The reason why foie gras could become the top delicacy in the West was that the foie gras produced in the West was not ordinary foie gras, but a very large and special foie gras. It could also be understood as fatty foie gras. The method of making this delicacy was very cruel. It was a great physical devastation to the goose.
Everyone knew that the liver of a naturally grown goose was very small, and the taste was relatively ordinary. However, the Western foie gras was very large. A complete foie gras weighed about seven to eight hundred grams, which was about one and a half catties. Such a large foie gras occupied a large part of the goose's body. It seriously exceeded the size of the liver. The damage to the goose's body was obvious.
The technique of making this kind of foie gras was also very simple and cruel. That was, when a normal goose was 14 weeks old, it began to be forced to eat. It had to be force-fed for about three weeks, about three times a day. The so-called force-feeding was to extend a tube into the goose's stomach, and then, a large amount of prepared corn was directly poured into the goose's stomach. A large amount of excess fat accumulated in the goose's liver, and then, a fat liver grew.
The huge liver of the goose's body was a kind of fatty liver. Even if this kind of goose was not killed, it would not live for too long. Its lifespan was much shorter than that of ordinary geese. However, the purpose of breeding this kind of goose was to get the foie gras. Therefore, no one would consider the lifespan of the goose. After all, in the eyes of humans, geese were just a kind of food. It was not a big deal. Even if the goose suffered more, it should be.
The cost of foie gras was high because the whole goose was just to get the liver. The rest of the body part was worthless. However, the proportion of foie gras to the goose's body was at least much higher than the proportion of fish brain to the fish's body. Therefore, the cost of foie gras was relatively good. At least, it was more reliable than eating fish brain tofu.
Westerners usually couldn't bear to eat foie gras because they weren't rich enough. In other words, the lower-class people in the West weren't very rich, and there were more places where they needed to spend money. Therefore, they couldn't bear to eat foie gras usually. If they ate foie gras like rice every day, ordinary people really couldn't afford it, especially the top-grade foie gras. The price was even higher.
If Ang Lee wanted to eat top-grade foie gras, it would not be difficult. After all, many people in the Tang Empire also raised geese. However, the Tang Empire did not have the custom of eating foie gras, nor did they have the technology to produce foie gras. If he wanted to eat foie gras, he must tell the ordinary people the technology to produce foie gras and let them be responsible for the production. Only then could he eat the fat foie gras.
According to the production process of foie gras, it would take at least four months to eat foie gras, but there were many ready-made adult geese that could be used directly. In this way, it would only take two or three weeks to make the fatty foie gras.
The Chinese New Year was about time, so as long as Ang Lee started now, he could eat the delicious foie gras during the Chinese New Year.
Ang Lee could raise geese in his own house, but the area was limited. It would be better to let ordinary people help to raise them. The effect would be better. As long as the special tube was given to the people, the people could force feed the geese according to the requirements.
This matter could be done by the servants. Ang Lee didn't need to do it himself. After all, there were many people who raised geese in Beijing. Just find a few hundred geese and then raise them according to Ang Lee's method. It was very convenient and simple.
There was one last top-grade delicacy in Europe, which was caviar. Just listening to the name, it was not a big deal. Caviar could be found everywhere. It was not rare. Caviar seemed to be no big deal.
However, the caviar in Europe was not the roe of ordinary fish, but the eggs of sturgeon. It was a precious fish. In the beginning, the fishermen on the Volga River used the roe of sturgeon to make delicacies. It was loved by the Tsar and the ordinary old people. Later, it was spread to France and was regarded as a treasure.
Because only sturgeon above sixty years old could make top-grade caviar, the production of caviar was very limited. As a result, the price of caviar was high.
Li An had eaten a lot of fish roe, but they were all from carp and crucian carp. Sturgeon roe was something that he had never tasted in either of his previous lives. It was a great pity that he had never tasted it before.
In fact, there were sturgeon in the Tang dynasty. They lived in the Yangtze River of the Tang dynasty. They were called Chinese sturgeon and were the largest fish in the Yangtze River. The male sturgeon was two hundred pounds, and the largest one was five hundred pounds. It could be seen that it was a very large fish.
