Mountain God’s Forest Farm

Chapter 48: Smoking Cured Meat

January 19th, the first day of the twelfth lunar month.

Changchuan County officially entered the coldest month of the year.

The people in the county seemed to have received some kind of signal.

After entering the twelfth lunar month, more and more households began smoking cured meat and sausages.

Even while Ying Kongtu sat on the recliner in his courtyard, he could smell all kinds of cypress fragrance drifting up from the foot of the mountain.

“They’re smoking cured meat again.” Ying Kongtu closed his eyes. “It smells so good. This family used decent wine.”

Wen Zhongshan sat nearby. “Should we smoke some too?”

“Forget it. We can’t buy suitable meat.”

That was what Ying Kongtu said, but that morning, when they went up the mountain to check on the isatis, they stood on the slope and looked down. Almost every household had carried out cured meat and sausages to dry.

Those rods of cured meat and sausages looked like fruit-laden trees in autumn, slowly ripening under the sunlight.

These cured meats and sausages had first been salted, then smoked, and only now taken out to dry. Under the sunlight, they slowly shrank and dripped strings of amber-like cured fat.

After this step, the texture of the meat would become firmer, the flavor would become more pronounced, and it would also carry the alluring fragrance born from fermentation.

In spring, it could be stir-fried with bracken. In summer, with bamboo shoots. In autumn, with Chinese onions. That flavor would be unbearably fragrant.

Ying Kongtu looked at them several more times before suddenly saying, “Let’s go pick tangerines.”

Wen Zhongshan asked, “There are still tangerines now?”

“There are. They’re wild tangerines from the mountains.” Ying Kongtu said, “When I went to check last time, there were still plenty.”

They were called wild tangerines from the mountains, but in truth, they were tangerines borne by trees that the mountain people of the past had left deep in the mountains.

These tangerines had gone unmanaged for years. When eaten in autumn, they tasted a little sour, sour enough to make one’s teeth ache. But now, after a long period of sugar accumulation, the flavor was just right.

Ying Kongtu led Wen Zhongshan over several mountains.

From far away, they could already see a small patch of tangerine trees on the slope. Among the deep green leaves, golden tangerines were still hanging.

When they went over and picked some to taste, the tangerines were indeed purely sweet without sourness. They were plump, juicy, and full of tangerine fragrance. In the dry weather, one bite made the whole person feel refreshed.

Wen Zhongshan looked at the tangerine in his hand. “Tangerines this good, and no one comes to pick them?”

“This is deep in the mountains. Cars can’t get in at all. Besides, tangerines aren’t expensive. The purchasing price is only a few mao per jin, so no one is willing to bother.”

“It seems birds don’t really come to eat them either. Did you use divine power to keep the birds and beasts away?”

“No. They simply don’t like the smell of tangerine peel.” Ying Kongtu smiled. “Tangerine peel can also be used to repel certain wild animals.”

Wild birds and beasts did not like the mountain tangerines, but Ying Kongtu liked them very much.

He found the best tangerines on the trees and picked them together with Wen Zhongshan, placing them into their back baskets.

By the time they left the mountain, both baskets were filled with plump golden tangerines. They looked extremely tempting.

When they ate them again after returning home, the tangerines were cool and sweet. Even Tiaozhu, who did not much like tangerines, could eat two segments.

As for Dart, as a purebred cat, it was the only furry creature in the household that could not eat tangerines. Ying Kongtu opened a can for it as compensation.

That day, Ying Kongtu was taking an afternoon nap and was still lazing in bed.

He heard Wen Zhongshan’s phone ringing outside.

Wen Zhongshan quickly answered the call and replied in a low voice. Through the door, Ying Kongtu could not hear clearly what he was saying. He only caught a few keywords related to “meat.”

The room had white gauze curtains drawn. Soft light filtered in from outside, but instead of waking Ying Kongtu, it only made him sleepier.

After Wen Zhongshan hung up and stopped talking, Ying Kongtu yawned and called outside, “Wen Zhongshan?”

Wen Zhongshan walked over, lightly knocked on the bedroom door, then turned the handle and opened it. “What is it?”

Ying Kongtu lay on the pillow, looking sideways at him with a smile. “I heard you mention pigs. What pig? Are we buying a pig?”

