kvmb Chapter 271 Roasted Gluten (2)
Chapter 271 Roasted Gluten (2)
Fortunately, the process of making gluten is not complicated, it just requires a bit of hand and flour.
Lin Chunyi gave up on wasting any more words trying to stop her sister from going to the deep mountains; she'd deal with it tomorrow.
Let's finish these two big bowls of flour first.
If you're going to do it, make a lot at once, so you don't have to go through all that trouble every time you want to eat it again.
The two sisters always divide the work equally or cooperate with each other.
For example, cooking.
Lin Chunyi is a better cook, so she is the one who prepares and cooks most of the dishes.
Lin Lanshan preferred to sit in front of the stove and tend the fire (to be lazy), so she was usually in charge of controlling the heat of the two pots and doing odd jobs such as picking vegetables, washing vegetables, and peeling garlic.
At this point, the work of making gluten didn't involve any complicated processes, and there wasn't much of a division of labor. So, to be fair, they simply put a bowl of flour in front of each person and all kneaded and washed the dough.
The main point is that if you're going to work, you have to work; nobody can slack off or rest, hahaha...
"Add salt, pour in water," Lin Chunyi ordered.
The two of them started by sprinkling a pinch of salt into the flour bowl, then pouring in water. They added water if there was too much flour, and added flour if there was too much water, until it was about right, then they started kneading the dough.
At that moment, the table suddenly began to shake slightly. The bottles, jars, and several bowls of spices on the table collided, making a crisp, soft sound.
Lin Chunyi, who was kneading dough with her head down, looked up and was speechless. If she hadn't glanced at her sister's hands, she would have thought there was an earthquake in the mountains!
Lin Lanshan, oblivious to everything, was huffing and puffing as she kneaded dough on the table, her movements suggesting she was about to knead the bowl through.
Lin Chunyi simply put down the dough in her hand and teased her in a low voice, "Lin Lanshan, are you practicing Iron Palm with dough here? Do you think you can master it? Or should I go and shovel some sand for you?"
"Huh? When did I start practicing Iron Palm?" Lin Lanshan, who had somehow managed to splatter flour all over her face, looked up in confusion, her face covered in white flour.
"Why are you using so much force if it's not Iron Palm? Look how wobbly this table is. If you use any more force, we'll either be missing a desk or a wooden basin tomorrow."
"I didn't use any force!" Lin Lanshan said, sounding a little aggrieved.
This time, she really put in a lot of effort, working very seriously and wholeheartedly without any slacking off!
I still got criticized.
She even started to imagine that perhaps her sister, having lived alone in the mountains with her for so long, was getting tired of seeing her face every day...
Lin Chunyi had no idea what her sister was thinking, but she knew that both of them had almost the same amount of flour and water in their bowls. However, the dough in her sister's bowl was visibly a little smaller than the dough in hers.
It looks incredibly chewy... She's compressed this dough so much that it's almost elastic! And she hasn't even used much force yet.
Let's start tomorrow and have her use her strength to make some compressed food by hand!
We can't let her talent go to waste!
Lin Chunyi banished the strange thoughts from her mind before saying:
“You’re a bit weak. Kneading dough requires finesse, not brute force, and it’s not like pounding a wooden basin. If you really can’t control yourself, then just squat on the ground and knead the dough. At least leave me a worktable.”
I've seen this in anime before. A female protagonist who has practiced martial arts since elementary school makes rice balls for the first time. When she's washing the rice, she breaks the basin, deforms the rice, and ends up making a steel ball that smashes a huge crater in the ground...
At the time, I just thought it was too outrageous and funny. I never expected... It seems that the value of the saying "art comes from life" is still rising!
So, faced with the choice between losing the kitchen counter and her sister suffering leg pain, she chose the latter without hesitation.
"Oh~" Feeling rejected, Lin Lanshan silently hugged her basin and squatted on the ground.
Well, squatting is too much strain on my legs. Anyway, my clothes aren't very clean, so I just sat down on the ground with my legs spread apart.
"..." Lin Chunyi suddenly felt a bit of admiration for her.
A person who can find ways to avoid getting tired while working must be a person of great wisdom!
The two of them, one standing and one sitting, continued kneading the dough.
Once the slightly firm and smooth dough has been kneaded, pour enough water into the bowl to cover the dough and begin washing it.
During the kneading process, the dough may become loose and fall apart. Don't worry, just keep kneading and washing it together, and it will slowly stick back together on its own.
Once the flour and water become cloudy, change the water and continue kneading the dough. Keep kneading until the water is almost clear. The last clump of dough that remains is raw gluten!
They didn't know how long it took, their fingers were all wrinkled from being soaked, but they finally managed to wash out the gluten from the basin one by one.
Lin Lanshan fished one out of the water; she had been sitting on the ground until her buttocks were numb from washing it. It was a lump of gluten, a little bigger than her palm.
She exclaimed incredulously, "A whole basin of flour, kneaded into half a basin of dough, and in the end only a palm-sized piece of gluten? This gluten is such a waste! This whole basin of flour could have made so many bowls of noodles!"
Fourteen or fifteen pounds of flour yielded less than five pounds of gluten. Suddenly, I'm starting to wonder if the advent of technology and grueling labor has some justification (oh wait, no!)...
Lin Chunyi lightly shook the water off her hands in the basin, placed the washed gluten on the cutting board and stretched it into a rectangular shape, then took the gluten from her younger sister's hand and said:
"You forgot, there are still countless sheets of cold skin noodles that can be made from the flour water we washed out."
If you waste over ten kilograms of flour to make just two palm-sized gluten balls, then gluten would probably be relegated to the realm of high-end ingredients.
They can't afford to buy four or five sticks for ten yuan at a roadside stall anymore, so they can eat them every day. They'd be cut into fingernail-sized pieces, plated, and served in Michelin-starred restaurants long ago…
Lin Lanshan pushed herself up to stand, patted the dust off her bottom, and said, "Liangpi (cold skin noodles), I'd completely forgotten about it. If I'd remembered earlier, it would have been so refreshing to eat it in the hot summer."
"It's alright~ Look at those two big buckets of flour water we washed out. I reckon it's enough to make 20 or 30 pounds of cold noodles, and it'll be enough to last until next summer without any problem!"
After hearing her sister's analysis, Lin Lanshan suddenly felt that the work she had done today was quite worthwhile! Washing the dough once would allow her to make many, many more meals of grilled gluten and cold noodles...
It's best to let the washed gluten sit for a while before cooking it, so the two sisters used the waiting time to prepare the sauce.
It's still that all-purpose dipping sauce that tastes good even on shoe soles, just with a slight adjustment:
Put chili powder, Sichuan peppercorn powder, white sesame seeds, cumin seeds, and crushed peanuts in a bowl, then pour boiling oil over them, and add salt, sugar, soy sauce, and chili oil and stir.
The aroma wafted from the bowl, making the two sisters feel as if they were standing in front of a roadside stall selling grilled sausages and gluten.
The sauce for brushing gluten is now ready!