Sturgeon was a large migratory fish. Usually, Chinese sturgeon lived in the coastal continental shelf from the west coast of North Korea to the southeast coast of China in the south. After living in the ocean for nine to eighteen years, when the gonads were close to maturity, they migrated to the Yangtze River in groups and reached the upper reaches of the Yangtze River and the lower section of the Jinsha River to breed.
Every summer and autumn, they gathered at the mouth of the Yangtze River and went up the river to the upper reaches of the Yangtze River to lay eggs in the Jinsha River. They went down the river with the young sturgeon to the East China Sea and the deep water of the Yellow Sea to grow.
In the spawning group, the age of the male sturgeon was generally nine to twenty years old, and the age of the female sturgeon was sixteen to twenty-nine years old. Chinese sturgeon also laid a large number of eggs. A female sturgeon could produce millions of roe at a time, but the survival rate was not high. In the end, the number of mature fish was still a small number.
After laying eggs, the female sturgeon quickly began to fall into the river. The eggs were adhered to the rocks or gravel at the bottom of the river. Under the conditions of the water temperature of seventeen to eighteen degrees, the fertilized eggs hatched after about five to six days. The newly hatched larvae had a huge yolk sac, which was shaped like a tadpole. They drifted with the water and began to eat after about thirteen days.
In the spring of the next year, the young sturgeon gradually fell into the river and appeared in the Yangtze River estuary from May to August. After September, the young sturgeon, which had reached thirty centimeters in length, left the shallow beach of the Yangtze River estuary one after another and entered the sea to cultivate and grow. The Chinese sturgeon could live up to forty years old. It was a fish with a relatively long life span. It lived longer than many animals raised by humans. Moreover, this was still a wild one. If it was artificially raised, the life span of the sturgeon might exceed a hundred years.
However, the Chinese sturgeon was the first-level key protected wild animal in Hua Xia in the future. It was known as the giant panda in the water. No one dared to kill the Chinese sturgeon. Otherwise, it would be a capital offense. Therefore, no one knew what the roe of the Chinese sturgeon tasted like. No one even dared to talk about this issue to avoid bringing trouble to themselves.
However, Li Shizen recorded in the Compendium of Materia Medica that the liver of the Chinese sturgeon could treat sores. The fish meat could supplement the deficiency and benefit the qi. It was healthy to eat. The roe was the size of a small bean. Eating it could kill the small worms in the stomach. In short, it was very certain that this food was good. It was just unknown how the taste was compared to European caviar.
If you want to make a comparison, it was very simple. Catch a Chinese sturgeon and take its roe to make caviar. Then, go to the Volga River to catch sturgeon and take its roe to make caviar. The two caviars were put together for a little comparison. It should be able to compare which one was better.
The Chinese sturgeon was easy to get. As long as the fishermen were ordered to go to the river to catch it, they would eventually get it. However, the sturgeon of the Volga River was not so easy to get. After all, the Volga River was still in Europe. It was too far away from the Tang dynasty. Now, the railway had not been built yet. It was still very difficult to get the sturgeon from there.
At least, the people of the Tang dynasty had not yet pursued caviar. Therefore, even if there were merchants of the Tang dynasty near the Volga River, they were not willing to transport the sturgeon back to the Tang dynasty because it was not profitable. Merchants were not fools. How could they do something that was not profitable?
Speaking of the three great delicacies of Europe, truffle was just a kind of wild fungus, foie gras was just a part of the body of ordinary poultry, and caviar was just the roe of sturgeon. It seemed that there was nothing special about it. However, because of their rarity and popularity, these seemingly ordinary foods had become top luxury food ingredients. It was really amazing.
Before the New Year, if Ang Lee wanted to get caviar, he could only go to the Yangtze River to get it. As for truffle, he could send people to Lingnan to find it. It should not be too big of a problem to get one back to Chang 'an before the New Year. As for the fat foie gras, as long as he immediately started feeding it according to the requirements, it would not be difficult. Before the New Year, he could feed at least about a jin of fat foie gras, which was three times the size of normal foie gras.
