Chapter 83: Dried Sauce

After receiving the bamboo tube of sugar water from Shen An and Shen Ning, Shen Jin felt as if he had been given an olive branch. He hadn’t gone to Shen An’s side for many days. After receiving this bamboo tube of sugar water, he felt as if he had been unsealed. In the afternoon, leaving Shen Tie at home to look after Shen Tian, he took Shen Yin and went to cut two more bundles of hemp. Then, with joy, he carried the hemp up the mountain.

Of course, he also brought the cleaned bamboo tube.

Not seeing Shen An, only seeing Shen Ning sitting outside the yard stripping hemp, he was a little surprised. He still felt a bit awkward when facing Shen Ning. When he asked if Shen An was there, the answer was naturally no.

“He went into the mountain with my sister-in-law.”

As for why they went into the mountain, Shen Jin didn’t dare to ask. If he asked, Shen Ning would definitely say, “We don’t have any land, so why wouldn’t we go into the mountains to make a living?”

He would definitely be rebuffed, so he didn’t ask.

He handed the bamboo tube back to Shen Ning, feeling too embarrassed to say thank you. He just put down the hemp and sat down on the stone-paved ground, helping to strip the hemp.

Of course, Shen Jin and Shen Yin weren’t the only ones helping to strip the hemp in the afternoon. The group of children who had drunk sugar water in the morning all came together. When Sang Luo and Shen An came back for the second time with two baskets of yams, several children had already sealed the other side of the mountain spring pool that had been piled up with stones, so that the water could flow out. The hemp soaked in the water was lightly pressed with stones and wouldn’t be washed away.

There was no shortage of hemp knives, and the adults from several families knew that the children had each received a large bowl of sugar water from the Shen family’s main room. Without any hesitation, when the children went to help strip the hemp, their families directly let them bring their hemp knives.

This saved Sang Luo a lot of trouble, she smiled and said, “That’s great, please give my thanks to your aunt on my behalf.”

Erniu’s aunt was Shi Erlang’s wife. Since they had been gathering mushrooms together for a few days, she felt they had a somewhat deep friendship. She often sent vegetables over to this side, and now both the Shi and Lu families would receive some tofu residue and the like, which used to come only from the Chen family.

Erniu scratched his head upon hearing Sang Luo’s words, smiled, and agreed, then went back to work.

Sang Luo was too busy to pay them much attention. She wanted to store as much dried konjac as possible when she could dig it up, so she dug konjac twice a day, picked sour jujubes, and looked for wild jujubes. When she returned, she still had to process them, filling her time to the brim.

…

Fifteen wooden boards for pressing fermented bean curd. Chen Youtian didn’t rest at noon and had Chen Ershan deliver ten boards by mid-afternoon. He didn’t know what Sang Luo was going to use them for, but since Sang Luo asked him to make these first, he made as many as he could and sent them over so Sang Luo could use them as soon as possible.

When Sang Luo came back from the mountain and saw the ten boards that had been delivered, she was delighted. For the first time in the afternoon, she soaked the beans in water. She also brought back some large stones that were roughly the same size as the wooden boards.

After sending Sang Luo to Chen’s house to borrow a curved knife and scissors, they moved some bamboo poles that had been left over from making drying racks in the courtyard. They split them into thick finger-sized bamboo strips, trimmed off the thorns, and washed them for later use.

After finishing these tasks and closing the door, Sang Luo took out the filter cloth she had washed and dried after making the fairy tofu. She cut it into squares slightly smaller than the palm of her hand.

One piece of filter cloth wasn’t enough, so she found some unused new cloth and cut over a hundred pieces before she stopped.

Shen Ning watched her cutting with the scissors, and his heart ached as he saw large pieces of cloth turned into scraps.

Sang Luo smiled. “These will be very useful. You’ll see tonight.”

Undeniably, these preparations aroused Shen An and Shen Ning’s curiosity.

After dinner, when the sour jujube cakes and vegetarian tripe for the Dongfu Restaurant were ready to solidify, Sang Luo checked the time and saw that the beans were almost done soaking, so she began to grind them.

Shen An and Shen Ning knew that their sister-in-law was going to make something new today, so they were excited and helped out on the side, feeling a bit bewildered as they assisted in each step.

“Sister-in-law, isn’t this still tofu?” Shen An asked.

Sang Luo laughed.

When it came time to curdle the tofu, she took out a small piece of brine she had bought during the day and broke it into small pieces. After breaking it, she ground it into fine powder in a stone mortar. Shen An and Shen Ning widened their eyes when they saw this. “Sister-in-law, are you going to use something else to curdle the tofu?”

The siblings didn’t recognize the brine, but they saw that Sang Luo usually used gypsum. They could tell the difference between the two.

