Recently, Tian Fei has started to get busy again, either going to the pig farm to guide and help, or going to see the charcoal kiln to produce charcoal, or to see the growth of corn, or to seize the time to chat with Li Yu on the phone and send messages to contact feelings. What a happy old rich man.

Tian Fei found that the number of people who came to the house seemed to have become a little more, and they were mainly elderly and women. Tian Fei was sure that he definitely didn't come to his house to buy wine, and certainly not to buy tofu. So what are these people asking?

……

It turned out that these people came to ask Tian Zhensheng when he started boiling maltose.

Maltose has always been Tian Fei's sweetest memory, and many post-80s and post-70s generations have eaten snacks made of maltose when they were young.

Every year before the Mid-Autumn Festival, the villagers use maltose to make sugar cakes and sugar chips. In the whole village, only Tian Fei's father is still insisting on boiling maltose, and now it is not long before the Mid-Autumn Festival, so everyone came to inquire about the situation.

……

Finally, Tian Zhensheng moved all the tools and equipment for sugar production to the yard and cleaned it, which was an official announcement that he was going to start boiling.

Maltose has been used as a traditional snack for hundreds of years. So the production equipment is just some wooden pressing tools and knives, spatulas and the like.

……

In the past, he had always watched his grandfather and father make maltose, but now Tian Fei also wants to try it himself.

"Dad, if you want to prepare to make maltose, I'll make it for you. Tian Fei said to his father.

"Are you interested, then let's go together. "His son is interested in his career, and Tian Zhensheng is also very happy.

To boil maltose, you first have to prepare the ingredients.

The main materials of maltose are wheat and glutinous rice. Tian Fei has stored both of these things at home, and all of them are home-grown.

The glutinous rice and malt had to be soaked in advance, and when Tian Zhensheng washed the tools, he also told Tian Fei to prepare the tools.

"Xiaofei, you go to the urn first to scoop 20 catties of glutinous rice and soak it, and then scoop 15 catties of wheat, and then I will soak it in water to make it sprout. ”

After finishing the work at hand, Tian Zhensheng began to instruct Tian Fei on how to germinate wheat.

……

The next morning, Tian Fei got up and walked into the kitchen, and found that two trays of six or seven centimeters of wheat sprouts had grown.

"It's okay to have such long buds, you go burn some firewood, and then cook the glutinous rice that was soaked yesterday. The malts are minced first. Tian Zhensheng also got up and said to Tian Fei in the kitchen.

Tian Fei followed what his father said and began to boil water and boil glutinous rice. And Tian Zhensheng also took out the malt in the tray and chopped it.

After the glutinous rice is cooked, remove it and let it cool.

Tian Fei's father poured the minced malt and boiled glutinous rice into the wooden retort and stirred them evenly. Then put it in the steamer and steam it.

"It is very important to get out of the pot after 10 minutes of steaming, put it in this pot, and then cover it and let it simmer for five hours, so that the malt and glutinous rice are fully integrated with each other to ferment. Tian Fei's father explained as he did it.

After doing this, Tian Zhensheng washed his hands and continued: "After lunch, we will start boiling sugar. ”

……

After lunch, Tian Zhensheng uncovered the lid of the wooden basin and grabbed a handful of fermented glutinous rice malt with his hand and looked at it carefully.

"Almost, Xiaofei, you go and adjust the press, we have to squeeze out the soup in this glutinous rice. ”

The press is a wooden shelf that resembles a table, with a wooden shaft at one end, a wooden stick stuck in the middle, and a rope tied to the other end.

Tian Fei and his father loaded the glutinous rice on the press, pressed the wooden stick down through the pull of the rope, and squeezed out the fermented soup that was placed on the shelf.

After that, it's time to start boiling.

Tian Zhensheng put the soup into the firewood hot pot and boiled it slowly over low heat. This step is the most important, the temperature should be well controlled, be sure to keep the heat low, stir with something like a wooden paddle during the period, and stir in one direction to prevent the pot from burning. Once there is a little burnt, the maltose will taste mushy after it is ready. So this process was done by Tian Zhensheng, and Tian Fei was just watching from the side.

As Tian Zhensheng kept stirring, and finally the water was basically boiled dry, the solution in the pot slowly became more and more viscous, becoming an amber gelatinous substance, which was the moist semi-finished maltose.

At this time, Tian Zhensheng said to Tian Fei: "You go and put the small iron pot on the rack, take a brush to brush the inside of the pot with oil, and wait for the bottom to be filled with first sugar." ”

After that, seeing that the initial sugar in the pot was almost up, Tian Zhensheng stopped stirring and extinguished the fire in the stove.

Wait for Tian Fei to set up the iron pot and brush it with oil. Tian Zhensheng scooped out the amber syrup that had just stopped stirring while it was hot and poured it in.

After that, it is to wait for the maltose syrup in the pot to cool and condense, and when it has cooled to about the same body temperature as the human body, it will not touch your hands when you pick it up, and you can proceed to the next step, which is about three or four hours.

The pot where the syrup was boiled just now is still burnt, forming a pot like a pot attached to the bottom of the pot. Therefore, these pots need to be scraped off with a knife every time.

These sweet and greasy pots used to be Tian Fei's favorite. In times of material scarcity, there was no chocolate, no cake, and no ice cream. Every piece of sugar pot that is scraped off will be collected, or shared with good friends or tasted quietly by his only son. This kind of sugar is very sweet and sticky to the teeth, Tian Fei was glued to his teeth during the tooth replacement period, so he can only melt slowly in his mouth, but cannot chew and eat.

……

At six o'clock in the afternoon, Tian Zhensheng pressed the syrup in the pot with his hand, which was already quite condensed, and at this time he could move on to the next and last step of the process - pulling sugar.

Because he had brushed the oil in the iron pot in advance, Tian Zhensheng easily took out the amber maltose that had condensed in the pot. Then hang the whole piece of maltose on a fixed wooden stick in the hall, and at the same time use another wooden stick about a foot long to also insert it into the sugar block, and then hold this wooden stick with both hands, slowly stretch it, pull it to about two meters, fold it in half, and continue to pull. Like pulling ramen, it is pulled and pulled again and again until the amber maltose and air solidify to form a silvery white color. The maltose that comes out in this way tastes sweeter. Pulling maltose is also a technical job, which only Tian Zhensheng can do, and Tian Fei can't do it.

At this time, some children had already come to Tian Fei's house, all of them were villagers, and Tian Zhensheng would tear off a piece of candy for the children to eat. Some children go home and ask their grandmothers to exchange money or rice for sugar.

The silvery-white maltose is pulled like a large winter melon with a diameter of 20 cm. Tian Zhensheng lay this "big winter melon" on a large bamboo tray sprinkled with glutinous rice flour. Tian Fei took a thin rope and wrapped it around five centimeters at one end of this "big winter melon", and then pulled the two ends of the rope with his father respectively, so a sugar cake five centimeters thick and twenty centimeters in diameter was cut out. Repeatedly, the whole "big winter melon" is cut into more than a dozen sugar cakes.

At this time, some people came to Tian Fei's house to buy sugar, and they generally used a small cutter and a small hammer with the word "7" line to break it into a small piece quickly, so that everyone could go home and process it into sesame candy. "Jingle bell" is good.