“Someone in Shanchai Village, Shuangqing Town, is slaughtering a pig. I heard they raise native pigs over there, so I asked them to let me know when they killed one.”

“When are they killing it?”

“Tomorrow morning. Do you want to go see?”

“Let’s go.” Ying Kongtu yawned again, looked at Wen Zhongshan, and said with smiling eyes, “It’s so cold. Why don’t you lie down too and take a nap?”

“If I sleep again, I’m afraid I won’t be able to sleep tonight.” Wen Zhongshan walked over. “Getting up?”

Ying Kongtu reached a hand out from under the blanket. “Pull me.”

The next day, after the two ate breakfast, they rode a motorcycle to the small mountain village in the township below to watch the pig slaughter.

The pig owner had gotten up early and had already prepared everything needed for the slaughter. The butcher had also arrived.

A crowd of people was helping at the pig owner’s house and watching the excitement. At the moment, they were driving the pig forward, grabbing its ears, and bringing it to the scale to weigh it.

“Good heavens, three hundred and six jin. It isn’t easy to raise a black pig to three hundred jin.”

“It’s been fed for two years.”

“No wonder! Is the water boiled? Let’s start.”

Ying Kongtu and Wen Zhongshan squeezed into the crowd, watching this scene of harvest.

The pig owner only thought they were people who had come to watch the excitement and did not mind.

The courtyard was lively. As two especially tall young men, Ying Kongtu and Wen Zhongshan were even pulled in to help.

With them there, the slaughtering process really did go unusually smoothly.

In one corner of the courtyard, a large wok sat on a firewood stove, steam rising from the boiling water inside. That was the water used to process the pig.

Everyone worked together: slaughtering the pig, scraping off the hair, singeing the skin, scalding the trotters, and cleaning the pig thoroughly.

The pig was too big, so the owner even removed the wooden door panels from the house to carry it.

The meat from two large door panels was laid out in the courtyard, filling people with satisfaction just by looking at it.

This family still lived in an old house with blue bricks and black tiles, and the door panels were traditional wooden panels.

If it were not for the difference in the surrounding people’s clothes, Ying Kongtu, standing among the crowd, would really have thought he had returned to the past.

However, there had been no Wen Zhongshan in the past, while this year, Wen Zhongshan was by his side.

The pig was split into two halves. The lean meat was bright red and glossy, and the fat was faintly yellow and translucent. It looked distinctly different from ordinary pork.

Ying Kongtu found the pig owner, exchanged a few words, and asked, “Are you selling your pork?”

“I am, but…” The pig owner hesitated. “How much do you want?”

“Half of it.” Ying Kongtu smiled. “After you divide it later, just weigh it for me according to the market price for native pork.”

“The pig head can’t be given to you. Everything else is fine.” The pig owner looked at Ying Kongtu. “Half a pig is a lot. Can you really take that much?”

“I can. There are many members in my family.”

The pig owner happily agreed. “Then I’ll weigh it for you later.”

After the pig was slaughtered, the owner invited everyone to stay for the pig-killing feast.

Roasted pork liver, stewed ribs and pig’s blood, stir-fried tenderloin.

The cook was a village banquet chef, cooking right on the firewood stove that had been used to boil water earlier.

Fresh meat, freshly cut side ingredients, and fierce stir-frying over a firewood stove—the courtyard soon filled with rich fragrance.

As soon as each dish was done, everyone took disposable bowls and chopsticks and ate one dish at a time. Everything was hot and steaming, and both the taste and atmosphere were wonderful.

Ying Kongtu and Wen Zhongshan ate among the crowd and still had time to answer the villagers’ enthusiastic questions.

After eating, the owner weighed the meat for them, laid snakeskin sacks on the back seat of the motorcycle, then tied the meat on top so they could carry it back.

Because they had bought so much meat, the owner even gave them half a set of pork liver and half a set of pig intestines.

They returned fully loaded and were welcomed home with great enthusiasm by the household’s furry creatures.

That night, after they ate a meal of meat, Ying Kongtu cleaned up the kitchen and began stir-frying spices.

Coarse salt, star anise, cinnamon bark, bay leaves, Sichuan peppercorns… Ying Kongtu poured them into the large iron wok, which was free of oil and water, and dry-fried them until the salt grains turned yellow and the fragrance emerged.

