Make a Fortune and Become Well-off [90] - Chapter 22

Her father eventually responded, “When the house is built, there will definitely be a place for you.”

But Jiang Yueqin insisted, “I don’t care; I want the room on the right.”

With two additional rooms to be built upstairs, she wanted the one on the right, reserving the left for her brother’s future wife.

Her parents relented, waving their hands, “Okay, okay, the room on the right is yours.”

In their eyes, their daughter worked outside and only returned during Chinese New Year. At nineteen, she would likely marry within two years, making a dedicated room seem unnecessary.

Jiang Ning brought the cleaned river clams home and placed them in a wooden basin for safekeeping.

The family only had one bathtub, so Mother Jiang and the others had to resort to using the basin for their nightly washes. Without a basin, Mother Jiang would likely discard the river clams she had worked so hard to retrieve.

To save time, Jiang Ning added a spoonful of oil and a large spoonful of coarse salt to the wooden basin while the river clams and snails were still expelling mud. Then, she attended to the small miscellaneous fish that were on the verge of dying.

Cleaning small fish was a laborious task, especially due to the need to meticulously remove their internal organs one by one. Given their small size and abundance, it was a time-consuming process. Jiang Ning decided to wash the rice first and set it aside in a large pot. Once the rice was ready, she proceeded to clean the small fish to be cooked for the noon meal. She marinated them with cooking wine, onions, ginger, and garlic, before moving on to the remaining batch of small fish.

Once all the fish were cleaned, Jiang Ning pickled half of them for half an hour, readying them to be put into the pot for braising. To prevent sticking, she sprinkled some salt grains along the edge of the pot before adding the fish.

Since there was no fine salt available, only coarse salt sold in bulk, Jiang Ning improvised. She fried both sides of the small fish until they turned golden brown. Then, she added ginger, garlic, dried chili pepper, and stir-fried until fragrant. Next, she added soybean paste and continued to stir-fry until fragrant, before pouring in boiling water to cook. Finally, she added green and red chili peppers and garlic leaves for extra flavor.

Lacking fermented chili bean paste, Jiang Ning made do with the soybean paste provided by her aunt.

Mother Jiang’s culinary skills were lacking, so each year, when her eldest son wanted to make some sauce, Mother Jiang sought help from Jiang Ning’s aunt. In the past, she had used her aunt’s sauce to cook crayfish.

After enjoying some braised small fish, cold lotus root strips, and stir-fried garlic eggplant, Jiang Ning changed the water for the river clams, added oil and salt, and continued to let them expel mud. Once finished, she went to deliver meals to Grandpa Jiang, Father Jiang, and Mother Jiang.

Passing by the rice field, she first delivered food to Grandpa Jiang. Upon reaching the river, she found Father Jiang and Mother Jiang, who had been fishing all morning, sitting on the shore with a small basin of fish. They washed their hands in the ditch and began eating.

Although they lived near the river, they could only catch fish and shrimp on the river every year when water was pumped for rice seedlings. Access to the main river was limited, so whenever the river was exposed during water pumping, the entire village gathered to catch fish, providing a rare opportunity to enhance their food supply.

The women at home also took advantage of this opportunity to send fish to their parents’ families, just like Mother Jiang intended to do.

Mother Jiang wanted to catch more fish to send to her siblings. Her parents lived in the mountains, where acquiring fish required bringing them from elsewhere or catching one or two from mountain streams. Mother Jiang’s second eldest brother was three years older than her.

Jiang Ning often questioned herself about this dynamic. While it was natural for a child to admire their mother, Mother Jiang was very kind to her brothers and her own siblings, but not to Jiang Ning. She wondered if it was because she wasn’t good enough, leading her to become more obedient, suppressing her own nature to please Mother Jiang.

At the time, Jiang Ning lacked a clear understanding of herself, Mother Jiang, or the complexities of human nature.

Seeing Jiang Ning standing on the bank and watching, Mother Jiang didn’t want to let a potential helper go, so she asked, “Have you eaten yet?”

“I have already eaten,” Jiang Ning replied.

Mother Jiang wanted Jiang Ning to go fishing, but without a watch, she didn’t know the time. Everyone in the village came to fish, and since some people brought food later than Jiang Ning, Mother Jiang had no reason to scold her. Instead, she remarked, “You’re so lazy. I can fill a basin with fish in one morning, but you’ve done nothing but useless things.”

Unwilling to hear her mother’s nagging, Jiang Ning turned and left. Mother Jiang assumed she was hurrying back for dinner, knowing Jiang Ning’s cooking skills were exceptional, and allowed her to leave quickly to prepare the meal.

Upon her return, Jiang Ning didn’t rush to deal with the clams but first prepared the ingredients for making snail chili sauce and clam chili sauce.

Given the name “chili sauce”, chili was essential alongside the main ingredients of snail meat and clam meat. Locals loved spicy food, cultivating various hot peppers and millet peppers. Even vegetable peppers used for tiger green peppers were fiery. The Jiang family shared this fondness for spice, with their yard and vegetable field filled with chili peppers grown by Grandpa Jiang and Father Jiang. Strings of dried red chili peppers adorned the door.

Jiang Ning picked a bunch of chili peppers, cut and mashed them, along with millet peppers and Chaotian peppers. She also minced ginger and garlic, gathered white sesame seeds, peanuts, various spices, and even some celery, as some spices were unavailable.

Yaoqin, a local celery variety, grew abundantly in ditches, but its strong fragrance, akin to Chinese medicine, deterred consumption.

After preparing the ingredients, the river clams and snails had been expelling mud for nearly four hours. While ideally, they would need two more days to cleanse thoroughly, Jiang Ning lacked that luxury of time. She had to finish everything before Mother Jiang returned in the evening.