Glutinous rice is a specialty of Luo Tong's city, but Luo Tong usually buys and processes it, and has never seen the production process of glutinous rice cakes. Being able to see it with her own eyes today, Luo Tong couldn't be more curious, she held her cheeks with both hands, her phoenix eyes widened slightly, and she watched everyone's every move carefully.

Grandma Chen was lighting a fire under the stove, and a wooden utensil rested on top of the cauldron. It is about half a meter in diameter and about 60 centimeters high, and it looks like a huge wooden barrel. Luo Tong guessed that it was supposed to be a rice steaming utensil, because she could smell the aroma of glutinous rice inside.

Soon, Uncle Chen's two sons, Chen Song and Chen Zhu, worked together to carry the big wooden barrel down. Only then did Luo Tong see the shape clearly. It turned out that at the beginning, the bottom of this "wooden barrel" was on the pot, and it was difficult to see the whole picture.

Now it seems that it has a somewhat strange shape, narrow at the bottom and wide at the top. Sheng Qiwu looked at it and introduced to Luo Tong that this is a kind of utensils for steaming rice-wooden retorts. The 'wooden retort' is made of thick wooden planks, and a bamboo strip is placed at the bottom to form a spired-shaped partition, which can not only keep the rice from getting wet in the pot, but also facilitate the entry of steam.

This utensil is needed every time the glutinous rice is steamed, and as long as it is placed on top of a large pot of boiling water, the rice inside can be steamed in a short time. The time is short, the efficiency is high, and the steamed rice is dry and loose, and there is no clumping and stickiness.

The traditional skills of the folk are able to make the 'wooden retort' to an airtight level, so that the steamed rice will not be cooked thoroughly due to air leakage. Another good feature of the wood retort is that the wood can absorb the water droplets condensed by the water vapor and prevent the water droplets from falling into the rice, making the rice too viscous.

In addition, some families with good conditions will also use slightly aromatic wood to make wooden retorts, so that the steamed rice will have a slight hint of fragrant wood fragrance, adding a more flavor.

Nowadays, there is a kind of pottery retort fired with clay on the market, although it is not troublesome to make and the sealing performance is good, but if you want to steam the best glutinous rice, you still have to use a wooden retort.

Grandma Chen lifted the lid of the wooden retort and saw a hot vapor steaming up, condensing into a mist in the slightly cold air, and emitting an even richer fragrance.

Chen Song and Chen Zhu worked hard together, pouring the opening of the wooden retort into the stone mortar, and Luo Tong saw that the crystal clear rice balls fell into the stone mortar one day. The glutinous rice, which was originally a neat piece, slowly fell to both sides under the action of gravity, and the glutinous rice grains did not stick together.

At this time, the whole kitchen is filled with steaming heat, and the soft and glutinous aroma reaches the heart and lungs, making people reluctant to wake up for a long time. Chen Song and Chen Zhu, who had put down the 'wooden retort', each picked up a stick as tall as a person, and began to chisel the rice balls inside the stone mortar rhythmically.

Luo Tong recognized the material of this stick, which is the branch of an oak tree, which is very hard and heavy, with a compact structure and dense wood. In rural areas, this kind of branch is generally used to make sickles, axes and other tools of the wooden handle, durable, very popular with farmers.

Luo Tong is also because when the orchard planted trees, the agricultural furniture that everyone brought was made of wood of this material, so Luo Tong asked the villagers specifically to find out. I always heard Sheng Qiwu say that Luo Tong felt that he was so knowledgeable, and it was rare to have one that he knew now.

After speaking, Luo Tong looked at Sheng Qiwu with bright eyes, Sheng Qiwu liked Luo Tong's proud little appearance very much, he pinched Luo Tong's cheek, and said with a smile: "Tong Tong knows so much." ”

Luo Tong was embarrassed, "No, I also listened to what others said, unlike Brother Sheng, who knows everything." Sheng Qiwu smiled and didn't speak.

Chen Song and the two stood on one side. The oak sticks of the same thickness as the hands and arms fell one after the other, like a storm, but they did not crash once. The steamed ground in this wooden retort just now is the small glutinous rice that is the raw material for making glutinous rice today.

This long, slender glutinous rice, a local specialty, is the best material for making glutinous rice because of its strong stickiness. After the glutinous rice is steamed to medium cooked, it is put into a stone mortar and beaten into rice puree, and then it can be made into glutinous rice cakes.

Although the process is simple and straightforward, it involves a lot of skills. Only the details of each link can be dealt with, and the first thing to do is the selection of raw materials.

The glutinous rice must be a new local small glutinous rice from the late rice of the year, if it is other varieties or aged rice, the taste and stickiness will be greatly reduced. The selected small glutinous rice should be soaked in water the night before.

After the rice grains are completely soaked and permeable, drain the water and then steam them on the wooden retort. The heat of steaming glutinous rice also needs to be mastered very well, because overripe rice is easy to make the rice puree too wilty and inelastic; if it is not ripe thoroughly, the glutinous rice will have a half-cooked rice heart, which will affect the taste.

Therefore, glutinous rice is cooked at nearly nine years of maturity, and then the residual heat is used to fully cook it during the beating process. In this way, you can make rice puree with good elasticity and toughness.

The skill of beating glutinous rice is also very particular, because the stickiness of glutinous rice itself is very sufficient, if it is not a person with good beating skills, it is easy to cause the phenomenon of wooden sticks and rice puree fighting with each other.

I saw the wooden sticks in the hands of Chen Song and Chen Zhu flying up and down, and they had the four-character key of 'fast, accurate, stable, and ruthless', and Luo Tong was dazzled. Every thrashing was like a dragonfly touching water, and the wooden stick in the hands of the two did not stay in the stone mortar for too long.

What surprised Sheng Qiwu, who was standing on the side, was that the wooden sticks of the Chen Song brothers were beaten on the rice balls every time, and none of them were beaten on the stone mortar itself.

Looking at the green tendons and white fingers on the hands of the two of them, Luo Tong knew that in fact, the two of them were not as easy as they appeared on the face, and this work of making glutinous rice cakes was really a job that required both skill and physical strength.

From beginning to end, Chen Song and Chen Zhu's speed did not change at all, and there was no situation of being fast and slow, which showed that the two of them had extremely rich experience. If someone who doesn't know how to beat it up, it is estimated that the front is like a storm, and then it will be weak and weak.

Gradually, the original crystal clear glutinous rice grains were slowly deformed under the continuous beating of two oak sticks, losing their own characteristics and becoming confused. The rice puree itself has a milky white color, but it also emits a very crystalline light, a bit like milk jelly.