Sweet potato is the main crop common in the rural areas of northern China, its planting range is very wide, Shaanxi, Henan, Shanxi, Gansu and other provinces are planted, it is loved by people for its high yield and sweetness. In difficult times, it is a staple food for people for a year, and people who have experienced the era of low standards and hunger have an inexplicable special affection for sweet potatoes. Today, when food is abundant and abundant, sweet potatoes appear on the tables of ordinary people in the form of processed products, such as vermicelli.
I was born in a rural area and grew up in a rural area, and I have experienced the difficulty of digging sweet potatoes in April, the hard work of keeping rations and storing them in the cellar, and the magic of beating sweet potatoes and hanging them into vermicelli.
I vividly remember the scene when the wheels were crushing the thin ice on the road and making a "slag" sound, my father pinched the sweet potato, beat the noodles, and hung the noodles at the best time to make vermicelli.
I like sweet potatoes the most, because of the narrow mouth of the cellar, I have to take off my padded jacket when I go down to the cellar, and my father puts the rope tied around my waist with both hands and puts it into the cellar. Hang vermicelli once, hundreds of catties of sweet potatoes, nest in the cellar, and get enough of the addiction of sweet potatoes.
Sweet potatoes grown in the loess are inevitably stained with soil, and must be washed before flouring, otherwise the noodles will be toothy because of impurities. At that time, the villagers ate well water, and they had to carry it back one by one, and it took a lot of water to wash the sweet potatoes, so my father directly pulled the sweet potatoes by the pond to wash.
Farmers can always sum up simple, practical and fast methods in their work. When hanging vermicelli, wash the sweet potatoes, usually pour the sweet potatoes into a large wooden trough, lift the water and pour it into the trough, stir vigorously in the wooden trough with a wooden stick, and then pour the water over and over again to change the water, and then take it out one by one.
In the pond of Layue, the north wind was cold, the water was cold and biting, after washing hundreds of catties of sweet potatoes, the back of my mother's hand was full of blown blood marks, oozing blood, and after a night, it turned into a dense brown scab.
The washed sweet potatoes are pulled to the mill for pulping. The mill was in a neighboring village, and my father was pulling a cart with buckets and clay basins on it, and my siblings and I were sandwiched between several large baskets, chattering all the way.
It is not troublesome to grind the powder, pour it into the machine, and boom, the sweet potato will be crushed, and the filter powder is really time-consuming and laborious. The sweet potato puree and the slurry water are mixed together, with a faint yellowish-red color, and poured into a large basin, like quicksand. There is no more advanced method, basically inheriting the manual filtration, using a large piece of clean white cloth, wrapping the sweet potato puree in stages, squeezing it vigorously, wring out the slurry, and then pouring the squeezed sweet potato puree into the clay pot to add water, stirring evenly and then wrapping, and then squeezing.
Why do you have to mix it with water over and over again?”
When the squeezed water gets clearer and clearer, it means that the sweet potato puree no longer contains starch. ”
How can starch water be turned into vermicelli?”
Wait for the starch water to settle and pour out the water on it, leaving the flour behind. Make vermicelli from flour flour. ”
It's also curious, and I keep asking when I see adults repeating the same action.
A few days later, my uncles were building pots, iron pots, and water tanks in an open field, and I knew that the long-awaited hanging of vermicelli was about to begin.
There is an old rule that the master will entertain the master for whoever he wants. That morning, four masters were having dinner at my house, and as soon as they put down the bowl, one of the masters began to make noodles. The so-called and powder, is to add the white sail of water to mix the noodles, "and the noodles and good, the noodles will not be bad", and the noodles are the key step to hang the noodles, too thick, not good to leak powder, too thin, the noodles are difficult to form, how much noodles add how much water, the master is eyesight, only to see him roll up his sleeves, both hands in the tile basin up and down, when the dough is formed, use the fist to keep squeezing, kneading, a bag of cigarettes, a basin of smooth, delicate and elastic soft dough ready.
Seeing my surprised look, the master smiled and said: Boy, there is no mystery in hanging vermicelli, but it is just the intention of cleaning, powdering, filtering, powdering, hanging powder and drying powder, plus the familiarity of technical experience, you will know it when you look at it. While speaking, the masters performed their duties and stood on their own feet, and they entered the state.
The fire under the pot is blazing, the water splash in the pot is rolling, the pot is steaming, I saw the master of the palm scoop holding the water scoop with one hand, placing it directly above the mouth of the pot, grabbing a little noodles with one hand, quickly pouring it into the leaky scoop, and then gently knocking on the edge of the scoop with a clenched fist, the dough became dozens of lines of uniform thickness, and fell into the pot that was already boiling. At the same time, the noodle master uses a wooden stick to slowly stir in the pot, and when the vermicelli turns from milky white to gray, he uses two wooden sticks to scoop up the vermicelli and quickly put it in a large water tank to cool. At this time, sit.
The master who was waiting on the side was quick with his eyes, reached into the tank with his hand and picked up the vermicelli and swung it left and right, and then grabbed the vermicelli and hung it on the wooden pole, neatly and evenly. At this point, after the three key processes, with technology, strength and patience, the pure, tough, smooth and strong vermicelli is like a ribbon just after taking a bath, and finally comes out of the pot with thick hot air.
Hanging vermicelli, the workload is not large, but it is not easy to ask a master to support a pot, generally three or five companies together in partnership, according to the order, each provides firewood, grass and other materials. During the whole process, the adults were not idle, the aunts carried firewood and lit the fire, and the uncles carried water, changed the water, and took turns to put the vermicelli hung by the master on the rope between the two trees.
Like the little beggars in the movie, the children sucked their noses and gathered around the stove, staring at the mouth of the pot with their eyes, waiting for the master to remove the residue from the bottom of the pot. On that poor and cold winter day, how delicious those three inches of silver were!
The sun was setting slowly, the sun was slowly sinking, the temperature was also dropping, the snow that melted on the road began to freeze, and the vermicelli hanging on the rope was also frozen, and it was hard to the touch.
Thank goodness!The mother said, "It was a good day, and I poured water twice in the evening to freeze it, and this year's vermicelli became ready." "My father took the noodles from between the ropes one by one and carried them to the cart, and I followed my parents, picking up the noodles that were stuck to the dirt.
I slept very deeply at night, I don't know when my father poured water on the vermicelli, but I remember waking up the next day, the warm sun was shining, the smoke was wafting on the roof, a few gray finches circled and flew down to the yard and jumped around, the thin ice on the hanging vermicelli was slowly melting, and the crystal water droplets dripped down the long vermicelli to the ground, shining.
This painting-like courtyard, the smell of the rising poor winter, just like that, is frozen in my years!
About the Author: Wang Zhilian, a member of the Chinese Poetry Society, a member of the Shaanxi Provincial Sanqu Association, a member of the Weinan Writers Association, a member of the Chengcheng County Writers Association, the vice president of the Chengcheng Women's Poetry Society, and a special writer of the County Cultural Center.