Chapter 472: Drinking fish soup is often a wonderful thing.
The bamboo board was taken off the campfire, still emitting billowing hot smoke.
Bifang picked up the fish belly residue on the fried noodles with chopsticks made of tree branches and put it into his mouth. It was extremely crispy and had a slightly bitter taste.
After letting the bamboo board cool down a little, Bifang picked it up with his bare hands and took out a can of boiling water and some pieces of charcoal.
"The easiest thing to forget when traveling or surviving in the wild is soap. In fact, soap is very easy to make in the wild and is very important for maintaining hygiene, especially in life-threatening situations, such as cleaning wounds."
Bifang had never made soap before, because it was not very useful and there was no need for socializing, so it didn't matter if it was a little dirty, and no one could see each other.
But in the rainforest, maintaining personal hygiene is very important, as uncleanness can be fatal.
"The raw materials needed to make soap are just these few: alkaline charcoal ash, water, and oils, either vegetable fat or animal fat, anything flying, swimming, or running will do. Finally, if conditions permit, add some antiseptic drugs."
"Of course, the last item is not necessary, but to make the soap have antibacterial properties and a pleasant smell, I can find pine needles and pine resin in the forest, and I can use citronella in the rainforest."
"Lemongrass is more than just a spice, because it contains citral, which has the effect of disinfecting, sterilizing, and treating neuralgia and muscle pain, so it is known as the 'pain reliever'. It can treat abdominal pain, colds and fevers, and is equivalent to a panacea for common diseases. It can even beautify and is good for the skin."
Bifang crushed the charcoal with a stone, mixed the charcoal ash with water, and said, "Be careful not to stir it with your hands. On the one hand, it is very hot, and on the other hand, the charcoal ash is highly alkaline and may burn your skin."
After stirring thoroughly, filter out the charcoal ash and pour the water into the bamboo tube.
Then, before the oil cools down and solidifies, pour it into the bamboo tube that was just filled with water, and put the bamboo tube filled with oil and charcoal ash water back into the campfire to heat it.
"Next we have to boil it again to sterilize it, but there is still a little bit of oil left here, so we must not waste it. We can use it to make a bamboo shoot soup."
Bifang peeled three of the bamboo shoots she had collected earlier. After peeling, the innermost part was still dripping with water.
"Bamboo shoots are fresh and tender food, and cannot withstand storage or long-distance transportation, so there is no need for us to save them. We should just eat as much as we can."
Bifang put the bamboo shoots into the semicircular bamboo tube where the oil had just been refined, added some water and continued to stew them, with light golden oil floating on them.
Tear up handfuls of lemongrass, mash it, and add it directly to the bamboo jar in the fire pit. At this point, the soap making process is basically complete.
"If you don't need a strong soap, then you don't have to worry about the ratio of fat to charcoal ash water, because we can just steam it dry, wait for the water to evaporate completely, wait for it to cool, and it will be a pretty good soap that can remove dirt and kill bacteria."
[Hiss, I learned another trick. I can only travel through time and space to show off my skills in front of the natives.]
[666, really eye-opening, really eye-opening! ]
"Just traveling through time may not be enough. You have to at least travel to the time before the primitive tribe, because even many primitive tribes know how to make this kind of soap."
"This is a misunderstanding of many people, who think that people in primitive tribes must be dirtier than us. But in fact, in some primitive tribes that still exist today, hygiene is as important as in modern society."
Bifang saw the barrage and made a joke like the audience.
"Finally, even if you bring biodegradable soap or shampoo, you must be aware that they need soil to degrade, so in order to avoid contamination, we should dig a pit 25 meters away from the water source and pour all the washing water into it."
While waiting for the moisture to evaporate, the grilled fish and blanched bamboo shoots were finally completed.
The originally golden fish skin has turned into a burnt yellow. Although it is not as beautiful as before, it is more earthy and appetizing, with a faint lemon scent wrapped in the burnt aroma.
When you open the lid of the bamboo tube, white smoke rises, and the milky white bamboo shoots roll up and down in the boiling water, accompanied by a faint aroma of fish oil. A lot of black ants are sprinkled inside to add flavor, and they look like black sesame seeds.
Bifang picked up one and tasted it, his eyes lit up. The crisp and tender taste accompanied by the bursting of hot juice made him open his mouth to cool down, but he couldn't bear to spit it out.
There is a slight astringency mixed with oiliness. Although it doesn't have much flavor, you can still feel the inner sweetness.
