Chapter 356 Cooking(1/2)
When everyone returned home loaded with fish, everyone in the camp looked at them with suspicion.
The fish were caught from the water and were still alive. The fish were placed in buckets and baskets. Fish kept jumping out of the water along the way.
When the people saw the big fish jumping around, their eyes were filled with envy.
After carrying half a bucket of fish back to the earthen jar, Guan Yu hurriedly looked into the earthen jar.
If you want to ask why he looked anxious, it was because when Li Mengxi asked him to go fishing, Guan Yu forgot what was boiling in the earthen pot as soon as he left.
I thought that since I hadn't added water for a long time since I left here, the water in the earthen pot had long since boiled dry and the boiled intestines in the pot had long since become mushy.
I didn't want to, but I took a closer look and saw that there was still water in the pot. In the soup, several sections of cow intestines had been boiled for several hours. They had been boiled to a pulp and turned white. They were rising and falling with the boiling water.
It seems that someone saw that the water in the jar was almost dry and added more water.
A faint aroma of meat wafted out from the jar, and when you smell it, you feel very good.
"It's delicious." Guan Yu smiled happily.
Everyone with empty stomachs could not wait to eat now, especially Brick.
Liu Bei brought bowls and chopsticks and distributed them to everyone. Then he stretched out his chopsticks and picked out a piece of beef intestine from the jar, and placed it in Brick's bowl, which he watched eagerly.
The intestines that had just been taken out of the boiling water were so hot that the greedy Brick couldn't wait to bite into them. It was so hot that he vomited the intestines and almost cried from the burning.
"Eat it cold, it's so hot." Li Mengxi didn't care about his stupid brother.
Li Mengxi picked up the beef intestines in the bowl with chopsticks and blew them for a long time. When the intestines were cold, he took a small bite with his teeth.
Because the wine has been added in advance, part of the meaty smell has been removed. Although there is no seasoning, what you can taste is the pure aroma of the meat, without any flavor contaminated by seasoning.
The beef intestines are smooth and tender in the mouth, tough and waxy at the same time. They have been stewed for so long and are so tender that they become rotten when chewed. It tastes very refreshing.
The beef intestines turned out to be surprisingly delicious, so Li Mengxi started to eat them and wolfed them down.
Li Mengxi ate so much that the two adults Liu Bei and Guan Yu looked similar to Li Mengxi.
Soon, everyone's bowls were empty, and the beef intestines were divided into jars.
After a while, the four of them finished the beef intestines.
After eating, Li Mengxi put down his bowl and chopsticks, feeling a little unfinished.
Previously, most of the beef intestines were given to the coachman, Lao Tie, and only seven or eight sections were left here.
"How does it taste?" Li Mengxi pursed his lips and asked Liu Bei and Guan Yu with a smile.
"It's delicious!" Before Liu Bei and Guan Yu could answer, his younger brother raised the bowl and rushed to say it.
"That's right! As Zhuan'er said, beef intestines are very delicious." Guan Yu brushed his beard and laughed.
The beef intestines that no one wants on weekdays, once washed and eaten, taste no worse than meat, and even have a unique texture.
When I think about the villagers slaughtering animals, the intestines and other parts are thrown away to be eaten by the poultry. Now that I think about it, it is really a waste.
Since beef intestines are edible and taste good, they cannot be thrown away when the animals are killed in the future.
Just a few beef intestines, but the four of them were not full at all.
I happened to catch some fish tonight, and it will be just right to cook the fish tonight.
Guan Yu put down his bowl and chopsticks and began to use a short knife to scale the fish. His younger brother was watching, and so was Li Mengxi.
Seeing Guan Yu looking for water, Li Mengxi thought thoughtfully, "...After washing the fish, you still have to rinse it with clean water. If you ask me, let's find more people next time, catch the fish, directly scrape the scales and remove the dirt, and then put it on the spot.
Wouldn’t it be convenient to wash the fish with river water and bring it back?”
Guan Yu raised his head and glanced helplessly at Li Mengxi, "Why didn't you tell me earlier? I'll be back soon."
It wasn't that Li Mengxi didn't want to tell him earlier, it was because after catching so many fish, everyone rushed back happily. Some of them were a little carried away for a while, and they didn't even think of handling the fish by the river and then taking them back.
I will have experience next time. Next time, I will send a fishing team to net fish. At the same time, I will bring the tools for killing fish and have enough manpower. I will net the fish over there and process the fish here at the same time.
When the clean fish is brought back, it can be distributed to everyone and cooked and eaten directly.
It is impossible to rely on fish to solve the military food problem, but it can alleviate the pressure on food to some extent, and it can also enrich the nutritional structure.
I have always eaten only grains, which are nutritious. If I have some fish, I can supplement my protein.
After a while, when the fishing net is weaved, fish will often be caught.
There were fish, but Li Mengxi couldn't make up his mind as to how to distribute them.
