Yu Wei.
The day before the Chinese New Year's Eve, the third uncle, the fourth uncle and the fifth uncle who worked in the county town, like returning birds, returned to their hometown early in the morning to celebrate the New Year with their grandfather, who lived with his father and mother.
Although I haven't seen each other for many days, my grandfather hasn't talked about it for a long time. Every winter, the grandfather who goes up the mountain to collect firewood and grass until the twenty-eighth day of the lunar month only stops to enter the mountain on the day before the New Year. As soon as he had finished breakfast, he sat down on the stove with a wooden bench and lit a red fire with the firewood and grass he had accumulated in the wind and snow all winter: the cauldron began to boil the wood-fired meat jelly.
Eight pig's trotters, two catties of chicken feet, a number of green onions, a number of ginger pieces, filled with a large handful of peppercorns and a large handful of star anise gauze cloth bags were put into a cauldron with a diameter of about one meter.
When the heavy wooden lid of the pot was firmly closed, the grandfather put down the dry tobacco pouch in his mouth, the tobacco pouch pot was facing down, and the nearly one-foot tobacco pouch rod was close to the bellows. After the stove fire is burning, grandpa will stuff a large *** elm tree head, the firewood is more vigorous, the water boils for an hour and a half, and the meat tastes fragrant for more than two hours. The long wood was replaced by small branches, the fire became small, and the grandfather sat in front of the stove from breakfast to lunch, from lunch to dinner, and never let the lid of the pot be lifted.
At seven o'clock after dinner, the lights of the New Year's Eve had already been lit, and the moment of happiness came. The lid of the pot was raised high, and the mother used a large fence to remove the boiled pig's trotters and remove them.
Put a basin of bone and meat, a large basin of meat, and a small basin of bones, and the younger brothers and sisters who were so anxious to swallow saliva quickly grabbed the saltless hoof meat that had just come out of the pot and stuffed it into their mouths, and screamed hotly. I look for "treasure" in a small basin, which is the four toes of the pig's trotters, Jiaodong's hometown is called "pig's trotters", a small pig's trotters, with bones and meat, the meat is strong, fat but not greasy, and the taste is excellent. Eight pig's trotters and thirty-two "pig's trotters", I counted them while eating, and when I ate less than half of them, my mouth was full of oil, and my belly was round and round, and the year's gluttony was driven away. Between the stove houses, the 30-watt electric lights flickered and flickered, just like our rippling hearts at the moment.
The meat in the large pot was cut into small pieces by the mother and put back into the cauldron. The bones in the small pot were placed in another small pot, and the water was added again to boil for more than an hour, and the mother scooped up the bones for the second time, and poured the pure white minced broth back into the cauldron and continued to simmer.
At about 10 o'clock in the evening, it was finally time to season and color the meat jelly. My father, who seemed to enter the kitchen only once a year, appeared. Burdened with the expectations of the whole family, his father is still calm, and the four standards summed up by years of boiling meat jelly make him confident: First, it is salty and light. Don't put too much salt in order to make it easier to store. Second, the color is moderate. The color weight is dark, and the light sugar color is the best. Third, it is flexible. The clamp is continuous, and the mouth is chewy. Fourth, the amount of jelly boiled out of the same weight of pig's trotters, the amount is the most.
The large amount of meat jelly is directly related to the mother's second time to add water to boil the bones. The color is beautiful and translucent, and it is my father's technical work to add soy sauce. The moderate saltiness is due to his father's trick of "the meat jelly is salty, and the broth needs to be slightly salty".
How to make the meat jelly elastic and boil more meat jelly is the mastery of my father's success in boiling meat jelly. When the pot full of ingredients is boiled from morning to night, a large pot of water has been removed for nearly half, the soup is thick, the minced meat is boiling, and the broth is blending. I saw my father scoop out a spoonful of broth from the pot, raise it high, and slowly fall from the sky, and say mysteriously while pouring it down, "See, when I landed, the broth was also blended, the meat was connected to the soup, and the soup was connected to the meat", and at this time I felt that my father was even more remarkable.
At this point, the process of adding fire and firewood to boiling meat jelly is basically over. I saw my father take out a small shallow dish, scoop up a small half spoon of broth, quickly take it outside to cool, take it back in half an hour, the broth has solidified, pick up the meat jelly, taste and look at the color to check the elasticity. If the solidification is not enough, continue to heat over low heat. After two or three consecutive tests, the elastic color and salinity reached my father's standard.
Out of the pot! The father shouted, like a trumpet of a charge, and the mother quickly brought three pots, large, medium and small, scooped the pots and pots full, brought them to the patio, covered with bamboo curtains for making dumplings, and waited until the table for the thirtieth year of the Chinese New Year's Eve, becoming the "signboard" of the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner.
The short-legged long table is placed on the kang **, and a large family of fifteen or sixteen people sits together. When they couldn't sit on the kang, the uncles stood under the edge of the kang, and the children sat on the windowsill.
When the square-cut, crystal clear meat jelly was served on the table, before he began to taste it, the uncle and aunt began to praise his father for the good color of the meat jelly, the third uncle said that it was delicious at a glance, the fourth uncle said that he wanted to eat it when he saw it, the fifth uncle said that he knew it without tasting it, and the father said that it was the grandfather who was the "fire head army" competent. My sister was impatient, and urged "Grandpa and grandpa move the chopsticks quickly, try it quickly", the adults laughed, and the joy of the year flew out of the house.
Meat jelly is the main dish in the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner, and it also carries the food expectations of half the first month. At 90 o'clock in the morning on the first day of the first lunar month, the younger generations who did not come out of the five suits took turns to come to the house to pay New Year's greetings to their grandfather. The father moved out of the small square table and put on the white porcelain wine cup, because it was not a main meal, there was only a plate of meat jelly on the table and the seaweed jelly boiled by the mother with seaweed and the coriander dripped with sesame oil. My father also taught the "four standards" experience of boiling from time to time, and his face was quite proud. At this time, the meat jelly is the "lining" of the family's highest cooking skills, and it is also the "face" of grandfather and father.
At this table, relatives were excitedly tasting the frozen meat, and another group of younger generations who were greeting the New Year arrived at the door of the house, and the mother quickly returned to the stove house to cut the meat and mix the jelly. In this way, five or six plates of meat jelly in the morning of the first half of the year were tasted and praised by the villagers who came to pay New Year's greetings.
For me when I was a child, the New Year was a handful of candy given to my grandmother's house in the same village on the first day of the new year, and it was the five-corner New Year's money given by walking two miles of mountain road to the fourth aunt's house, but for my grandfather and mother, the New Year may be a plate of light sugar and translucent meat jelly, which is hard work, beauty, expectation, and nostalgia.
Now the grandfather and father have traveled far away, but the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner of their grandfather should still be this translucent plate of light sugar-colored meat jelly, which has been continuing in the sky.