This New Year, Ang Lee wanted to eat these three top delicacies. Moreover, he wanted his family to taste these top western delicacies. Therefore, when there was still some time before the New Year, Ang Lee had already sent several people out. He believed that these servants would be able to do the tasks he gave them well.
Ang Lee also frequently took time to go hunting. Sometimes he went alone or with someone. Li Yu often accompanied Ang Lee to hunt.
When Ang Lee went out to hunt alone, the harvest was always very rich. After all, Ang Lee had a secret weapon in his hand. When he went out with Li Yu, Ang Lee often did not use his secret weapon, or he could only use it secretly. There was always a limit to it, so the harvest was relatively less.
In order to protect the limited wild animal resources, Ang Lee would often be lenient on groups of wild animals. For example, if he could catch more than a dozen, he would only kill two or three. This way, the population could reproduce better.
Of course, if it was an animal with a strong reproductive ability, Ang Lee would not be so lenient. For example, animals with a strong reproductive ability like hares would breed a nest at a time. The number was very large, especially in rugged mountainous areas. It was absolutely impossible to kill all hares unless he spent a lot of effort to destroy the forest. In this way, it was possible to exterminate the rabbit community. After all, rabbits could not survive in deserts and cities. Only wild environments such as forests were their habitat.
The most common weather in winter was snowy weather. Moreover, especially when the weather was extremely cold, the snow on the ground would take many days to completely melt. If there was continuous snowfall, it was very likely that new snow would cover the original snow before it had completely melted. This would cause a lot of trouble for the ordinary people when they were traveling.
After all, if the road was full of snow, the resistance of vehicles would be very high. Sleds were suitable for traveling on snow, but in the capital of the Tang dynasty, most people used vehicles. There were not many who had sleds. Moreover, even if there was a lot of snow, not every place had snow. Many of them were destroyed by people, which meant that the snow was not stable. Especially in the inner part of the capital, as long as there was snow on the roads, the imperial court would immediately organize a large number of people to clean up the snow, so that the main roads of the capital would be free of snow and the convenience of ordinary people. In this case, sleds were useless. They could not be used in the inner part of the city.
In addition, on the main roads outside the city, there would also be related personnel from the imperial court who would clean up the snow. Even the imperial court department in the capital was equipped with advanced vehicles to clean up the snow.
There were many ways to clean up the snow. For example, they could sprinkle salt on the road to facilitate the melting of ice cubes. They could also use hot water to wash the snow. The melted snow would quickly flow into the trenches on both sides and would not form a layer of ice on the road. In addition, they could also use fire to bake the snow.
Of course, the cheapest and most reliable method was to use manpower to pile up the thick snow on both sides of the road. This method was the most economical and environmentally friendly. The only drawback was that it was too exhausting. It was estimated that after clearing a road, the person in charge of clearing it would be exhausted to death.
However, the capital of the Tang dynasty was not short of manpower. So many ordinary people and soldiers could be used to support the professionals who did not have a large number of people.
For example, every ordinary person would be responsible for clearing the snow in front of their own door. In addition, every household would also have to send people to clear the snow in the Big and Small Cross Streets. As for clearing the snow on the main roads, there would be people specially organized to temporarily recruit ordinary people who were not working and pay them a certain amount of money to help clear the snow.
As for the snow on the main roads outside the city, there would be soldiers and government runners who were not working. They could also recruit ordinary people who had nothing to do. In this way, the more people there were, the faster and better the work could be done.
This winter, it had snowed several times. However, a few days before the New Year, it had snowed even more heavily. The snow was very thick, which made the related departments of the imperial court very busy. They recruited ordinary people who were not working and organized more manpower to clear the roads as soon as possible so that vehicles could pass through the city normally.
In addition, many businessmen had also begun to donate money and goods. They even directly donated to ordinary people so that the people could take action to clear the roads as soon as possible. After all, once the roads were blocked by snow, the goods of the businessmen would not be able to flow smoothly. In this way, not only would they not be able to make money, but they might even cause very serious economic losses because of the backlog of goods.
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