The simplest method is that after the fish is caught, no one can tell whether it should be salted or smoked and stored as military rations.
But if you think about it, this method is not feasible. Pickling requires a lot of salt, and smoking requires a lot of effort.
There are no conditions for using fish as military food reserves.
According to Li Mengxi's thinking, everyone should have the opportunity to taste the fish. In an army of more than 10,000 people, if everyone can eat fish every now and then, they can maximize the use of the limited fish catch.
Under current conditions, the biggest role of fish is not to satisfy hunger, but to supplement oil and protein, and its effectiveness is almost equivalent to medicine.
There are more than 10,000 rebels. Even if they can catch a thousand fish every day and each person gets one fish, it will still take ten days to rotate through ten thousand people.
Moreover, how should the rotation be done? The civilian camp is still in chaos, and there is no strict division of camp affiliations.
The method of dividing fish according to sorting can ensure evenness and fairness, but now that the rebels do not have good order, they have no basis for operation.
Nowadays, if fish is divided among civilians, there will definitely be a fight over it.
Besides, there are big and small fish, so it’s not easy to separate them.
Since it is difficult to divide the whole fish, chop the whole fish into pieces and then divide them into equal weights to ensure fairness.
The difficulty is to chop all the fish into pieces - there is no table.
To break down the flat areas that can be used to chop fish, there are only door panels. There are only some door panels in the army now. In the carpenter camp, carpenters plan wood on the door panels and so on.
Maybe you can borrow a door panel from the carpenter's camp, one door panel is enough. The fish can be chopped into pieces first and then weighed, so that they can be divided more fairly.
The rest is the process of dividing the fish.
According to Li Mengxi's idea, fish should be given priority to soldiers and women and children's camps, especially women and children's camps. There are so many children, and not eating meat will be very harmful to their health.
This chapter is not over yet, please click on the next page to continue reading! Half of the daily fish catch is divided between the war camp and the women and children camp.
The remaining half will be divided among the civilian camps, on a rotating basis for each camp.
But this can only be done after the civilian camp has a certain level of organization.
The women's and children's camp must have a minimum degree of organization, just like the current women's and children's camp. The women's and children's camp is divided into twenty-one stoves, with daily meals and a fixed number of personnel in each camp.
Only when there is basic division and discipline in the civilian camp, can the fish be divided fairly fairly.
Don’t worry about scarcity, but worry about inequality.
If the fish cannot be divided fairly, then it is better not to divide them at all.
Originally, there were no fish, so everyone could only eat grain. Everyone ate the same thing, so it didn’t matter.
Suddenly it was time to divide the fish, and all the villagers immediately stared at the fish.
If there is no clear distinction between who has more and who has less, or who is exposed, wouldn't it be a big contradiction?
Originally, there would be no contradiction if the fish were not divided, but if they were divided into one, it would be unfair and would add to the contradiction.
Therefore, if the division is not fair, it is better not to divide it, so as to avoid causing more troubles.
——
Guan Yu finished scraping the scales of a fish, and then cut the fish open from the belly line with a knife to take out the fish's internal organs.
After cutting open the belly of the fish, Guan Yu took out the swim bladder and handed it to Brick to play with. Brick was very happy.
After a while, after the first fish was processed, Guan Yu cut open the second fish and said, "Yeah, there are roe." There was a pile of yellow roe in the belly of the fish.
The fish roe is an unexpected bonus, the fish roe is very delicious.
"General Guan, tear off the black membrane inside the belly of the fish. This stuff is very bitter and will spoil the whole pot of soup." Li Mengxi suggested.
Guan Yu then followed Li Mengxi's instructions and tore off all the black membranes inside the fish's belly.
Li Mengxi said that the black membrane was very bitter. Guan Yu picked up some black membrane and put it into his mouth with a very inquiring spirit. He tasted it and found that it was indeed extremely bitter.
"Bah!" Guan Yu spat out the black film.
As a native of the late Han Dynasty, Guan Yu was not as experienced as Li Mengxi in cooking fish.
It is normal to think that knowledge exchange was not developed in ancient times, and fisheries were not developed either. It was more difficult for ancient people to eat fish because they ate less fish and had less experience in handling fish.
Coupled with restrictions on communication and other aspects, the chefs in the palace may have learned how to use materials containing glutamic acid (the main component of MSG) such as mushrooms to make them fresher. In remote rural areas, old farmers do not even know how to tear fish when eating it.
Remove the fish abdominal endometrium.
Guan Yu was born in a lower class, was his family in a remote countryside? Yes.
Guan Yu was a hero in the wilderness, but his father was most likely an old farmer in a remote countryside.
If Guan Yu's father didn't know how to cook fish, Guan Yu didn't know much.
Tonight, we will eat fish.
Guan Yu was about to put the whole fish into the jar. Li Mengxi took the fish, cut it into several pieces with a knife, and then put it into the jar.
To be continued...