I've been transported to the orc continent.

Chapter 298 Braised Pork

Crush the sugar cubes made from boiled sweet grass, put them in a pot and stir-fry. Once the sugar starts to bubble and change color, pour in soy sauce, sprinkle in a handful of salt, add ginger slices and scallion segments and start cooking.

This time, you don't need to cook it for so long. After the water boils, you don't need to add firewood to the stove. Cover the pot and let the soy sauce slowly boil using the residual heat in the stove. Once the fire is gone, the soy sauce will gradually cool down. Once it has completely cooled down, the soy sauce is ready.

Soy sauce made this way is certainly not as good as the soy sauce sold in supermarkets in my previous life, but it does provide the most basic seasoning and color enhancement for cooking. With soy sauce, you can make even more dishes.

Take braised pork belly, for example. If this dish doesn't have soy sauce, its color and taste will definitely not be authentic.

There are two stoves in the kitchen. The large stove is already steaming buns, while the small stove is used to make braised pork.

First, boil the lean and fatty meat in a pot, then take it out, wash it with cold water, and cut it into small pieces.

Heat oil in a pot, add scallions, ginger, and spices and stir-fry until fragrant. Then add the chopped meat and stir-fry. The meat will quickly render its fat. Once the meat is slightly browned, remove it from the pot.

Clean the pot with water, then add the animal fat again. When the fat is about 60-70% hot, add the sugar and stir-fry. Be careful not to let the heat get too high, or the sugar will burn. If the sugar burns, the braised pork will have a bitter taste.

Yue and Bai Ling had already developed a tacit understanding. When Bai Ling said "light a small fire," Yue immediately moved the fire from one stove to another, while also moving the fire in the pot around as much as possible, so the fire in the stove gradually became smaller.

The sugar in the pot slowly changed color, and more and more bubbles appeared. Bai Ling poured in two large bowls of stir-fried beast meat and stirred it vigorously.

After each piece of meat was coated with caramel coloring, Bai Ling added water and said to Yue, "Yue, start a big fire."

Yue immediately pulled out a few burning firewood from the stove next to her and put them into the stove.

Bai Ling then added the scallions, ginger, spices, and soy sauce in turn, along with a few pieces of sugar, and finally sprinkled in a handful of salt.

"Yue, get up, I'll start the fire," Bai Ling said.

Yue shook her head: "I'll start the fire."

Yue said he wanted to start a fire, so Bai Ling didn't argue with him. He found a rock to sit on, clenched his left fist in front of his chest, rested his right elbow on his left hand, and clenched his right fist to support his chin, staring at Yue.

The kitchen door was half open, and a cold draft blew in from the doorway, but both stoves were burning, so it wasn't too cold.

Yue sat between the two stoves, adding two pieces of firewood to the stove every now and then, poking at the fire with a fire poker, and occasionally glancing back at Bai Ling.

Despite being stared at by Bai Ling with such a burning, focused, persistent, and infatuated gaze, Yue showed no intention of looking away. Instead, he sat there and continued tending the fire, letting Bai Ling stare at him.

*

A series of heavy footsteps echoed in the courtyard, followed by Chen's cough. Before he even reached the kitchen door, he called out, "Brother, Father asked me to ask you if you want me to cook another dish?"

As long as Bai Ling is home and has time, Bai Ling will cook. If Yue happens to be there while Bai Ling is cooking, then Yue will be the one tending the fire.

The two worked together seamlessly in the kitchen, one tending the fire and the other cooking. At first, Cang and Feng felt embarrassed, since Yue was, after all, a guest of theirs, and they couldn't very well let her tend the fire.

But Ling and Yue were inseparable. When Ling cooked in the kitchen, Yue would help in the kitchen. Even though Feng or Cang were also helping in the kitchen, they always felt uncomfortable, as if they were superfluous.

Later, Cang and Feng stopped helping in the kitchen, leaving it to Bai Ling and Yue. When it was just the two of them in the kitchen, whoever went there would first make their footsteps heavier, cough twice, and start calling out before even reaching the kitchen, so that Bai Ling and Yue would know that someone was coming.

Otherwise, it would be awkward to see the two of them doing anything intimate.

After shouting that, Chen Cai arrived at the kitchen door. He opened the kitchen door but didn't come in. He just poked half his body in: "Brother, Father asked me to ask you if you want to cook any more dishes. Is just one meat dish enough? Do you also need some porridge?"

Bai Ling said, "Tell your father that after the meat is cooked, he should also stir-fry some winter melon. Just slice the winter melon. With these two dishes, plus the radish slices I made the day before yesterday, that should be enough for us. After the vegetables are cooked, I'll also cook some porridge. Tell your father not to worry about it."

He looked at the sky; it was a cloudy day. Although it wasn't dark yet, the light wasn't as bright as before. "Tell your father to stop weaving silk. It's bad for his eyes to weave in this weather."

There wasn't much to do in winter, so Feng and Cang took turns weaving silk at home. Before, when Bai Ling came to the kitchen to cook, their father would sit in front of the loom and weave silk again.

Chen nodded and said, "Brother, I understand. I'll persuade Father to get down from the loom right away. Oh, by the way, brother, is half a winter melon enough?"

Bai Ling: "We don't need that many, one piece of winter melon is enough."

*

Once the braised pork is cooked, transfer it to an earthenware pot, cover it, and place it on the lid of the steamer to keep it warm. Stir-fry the winter melon quickly, and after stir-frying it, also place it on the lid to keep it warm. When the porridge is cooked, the steamed buns can be taken out of the pot.

Take a steaming hot steamed bun, break it in half, put a few pieces of braised pork into the bun with chopsticks, press the bun down with both hands and squeeze it. The broth from the braised pork is squeezed out and immediately absorbed by the bun.

The steamed buns have a rich wheat aroma and are as soft as bread. Paired with tender and flavorful braised pork, every bite is an unparalleled delight.

Life is nothing more than eating and drinking. Bai Ling took a big bite of the steamed bun and swallowed it with the fatty but not greasy braised pork. Her whole body felt extremely satisfied.

Not only Bai Ling, but everyone else was also eating with great satisfaction. No one in the room spoke; they were all busy eating steamed buns.

Chen ate the fastest. Bai Ling had only eaten half of a steamed bun when Chen had already finished one and picked up a second one.

*

This winter, Bai Ling needed to make furniture. The carpentry group's house was already very crowded, so it was inconvenient for Bai Ling to go there. He cleaned up a side room in his house. There were some odds and ends in this room. He put all the odds and ends in the corner and welded a stove out of sheet metal. The stove pipe extended out of the window glass. He lit firewood in the stove and burned it for half a day. Finally, the temperature in the room rose.

Bai Ling had piled up a lot of wood behind his house. He had cut down the trees last spring, peeled off the bark, and piled them behind the wall. After so much time, the wood was almost dry and ready to be used to make furniture.