1983 Small Island, Starting From a Large Farmer

Chapter 24 Fish Balls (please follow up)

Seeing that his mother did not agree, Li Duoyu quickly said:

"It's still early for confinement. You can raise a bunch of chickens. Let's kill them first and feed them to your daughter-in-law. She's been studying two classes by herself recently and she's too tired."

Chen Huiying thought about it and it seemed to make sense.

And when Little Fatty heard that he was going to kill a chicken, he was so moved that he almost cried. Today he not only bought pork, but also killed a chicken, which was even richer than his family’s Chinese New Year.

Without waiting for Grandma’s consent, she got into the chicken coop and hugged the biggest rooster with open arms.

 “Grandma, will this one work?”

Seeing her baby grandson rebelling in the chicken pen, Chen Huiying quickly shouted:

"Don't catch that big rooster. Your aunt has a baby in her belly and can't eat the rooster."

“Grandma, I’ll catch that hen.”

"That one is laying eggs, let alone catching them. You come out first, and I will catch them myself."

I saw that they had already started catching chickens.

Li Duoyu went to Grandma's vegetable plot again and pulled out some green garlic and ginger.

 Then he and Zhou Xiaoying took their cutting boards and knives, and carried the whole bucket of seafood to the well a hundred meters away.

I found that there were already many people at the well. My neighbor Wang Po was sitting on a small bench and rubbing her clothes on the stone strips, while Uncle Hu next door was cleaning the Balang fish he had just bought from the dock.

This kind of fish is extremely abundant and very cheap. It is sold by the basket at the wharf. Even in later generations, a pound of wild Balang fish will hardly cost more than 10 yuan.

Uncle Hu’s family specializes in making Balang fish. When the weather is hot, they make dried Balang fish. When the weather is cold, they make some semi-wet salted Balang fish.

As for the children in his family, almost all of them are homeless. They all sell Balang fish outside, some on the streets of Rongcheng, and some in villages in the mountains.

 Life is a little bit harder now.

But Li Duoyu remembered that Uncle Hu and other children later bought cars and houses in Rongcheng, and also opened several stalls in the seafood wholesale market, and their lives were quite comfortable.

Uncle Hu saw Li Duoyu carrying so many seafood and asked casually: "It's a festival today, so rich."

 Wang Po, who was rubbing her clothes, smiled and said:

“I have reported a lot of fish and even had my photo taken with the leader, so I shouldn’t celebrate it.”

“That makes sense. I’m not used to Duoyu suddenly becoming so well-behaved. This old Li should pay homage to his ancestors.”

“The ancestral graves of the old Li family are far away, on the other side of the Bohai Sea.”

As Wang Po said, she looked at Zhou Xiaoying, who had very little meat on her body, and said to Li Duoyu:

"Hurry up and give Xiaoying a supplement. If you are so thin, you will never have the energy to have children in the future."

Li Duoyu smiled and said:

 “Take it up now and give her a big meal every day.”

“You can’t lie to Xiaoying.”

Li Duoyu chatted with the neighbors for a while, and then started to deal with the seafood. Since he worked illegally in the island country, he spent most of his time in the kitchen.

 He has killed most of the sea fish.

But his skilled fish-killing techniques made these neighbors dumbfounded.

A large dolphin fish weighing fifteen kilograms, a dog shark weighing seven or eight kilograms, and an oil cone were all taken care of by Li Duoyu in less than a few minutes.

The meat and fish bones are separated, and the kill is very beautiful. Even the fish bones are removed, which is no worse than fishermen like them who kill fish all year round.

 Uncle Hu, who was stunned, couldn't help but ask.

 “Who did you learn this skill from?”

Li Duoyu responded with two sentences casually:

“Killing fish is so simple. You can master it after just a few glances. Why do you need to find someone to learn it?”

Hearing this, Uncle Hu immediately didn’t want to reply and felt offended.

Zhou Xiaoying, who was cleaning the pen holder, was not surprised when she saw that Li Duoyu was so proficient in killing fish.

She felt that she had gotten used to it these past few days and was too lazy to think about it so much. Maybe Duoyu was secretly working hard where they couldn't see it.