Ying Kongtu brought over a large iron basin for the spices. Together with Wen Zhongshan, he divided the meat into strips, rubbed them with the spiced salt, then placed them into a large pottery jar to cure.

To make the cured meat even more fragrant, Ying Kongtu went all out and poured in a small bowl of the century-old wine they had dug out from the mountain to cure the meat.

After the last pork hind leg was rubbed and placed into the large pottery jar, Ying Kongtu covered it with a wooden lid. Then he and Wen Zhongshan carried over a large stone and pressed it on top.

“All right. After they cure for a few days, we can smoke them.” Ying Kongtu clapped his hands and smiled at Wen Zhongshan. “How did you know I wanted to make cured meat?”

“You had already picked the tangerines.”

Tangerine peel was the key ingredient for smoking cured meat, and it had to be freshly peeled.

Ying Kongtu had specially crossed mountains and ridges to pick tangerines. His meaning was self-evident.

Ying Kongtu smiled a little sheepishly, walked over, and bumped Wen Zhongshan’s shoulder with his own. “The one who understands me is Wen Zhongshan.”

After they finished packing the cured meat, the whole family of furry creatures gathered around.

The meat smelled fragrant, and the spices smelled fragrant too.

Dart stood on its hind legs on the ground, its front paws clutching the rim of the large pottery jar, its nose twitching as it sniffed hard.

“Dart!” Ying Kongtu called. “Stop sniffing.”

Dart put its front paws down and obediently crouched on the ground. It turned its round head to look at Ying Kongtu, opened its mouth, and gave a soft, sweet little meow. “Meow.”

Ying Kongtu said, “You can’t eat it. Stop being curious.”

Dart: “Meow.”

Ying Kongtu instructed the furry creatures, “All of you supervise each other.”

Tiaozhu and Xian Niao looked at Dart at the same time.

Only Jingwei did not understand what was going on. It grinned, stuck out its tongue, and gave Ying Kongtu an obedient smile.

The weather was very cold now. Even when it was warm outdoors, it was only two or three degrees Celsius.

Ying Kongtu and Wen Zhongshan carried the large pottery jar to a shaded spot in the courtyard and left it there, allowing the meat to cure and ferment naturally.

During the curing process, Ying Kongtu would check and turn the meat every day.

After curing for six days straight, Ying Kongtu took the meat out of the jar, threaded hemp rope through it, rinsed it briefly with well water to wash away the salt and spices on the surface, then hung it up in the courtyard to drip-dry.

“We can smoke it now.” Ying Kongtu smelled the cured meat, which carried a faint salty fragrance, and was extremely satisfied. “Let them hang here for a while. Once the surface moisture dries, we can build a fire and smoke them in the evening.”

“Do we need to go up the mountain and cut arborvitae?”

“No.” Ying Kongtu smiled mysteriously. “We’ll go up the mountain and cut fragrant cypress. Meat smoked with fragrant cypress is even more fragrant.”

“Fragrant cypress? Is that also a kind of cypress tree?”

“Yes, but it grows in higher, colder places. We have to climb the mountain to cut it.” Ying Kongtu went under the eaves to get the firewood knife and back basket. “I already spotted some especially suitable fragrant cypress on the mountain for smoking cured meat. They’re old, fragrant, and rich in oil. The cured meat smoked with them will definitely be fragrant without being harsh, delicate and mellow.”

Ying Kongtu said a long string of words in one breath. When he turned around, he met Wen Zhongshan’s smile.

“So you had already even chosen the smoking material.”

Ying Kongtu rubbed his nose. “Wasn’t it because I never found good meat? If we hadn’t found suitable meat this year, we would have kept it and smoked next year.”

Since they had already bought good meat this year, then they would smoke it this year.

Fragrant cypress grew new branches every year. If they wanted to smoke meat next year, they could cut branches again next year.

Author’s Note:

After discovering that Dart would imitate it, the first thing Tiaozhu taught it was how to poop outside.

Tiaozhu taught it for seven days, and Dart was beaten for seven days.

Finally, Dart completed its training.

This orange cat learned how to poop outside and bury it.

The happiest person about this was Wen Zhongshan.

The big fat orange cat ate like crazy and pooped like crazy. Its litter had to be scooped eight times a day. Wen Zhongshan scooped so much that he did not even want to go home.

Dart: Meow-ao! Shocked.JPG

You weren’t going home anyway, meow-ao!