Traveling through ancient times to escape famine, the prince led me to rebel

Today is Mid-Autumn Festival, and Luo Xiaoran had prepared the menu for the reunion dinner a few days ago.

Uncle Xiang bought all the ingredients yesterday, and Aunt Ji went into the kitchen early this morning.

Luo Xiaoran’s kitchen is very large and even has two sets of stoves.

One set is used when the weather is warm, and is no different from other people’s stoves for cooking and frying food.

The other stove is connected to the floor heating and is used specifically in winter.

The ground dragon is actually a curved and staggered flue built under the floor.

After the flue is built, by burning fire at the flue outlet, that is, in the stove, the heat can be transferred to the ground along the flue, making the house warm.

The weather is not cold enough now, so the floor heating cannot be used, and the stove that serves as the flue has not been used yet.

The spacious kitchen was now crowded with people.

Aunt Ji’s task today is to collect the meat, clean it and cut it.

Of course, she was the one who cooked in the end.

Ever since Luo Xiaoran taught Aunt Ji some cooking skills, she has become a foodie who is always waiting for delicious food.

Uncle Xiang’s job was to light the fire in the stove and fetch water from the well in the yard for washing vegetables.

“At the last housewarming party, everyone present was from Hexi Village, so you were not invited.

It would be meaningless for you two, master and servant, to spend the Mid-Autumn Festival alone, so I invite you to come together."

Luo Xiaoran said to Sun Qingyuan and Sansi, the master and servant.

“But you know my rules, if you want to eat, you have to do it yourself.

Sansi went to pick the vegetables, and after picking them, Sun Qingyuan went to wash them. "

"Why do I always wash the vegetables!" As soon as Luo Xiaoran finished speaking, Sun Qingyuan retorted loudly.

After all, he was the one who washed the dishes at the last apprenticeship banquet.

In the past, if Sun Qingyuan had challenged him like this, Du Kongqing would have started to argue first.

Today, she was uncharacteristically silent.

The reason is that her mother, Du Kang, is also here.

Originally, Du Kang had not planned to come, but considering that she did not come to the last housewarming party, it would not be nice to reject Luo Xiaoran's invitation this time.

After much consideration, Du Kang finally came.

"Aunt Ming also helps to pick vegetables?"

Luo Xiaoran glanced at Du Kang carefully. She seemed uncomfortable here.

Maybe if I had something to do, I could be more relaxed.

Du Kang nodded slightly, "Then I'll peel some garlic and onions."

Du Kongqing hurriedly handed his mother a handful of onions and a few heads of garlic.

Afterwards, he and Ruyi helped Luo Xiaoran make mooncakes.

When Luo Xiaoran came back from the county town two days ago, she had already prepared the ingredients for making mooncakes.

As soon as he arrived in Hexi Village, he found Liu Yishui and asked him to help make some mooncake molds.

Corresponding to the two types of mooncakes, round and petal-shaped molds were made.

Luo Xiaoran plans to make pumpkin mooncakes without filling and mooncakes with date paste filling.

The production process of pumpkin mooncakes is relatively simple.

First peel the pumpkin and cut it into pieces.

Then put it on the stove to steam.

Mash the steamed pumpkin and add flour, a little sugar and rapeseed oil.

Because the steamed pumpkin contains a lot of moisture, you almost don’t need to add water to knead the dough.

Because there was no baking powder in ancient times, the dough was set aside to ferment naturally after kneading.

The fermented dough is divided into small equal pieces, which are commonly known as "doses".

Place the dough into a petal-shaped mold to shape it.

Finally, put the yellow mooncake with five petals on the stove and steam it.

The mooncakes steamed in this way will have a soft and sticky texture.

It feels like what was added to the pumpkin was not flour, but glutinous rice flour.

Moreover, the greater the ratio of pumpkin to flour, the softer and more glutinous the steamed mooncake will be.

One more thing to mention: there is currently no glutinous rice for sale in Fuyuan County.

The production process of jujube paste mooncakes is more complicated.

First, make date paste.

Wash each plump date and dig out the pits.

Put the pitted dates into water and boil for 15 minutes.

After cooking, take out the dates, peel them, and then mash them into a paste.

This step alone was enough to make the two girls, Du Kongqing and Ruyi, exhausted.

The two tried pounding the dates in various ways, but the results were not very good.

Finally, Du Kongqing wanted to run back home to get her father's medicine twister, and then put the dates on it and twist it.

They were stopped by Luo Xiaoran, who handed them a kitchen knife.

Luo Xiaoran stood aside and watched Du Kongqing and Ruyi chopping jujubes with kitchen knives in sweaty hands, with a look of regret on her face.

She missed the modern crushing machines terribly.

Just like chopping dumpling fillings, the chopped dates are pretty close to a paste.

After the jujube paste was chopped, Luo Xiaoran personally fried the jujube paste.

Add sugar to the date paste and stir well.

Turn on low heat and stir-fry constantly.

Add canola oil in batches to prevent burning the bottom of the pan.

When it is fried until it turns shiny black, it means that the moisture inside has been boiled away.

The date paste is ready.

This time, the dough contains eggs, sugar and rapeseed oil, and the overall appearance is slightly yellow and shiny.

After the dough has fermented, make it into small pieces, add date paste in the middle, and then put it into a round mold and press into shape.

Next I would like to introduce Luo Xiaoran’s ancient oven.

When the house was built, Luo Xiaoran explained it to Wang Dandan many times before the oven was successfully built.

First, there are two stoves connected together.

There is a stove with a pot cover made of loess hanging on it, which is called stove No. 1.

The other stove is covered with an iron plate and is called stove No. 2.

The fire on stove No. 1 is high, raising the temperature inside the loess pot lid.

Use low heat on stove No. 2 to lower the temperature of the iron plate.

In this way, when the loess pot lid and the iron plate are placed up and down, a semi-enclosed environment can be formed between them.

This semi-enclosed environment can achieve heat convection, and thus becomes an oven.

The most difficult part of making this oven is building the pulleys on it.

Not only can the loess pot cover be moved left and right between stoves No. 1 and No. 2, it can also be moved up and down on stove No. 2.

By moving the No. 1 and No. 2 cooktops left and right, an "oven" was created.

Moving the No. 2 stove up and down is to adjust the temperature of the "oven".

The loess pot lid is lowered and the oven temperature is higher.

Place on high and the oven temperature on low.

Put some flour on the iron plate to prevent sticking, then put the jujube paste mooncakes on it and bake.

According to the state of the mooncakes during the baking process, the height of the loess pot lid can be adjusted at any time to control the temperature.

Luo Xiaoran was busy making mooncakes, and Aunt Ji was also busy preparing the meal.

With Sun Qingyuan, Sansi and Du Kang picking up the vegetables, Aunt Ji only needed to pick up the meat.

It didn't take long before the food preparation process was completed.

Aunt Ji wiped the water off her hands, ran to Luo Xiaoran and asked:

"Miss, the meat and vegetables are ready. Shall we fry them now?"

Luo Xiaoran stretched and saw that the sun outside had already set more than halfway, and the sunset glow around was very beautiful.

"Fry! Let's have dinner early. Let's see if everyone wants to stay and enjoy the moon together later."

"okay."