Chapter 89: Spicy Grilled Fish Ball
Just as Su Ran started simmering the fish soup, Hui, Qing Yu, and A Jin also returned from hunting.
The three beastmen had hunted back one red-skinned pig, three white-headed sheep, and four wild chickens and a string of green soap fruit carried in Hui’s hand.
There was too much food to make, and the main way of eating was of course roast meat that everyone could accept.
Su Ran no longer needed to handle the roast meat work.
Hui and A Huo could handle it themselves.
A Huo lit a slightly larger campfire nearby, then Hui used the multi-tool axe to divide the already cleaned large-bodied red-skinned pig into several pieces, skewered them on branches, applied salt powder and crushed fruit meat, and started grilling.
Su Ran helped process the several wild chickens on the side. Then she wrapped the seasoned wild chickens and the previously marinated fish with sweet leaf vein tree leaves, coated them in mud, and threw them together to the edge of the campfire, making beggars’ chicken and beggars’ fish.
As for the remaining three white-headed sheep, Su Ran originally wanted to use white-headed sheep mutton to fry meatballs.
But she immediately remembered she still needed to make fish balls, and if she fried meatballs too, the cooking time would be too long.
So in the end, she only cut off the fat from the three sheep, made the lean meat into roast lamb as usual, and rendered the fat in another pot to make some greaves, sprinkled with salt powder and chili fruit powder, preparing to leave them as small snacks for the several beastmen.
After processing these prey, Su Ran began making fish balls.
Xiao Ju had long been impatiently shaving off the fish meat from the remaining two basins of fish.
At this moment, she and A Jin stood in front of the simple table Su Ran had made, quickly chopping the fish meat with scallop knives, the speed of the knife rising and falling even creating afterimages.
A total of two and a half basins of big blue fish seemed like a lot, but once all chopped into minced fish meat, it only filled one large wooden basin of Su Ran’s.
Blue fish has good meat quality and sufficiently fresh flavor, so it doesn’t need too many additional ingredients.
Su Ran only added some scallop powder crushed with the hammer, then salt and green-skinned eggs, and then began stirring the minced fish meat.
Once the fish meat was stirred into a paste, she used the wooden spoon to drop fish balls into the pot of boiling water.
The fish balls Su Ran made were very large.
Because beastmen have big appetites, a small one wouldn’t satisfy in a single bite. And there was a lot of this large basin of fish meat, so making them larger would also speed up the process.
The fire under the pot burned strongly the whole time.
Even staying here long made it feel very hot.
At this point, the fish balls in the pot had floated to cover the water surface, each one white and plump, round and rolling, looking very appetizing.
Boiling the fish balls took some time.
By the time the last pot of fish balls was done, the roast meat on the other campfire was basically all grilled.
Qing Yu had used a wooden stick to pull out the beggars’ chicken and beggars’ fish from under the campfire, knocked them open with wood, placed the roasted fish and roasted chicken inside onto the wooden tray, and then put it on the simple long table made of stones and wooden planks on the ground near the woods.
Su Ran originally wanted to make a wooden table for eating, but later matters came one after another, so the table-making was postponed again and again by her.
Then she simply bound a row of wood together to make a rectangular wooden plank, padded stones underneath, which could also serve as a table.
As for the plan to make a standard table, she directly set it aside to consider after the house was built.
Otherwise, even after making the table, it couldn’t be taken into the bird’s nest to use.
Because the open space inside the bird’s nest already couldn’t fit a table, so she and Hui would still have to eat outside.
And before the house was built, she would probably have to eat together with Xiao Ju and the others, and a too-small table wouldn’t fit so many of them.
After the beggars’ chicken and beggars’ fish were served, the air above this river beach was suddenly filled with a rich meat aroma.
Among them, the aroma of the beggars’ chicken was especially enticing.
On the campfire, two whole large legs of the red-skinned pig were not yet grilled.
A Feng and Qing Yu together first moved the other fully cooked meat pieces to the table.
Taking advantage of the space freed up on the campfire, Su Ran hurriedly skewered a whole string of fish balls on several half-meter-long branches, lightly brushed some oil on the fish balls, and placed them over the fire to grill.
Although fish balls are tasty eaten plain, they were still a bit bland for Su Ran.
She wanted to eat spicy grilled fish balls more!
Su Ran used one-third of the fish balls to make roasted fish balls.
Then she skewered a small string of only about ten meatballs just for herself, grilling it while coating it with a large amount of homemade chili oil.
In the end, the whole string of fish balls was almost wrapped in a layer of red chili fruit fragments, startling Hui who came over to find Su Ran so much that his voice calling Su Ran changed tone.
The current chili fruit had grown to half the size of Su Ran’s palm.
The fruit was still round, the outer skin’s red a bit deeper, and the flavor spicier than at the beginning.
Moreover, Su Ran felt that sun-dried chili fruit was spicier to eat than fresh.
Her homemade chili oil was made by crushing sun-dried chili fruit and frying it in mutton fat, stored in a jar.
But the downside was that mutton fat always solidified, so every time using chili oil, she had to melt it in a bowl first to use.
The fish balls were grilled quickly.
Su Ran took a large bowl.
Of course, her current large bowl was almost as big as a medium basin.
She used chopsticks to slide all the strings of fish balls except her own string of spicy fish balls off the wooden sticks into the bowl, then carried it to the table.
Although the wooden plank table looked very crude when first made, looking at it longer made it gradually seem fine.
Especially at this moment, the table was fully covered with steaming hot food, and even a wooden tray on the side held a plate of cleaned thick lettuce leaves dripping with water beads and wild fruit.
The aroma of food permeated the nearby air, making people’s bellies growl uncontrollably, and at first glance, it even gave Su Ran the illusion of being on a spring outing.
Impatient Hui poked a roasted fish ball with chopsticks and put it in his mouth, but was scalded by the just-grilled fish ball and let out an “ao,” yet unwilling to spit it out, he hurriedly chewed a few times and swallowed it whole.
After swallowing, he looked at Su Ran with a unhappy face, looking very pitiful: “Ran Ran, fish ball hot!”
Su Ran helplessly raised her hand to pat his top of head: “Of course it’s hot, you have to bite it open and blow on the inside!”
She picked up a roasted fish ball and placed it on the tray in front of Hui, conveniently used chopsticks to split the fish ball in half, then pushed it to him: “Try it.”
“Wu~”
The fluffy big tail swept once, Hui used chopsticks to poke one half each of the two fish ball halves, held them to his mouth and was about to open it, but suddenly paused his action.
His eyes slanted to glance at Su Ran, thought for a moment, then slightly opened his lips and blew on the two fish ball halves in front of him, before “ao wu”-ing them into his mouth!
“Ao wu~ Tasty!”