 Li Duoyu finished processing the seafood and returned to the yard.

Aniang was holding a young hen. The feathers on the neck had been torn off, and then she cut it off with scissors. The young hen struggled violently for a few times.

 As the chicken feet stiffen, they stop moving.

 After seeing Li Duoyu come back.

 Chen Huiying asked again: "If you don't know how to make fish balls, I will help you."

Li Duoyu put the seafood on the stone strips.

“This time I’m going to make sure you make the most delicious fish **** on Dandan Island.”

 “Just be a stinker.”

But the next second, Chen Huiying seemed to have been cast a restraining spell, her eyes were as wide as bells. His uneducated and idle son really looked like a chef when it came to chopping fish.

 The kitchen knife chopped quickly on the cutting board, making a dense and crisp sound.

 Less than five minutes.

　　A big owl was chopped into pieces for him.

 Then came eels, sharks, and pork.

 The little fat man’s mouth can fit two eggs.

 “Uncle, you chop it up so fast.”

 Chen Huiying, who was stunned, asked her daughter-in-law: "When did you teach him how to cook?"

Zhou Xiaoying, who was chopping minced pork, was speechless: "Mom, I'm not as good at chopping as he is. Do you think it was me who taught you?"

 “Then why is he so powerful?”

Zhou Xiaoying smiled bitterly: "I don't know. Maybe I learned it somewhere. I only recently learned that Duoyu can cook."

Zhou Xiaoying suddenly remembered something. Some time ago, Duoyu came back drunk and made a lot of noise all night long. He always said that after making money, he would go to an island country to work as a chef.

 I always thought he was drunk and talking nonsense.

 I didn’t think so, but he was really trying hard.

Zhou Xiaoying looked at Li Duoyu again. Since they grew up together, she knew very well that Duoyu was not bad in nature and was very kind.

 When I was in junior high school, I even rescued a girl from the sea. I would not bully others at will, and sometimes would protect those students who were bullied.

 After Li Duoyu chopped the fish into pieces.

He divided the meat of the big owl into half for the eel and the shark. He planned to make two kinds of fish balls.

 A kind of eel ball.

 A kind of shark pellet.

Li Duoyu put the fish meat in a large stone mortar and beat it with a mallet.

 The fish **** must taste good.

 The fish meat must be as fine as mud.

While beating, Li Duoyu added some seasoning salt and MSG, hammered for about half an hour, and added several kilograms of sweet potato powder.

 Hext, use your arms to stir continuously to soften the sweet potato powder and fish paste.

 In the era before mixers, making fish **** was simply a manual job. Even if you were in your early twenties, you would have to work hard all night long.

Li Duoyu was sweating all over after stirring for half an hour.

 “No, let’s take a rest.”

 Zhou Xiaoying, who felt distressed, took a towel to wipe his sweat and shook his cattail leaf fan to cool him down.

 Chen Huiying, who had just finished plucking the chicken feathers, came over carrying a big white chicken: "You know you're tired, get up and let me stir it up."

 Finally, she walked to the stone mortar to take a look.

 She found that the fish paste had already been beaten, and it was better than what she had made before. It was very tender and smooth, and there was not even a fish residue to be found.

Followed by a group of people, holding wooden spoons specially used for making fish balls, put the fish paste in the spoon, then grabbed some minced meat and stuffed it into the fish paste in the spoon.

 Turn it around, wrap the minced meat into fish balls, and place them in clear water.

 In this way, the fish **** are wrapped.

However, there is still an important step, which is to boil these fish **** in clear water in a large iron pot for more than ten minutes.

 The fish **** are really good.

Li Duoyu boiled a pot of water, poured the wrapped fish **** in batches, and stirred them with a shovel.

Looking at the big fish **** rolling in the iron pot, Little Fatty's eyes widened. He already had bowls and chopsticks in his hands and kept swallowing his saliva.

 “Brother-in-law, are you okay?”

“No need to worry, if you want to eat, your aunt and I will eat first.”

 “Ah, but I’m so hungry.”

 (End of this chapter)