When the two returned to the main hall, the servants had already prepared food and wine. There were only two tables and seats in the hall, and the rest of the party were lined up in front of the corridor.
"You can go and dine by yourself, enjoy the wine and food, and don't disturb my uncle and nephew's gathering!"
Gao Zhongmi stood in front of the hall and waved his hands, then pulled Li Tai into the hall. The conservators outside the corridor dispersed into the side hall and sat down, and only a few maids who handed out dishes and meals followed them inside.
The two of them sat down at separate tables, looking at the somewhat empty hall, Gao Zhongmi sighed again: "In the past, when we were living and traveling, there were many followers. Now the only ones who can eat with each other are me and Apan!"
After hearing this, Li Tai thought for a moment and realized that Gao Zhongmi was really not bragging when he said this.
Li Tai himself had more than a dozen soldiers following him all the way, and he looked very impressive, but compared with Gao Zhongmi, he pales into insignificance.
When Gao Zhongmi went to Hulao in Northern Yuzhou to take office, he led nearly 2,000 troops. They were not the troops allocated by the Eastern Wei Dynasty, but the troops of the tribe who were completely subordinate to the Bohai Gao family!
Even this is still the size of the tribe that was able to be maintained even though the Bohai Gao clan was dispersed many times a few years after Gao Aocao died in the battle. The powerful families and private armed forces of this era can be seen clearly.
Therefore, after the Western Wei Dynasty experienced the disastrous defeat in the Battle of Mangshan, Yuwentai recruited Guan Longhaoyou and reorganized it into the army. The soldiers were quickly replenished and became the famous Guanzhong Prefecture soldiers in later generations.
Li Tai had roughly counted the Buqu family slaves dining outside the hall, including the more than 30 people he had brought back, and there were hundreds of them. However, compared with the thousands of Buqu family slaves that Gao Zhongmi had before, the number was naturally huge.
Shrunk.
"With the contents of this cup, I will pursue those who perished before the moon!"
Gao Zhongmi asked his maid to fill the wine glass, stood up and bowed deeply to the east, then poured the wine in the glass to the ground with a sad look on his face.
When Li Tai saw this, he followed suit and silently hoped that his father, Li Xiao, could escape safely. He had already taken over the body of his son, so he may not have deep feelings for his family, so guilt was inevitable.
"Okay, let's eat! The food of the Western Army is simple. I think you, Apan, have only been eating hastily these days."
After returning to the table and sitting down, Gao Zhongmi forced out a smile and pointed at the food on the table.
Li Tai also turned his attention back to the food table in front of him. There were already five or six kinds of dishes on the table, including meat and vegetables. Finally, it was no longer just a simple combination of buttermilk and rice. Just looking at it already made people feel hungry.
Moved.
Before coming to this world, Li Tai was an up owner of the ancient lifestyle genre. He racked his brains for material and copywriting every day. The diet of various periods in ancient times was also a major source of his video materials.
After all, food is the most important thing for the people. Compared with the relatively boring popular science of ancient history, there is no doubt that ancient food has more taste and texture, which is the guarantee of traffic.
In the long historical process, the existence of the Southern and Northern Dynasties was actually not high, and many people in later generations felt strange about this era.
But when it comes to food, in the Southern and Northern Dynasties, we have to say that the fundamental reason lies in a strange book that appeared in this era, which was "The Essentials of Qi Min" written by Jia Sixie, the most famous agriculturist in ancient times.
"Qimin Yaoshu" not only records rich agricultural and animal husbandry knowledge during the Southern and Northern Dynasties, but also records many dietary materials of this era.
Li Tai once produced a special series on the diet of the Southern and Northern Dynasties based on "Essential Art of Qi Min", which received a good response, so he has a certain understanding of the diet of the Southern and Northern Dynasties.
There is a small clay stove in the center of the dining table, with a charcoal fire in the stove. There is a small copper cauldron on top. The soup in the copper cauldron is boiling, and the soup is milky white. There are a lot of meat floating in it, and the aroma is fragrant.
Next to the small stove is a wooden box with a radius of more than a foot. In the wooden box is placed cooked venison with skin, and next to it are green onions, shredded ginger, pepper, salt, vinegar, black beans and other condiments.
The name of a dish that is very similar to hot pot is Qiang Boiled. As the name suggests, it is a Qiang people’s food custom that was introduced to China and became popular.
The base soup of Qiang cooking is made from pork and various condiments. The deer head is boiled in water and cut into pieces, then put on the table and rinsed directly.
This involves another little knowledge, that is, will the soup base made from pork be fishy and unpalatable?
In ancient times, pigs were one of the six domestic animals and one of the three Tailao animals. Their breeding and consumption history has a long history. Especially because of their habit of raising and fattening in houses, they are an important part of the small farmer economy.
An ancient name for pigs, fen (fen), specifically refers to castrated boars, so you don’t have to worry about the ancients not knowing how to castrate pigs and causing the pork to become fishy and unpalatable. After all, if you don’t eat it yourself, your ancestors will eat it too.
During this period, Li Tai felt that there was not enough food and water, so he was not polite when he saw such delicacies. He picked up the bamboo chopsticks and started eating. He ate half a box of venison before stopping. It was not because he was full, but because he was full. Too boring.
It is recorded in "Qi Min Yao Shu" that the seasonings for Qiang boiling include half-closed orange peels, which are used to relieve greasiness and seasoning. Perhaps orange peels are too rare in Guanzhong, so the chef did not add them when cooking, so the soup was too watery. It's greasy.
