Chapter 28 water chestnut

In the past, there was Daye Lake behind the kitchen of my grandmother’s house. When the water was high, you could go out to fish, or catch fish, and the fishing boats passed by, with the sound of oars and sails, and the shimmering scales. The creaking oars can travel far. In the lake there are water chestnuts and lotus roots.The places where lotus roots grow are mostly lake bays, where lotus roots bloom white and red flowers, and where red flowers bloom, the lake mud mostly contains sulfur and iron.Swimming is absolutely prohibited in places with long water chestnuts. The water chestnut vines are easy to entangle people's hands and feet, and the water chestnuts can also prick people.Water chestnut vine has green leaves, purplish red stems and bright yellow flowers. In hot weather, there are red dragonflies flying on the small yellow flowers, and some fish will use their beaks to move the water chestnut leaves floating on the water.In autumn, water chestnuts are ripe. The fisherman who harvests water chestnuts uses a water chestnut bucket like a big foot basin to pick water chestnuts. I am always worried that the water chestnut bucket will sink, but I have never seen it turn over Shen.Sit on the water chestnut bucket, pull up the water chestnut vines and pick up the water chestnuts one by one.

There are two kinds of water chestnut, one is called home water chestnut, it has only two corners, it is easy to break apart when cooked, it is powdery and high in starch; the other is called wild water chestnut, multi-cornered, easy to prick, we put it in our trouser pockets I dare not run away, and it is not easy to peel. Most of the old people who sell water chestnut will put a small wooden box and a strangely old kitchen knife in front of the stall, cut off the horns, peel off the shell, and sell water chestnut rice exclusively.Wild water chestnut is crisp and sweet, and the tender ones are sweeter.

I specialize in eating water chestnut, of course I like home water chestnut, but for cooking, I like wild water chestnut. Roast pork with wild water chestnut is really better than chestnut.Some people cook chicken with water chestnut rice, but I think the taste is so-so. I bought pork belly, cut it into small cubes, put the water chestnut rice in red, and stewed the taste into the water chestnut rice. The tip of the water chestnut rice is still crisp and tender. The inside is powdery, and there is a sweet smell inside, and the outside has gravy, which tastes like the fragrance of lake water.

Water chestnut rice can also be stewed in soup. If you stew ribs soup, the soup is sweet and not greasy. Aquatic plants have such a characteristic that they are non-greasy, even if they are used for frying, Oil also does not penetrate.However, terrestrial fruits such as peanuts are completely different. When peanuts are fried in oil, the more oil they fry, it is not like the oil-absorbing fruit, which absorbs the oil completely.How much oil is used to fry the water chestnut rice, it neither emits oil nor absorbs oil, but it is very shiny. The water chestnut rice stewed with pork belly will shine brightly, which is very beautiful.

The dried water chestnut rice is completely powdery, so it has to be soaked in hot water to make meat, but the dried water chestnut rice does not have the sweetness of water, you can chew the fragrance of the sun, and put it for a long time , there will still be some stale air of the years, so not everything can be put away.In addition, water chestnut vines can also be used for cooking. I remember eating them when I was young, but I didn’t cook them myself. At that time, the adults said that this kind of vegetables would scrape the oil from the intestines, so I didn’t eat a lot of them. Now that I think about it, It's a good diet food, but I can't eat it anymore.There are fewer and fewer water chestnuts now. Although you can still eat them every year, you will never miss the opportunity to taste them. However, water chestnut vines are not sold anymore. The vegetable soup cooked with that thing turns black. In fact, it is purple, so the water chestnut It's delicious, and the people who pick water chestnuts also have black hands.