12dz Chapter 135 Making Lotus Root Starch
Chapter 135 Making Lotus Root Starch
"Yes, we plan to use them to make a new food. Auntie, you can tell the villagers when you meet them. Just go when you have free time, so as not to delay the sweet potato harvest." Song Jiaojiao reminded them, afraid that these people would forget about the sweet potatoes in the field while looking for chestnuts.
"No, no, even a child can find these. It won't interfere with the work in the fields. Alright, Jiaojiao, I won't talk to you anymore. Since it's not dark yet, we can go find some and dry them for a couple of days so they'll be easier to peel." Aunt Sun waved to Song Jiaojiao and left in a hurry.
Looking at Aunt Sun's anxious state, Song Jiaojiao could understand. Although the villagers' lives had improved because Song Jiaojiao had opened a workshop, who would complain about having more money?
After resting for a while, Song Jiaojiao met several villagers and told them about her plan to buy chestnuts. Once she had rested enough, she carried the chestnuts home.
Pour the chestnuts from the basket into a corner of the yard and let them air dry for two days. The shells will be easier to peel off, and the chestnuts will be even sweeter after two days.
Call Meng Qi in and tell him to go to the riverbank and collect some pebbles the size of pigeon eggs whenever he has time. They'll be useful for roasting chestnuts. Chestnuts roasted with pebbles will heat up more evenly.
Lotus roots are indeed difficult to harvest. Song Jiaojiao didn't plant many this year. The village chief and his team only managed to harvest half a pond in a day. The harvested lotus roots still had black mud on them, and the soil looked very fertile.
Song Jiaojiao asked Xu Fang to wash two sections of lotus root. She planned to eat lotus root for dinner. In order to eat lotus root, Song Jiaojiao also asked Xu Fang to kill a chicken. The other section was used to stir-fry. The stir-fried lotus root was crisp and slightly sweet.
The soft and tender lotus root received unanimous praise. Song Jiaojiao thought that she could probably only eat it this year, and the rest would have to be used to make lotus root starch. It seemed that she could plant more next year. It was time to buy land.
As time passed, the weather was excellent the next day, even warmer than the day before. The village chief led everyone to the village early in the morning, hoping to harvest all the lotus roots that day.
Song Jiaojiao found Aunt Li early in the morning and asked her to ask if there were any aunties or women who were free, as she needed quite a few people to clean lotus roots today.
Yesterday, half a pond of lotus roots weighed about 300 jin (150 kg). With today's lotus roots, it will be about 600 jin (300 kg). Song Jiaojiao plans to extract the lotus root pulp in the next two days, and then dry it into lotus root powder after it settles.
"Auntie, come here for a moment. I need you to come over here today and ask if there are any aunties who are free. I need six people to help me wash lotus roots."
"Okay, I'll go ask for you right away." Seeing that Song Jiaojiao was in a hurry, Aunt Li didn't say much, agreed, and left.
Song Jiaojiao soaked the lotus roots she dug yesterday in water so they would be easier to clean today. The process of making lotus root starch is the same as that of sweet potatoes. First, the lotus roots are washed, ground into a paste, and then the liquid is filtered out. After sedimentation, the clear water on top is poured off. This process needs to be repeated twice to ensure that the resulting lotus root starch is snow-white.
Ten pounds of lotus root can only yield about one pound of starch, and this whole pond of lotus root can produce a maximum of about sixty pounds of starch. The starch yield of lotus root is really low.
One pound of lotus root starch can make about forty or fifty bowls of lotus root soup. It seems that Banrixianli will have to limit the production of lotus root soup to only thirty servings per day, which should be enough to last through the winter.
A little while later, Aunt Li returned with five other women. These women had planned to go up the mountain to pick chestnuts that day, but before they could even leave, Aunt Li came to their door.
Without wasting any words, Song Jiaojiao led the aunties to wash the lotus roots. This time, the lotus roots were made at the sweet potato factory, and the tools needed were exactly the same tools used to make sweet potato starch. Song Jiaojiao briefly explained the process and then handed the task over to Aunt Li.
The hardest part of making lotus root starch is washing the lotus roots, especially the ones on both sides, as there is a lot of mud in the holes, which needs to be rinsed constantly to clean them.
In just one day, a whole pond of lotus roots is ground into lotus root paste and filtered. After settling, it is dried in the sun and ready to be consumed as lotus root powder.
This time, Song Jiaojiao didn't let them leave. Coincidentally, on the afternoon the lotus root starch settled, Wang the stonemason delivered the millstone. That very evening, Song Jiaojiao soaked fifty catties of soybeans, and the soybeans could be ground the next day.
The next morning, everyone arrived. Seeing that the soybeans were almost soaked, Song Jiaojiao started grinding them. She filtered out the soybean pulp from the ground soybean milk and poured the filtered soybean water directly into a pot to boil. Soybeans can be used to make many soy products, such as tofu, tofu pudding, dried bean curd sheets, etc. They can also be made into dried tofu. This time, Song Jiaojiao did not buy gypsum and only planned to make dried bean curd sheets. Dried bean curd sheets are easier to store and require less work.
"Pour the filtered soy milk into a pot and bring it to a boil over medium heat, stirring constantly to prevent it from burning. Once it boils, skim off the foam on top, then turn the heat to low. At this point, you don't need to stir the soy milk; just wait a while. A layer of bean curd skin will float to the surface of the soy milk. This bean curd skin is called yuba. Use chopsticks to scoop out the bean curd skin from the surface and hang it on a thin bamboo pole that you have prepared in advance. When there is enough yuba hanging on the bamboo pole, you can take it outside to dry."
As Song Jiaojiao spoke, she demonstrated, and everyone listened attentively, their eyes glued to her steps, afraid of missing a single detail.
Ten pounds of soybeans can make about two pounds of dried bean curd sticks. Making dried bean curd sticks is not difficult; the difficulty lies in waiting until the soy milk stops producing dried bean curd sticks.
Song Jiaojiao added sugar to the leftover soy milk she made today and had everyone drink it. Tomorrow, she'll ask Meng An to go to the pharmacy to buy some gypsum so they can make tofu pudding or tofu. However, tofu made this way won't have much flavor, so Song Jiaojiao thought she'd use it to make smoked tofu instead.
The next morning, Song Jiaojiao took the dried bean curd she had made the day before to town. The bean curd, which had been drying in the sun all day, was only half-dry. Song Jiaojiao was thinking that she needed to buy gypsum and spices for braising tofu today, so she came along. She originally wanted to go to the blacksmith shop to order a special rack for smoking dried bean curd. She thought she could use bamboo to make it. Since it was smoking, there would be no open flame, so she wasn't worried. Using bamboo would also give it a fresh bamboo fragrance.
Since the tofu made from dried bean curd sticks wouldn't have much of a tofu flavor, Song Jiaojiao still planned to make five-spice dried bean curd, which was also a way to make use of waste. After all, even the best-tasting soy milk would become tiresome if you drank it every day.
First, they arrived at Sifanglou. As the weather turned cooler, there were more people eating hot and cold noodles inside. Actually, Song Jiaojiao preferred to eat tofu skin cold, followed by hot pot and maocai. Today, Song Jiaojiao planned to cook maocai. If the owner of Sifanglou were here, she could discuss opening a hot pot restaurant with him. Cold weather and hot pot are a perfect match. If it worked out, she would let him open it near Banrixian. Hot pot and milk tea would be a perfect combination.