Bifang quickly picked up a piece of sizzling fish meat, which was mixed with the unique aroma of lemongrass and the sour and salty taste of formic acid, which further highlighted the unique deliciousness of the grilled fish.
Especially since catfish itself doesn’t have many bones, you can get a lot of satisfaction from taking a bite.
Bifang, who had not eaten for a whole day, was now drinking bamboo shoot soup, eating grilled fish, sitting by the campfire, listening to the rain hitting the banana leaves, and feeling very comfortable.
Very beautiful.
Under the rain, the fireworks far away from the world are hidden, just like the falling mint leaves in soda water, everything becomes fresh.
Bifang took a sip of the soup with a spoon and said comfortably, "Catfish is fat and has few bones, so it's just right for roasting. Carp can be used to stew bamboo shoots. Tomorrow's meals are settled, and it must be oily to make it fragrant."
"The only drawback is that we don't have any salt. Otherwise, a pinch of salt would make it taste even better. I'll try to find some salt tomorrow. We can't go 20 days without salt. We'll lose our strength."
[Drooling, hehe]
[I’m hungry too. I want to eat too. Woo woo woo]
[It’s already 7 o’clock, and the takeaway I ordered hasn’t arrived yet. I’m starving]
[By the way, can catfish really be eaten? I saw a video last time that said catfish grow up eating feces and garbage... their bodies are full of heavy metals...]
[Pfft, is this true? I see Fang Shen is enjoying his meal.]
Bifang swallowed the fish in his mouth. Hearing this during the meal really ruined the atmosphere. He shook his head and said, "I don't know where you read this from, but it's not very reliable and it's very biased."
"First of all, catfish are carnivorous fish in terms of their feeding habits. Wild catfish mainly prey on fish that are smaller than themselves, such as crucian carp, carp, loach, etc. They use their sense of smell to find their prey, then trap them with their teeth and swallow them."
"If they really want to eat feces, then not only catfish, but any fish will eat it, but feces is not necessarily what they eat."
"In the countryside, people who raised fish in the early years should know that in many fish ponds, if the ponds are large, fish farmers would directly throw manure into them. This would stir up a large school of fish."
"That group of fish were eating with great relish, scrambling for the food, one after another. There were not just catfish, carp, grass carp, silver carp, but all kinds of fish."
[Ah, I've seen this! ]
[One more thing: my grandfather’s house has a small fish pond. Whenever I go fishing, I just pour some hay manure on it, and all the fish will come up at once. I can eat the fish I caught at night, and it’s still delicious.]
In his previous life, Bifang worked in a city, and there happened to be a large, smelly ditch near where he lived.
That thing had a horrible stench within a few miles. It was no exaggeration to say that the stench could be smelled from two miles away.
If it was just a stinky water hook, the problem wouldn't be big. The problem is that it is a stagnant water pit. Not only is it a designated pit for nearby residents to discharge sewers, but wastewater from many factories is also discharged into this pit.
The water has a very high viscosity and when stirred it can stick to the wall just like milk.
It not only contains feces, industrial wastewater, various garbage, but also all kinds of smelly fish and shrimp.
There was no grass or any living thing in the pond, but there was only one mysterious creature.
That's it - catfish, and a few catfish from other countries. Bifang couldn't recognize what species it was at the time, but that stinky ditch caused the prices of houses nearby to be relatively low.
Once when passing by, Bifang saw an old man fishing. He was shocked at the time and stopped to watch. After about 10 minutes, he hooked a catfish.
It was more than one meter long, with a greenish black color and a blackish purple color. It exuded a foul industrial smell, and had a scary beard. When you got closer, you could see that the fish was deformed. Its head was crooked, and its rear end was bulging.
None of this is important. What is important is that on the left side of the back of the fish, there is a bunch of growths of unknown color, and no one knows what they are.
Bifang, who studies biology, witnessed for the first time the tenacious vitality of organisms, and also learned for the first time the horror of mutation.
"So, catfish are really strong and can survive in any dirty environment. But that's only a few of them. And all catfish in China have one characteristic: they are clean."
"For example, the southern catfish has extremely high requirements for water quality. Once the water is dirty, it will immediately turn over and die in front of you."
Bifang's words made the audience laugh, but they also understood.
Whether the fish itself is clean or not depends on its living environment.
As a natural river in the rainforest, it is not too dirty, just a little turbid, so there is no need to worry about eating it.
Catfish like bigmouth catfish and native catfish feed on small fish and shrimps in the wild. If you can get wild ones, it will be a great thing whether you grill them or cook them.
