Li Shimin was very interested in studying under the martial arts master.
He stood aside and watched as Wu Huaiyu specially picked a pot of small potatoes. After cleaning them, there was no need to peel them. He boiled water in the pot and added an appropriate amount of salt, then put the small potatoes in whole and boiled them.
"This salt is very good. Did you bring it back from Zhang County?" Li Shimin asked.
"Your Majesty, this is indeed the salt produced after the restoration of Yanjing Village in Zhang County."
"Baojing Jiyu, it turns out that these are the fire salt bricks of Baoyu Salt Factory. I heard that Chang'an is quite famous now," the emperor said with a smile, but Wu Huaiyu heard the meaning of the emperor's words. He Wu Huaiyu did it in Zhangxian County
The emperor already had a clear grasp of that little bit of private property.
"Your Majesty, this fire salt brick is still inferior to the green salt from Yanzhou Wubai Salt Pond."
Boil the small potatoes in the pot until they can be easily pierced with a toothpick, then take them out and drain them. During this time, chop the fresh green onions into chopped green onions.
Pour sesame oil into the pot, add the small potatoes, and fry slowly over low heat until the surface is golden brown and wrinkled. Sprinkle in fine salt, cumin powder, pepper powder, Sichuan pepper powder and coarse chili powder in order.
Stir-fry for a while, then sprinkle with coarse cumin, white sesame seeds, chopped green onions, and remove from the pan and serve.
The spicy smell hit your nostrils.
The small potatoes are fried to golden brown and crispy.
Li Shimin ate mashed potatoes made by Huaiyu last time and was very satisfied. Today's pan-fried cumin potatoes are different, especially the kinds of noodles sprinkled on them, especially the red ones, which are special and extraordinary.
.
"What's that?"
"Chili noodles, dry the chili peppers and roast them in the ashes of the stove, pat them clean and grind them into coarse pieces. It's very spicy."
Pepper, Sichuan pepper, Li Shimin knew, but this was the first time he saw pepper.
"Like potatoes, corn, and sweet potatoes, are they all the cabbage seeds collected by your master?"
"Well, it is said that we got it from a maritime trader. The maritime trader said that the origin of these peppers and corns is in the Eastern Wasteland, at the end of the East China Sea, tens of thousands of miles away from us...
·”
Li Shimin was very interested in Donghuang, but unfortunately Wu Huaiyu didn't reveal much about it, saying that he didn't know much either.
Xu Luoren first tasted small potatoes for the emperor.
It looked very tempting, but when he put a small potato into his mouth and chewed it for just a few bites, his face became serious.
My face even turned red and purple at the end.
"water!"
Seeing this, Zhou Shaofan immediately asked Wu Huaiyu, "General Wu, what is going on?"
"The chili pepper is spicy."
Xu Luoren was a little uncomfortable eating chili peppers for the first time. Spicy in the Tang Dynasty generally refers to the spiciness of ginger and garlic. You see what the Tang people say: onions are spicy in the mouth, garlic is spicy in the heart, and leeks are spicy in the neck.
They think even leeks are spicy enough to break neck tendons, and they say onions and garlic are spicy to the heart, but they know they can't eat anything spicy. Dogwood and Fuyuvine are just some seasonings when making stews.
Sprinkling a lot of chili noodles directly like Wu Huaiyu's was too shocking for Xu Luoren, a person who has never eaten spicy food.
He felt that the tendons in his neck were about to break, and even suspected that he had been poisoned.
Facing his questioning look, Wu Huaiyu directly picked up a toothpick and put it in his mouth.
Well, that's the smell.
Familiar taste.
It's a pity that I forgot to put some coriander. It would also be great if I mixed some Zanthoxylum bungee root into it.
One bite at a time.
This small potato is perfect for frying. It is crispy on the outside and floury on the inside. The seasonings make it rich in taste.
After showing off five or six times in one breath, Wu Huaiyu didn't seem to have any trouble at all, but looked intoxicated.
Li Shimin saw this and no longer hesitated. He picked up a toothpick and put it in his mouth.
As a result, his reaction was not much better than that of Xu Luoren, it was so spicy that he sucked it right away.
"This chili noodles is really spicy."
"Your Majesty, this is not spicy at all. It can only be considered slightly spicy. Really hot peppers are much hotter than this."
