Handrolled noodles made of water grinding noodles
Text/Zhu Shihuai
Handrolled noodles are still many years ago, and I have never eaten them again in recent years.
Hand-rolled noodles, called "Roll rice" by people from my hometown, which is also the home-cooked meal that farmers lived in the past. At that time, every household had a wide and flat willow chopping board in the kitchen. A cypress rolling pin with a straight and round egg head (thick in the middle and pointed at both ends) was placed on the two nails against the wall. A narrow board below was placed with alkali noodles, flour, oil, salt, sauce, vinegar and seasonings and other essential items in the kitchen. This was also a must-have for farmers.
When I was a child, there was no alkaline noodles at home. Every time my mother burned big buckwheat, it was ashes, and rolled noodles with ash water. The big buckwheat was not easy to burn, and it was just white smoke. Once, my mother asked me to burn it. When I saw the smoked buckwheat was about to burst out, she blew it with her mouth, "panic" it, I avoided it slowly, and my eyebrows and hair were burned into browned curls by the flames, emitting a scorched smell of hair.
The big buckwheat is gray, not very white, it is black, and it looks like a ball of black grass, and it disperses when it moves. I realized it was ash, so I put it in lid , pour it with water, and pour it out turbid ash water. When it is clarified, I can mix the noodles and roll the rice.
At that time, I often followed my mother to water mill to grind noodles. The grain was dried and clean, so it was no longer called grain, but it was called "grinding". My back was three liters and five liters, and my mother carried one liters and two liters. She went down the mountain and walked over the river for a while. After passing two wooden bridges, she went to the water mill. She saw that the old lady was very kind, with her gray hair covered with white dust. She was wearing wide clothes with large collars and covered with dust. She tied a very black white cloth as a hand towel on the long twisted rope. Sometimes she wiped her nose, sometimes she wiped her tears, and also wiped the bowl before scooping rice and tea. Yiyi I like to grind noodles with my mother, but I don’t eat rice or drink light tea.
When a circle of snow-white flour flows under the stone mill, my mother is about to bring back the noodles. A row of round wooden baskets of ponytails hung on the wall of the yellow mud-patterned wooden trunks. The wooden circles of those trunks were a little old and a little new and white.
"Er Po, is that copper silk? " Mother asked.
"The one in the top. "Watching the old lady holding the grinding on the large and thick grinding table, adjusting the distance between the grain bucket and the "eating eye", and observing the thickness of the surface.
"Luoer, isn't it made of long hair on the ponytail?" I asked without understanding.
"The copper wire is thinner, and the rice is longer." The mother said while busy.
" Rumble..." The thunder-like stone mill was rotating rapidly under the guidance of the wooden wheel.
"Bang, bang, bang..." My mother sat on a greasy wooden pier, held Luo'er in her right hand and tried her best to shake the sieve on the Luo rack. Her left hand slapped Luo'er's wooden basket. The snow-white white surface below flowed out like snowflakes, slowly piled into pointed hills.
I swept the noodles for my mother under the stone mill. There were several times when the rotating mills slammed my forehead. I didn't care about the pain and swept them carefully...
The copper wire is thin, the noodles are slow, and it is difficult. But what kind of bitterness did my mother never suffer? When she put the head and face into her pocket, she also scooped a spoonful of the old lady to show the ground. The old lady said, "Forget it, forget it." But her hand had already opened the pocket of her noodles. Finally, my mother asked the old lady to grind the bran twice, and used yaki (middle thin) to make black noodles. When I went home, my mother used a yeast pot to boil it, steam it, or bake it into cakes. The adults went to the field to work as a noon, or I carried it on Sunday to study.
Time flies, life is difficult, my mother saves food and picks up supplies, matches thick and thin, and keeps the food and clothing of our six children hard and maintains the food and clothing of our whole family.
When you go home every Saturday, you roll out rice at home. My mother said, "The whole family is here, let's have a meal." My mother came back from the field and washed her hands and rolled out the rice regardless of her fatigue.
My brother and sisters all thought they wanted to eat well, and they were very attentive. They were all peeling onions, some picked beans, some pinched garlic leaves, and some looked for firewood to make fire...
There are many people in the family, and my mother wanted to roll two pieces of rice. First roll one piece cooled on the cabinet cover, lay a clean turban below, and then roll one piece cooled on the chopping board. Just start to take a look.
At that time, I loved going home very much. Most of the reason was that I could eat long roe noodles when I got home. The water-ground noodles are not as white as steel-ground noodles. Although they are fine and slurry, they are still a little blue, but they taste fragrant and have good muscles. They can't bite them even if they are leftover rice. They are still fried one by one.
The current steel grinding noodles taste a bit irritating if you use a machine to press noodles, and they will no longer have the original fragrance of wheat noodles.
At that time, my mother would cut a long stream of thin, thin and unbroken noodles before meals. It was what I ate when I took it to study the next day, so I ate it first when I arrived at the store. At that time, we didn’t take white flour when we studied. Most of the reason was that white flour was scarce, and I couldn’t roll it out even if there were no cases in the store. They carry a small bag of cornmeal, make potato soup, sprinkle noodles and rice, or are embarrassed.
hand-rolled noodles, then it was a luxury to be able to eat them, and it was even more dreamy to be able to eat them every meal.
Later, I went to high school, and the land was divided into households and there was more white flour, so I took some white flour and potato rice to eat. At first, I couldn't hold the water color when rolling the rice. When the noodles were soft, the rice was not formed, so I cut it into small lumps and cooked it into soup. Sometimes the noodles were hard and could not roll it. If I added water, I felt that it was too much...
Later, I slowly mastered the water color, but I couldn't roll it round rice. The rice on the table looked like a map of China. It's thin in the middle and thick in the surrounding area. When I got home, I asked my mother, and she said that the rice should be rolled around and rolled a few more times in the gap. Don’t rush to roll the rolling pin first, roll it a little less, and then roll it on the rolling pin in the middle when the edges are thin. In this way, I learned to roll out rice and eat when I was in my third year of high school.
Now, I haven’t rolled rice for many years, and I gradually can’t roll it anymore. I either buy ready-made noodles or buy noodles and to cook.
Water-ground noodles, hand-rolled rice, that is the real taste of my hometown...
Author profile: Zhu Shihuai, from Li County, Gansu Province, is a member of the local literature community, often writes some essays and publishes. "Selected Essays of Zhu Shihuai Countryside" was published.
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