Baozi Xishi's Struggle

Chapter 356: Small River Prawns for Enhanced Flavor

Unexpectedly, Li got a little nervous after hearing this and asked, "The flower cakes and pastries need to be made in advance, right? Shouldn't we just help them make the pastry base the night before, instead of making them and serving them on the day?"

Shen Yu nodded: "Start making it in the evening of the day before, and we won't have to worry about it after the dough is ready in the evening."

"Master Wen Yuan and his friends will start frying them at 5 a.m. on the second day, and they will be laid out one after another when the blessing ceremony begins."

Li heaved a sigh of relief and said with a smile, "It means we can only do it at night. It won't interfere with our participation in the blessing ceremony during the day."

"Oh, silly girl, what's so hard about that? Think about the cakes and pastries distributed to the people at the Dharma Assembly. We made them together. That's a great merit. Others want to make them but don't have a chance."

After Li finished speaking, she had a proud expression on her face, not taking into account the hard work of making more than 2,000 cakes.

Jiang and Zheng Sanniang also looked excited and were talking in low voices, as if that was not about making cakes, but about doing something extremely meaningful and meritorious.

Shen Yu couldn't help but smile. The power of faith is truly magical.

This is a good thing. Li and her friends are in a good mood when making cakes, which is much better than working in a hurry.

After lunch the next day, when there were fewer customers in the store, Shen Yu went to the kitchen in the backyard.

First, he would go and mix some flour and pastry for making cakes. Second, Shen Yu planned to make some fried wontons and take them back with him when 7-Up came to get the cakes, so that Lu Lang and the others could have them as midnight snacks.

Wontons include small wontons with pure meat filling, and large wontons with vegetable and meat filling.

Shen Yu’s favorite vegetable and meat wonton stew is made with shepherd’s purse in the spring as the filling. Now it is the end of autumn and the beginning of winter, so she can’t enjoy it and can only imagine the refreshing and delicious taste.

Wontons with pure meat filling are much simpler to make, as the meat filling is ready-made, but the dough for making the wontons needs to be mixed separately.

Take an appropriate amount of flour and put it in a bowl. Add a little salt, crack an egg, add a little water, stir it with chopsticks into flour, and make it into a hard dough.

Knead until smooth, cover with a cloth and let rise for a while.

Fried wontons can be eaten directly while hot after being fried, or they can be set aside after cooling. When you want to eat them, put some seasonings in a soup bowl, pour in boiling water, cover it with a lid and let it simmer for a while.

The soup wontons made in this way are steaming hot, crispy on the outside and soft on the inside, with a delicious soup and a unique flavor.

The most important thing is that this method is very convenient to use as a midnight snack.

As long as there is boiling water, you can eat a bowl of it without almost any fire. It is a bit like instant noodles with fillings.

Shen Yu took out a small basket of dried river shrimps from the shelf where the ingredients were placed.

As the weather turned cold, fishermen caught fewer fish, but there were still other seafood for sale.

This basket of small river shrimps are so tiny that it is not an exaggeration to call them tiny shrimps.

It was when Shen Yu went to buy fish a few days ago that he saw it next to the fish stall. He asked and only spent ten cents, but got a full basket and a large bamboo basket as a gift.

After buying it, Li and the others said that Shen Yu had been cheated.

This kind of shrimp is not food for humans. It is caught by fishermen. If someone raises koi or cats at home, they will buy it to make fish food or cat food.

Shen Yu just laughed at the time, but he took some time to wash and blanch a large basket of small shrimps, then spread them out in a bamboo winnowing basket to dry.

Every morning after the sun rises, I would tirelessly chase the sun, which is no longer very warm, or move the winnowing basket to a ventilated place and then bring it back in at night.

It took seven or eight days before it was finally completely dry.

It's just that there were a lot of things to do these two days and he hadn't had time to continue processing it, which attracted Yu Cheng's attention. He excitedly asked Shen Yu if he was planning to raise a kitten at home.

In fact, this small river shrimp may look inconspicuous, but it is a good seasoning for enhancing the flavor and aroma.

Dry it, bake it in an iron pan, grind it into powder, and it will become shrimp powder.

Sprinkle some in the soup when making it to enhance the flavor, which can be regarded as a natural MSG.

Light the stove and put the small iron pan for frying on it. When the pan is hot, pour in half a basket of dried river shrimps without adding any oil and stir-fry with a spatula.

After just two stir-frys, Yutao came over and wanted to help fry the river shrimps.

Shen Yu asked her to watch over the small iron wok and told her to stir-fry the river shrimps until they could be crushed into pieces with one touch, and when they were very dry, they could be ground into powder.

Yutao agreed and took the spatula to continue frying.

Shen Yu took the dough that had almost risen and started kneading it again. When he felt it was almost ready, he sprinkled some dry flour on it and began to roll it into a large thin sheet of dough.

Keep rolling it until it becomes as thick as a piece of rice paper and looks soft and translucent.

Sprinkle a layer of starch on the dough, fold it up, and cut it into squares the size of half a palm with a knife.

Shake it again to shake off excess starch, and the paper-white, thin and soft wonton wrapper is ready.

The fried river shrimps at Yutao's place are almost dry.

Seeing that Shen Yu had finished the work in her hands, he asked her to come over and see if it was okay.

Shen Yu picked up one and twisted it with his index finger and thumb. It broke into pieces immediately and could be taken off the stove. After it cooled down a while, he could use a rolling pin to crush it and put it away.

Yutao put the pot on the stove and looked at the wonton wrappers that Shen Yu had cut. She picked them up curiously and looked at them from left to right, wondering what Shen Yu was going to do.

Shen Yu asked her if she wanted to learn how to make Yuanbao wontons.

Yu Tao was about to agree, but Zheng Sanniang came over and said with a smile, "Miss, what new food are you making?"

"There are fewer customers in the shop ahead right now, so the lady asked me to come over and see if the girl needs any help."

"The market will be closed soon. They will come over after they have put away the tables and chairs, and learn how to wrap flower-shaped pastry and carve patterns together."

Shen Yu thought about it, and simply covered the cut dough with a cloth, and said: "Let's go over and clean up together, it will be faster. After we close the shop, if we do it together, we will definitely learn quickly and well."

The three of them returned to the store. Perhaps because of the bad weather today, there was no sun and the sky was gray, but it didn't look like it was going to rain.

The breeze felt cold on my body. There were not many pedestrians on the street and there were no customers in the shop at the moment. Only Li and her friends were wiping the tables and chairs and sweeping the floor.

Everyone worked together to clean up the shop. They closed the shop and returned to the backyard before the market closed.

Yucheng and Dundun didn't go to school today, so they shouted, "We're going to wash the dishes today, and no one is allowed to snatch them away."

The two brothers hurriedly picked up the large basin containing the bowls and chopsticks and went to the well.

Li told them to wait for the water on the stove to boil and then wash after having the hot water. Then she hurried into the kitchen with a happy face.