Summer is here, and the cold drinks are basically ice cream, milk tea, ice cream and the like. If someone asks me, what is my memory of summer? I will definitely answer that it is agar paste. That smooth and refreshing summer drink always brings back many infinite memories related to childhood, the past, and hometown. Nowadays, the raw materials for making agarwood paste have risen too fast, costing 500 yuan per kilogram. When I was a child, these things were all available. This year, I asked my old neighbor to buy some. This bag costs 100 yuan, so I can only make it. 10 times, I can’t afford the expensive ones, and it’s hard to find street stalls. They all use white jelly and stone lotus paste as fakes. The agar cake and stone lotus paste are completely different because the raw materials are the same. Woolen cloth!
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In the summer when we were young, we gathered around a porcelain basin and watched our grandmother conjuring a transparent liquid out of the water gauze. Liquid, that liquid flowed into the basin and gradually solidified into "jelly". Grandma used a copper spoon to gently open the jelly, scooped pieces into a small bowl, and then added mint, sugar and honey to the small bowl. Thus, a bowl of crystal clear agarwood paste with a mint flavor that hits your forehead was born. I gently put a mouthful into my mouth with a small spoon. It was cool, sweet, and smooth. This feeling penetrated into my body from every taste bud and penetrated every cell in my body. The summer heat all over my body disappeared immediately. I asked my grandma at that time: What is such delicious agar paste made of? She said to me: It is made of jelly grass from the sea. Of course, jelly grass is just what grandma used to coax us kids. Chinese cabbage paste is also called rock wool jelly in our hometown. ? Rock hair ? is an alias for seaweed and Gelidium. It is an intertidal algae that grows on underwater reefs. The growth environment is extremely harsh and must be in the open sea area with little influence from fresh water. Rock wool is now a rare product, with very little production and may have disappeared offshore. This kind of wild rock hair soaked in the local method is difficult to find on the market. In the past, the picking of "rock hair" had to pay attention to the rise and fall of the tide. Only when the tide was low could it be slowly scraped off the rocks with an iron spoon. In the past, when people on the beach were fishing for small seawater on the rocks, mining rock wool was just a side job, while fishing for rocks was their main business. There are many sea vegetables and algae in the sea that have similar shapes. It is extremely difficult to identify "rock hair" among them. Only experienced seamen can pick them. At that time, it was not easy for a family to save one or two kilograms of sun-dried "rock hair". The post-processing of "rock wool" is also quite cumbersome. After picking, "rock wool" needs to be dried and soaked for six times to form that light yellow color.
Soak in clean water and knead repeatedly. The agarwood is something from the sea, and occasionally there will be debris like small shell crumbs mixed in. However, it is difficult to tell whether it is a plant or an animal.
Put it into the rice cooker, add water, and cook porridge as usual. As for the proportions, they are more casual. The length of boiling and the ratio of water are the main factors that affect the juice. If there is too much water, you can cook it more.
When it’s cooked, it doesn’t look like it’s going to solidify, right?! Every time I see this, I feel a little uneasy?
Use a piece of large gauze and fold it repeatedly as a filter device, the agarwood remains on the gauze.
For me, my childhood was about putting the filtered juice into glass bowls and waiting for it to cool and solidify.
1-2 hours passed, and it solidified into a translucent solid, which was so beautiful! But it’s best not to eat it in a hurry. Cover it with a lid, seal it in a plastic bag, and put it in the refrigerator. It will have a frostier, crisper, and more chewy texture!
Take it out from the refrigerator. At this time, the agarwood is frozen more solidly. Take a few spoons out and prepare to eat it with auxiliary ingredients. Use a spoon to break the agar jelly into pieces one by one, larger or smaller, as you like. Add a spoonful of honey, a little mint juice, and a little ice water to create the best summer memories of Taizhou Yin's childhood.
The smell of cabbage paste is my original memory from childhood summers. Today, as the era of manual food production goes away, industrial products are constantly impacting our taste buds. Many of the previous flavors are no longer available, and traditional flavors are getting further and further away from us.
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