Li Shimin sucked and breathed, and slowly he came back to the aftertaste. After the spicy taste, he actually felt quite relaxed. Although his mouth and tongue were numb and his head was sweating due to the spicy taste, it did have a different taste.
"Your Majesty, have a glass of buttermilk,"
"I just forgot to put some minced garlic, ginger and coriander, otherwise it would taste better."
Xu Luoren took a big gulp of the buttermilk, but he was already awed and kept away from it, "How could someone still use this kind of thing as a seasoning? What's the point?"
"Sour, sweet, bitter, spicy, aren't they all tastes?" Huaiyu smiled, actually enjoying this long-lost taste, or rather enjoying the pain.
Li Shimin was very brave and had the courage to try new things. He insisted on eating three small potatoes and finally drank two large glasses of buttermilk.
Warrior Leng came with a group of officials from Sinong Temple. Perhaps this person was auspicious because Huaiyu had offered potatoes, corns and sweet potatoes before. It happened that Sinong Qing was vacant, and Warrior Leng was promoted to the position.
Compared with pan-fried baby potatoes with chili noodles, steamed cornmeal and goose fat cakes are more popular among people.
While eating cornmeal and goose fat steamed cakes, they discussed these novel crops and vegetables of the Wu family. Sinong Temple was in charge of agriculture and was relatively professional in this area. The questions they asked Wu Huaiyu were also very professional.
Among Wu Huaiyu's new grains and vegetables, the three most valuable to the court were corn, potatoes and sweet potatoes, which could be used as staple foods.
Among them, although the yield of corn is not high, it has good staple food properties and is better stored. It has certain similarities with sorghum, millet, millet, and millet.
"I believe that corn, potatoes and sweet potatoes can help open up wasteland on the frontier or in the inland mountainous areas," said the warrior, who was born as a landowner and could even build a house in Chang'an into a farmhouse. He was a man who truly understood crop agriculture.
In the plains of the Central Plains, especially in irrigated lands, these new crops do not have much advantage. There are mature irrigation systems and fertile plain fields, so growing wheat and rice is more advantageous. However, in border areas or inland mountainous areas, those places have vast areas and many people.
It is sparse and the water conservancy facilities are backward.
Planting wheat and rice faces the problem of water shortage and drought. Planting millet, millet, millet, sorghum, etc. actually has low yields. But now corn is grown with potatoes and sweet potatoes, which requires neither fertile land nor good irrigation facilities.
If the land is planted widely and the harvest is small, you can still get a good harvest.
If it is combined with raising some pigs, sheep, chickens and ducks, it will undoubtedly allow everyone to settle down in mountainous areas with more difficult and barren conditions.
"Potatoes and sweet potatoes are not good enough to be used as a staple food, but they are much stronger than ordinary melons and vegetables. They contain starch and can be used as a staple food."
Li Shimin asked about the yield of these crops.
"Your Majesty, take the wheat and millet cultivation in Guanzhong as an example. The yield of wheat on irrigated land in the plains is higher, and the best irrigated land can achieve a yield of three stones per mu. However, in mountainous areas where drought is lacking, or on plateaus or slopes, only tolerant crops can be grown.
The yield of dry millet, millet, etc. is less than one stone per mu, and the yield per mu is only about seventy or eighty kilograms.
In irrigated plains, wheat yields are high, but in water-scarce plateaus and mountainous areas, millet and sorghum yields are higher than wheat, with an average yield of about one stone per mu."
Warrior Leng, the Sinong Qing, also came up with data on several pieces of land belonging to their Sinong Temple, "Your Majesty, the average yield per mu of land planted in Sinong Temple last year was 146 kilograms of wheat, 152 kilograms of barley, and 204 kilograms of sorghum.
, 177 jins of soybeans and 223 jins of millet.”
In the same land, millet has the highest yield, then sorghum, then soybeans, and wheat has the lowest yield. However, for the same grain, wheat and millet are the most commonly consumed today.
Although sorghum has a high yield, it is not suitable for direct consumption. Unless there is a famine, it is usually either used to make wine or to feed livestock.
"What about corn, potatoes, and sweet potatoes? How much yield can be achieved per acre? Just plant them under normal conditions?"
For the same land, if water and fertilizer are different, the yield will definitely be different, and field planting will definitely be different from experimental planting.
