Chapter 178: Cooking skills are not enough to make up the seasoning
Considering the urgency of time, Qi Ling's movements sped up a little, and gently cut the toon leaves that had been washed just now into small slices.
And after marinating with salt for a while, the water that has been salted is poured out, because the salt can remove the astringency of the toon and keep it fresh.
In this way, some strange parts of the smell of the toon can be removed, and it will be more acceptable when the time comes.
After cutting, she poured the leaves into the egg mixture she had just beaten, and then stirred well so that the front and back sides of the leaves were wrapped in a layer of golden egg liquid.
After stirring, Qi Ling took out a small bottle from her body, this was her secret weapon.
After opening it, Qi Ling poured out most of the powder inside, and then nodded contentedly.
The secret weapon in this bottle was nothing else, but Qi Ling had fully dried all kinds of edible shiitake mushrooms picked from the mountain, and smashed them into a fine powder with a small medicine.
Don't underestimate this thing, you only need to add some to make the food taste more delicious, which Qi Ling only figured out for a while.
Why did she think of making such a thing, it was really because there were very few seasonings in this era, and there was no monosodium glutamate, chicken essence, and even a shadow could not be found.
There are only a few common ones such as oil, salt, sauce and vinegar, and even chili pepper and Sichuan pepper are rare, and the price is very expensive.
Therefore, a person like Qi Ling, who is an average cook, has to find a way to add some flavor to the food he makes, after all, the cooking skills are not enough to make up the seasonings.
Her first thought was to refine MSG by herself, Qi Ling had previously learned in chemistry textbooks, the so-called "MSG", the main ingredients of this kind of thing are monosodium glutamate and table salt, which can be used to increase the "umami" taste that can be felt on the taste buds.
The modern method of manufacturing monosodium glutamate is to use various grains as raw materials, after a long period of fermentation, extract the sodium glutamate inside, and then go through various chemical decolorization, deironization, evaporation, and crystallization to extract glutamate crystals.
This method was obviously not suitable for Qi Ling, because she couldn't figure out all the tools needed for this method, not to mention some of the complex chemical reactions, she hadn't even learned.
However, fortunately, Qi Ling had seen a soil method to make MSG on TV before.
It is to simmer the kelp at a high temperature repeatedly, and finally a layer of light yellow crystals will form on it, and they can be scraped off, which is the simplest version of MSG.
Although the taste is not necessarily mellow, and even the color is a little unsightly, as long as there is an effect, it is enough to make Qi Ling happy.
It's just that although this method sounds simple, it is very complicated for Qi Ling to operate.
Because she found out a few days ago that there are almost no seafood products in the various shops in the city.
Even some common shrimp skins and dried goods in the sea are rare, and there are not many natural kelp left.
These things are not only scarce, but also very expensive, the price of one or two shark fins is almost several times that of bird's nest, which is also a rare thing.
Therefore, on weekdays, everyone eats river shrimp and river fish, and there is no chance to eat some seafood in the sea.
Although Qi Ling didn't know why, he faintly guessed in his heart that the country he was crossing should be a place far away from the sea.
That's why it's so difficult to transport all the way from the seaside, and it's so expensive, it's not something ordinary people can eat.
Since there was no way to find enough kelp, Qi Ling naturally wanted to temporarily abandon this method and wait for the right time to put it into use.
However, in addition to this kelp production method, Qi Ling also knows a simpler way to increase the umami taste of food, and that is to use various mountain mushrooms.
Since ancient times, people have described the delicious taste as mountain delicacies, which refer to all kinds of wild mushrooms, and seafood refers to all kinds of seafood.
Since the seafood is no longer needed, there are still mountain delicacies.
How to refine the original monosodium glutamate, Qi Ling didn't know, but the asparagus roast meat she ate at the uncle's house last time who made bamboo baskets gave her inspiration.
The lady just dried some mushrooms on the mountain, ground them into powder, and sprinkled some when the dishes were about to come out of the pot, which would make the meal have a unique umami flavor of mushrooms.
Therefore, Qi Ling simply followed her method and selected some of the various mountain mushrooms sent by everyone in the workshop, and ground them into powder after drying.
I made several kinds of mushrooms in different proportions, tasted the freshest ones, wrote down the proportions of different mushrooms used in this one, and made a large number of them.
Although he used a lot of it at once today, but thinking that everyone who came could taste the taste of the food he cooked, Qi Ling felt that his hard work was not in vain.
After adding the "monosodium glutamate" he made to the egg liquid, Qi Ling took a pair of big chopsticks and beat hard, so that the umami would not be uneven when the time came.
After beating it, she put two large spoons of oil in the pot, and she can fry more than a dozen plates of dishes with the usual amount.
This is still under the condition that Qi Ling is very reluctant to put oil in cooking, if he changes to a woman who saves a little, the oil is enough for the family to eat for a month.
It's just that the situation is different today after all, and it is an egg that can only be used in more than a dozen dishes, and the amount of oil used naturally must be used in a dozen plates.
And we all know that there is a trick to making scrambled eggs delicious, that is, the oil should be more moderate, so that the oil can be quickly fried, and the inside can still be kept tender.
After Qi Ling saw that the oil was almost burning, he put his palm on the top of the oil pot, and after feeling the heat in his palm enough, he made sure that the oil temperature was okay.
Then I poured the egg mixture mixed with green toon leaves into it at once.
Just listening to the sound of a bang, the oil temperature quickly fried some of the eggs, and the color began to turn slightly yellow.
At this time, Qi Ling took the shovel of stir-frying and stir-fried back and forth, so as not to let the egg liquid at the bottom be scorched by the high temperature.
With the stir-frying, the eggs mixed with the unique smell of toon immediately wafted out, and there was no smell like everyone imagined, but a strange fragrance, which made people can't help but smell it again and again.
People who didn't think it would taste very good were also a little excited by the fragrance.
After the stir-fry was almost done, the peach blossoms who were waiting on the side began to hand Qi Ling the plate.
Qi Ling took the plate in one hand and filled the scrambled toon eggs on the plate with the other, and he was busy with his work.