Food is the most important thing for the people. People need to eat to live, and the key to delicious food depends on oil. The so-called skillful woman cannot cook without rice. Without oil, the rice cooked by a skillful woman will no longer be so delicious. Oil is the main supplier of energy for the human body. Just like women cannot live without cosmetics, a healthy body cannot live without the nourishment of oil. Speaking of oil, I think of past events related to oil extraction.
According to my grandma, there used to be no oil mills around the village, and the edible vegetable oil of the villagers was not squeezed out, but refined in their own cooking pots. Grandma was born at the beginning of the last century. At that time, the vast stretches of first-class Sichuan land in the village were planted with hemp, and the most common oil crop was hemp seeds . At that time, rural people's daily cooking oil was mainly animal oil, and vegetable oil was generally only used to make spicy peppers and cold dishes. The dosage was very small. Whenever vegetable oil was needed, people would beat it out on the wheat field during the autumn harvest season and make it. Take out some of the sifted and dried hemp seeds from the grain cabinet, carefully sift them again, pick out the soil and stones, wait until the hemp seeds are cleaned, pour them on a roller and grind them into a coarse powder, then pour the crushed hemp seeds into the pot and add Water, the amount of water should be enough to cover the pockmarks, and then add firewood to the pot. The heat should be warm and simmering, avoid cooking over high heat. After slow cooking for about an hour, the oil in the pockmarks will gradually surface. At this time, use an iron spoon to scoop the oil floating on the water into an iron basin. Cook like this for about three times, and after scooping out the pockmarks for about three times, the oil in the pockmarks has basically been "drawn out", so pour out the residue in the pot, then wash the pot with clean water, and pour the oil that was scooped out earlier into the pot. The oil is refined over slow heat to remove the water mixed in the oil. In this way, after a lot of hard work, several kilograms of pure and authentic hemp seed oil was ready.
In addition, there are many apricot trees growing in the vast forest of Huating . The apricot trees are like the simple, strong and tolerant Huating people. They generally do not need management and care. If the flowering period is not affected by frost, they will bloom almost every year. Can produce apricots. Almonds contain a lot of oil, and Huating people also eat oil from almonds.
The following procedure is used to extract oil from almonds. First break the dried apricot kernels one by one to take out the almonds, then fry the almonds, then pour them into a stone mortar and grind them into fine powder. Then find a clean coarse cloth and take out the oil. Wrap an appropriate amount of almond powder inside, and then squeeze it hard with your hands. Again and again, with the kneading action, the oil in the almond powder will slowly seep out from the eyes of the cloth and drip into the jar below. It is said that during the process of kneading oil, one must keep quiet and cannot speak loudly. Even the dog at home cannot bark. Almonds will not produce oil in a noisy environment. Therefore, when kneading oil, the family will assign a special person to concentrate the children elsewhere, and the watchdog at home will also be pulled to a farther place. Even the person kneading oil will hold his breath and use eyes or gestures to communicate when cooperating with each other. . Only after the oil pinching is over can the doll come closer and people can speak. During the period of kneading the oil, you often have to thank customers behind closed doors. If you fail to knead the oil because of talking, you will be scolded by the shopkeeper. At that time, although the life of rural people was very hard, the family laws in the countryside were very strict. Every household was headed by an old man, and the younger generation had no choice but to obey orders. If the old man lost his temper, the younger generation would not even dare to express his anger.
At the same time, there are also manual oil pressing mills in fast-developing places close to towns. Families who live a prosperous life and have plenty of oil will spend a little money to press oil in the oil mill.
I have no memory about manual oil pressing mills. I heard from old people that oil mills are generally the same as mills. The equipment is placed in relatively spacious and simple earth houses. They were originally owned by the production team, and later after the land reform and household responsibility system, they were Privately owned. However, after the privatization of oil mills, most of the manual oil mills have basically become decorations, and have been replaced by electric oil presses.
Manual oil extraction tools mainly include large wooden presses, battering rams, battering rods, rollers, large frying pans, stoves, iron hoops, oil cylinders, etc.
The first step in oil extraction is stir-frying. Pour the sifted dry oil seeds such as pockmark, flax , rapeseed , etc. into a large wok and stir-fry until cooked. Pay attention to the heat during the process, so that the outside is coke and the inside is crispy. The next step is to grind the ingredients. Pour the fried oil seeds on the grinding plate and crush them into a coarse powder.Most of the crushing relies on animal power, usually donkeys. In order to allow the donkey to work with peace of mind and not to steal the seeds, the donkey is blindfolded with a cloth when grinding. After the seeds are crushed, the oil extraction process enters the next step, which is steaming the ingredients. As the name suggests, steamed material is to put the oil seeds ground into powder into a large steamer rack and steam them on the stove. The steamed material is then made into cakes and wrapped with wheat straw or horsetail, with iron hoops on the edges. The last step is to press the oil: the prepared cakes are arranged horizontally in the oil trench of the big wooden press, and the workers use all their strength to push the huge wooden hammer suspended above the wooden press and hit the wooden wedge outside the wooden press. , to squeeze the material cake in the oil trench, keep hitting it, keep adding wedges, and so on. In the huge "bang...bang..." sound, the bright yellow and mellow oil will be squeezed out, slowly It slowly flows down the groove to the oil drum, flows into thousands of households, and flows into people's rice bowls.
The wheel of time ruthlessly rolls through the vicissitudes of time. The spring breeze of development spreads through the city and blows to distant rural areas. Later, I often followed my father to watch the excitement. What is in front of me is the electric oil press of the new era. The legendary manual oil pressing tools have disappeared, and more and more people have no idea about the traditional oil pressing technology. Every time I go back to my hometown, standing in the fields and watching the villagers' rape blossoms and flax blossoms, I can always think of those clear pictures in my youth: the father pulling a frame truck with vigorous steps, walking on the oil extraction line. On the road.
Yu Huating
in 2020