But the venison is tender and delicious. Even if it is not boiled in soup and only seasoned with salt and vinegar, it is already considered a delicacy.
Gao Zhongmi was not like Li Tai who didn't look like he was eating. He just drank from the cup and watched Li Tai eating with a smile.
Next to the small Qiang cooking stove, there is a box of Qiang. Qiang is a kind of eating method in which vegetables are chopped, mixed and stirred. It is also a relatively common way of eating in the Southern and Northern Dynasties. It is popular up and down, and people are rich and frugal.
"Qi Min Yao Shu" records a recipe of eight kinds of ingredients, including ginger, garlic, oranges, white plums, cooked chestnut kernels, japonica rice, salt and anhydrous. The anhydrous is vinegar.
Li Tai tasted the box of glutinous rice on the table carefully. It also had no orange peel, but was replaced with mallow leaves and mixed with honey. It was equally sweet and delicious.
There are also chicken and duck breasts, sour mint sauce, etc. Li Tai also tasted them in turn. In terms of taste alone, it is naturally not as strong and distinct as the food of later generations. After all, the seasonings have a gap between the times. But the antique flavor The atmosphere and feeling brought about by the cooking method cannot be compared with the food of later generations.
Li Tai was in his mid-teens and exercised a lot. He tried every dish and unknowingly wiped out most of the food on the table.
Gao Zhongmi saw that Li Tai still had unsatisfied feelings, so he smiled and asked his maid to send the dishes without chopsticks on his table to Li Tai's dining table, and said with a smile: "Apan, don't just worry about filling your stomach, drink with me." cup!"
After hearing this, Li Tai put down his chopsticks, raised the filled wine glass and said with a smile: "Young man has no restraint on his appetite, which makes my uncle laugh. From then on, my uncle and nephew live in this hometown and make progress in their achievements. Ah Pan drinks first as a token of respect." !”
When the wine entered his mouth, he paused for a moment. He felt that the wine in his mouth was not spicy enough and was sour. It was a torture to his taste buds and was almost difficult to swallow.
When Gao Zhongmi saw this, he slapped the table and laughed: "Don't vomit, don't vomit, drink it! Alas, when I lived in the countryside, half an area of seedlings in my house was used as a wine field, and the home-brewed wine was not as delicious as any other wine shop in Ye.
When I came to Kansai, I had to rely on Daxingtai to give me even this kind of physalis, so I couldn’t drink it as much as I wanted..."
Li Tai was not addicted to alcohol, so he barely swallowed the glass of sour wine and refused to let his maid refill it. When he heard Gao Zhongmi's emotion, he was reminded of it for a while.
The Eastern Wei occupies the fertile land of Hebei, and its productivity cannot be compared with that of the Western Wei who ruled the exhausted Guanzhong. A few years ago, there was a great famine in the Western Wei, forcing Yu Wentai to lead his army out of Tongguan to steal grain from Hengnong. Of course, there was no abundant grain.
Used to make wine.
Just looking at how much Yu Wentai has to go through to get even this kind of physalis, we can see the lack of materials in Guanzhong. Even if there are powerful people on the ground with huge family fortunes, I am afraid they will not be as generous as the Gao family in Bohai, who took a hundred acres of fertile land.
Growing sorghum to make wine.
Gao Zhongmi smiled, his eyes became moist again, and his thoughts were probably once again obsessed with the gap in fortunes brought about by switching from the Eastern Wei Dynasty to the Western Wei Dynasty.
Li Taiyin knew that the Western Wei and Northern Zhou Dynasties had a bright future, and since Xinjin had traveled through time, he didn't feel any regrets about the disparity in fortunes. Seeing Gao Zhongmi drinking alone, he continued to focus on the food on the table.
A dish moved to Gao Zhongmi's table caught Li Tai's attention. This dish was yellow and white in color and fragrant. It was a plate of scrambled eggs with scallions and whites.
Yes, stir-fried vegetables were already available in the Northern and Southern Dynasties, and it is not the common belief of later generations that it was not until the Song Dynasty that iron pots were introduced, so that the ancestors could have a bite of stir-fried vegetables.
Stir-frying was not a cooking method at first, but a processing method of crude drugs. There have been records of stir-frying medicinal materials since the Han Dynasty. Vegetable oil also has a long history and is not only used for food, but also for lighting, lubrication, lacquerware and even as a
A reserve of military supplies.
Of course, the one used to scramble eggs is not an iron pot, but a copper pan. However, the thermal conductivity of copper is much higher than that of iron, and copper utensils are not very popular. There are not many ingredients that can be fried and processed with copper pans, so
Before the popularity of iron pots, stir-frying was not a mainstream method of cooking.
The lives of ancient dignitaries and ordinary people were two completely different worlds. Unlike later generations, which were based on rich material foundations, there was no essential difference in the food experiences of the rich and the poor.
After Li Tai finished the plate of scrambled eggs, the maids served tonight's staple food, steamed buns, which are steamed steamed buns. Soaked in the remaining vegetable juice and soup, Li Tai ate two more fist-sized buns.
I finally finished eating the steamed buns, my first full meal after coming into this world.
"He Liuhun, you are ungrateful and bad at raising your children! I will kill you, I..."
Gao Zhongmi drank to himself, and soon became drunk. He slapped the table and cried and cursed a few times, and then shouted: "Bring me some wine, bring me some wine..."
"Wine, the wine is gone..."
The maid said in a trembling voice with a cry. Upon seeing this, Li Tai stepped forward and waved his hand to dismiss the maid, and helped Gao Zhongmi up who had fallen on the table.