Chapter 25: Stir-fried Shredded Radish with Lard Cracklings

Chapter 25: Chapter 25: Stir-fried Shredded Radish with Lard Cracklings

They still didn’t get to eat meat that night.

Hu Liang had already cooked dinner before they returned, keeping it warm in the pot so it was ready to eat. Plus, it was getting late and everyone was exhausted from the day’s travels, so they ate a simple meal and went to rest.

Widow Xie’s room was rather small, with a narrow heated brick bed. It was already cramped with the three of them—her, Widow Xie, and Hu Ximei. Now with the addition of Old Mother Xie, there was no longer enough room for everyone to sleep.

After one night of squeezing together, Ji Huan made up her mind. ’Tomorrow, I have to get Aunt Xie to help me finish the quilt. It’s time for me to move back to my dilapidated shed.’

The next day after breakfast, Widow Xie had Ji Huan give her a hand with cutting the fabric for the quilt’s lining and cover. Hu Dacheng and Hu Ximei, along with Xiao’an and Hua, didn’t go out to play, but instead squatted nearby, watching with eager eyes.

How could Ji Huan not know what they were waiting for? Hu Liang had just said that Hu Dacheng was shouting for meat in his sleep last night, which had woken Hu Liang up and made him hungry.

By the time they were done, it was nearly noon. Ji Huan stretched and announced, "Light the fire."

"Aye!" Hu Dacheng answered with a resonant cry and dashed into the kitchen. Then, he yelled from inside, "Wan! High heat or low heat?"

Hu Ximei and the two little kids giggled. Ji Huan laughed along and, imitating his volume, shouted back, "Medium heat!"

Ji Huan rubbed the pork belly all over with salt and hung it up under the eaves. She didn’t plan on cooking it for lunch; first, she was going to render lard.

Lard was a staple in every household’s kitchen, primarily because it was economical, but also because it was undeniably delicious. It made noodles incredibly flavorful. Adding a bit of lard when leavening dough resulted in perfectly fluffy, white steamed buns. A spoonful in the pot while cooking rice made the grains exceptionally soft and tasty. It was a truly all-purpose animal fat with countless uses.

The best lard is both white and fragrant, and its cracklings are especially flavorful and crisp. To render such high-quality lard, one needs clean, white, and thick leaf lard, which was why she had spent so long carefully selecting it at the market yesterday.

She washed the leaf lard, cut it into small cubes, placed them in a wok, and poured in a moderate amount of water.

"Huh? Wan, that’s not right. You don’t add water when you render lard," Hu Ximei said, thinking Ji Huan had made a mistake.

"You can do it either way," Ji Huan said as she instructed Dacheng to add more firewood. She brought the wok to a boil over high heat, then reduced it to a low simmer. As she stirred the contents of the wok with a spatula, she explained to Hu Ximei.

"Rendering it directly without water is much faster, but the oil gets overcooked. The color isn’t as nice once it cools, and you might get black impurities. If you boil it in water first, the rendered lard is not only whiter and more fragrant, but the cracklings also won’t burn from the high heat. Relatively speaking, it will also last much longer."

Hu Ximei nodded, only half-understanding. She just thought, ’Wan knows so, so much.’

As they spoke, the water in the wok slowly evaporated, and the fat began to render. With time, the amount of liquid fat gradually increased.

Ji Huan stirred the pieces of lard from time to time with a ladle. Once they had shrunk and turned a golden brown, she quickly scooped them out with a slotted spoon and placed them in a nearby ceramic bowl.

The entire time, the sound of Hu Dacheng constantly gulping could be heard.

In the countryside, watching lard being rendered was one of the children’s favorite things to do.

They would wait by the stove, watching as the pieces of lard were rendered into crisp, golden-brown cracklings over the high heat. An adult would often pick one up and pop it into a child’s mouth, or a child might sneak one when no one was looking. Even if it was so hot they had to suck in a sharp breath, it wouldn’t stop them from chewing. The fresh cracklings were perfectly crisp the moment they hit the tongue, and the flavor was just out of this world!

The Hu family children were all very well-behaved. Without permission, they wouldn’t dare sneak a piece, no matter how much their mouths were watering.

Ji Huan picked up a large piece first and handed it to Hu Dacheng. "The first one is for our Fire Chief. He’s the hero of the day."

