Chapter 287 - 127: Dairy Products (Part 2)
Chen Zhou milks the mother goat every other day.
Including the original mother goats, there are four goats continuously producing milk, which he simply can't drink fast enough. Even if he drinks orange iced milk tea, he gets tired of it, so he tries making some dairy products.
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Chen Zhou is in the north, which can be said to be the northernmost part of the country, close to the border and extremely remote.
From the small town where he went to school, a hundred kilometers west is a vast grassland, where many Mongolians live.
These minorities, who once carved out a vast territory, have gradually merged with the Han people and followed the pace of development, moving to live in cities.
In Chen Zhou's grandmother's home, that remote little mountain village, there lived a few Mongolian families.
One of these families was just north of his grandmother's village, their sheep pen facing the path out of the village.
Every winter, when the herders no longer go out to graze, climbing up the old elm tree at the village entrance to look out, you can see from afar the pen full of gray sheep — those are dirty.
Chen Zhou's grandfather was highly respected in the village, a man of integrity.
In earlier years, when the villagers were ostracizing the Mongolians, he often spoke for the Mongolians. Plus, he liked to drink, could drink, spoke well, and knew some folk ways of treating livestock, so he was very respected by the Mongolians.
Benefiting from his grandfather's reputation, Chen Zhou recognized a Mongolian godmother when he was five.
In his childhood, the Mongolians still maintained a simple and straightforward attitude towards life, entertaining distant guests even if they only had two pieces of milk tofu and one sheep left at home.
At that time, Chen Zhou's Mongolian godmother was no different from his biological mother; it was sincerity exchanged for sincerity.
It's just that Chen Zhou's Mongolian godmother didn't speak Mandarin very well, and when he was looked after by his grandmother and grandfather in the village, he was still young and always found himself puzzled when listening to his godmother speak Mongolian.
This barrier in communication meant that he seldom went to his godmother's house to play voluntarily.
But when it came to routine visits during festivals, or when his godmother's family slaughtered cattle and sheep and sent out invitations, he always couldn't refuse.
From what he saw and heard, Chen Zhou also gained some understanding of the traditional Mongolian methods of making dairy products.
The most familiar include traditional Mongolian butter and milk tofu, milk skin, and other traditional delicacies.
The method of making butter is the simplest, using a tall cylindrical machine to stir fresh milk, which destroys the structure of the dairy product, causing the oil and water to separate.
The separated fat is then rinsed with cotton cloth or a filter net to remove water before being sun-dried, and it can be eaten after cooling.
If you want more aesthetically pleasing blocks of butter, you just need to press it into molds, shape it, then refrigerate it.
The island's goats eat nutritious natural forage, and the milk's fat content is relatively high, allowing for considerable butter production, adding a new ingredient to Chen Zhou's kitchen.
The process for making milk skin is more complex.
According to Chen Zhou's observations, there are two kinds of milk skin.
One is very ancient, called "tuhou urum" in Mongolian, a raw milk skin.
This kind of milk skin has a strong fermented taste, even a slight stink.
It is made by allowing goat milk to naturally sour in a vessel before peeling off the thin top layer. The method is simple but is not popular due to the taste.
The other kind of milk skin requires multiple tools and considerable time and effort.
The whole process involves filtering the milk, boiling and skimming it, controlling the heat, congealing the milk skin, drying it in the shade for preservation, and other steps, taking at least a day or two to complete.
Coincidentally, Chen Zhou likes this kind of milk skin the most and enjoys the hassle, so he devoted himself to trying it out in the cave house.
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Though the process of making milk skin is complex, it is ultimately a craft that can be passed down orally. In terms of complexity, it's far less than the earth mills or foot-operated pestles, and it's incomparable to the technique of bending wood to make wheels.
Reflecting on the steps, Chen Zhou carefully thought through a few details and succeeded in making milk skin for the first time.
Later, he became more skilled, storing over two pounds of milk skin in the container fridge aside from what he consumed.
If not for the limitations of goat milk production, he felt he could entirely achieve dairy product freedom on the island.
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Nevertheless, as the saying goes, the world is unpredictable; making dairy products and successfully seeking benefits for his taste buds is certainly gratifying.
Some unexpected incidents also catch people off guard.
The little lambs grew day by day, their bodies becoming more robust and adventurous, inevitably resulting in some unlucky ones.
Among them, the neutered little guy was particularly unfortunate, losing its concerns and somehow getting bitten by a venomous snake.
When Chen Zhou discovered it, its leg was already severely swollen, especially the knee joint, looking as if there was a honeycomb hanging there, with the hair falling off to reveal the red-black skin beneath, with two already decaying ulcerations.
During the rainy season, the lamb's wound got soaked, soon leading to inflammation, fever, rapid breathing, shock, and life-threatening conditions.
Upon realizing the seriousness of its injuries, Chen Zhou immediately brought it back to the cave house, cut open its wound, and performed debridement and disinfection surgery.
Unfortunately, already injected with venom and in a weakened state, the lamb, having been drenched by rain, simply couldn't survive this ordeal.
Despite Chen Zhou's strenuous attempts to save its life, he was unsuccessful.
Less than six hours after the debridement surgery, its heart stopped abruptly, its wide eyes staring blankly at the fire wall.