"Your Majesty, based on the corn harvested this year, I estimate that the yield per mu in the field should be at least 180 kilograms per mu. The yield per mu can be thirty or forty kilograms more than wheat, but it may be three or four kilograms less than sorghum and millet.
Ten pounds.
When growing sweet potatoes, one acre can produce about 1,500 kilograms. However, sweet potatoes have a high water content and will not yield much if dried. If processed into sweet potato flour, one thousand kilograms can produce about two hundred kilograms of flour.
Five hundred kilograms can produce about three hundred kilograms of powder."
“The yield per mu of potatoes is lower than that of sweet potatoes, about 1,000 kilograms per mu.”
What Huaiyu is talking about is the yield of planting in wheat fields and valleys. If it is placed in dry and water-deficient plateaus or mountainous areas, the yield will definitely be reduced accordingly.
But even if the output in dry land in the mountains is only one-third, wouldn't it be possible to produce a hundred kilograms of sweet potato flour per acre?
"One acre of sweet potatoes can produce 1,500 kilograms of sweet potatoes and 300 kilograms of sweet potato flour?" Li Shimin was surprised by this yield. Isn't it equivalent to twice that of wheat and 70 to 80 kilograms more than millet per acre?
The grain yield per acre in the Tang Dynasty was not high. Firstly, there were insufficient water conservancy facilities. Secondly, there was a lack of fertilizer. There were even a lack of cattle and horses, and the plowing land was not deep enough.
In future generations, it would be common for rice to yield a thousand kilograms per mu, and some high-yielding rice fields could even produce nearly two thousand kilograms of hybrid rice per mu. Even for wheat, a yield of six to seven hundred kilograms, or even eight or nine hundred kilograms per mu would be normal.
For sweet potatoes and potatoes, the yield per mu can reach five to six thousand catties.
But this was not possible in the Tang Dynasty. Even with the best water-irrigated fields, intensive cultivation, and supplementary fertilizers, the yield could hardly exceed three stones per acre in a single season.
Three stones per acre has basically become the ceiling, and most of them produce about one stone per acre.
Even this field has to be frequently rotated and left fallow.
There is a lack of fertilizer, insufficient soil fertility, and insufficient irrigation.
Many farmers in the Tang Dynasty had to cultivate hundreds of acres of land for their family. This would have been unimaginable in later generations without machinery. But in this era, if we don't plant more crops, the harvest will not be enough to sustain our lives. We need to plant extensively and harvest poorly, and cultivate extensively and cultivate extensively.
Among the yamen in Chang'an, Taipu Temple does not have great power, but the officials live a very prosperous life. The most important thing is that Taipu Temple raises many horses and they have a lot of horse dung. Every year, these horse dung are sold for a large amount.
With this amount of income, relying on the welfare of this horse dung, Taipu Temple's life is better than other yamen.
It's not that people in the Tang Dynasty didn't know how to use fertilizer, it's just that in this era, there was too little fertilizer and it was simply not enough.
"We, Sinong Temple, have sent officials to guard the greenhouse in the courtyard of the Wu family. We should help Wu Huaiyu take care of it, take good notes, and learn how to plant it." Li Shimin gave instructions on the spot.
"As well as my imperial garden greenhouse and the garden of your Sinong Temple, we should also quickly plant these corns, potatoes and sweet potatoes, cultivate the seeds carefully, and teach more farmers how to plant more in the next spring."
Li Shimin fantasized about the prosperous times when the poor people of the Tang Dynasty would be able to eat sweet potato, potato and corn pancakes every day and no longer have to go hungry.
"At that time, the world will have enough food and clothing, and there will be no more famines. It will be possible to fight for rice for two or three cents!" Li Shimin waved his arms excitedly. If everyone in the world is fed and clothed, wouldn't that be a peaceful and prosperous age?
"Warrior Leng, Wu Huaiyu, you will lead people to build a small greenhouse in the courtyard of my Lizheng Palace, and plant these corns, potatoes, sweet potatoes, and those red beans and other things. I think I can also take care of it when I have free time in the future.
Take care of these babies!"
It has been on the shelves for a month and more than a hundred chapters have been updated. I read everyone's comments every day and seriously think about how to write better content. Thank you for your support and I will continue to work hard.