Hu Ximei quickly raised her hand. "Me too, me too! I helped wash the jars!"

"You’re a hero too, of course you get one!" Ji Huan picked out another piece for Hu Ximei. Xiao’an and Hua, growing impatient, tugged at her skirt from below. "Meat... meat..."

Ji Huan quickly picked out two small pieces, crouched down, blew on them to cool them off a bit, and then popped them into two little mouths.

The children ate with looks of pure bliss, happier than could be.

Widow Xie and Hu Liang were still in the east room, giving Old Mother Xie a sponge bath and changing her clothes. Ji Huan had Hu Ximei fetch the family’s small, half-full bag of white sugar. Then, she had Hu Dacheng heat up another wok to toast the fine salt she’d bought yesterday with ground Sichuan peppercorns, making a seasoned pepper-salt.

She divided the cracklings among several bowls, sprinkling half with white sugar and the other half with the pepper-salt. While they were still hot, she carried them to the main room and called for Widow Xie and the others to come eat.

The cracklings could also be eaten like roast duck: dipped in sweet bean sauce, rolled up with shredded scallions in a thin, steamed pancake, and then popped into your mouth. But making the pancakes was a bit of a hassle, and she still had cleanup work to do.

The lard jars had long since been washed and air-dried. She sprinkled some white sugar into the bottom of each jar as a preservative, then ladled the hot lard from the wok into them, filling two large jars to the brim. This would last them for quite some time.

She had just finished up when Hu Dacheng scurried in with an empty bowl, grinning. "Ma and Second Brother said they’re delicious! Ma finished hers and is feeding Grandma now. I told her what you said, that Grandma shouldn’t have too much greasy food..."

"You can’t eat too much, either." Ji Huan saw right through his little scheme. ’He must have gobbled his share down without even tasting it and is already thinking about the next bowl.’

"If you eat too many cracklings, you’ll get a stomachache. There’s something even more delicious coming later. Aren’t you going to save any room?"

Hu Dacheng smacked his lips and glanced again at the bowl, which was still more than half-full of cracklings, a look of profound conflict on his face. In the end, he relented. He shuffled reluctantly over to the mouth of the stove, sat down, and started feeding the fire.

Ji Huan went to the vegetable garden to pull up a large radish. She washed it, shredded it with swift cuts of her knife, and tossed it into the wok used for the lard, stir-frying it with some of the pork cracklings. Just as it was nearly cooked through, she threw in some chopped garlic sprouts. The rich aroma filled the air before she even took it off the heat.

After plating the dish, she picked up a small amount with her chopsticks to taste it. The stir-fried cracklings had taken on a new, richer texture. The radish shreds, having tumbled in the pork fat, had shed their plain character and become glossy with oil, yet without losing any of their original crisp-tender crunch.

RUMBLE...

A glance toward the stove revealed Hu Dacheng clutching his stomach, his eyes gleaming as he stared at her—or more accurately, at the serving dish.

Ji Huan suppressed a laugh and held out her chopsticks to him. "Want to try some?"

Hu Dacheng swallowed hard a few times and shook his head. "Later... We’ll eat together in a bit."

With that, he tore his gaze away with great difficulty and added more firewood under the other wok.

This wok was for boiling water to cook noodles. Hu Ximei collected the empty bowls from the main room and washed them. Ji Huan lined the clean bowls up on the stove, adding fresh lard, the pepper-salt, slivered ginger, sliced garlic, chili flakes, and chopped scallions to each one in turn.

By the time she finished, the water was boiling. She added the noodles that Hu Liang had rolled out earlier that morning. Then, she ladled some of the boiling noodle water into each of the bowls to mix the seasonings and melt the lard.

She added a splash of cold water to the boiling wok once or twice more, and finally, she lifted the cooked noodles out, placed them in the bowls, and gave them a good mix. All done.

This was yet another method of cooking noodles Hu Ximei had never seen. This time, however, she was smart enough not to ask. In her heart, Wan was omnipotent. ’Whatever she makes is delicious, and whatever she does is right!’

Hu Ximei went to the main room to set the table. Hu Dacheng washed his hands and helped carry out the bowls of noodles. Last came the dish of stir-fried radish with pork cracklings, which had been tempting him for what felt like an eternity.