“Yes, this is called brine. If we use this to curdle the tofu, the texture of the tofu will be different. It’s called old tofu. But we have fewer tofu molds, and we have to deliver a set amount of fresh tofu tomorrow morning, so let’s not make old tofu tonight. Let’s make fermented bean curd.”

Of course, tofu curdled with gypsum can also be made into fermented bean curd, but there will be some differences in taste and texture. Sang Luo was going to make old tofu, and she also bought brine.

Shen An and Shen Ning heard the name of the new food and watched with rapt attention as Sang Luo explained how to make fermented bean curd.

It was no different from making tofu before, except for the change in ingredients. When it came time to curdle the tofu, instead of pressing the tofu, Sang Luo just used the tofu mold as a temporary filter.

The gauze cut earlier came in handy at this time. The two younger siblings helped, their hands already washed. They scooped the curdled tofu into the gauze, balled it up, and wrapped it into small square blocks.

The new wooden boards came into play at this time. The wrapped small blocks were placed on the boards one by one. After they were all wrapped, there were two large boards, sixty-four pieces on each board, for a total of one hundred and twenty-eight pieces.

Then, under Shen An and Shen Ning’s puzzled gaze, Sang Luo added layers of boards to the two boards, adding four wooden boards on one side, and then added clean stones on top.

She called Shen An over to help start the fire and took out the brine she had bought in the county during the day to start preparing the brine solution.

Shen An had tasted braised pork before and knew how delicious it was, so his eyes lit up. “Sister-in-law, will this fermented bean curd taste like braised pork?”

“The aroma might be somewhat similar, but it won’t taste exactly the same.”

After all, meat was meat, and fermented bean curd couldn’t truly replace it.

“But it’s still very delicious.”

As night fell, a tantalizing aroma began to waft from the kitchen where they were cooking, to the courtyard, and even into the night sky above. However, they lived far away, and the people in the village couldn’t smell it, leaving only Shen An and Shen Ning craving for it.

While Shen Ning was removing the gauze, piece by piece, the white blocks of dried tofu were laid out on the baseboard. Once Sang Luo’s braising liquid was ready, it was poured into the pot to stew the tofu.

One pot couldn’t hold so much, so when the first batch was stewing, Sang Luo asked Shen Ning to start another fire, controlling it to be slightly stronger than charcoal but still a low flame.

The bamboo strips that had been washed and dried in the afternoon came into use. Sang Luo brought them in and arranged them on the stove. When the first batch of fermented bean curd was well-flavored, Sang Luo scooped them up and laid them flat on the bamboo strips above the stove, roasting them over a low flame.

The texture of the fermented bean curd depended on the braising and roasting time.

It wasn’t until late into the night that these were finally done.

The two siblings looked at the well-roasted fermented bean curd with great curiosity, itching to try a piece.

Sang Luo chuckled and handed them each a piece, saying, “Go ahead and try it. But it’s best eaten with stir-fried garlic shoots.”

Shen An smiled, “We’re just curious, sister-in-law. With this, our family has another source of income, right?”

Indeed, it was another source of income.

Sang Luo nodded.

Shen Ning, however, said, “This is much more tiring than making tofu, and it requires more ingredients and a large brine pot. How do we sell it?”

It was a good question.

Sang Luo calculated the costs and said, “We haven’t weighed them, so let’s just sell them by the piece. This product costs much more than tofu to make, and with the current rise in rice prices, I think we shouldn’t sell it too cheaply.”

After thinking for a moment, she said, “Let’s sell ten pieces for your aunties for fifteen coins, and sell them for two coins each on the market.”

Selling ten pieces would earn five coins. It sounded the same as tofu, but most families only needed one piece of tofu for a dish, while fermented bean curd needed two or three pieces for a dish. However, whether it was two or three pieces, fermented bean curd would definitely sell more than tofu.

For residents in the county, spending four or six or eight coins on a dish was a bit extravagant, but many families could afford it, and they often could.

With this in mind, Sang Luo felt relieved. “That’s settled then. This thing is too labor-intensive and troublesome to make. Selling it cheaply wouldn’t be worth the effort for us, and our skills, time, and energy are also costs.”

Upon hearing that selling ten pieces of tofu could earn fifteen coins, Shen Ning’s eyes lit up.

“Two boards, one hundred and twenty-eight pieces! We just ate one piece…” He felt a pang of regret and continued muttering to himself, “One hundred and twenty-seven pieces, one hundred and twenty-seven pieces…”

“Sister-in-law, how much is one hundred and twenty-seven pieces?” Shen An, who had been silently calculating alongside him, asked when he heard his sister’s question.

He tried to convert it to decimal, saying, “If one hundred and twenty pieces equals twelve sets of ten pieces, then twelve sets of ten pieces…”

He still couldn’t figure it out.

He felt a bit confused, and the siblings looked at Sang Luo together.

Sang Luo: …

It seemed like besides teaching them how to write, math classes needed to be arranged as well. Great, should she teach them the multiplication table before bedtime?