Chapter 304.1 – Grilled Rushan?

Written by Gumi: … Christmas treat for everyone. Haha.

 

The moment milk was exposed to the sour water, it began to curdle.

“Watch carefully when I do this. You will be doing this from now on,” said Shiyu as she took out a pair of chopsticks and began to stir the mixture in the pot.

At this, the three men kept their eyes on the pot, wondering what would happen next.

Shiyu kept stirring. [3] The curdling milk that had begun to form clumps broke into smaller pieces. Frowning, Shiyu stirred harder. The milk solids eventually split further apart, becoming as small as rice grains floating in a yellow liquid…

The three men watched, unsure what this little girl was trying to do.

 

[5] “So, it turns out you want to make yenx, I never made them before but my great-grandmother used to make them. So it turns out you have to press out the water from the curds…”

Shiyu watched, her face hot with embarrassment as the cooks poured the liquids into fine-weaved baskets to collect the curds and separate the whey.

Once the curds were poured out onto the table, Shiyu seized the chance to grab the crumbly looking curds and began to stretch them, “See, these as flexible as taffy and you can pull-”

The curds broke apart, a bit of it fell sadly onto the table.

Somehow, the three cooks managed to maintain their poker face when Shiyu accidentally clenched her fist and curds squirted through her fingers. This girl is so scary, ah…

 

[6] “Would you look at that, it was so crumbly just now because there was just too much water in them. It’s, uh, important to squeeze out the water first.”

“Yes, yes, what an odd ingredient. Look, it’s almost like dough once you kneaded it,” the three cooks pretended not to see the pissed off owner as they worked together to get something that was ‘like taffy’, only to be presented with another challenge.

The owner appeared with two bamboo poles tied together about half a palm width apart and as tall as herself. “Stretch the dough out here.”

“… um, stretch the, uh, yenx here?”

“It’s called Rushan!” she snapped sharply. “It will be Rushan as long as you make it properly!”

“…okay…” was it too late to resign? But the pay is really good. They just need to put up with one crazy owner.

They did their best to stretch out the, uh, Rushan? They really did, but though it was quite stretchy, there was only so much dough they could handle. The… Rushan (?), had to be kneaded carefully until most of the water has been squeezed out but their hands were only so big. Working with large amounts just… doesn’t work.

Finally, one of the cooks hit upon the brilliant idea to just wrap small amounts of Rushan in increments. First, a couple of feet here, followed by a couple of feet down there and a bit more later and tada! It looked like one long Rushan had been wrapped around the poles.

When it was done, they cautiously presented the Rushan wrapped poles to owner who snatched it away muttering that she was going to set it to dry…

The cooks looked at each other, then at the three barrels of milk and more poles.

Well, they were paid to obey the master, so…

 

About half a day of making this mysterious thing later, there was a cry:

[8] “My Rushan cracked!!”

One of them looked up, but he was pulled down by his friends.

“Shhh, pretend we didn’t hear anything!”

“…okay…”

 

Three days later.

 

“You’ve been making nothing but these things for two days?!” a good looking young man looked down at them disdainfully.

Tiredly, the three cooks looked at the young man resentfully. Your motherf*cker of an owner is the one who made us do this.

“You’ll know what it is later,” Shiyu smiled mysteriously as she took a perfectly dried, 1.5 feet long Rushan.

She had howled at them three days ago over the cracked Rushan [8] incident. That was when the youngest of them challenged her to make a single Rushan long enough to wrap around the man height poles.

Long story short, it didn’t manage to happen.

Anyway, it was finally concluded that the sun must have been too strong earlier and the Rushan cracked from excessive heat (never mind that it was in the middle of the bloody winter).

The Rushan was later moved under some tree branches and left there for two days to dry.

“So? What is it?” asked the young man.

Shiyu heated some oil,  waited until the oil is fragrant before placing some of the Rushan in.

As soon as the white Rushan [10] touched the oil, it immediately made a sizzling sound. Soon, it puffed up and turned crisped and golden brown.

Once it was done frying, Shiyu removed the Rushan from the oil, drained the oil and placed it on a porcelain dish.

“You can add sugar or salt to it. Adding honey makes it even better. Go on, try some. This is fried Rushan. If you don’t want to touch oil, you can also grill it.”

After saying this, she took the pot off the fire and revealed the burning embers beneath.

She spread the Rushan apart with two pairs of chopsticks, dabbed a bit of honey on top and grilled it over the fire.

The Rushan began to [11] soften from the heat and the middle sagged into the fire. The bottom would have burned if Shiyu hadn’t moved fast enough.

Shiyu, “… why don’t you try the fried one first?”

Liu Eleven shrugged and grabbed a piece of crispy fried Rushan. It crunched satisfyingly under his teeth and-

“Pei! Pei! Bleh, oof! Pei! Sour! What is this sour thing!!!??”

 

[Gumhou: And that, my dear readers, is what would have really happened if Shiyu made Rushan according to her cursed method]

 

We now have Glossaries for Character, Cultivation Terms, Clan Names, Restaurants & Places

The thing Shiyu was trying to make:

Documentary of the real Rushan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBzBCaJJVJY

 

By Amanda Tastes, this lady actually studied the entire process and showed her failures too

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nc4SozX7WpE

 

Rushan is also called yenx, seinp or nvseiz

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rushan_cheese

 

More trustworthy information on Rushan

http://www.wonderlust.me/2011/06/crispy-rushan-in-dali-yunnan/