh. Sure, sprinkle some chopped green onion. Finally, cooked oil is essential. Sesame oil is the best, followed by rapeseed oil. After pouring the oily vermicelli, you can eat chopsticks
A bowl of spicy vermicelli is enough to make the whole bleak late autumn or early winter full of warmth and comfort. The hometown at this moment is not how long I have lived alone, but has an idyllic flavor, and the numbness, spicy taste and enjoyment on the tip of my tongue will never spread.
We sat cross-legged on the kang, holding bowls, smoking vermicelli and sweating all over our noses. Aunt prone on the ground, hands stained with potato noodles, said with a smile, eat slowly. What's more, it depends on how fragrant you are.
Fried fruit is also the best my aunt has ever made.
Make up one day in advance. There are two kinds of noodles: white noodles and black noodles. Then ferment. When the noodles are ready, you can fry the fruit. When mixing dough, salt is salted fruit, and sugar is sweet fruit. Dry wood and rotten roots were cut down by my uncle the day before and piled under the eaves. Want a big pot and pour sesame oil. Ignition, the pot is hot, and oil bubbles from the bottom of the pot. Dry wood, soon lit. The blazing flame licked the dark bottom of the pot. The oil is hot. My aunt rolled white flour and black flour into cakes on the chopping board. Once overlapped, the black and white sides are combined into one, rolled into a stick and cut horizontally, just like cutting radish slices. Then these layers of white and black cakes are freely played and made into various patterns, which is a clever job. Butterflies, cicadas, birds, swimming fish, all kinds. My aunt can also make flowers, the most complicated peony. Mom is all thumbs and can't do many tricks well, aunt said. You are careless in everything you do. Mother smiled. It's your fault. You are born stupid.
The oil began to smoke. The oil is ripe. If you put the fruit lightly, you will be afraid of scalding people by spilling oil, and you will be afraid of pinching your hands again. The fruit enters the oil, sinks, and soon floats to the oil surface, and the color changes from white to light yellow, and finally becomes golden yellow. Keep turning, so that each fruit is heated evenly, will not burn, and the color is the same. A pot of fruit, all kinds of flowers, birds, fish and insects, like a hundred flowers garden.
When the fruit is fried, fish it into the basin. Don't be impatient. Wait a moment and let it cool completely. The fruit just out of the pot is a little soft. The fruit is cold, the oil is gone, and it tastes crisp and crisp. Bite it down, and the fragrance of sesame oil and the crispness of fruit will make you drool. As if you were seven or eight years old, running in the blue fields of flax in June.
Fruit can be eaten for many days if stored.
Steamed noodles are troublesome, but steamed noodles are really delicious. This is why cherries are delicious and trees are difficult to grow. There is no time when farming is busy, so we have to wait for rainy days. We sat on my uncle's kang and listened to his rambling about the village. My uncle is busy in the kitchen.
You have to borrow a gong from the village first, and you need one or two more.
Wash your face first. Before washing, knead the noodles into balls with cold water and knead them repeatedly in clear water. Finally, protein and starch are separated. And then precipitate. After precipitation, clear water is poured out. Put alkaline noodles into starch to make batter. Put a layer of oil on the gong and pour the batter into the gong until it is enough, not too much, too much too thick, too little too thin. Shake the gong surface and spread the batter evenly on it. Then put it in the pot and cover it tightly. With firewood, the fire will flourish. When the dough changes from white to oily yellow, becomes light and swells, it can be cooled out of the pot. Put another gong into the pot, and so on. The washed pieces are egg whites and steamed separately. After the pot is out, it is as empty as a sponge, full of fine holes. This is gluten.
Steam rises in the kitchen, covering the roof and seeping through the cracks in the eaves. My aunt is meticulous in steaming. We had no choice but to get down from the kang, stand in front of the chopping board and spit. The dough is a little cold, peel it off from the gong, roll it into a stick and cut it into finger width. Put it in a bowl, put chopped gluten on it, then add salt, vinegar, pepper, garlic and a spoonful of cooked oil. Vinegar should be in bulk, pour a bottle. Pepper needs oil. Garlic should be chopped After mixing the ingredients, you can eat and quit.
A bowl of cold, delicious, sour and tender dough is branded on the tip of your tongue all your life. Whenever it is misty and rainy, I think of firewood, rising steam, charming face, aunt's gray sideburns, and the ticking time on the eaves.
Apricot tea, occasionally in the city's breakfast stall. White as milk, sprinkled with a pinch of almond powder. Drinking, there is only a faint tasteless apricot flavor, and there is no such slightly bitter fragrance at all. What, once in town, is very bad.
My aunt can make delicious apricot tea.
One day in June, when wheat is harvested, apricots will turn yellow. When the wheat is cut, it can be idle for a few days. The apricots in the mountains are all ripe. As soon as the wind blew, one fell to the ground with a bang. Bang, another one. Bang, bang ... My aunt picked apricots with a bamboo basket. Just dropped, it's big and delicious, and it doesn't hurt. Just pick it up in the basket. No, peel the apricot and leave the apricot core. In half an afternoon, you can pick up a basket.
Pick apricots, peel them, string them together, hang them on the wall and air dry them. Eating dried apricots in autumn is very good, soft and sour. Eating dried apricots in autumn always reminds people of mushrooms, green snakes and blue grannies walking in the depths of green grass in the forest after heavy rain in summer.
Almonds, dried on the steps. When there is no work in hand, I sit on the wooden pier under the veranda, pad a brick and hit almonds with an axe. Make the axe, if you want to control the force, it will be light, but it will not open. If it is heavy, it will break the core, and even the almonds inside will be smashed into slag, so you can't pick them up. Bang, bang, pick out the almonds, break them and distribute them to one side. Bang, another one. In a short time, almonds are filled with bowls that are mostly white porcelain. The broken core also piled up a hill.
Finally, fry the almonds in a hot pot without oil. Almonds contain oil. Grasp the heat and don't burn it. Wait until the almond skin turns yellow, blistered and wrinkled, and it will be fine. After taking out the pot, crush it on the chopping board with a salt water bottle, and finally roll it repeatedly with a rolling pin.
Roasted apricot tea. Boil a small pot of water, sprinkle flour evenly and stir quickly, or you will get acne. When the water is slightly paste, sprinkle almonds, stir repeatedly, and finally add salt, and a pot of apricot tea will be fine.
After a bowl of apricot tea, it will be transparent. When I arrived in town, my aunt knew that my daughter-in-law and I loved apricot tea, and gave us all the half plastic bags of almonds left at home. Every time I drink apricot tea, I always think of my aunt and uncle, sitting under the eaves, facing the wall and knocking on the apricot stone. The collision between almonds and the back of an axe is crisp and bright. My aunt smashed it and never looked back. The back and white hair of the blue shirt are repeatedly illuminated by the sunshine in the late summer afternoon. Years later, I will still miss that quiet afternoon. There is no wind, no cock crow, no farming, and everything smells of bitter almonds, so long and so casual.
Of course, my aunt will do more than that, such as candied fruit, flat food, seasonal wild vegetables, potato balls, and many more.
My aunt is getting older and older, her face is wrinkled and her teeth are falling out. I don't want to wear new clothes Every day is always busy. I always miss the smell under menstruation's fingers, like a disease. In the winter when it is going to snow, in the autumn when it rains, in the spring when everything grows, in the long sunny summer, in all the joints of the four seasons, I am tortured by the smell in my memory.