"The noodle cutter is long and narrow, with gears on its surface, similar to the gears in the mechanical device of a large oak city gate winch. First, place two noodle cutters in a fixed groove, adjust the meshing distance between the two noodle cutters, and then fix the two noodle cutters with a buckle. The groove can adjust the size of the meshing gap between the two noodle cutters. The larger the size, the thicker the noodles; the smaller the size, the thinner the noodles."
"Place the kneaded dough on the noodle cutter, and shake the geared lever. The gear on the lever drives the gear on the noodle cutter, causing both noodle cutters to rotate inward, and thin noodles are continuously produced from under the noodle cutters."
"Use a rolling pin to catch the noodles until they reach the desired length, then cut them with scissors and hang them in the sun to dry. Next, cut the noodles into smaller pieces and tie them with clean cloth or silk ribbons. These can be bundled in bundles of two, five, or ten pounds each and stored in a grain warehouse for immediate consumption. When eating, simply boil them briefly in hot water. This delicacy is best enjoyed using chopsticks from the Western Regions. Knives, forks, and small knives are completely useless."
Master Tob listened, completely bewildered.
Seeing the master's expression, Mo Shan was completely unconcerned, as expected.
"Master, have you ever eaten noodles?"
Master Tob shook his head, his movements stiff and mechanical.
He ate a lot of black bread but never ate noodles.
Black bread, a rough and primitive food culture, is far removed from the refined culinary culture of China.
Noodles were a delicacy reserved for noble households with servants, professional chefs, and the leisure and refined taste to be prepared. They were thick and short, more like dough blocks than noodles, and their coarse texture resulted in a less than pleasant taste. However, compared to the various breads they were tired of eating, they offered a welcome change of pace for the nobles, who found them quite appealing.
However, those rough and primitive so-called noodles are incomparable to the refined noodles of Magic Mountain, which are several levels above civilization.
The limitations of an era determine the height of civilization, including its cuisine.
The more advanced a society becomes, the higher its level of civilization, and the more refined its division of labor; the same applies to food culture. The more refined a food culture is, the more advanced it is—this is beyond doubt.
Chopsticks are a symbol of Chinese culinary culture that has never been eliminated, spanning from the earliest pastoral civilization, through agricultural civilization, industrial civilization, and even modern technological civilization. Its thousands of years of practical history have proven its applicability to any civilization and its transcendence of the limitations of any dietary civilization.
The Mountain was fully aware of this and agreed wholeheartedly.
Master Tob had never heard of a noodle cutter, nor had he ever eaten noodles. And none of the great nobles, kings, or princes of this world, though they had eaten noodles, had ever seen such sophisticated noodle-making and noodle-cutting machinery, several levels above their civilization level.
The world's ironwork has reached a level where it can manufacture noodle-making machines that don't require electricity. They can produce perfectly fine noodles by simply cranking a lever and using gears to drive the rotation of the noodle cutter.
As for gear mechanisms and lever principles, these have already been applied to the mechanical opening of the giant city gates with iron-clad edges in this world.
With the advent of chopsticks, a magical tool for culinary civilization, even in the most basic level of civilization, sophisticated and refined culinary practices become truly possible.
Salt was a power absolutely monopolized by royalty and dukes, but wheat flour was not. With wheat flour and noodle-making machinery, fine noodles became a reality with ease.
The mechanical knowledge that the college science and engineering students who crossed the Demon Mountain had learned over the years had not all been forgotten by their teachers.
Hand-cranked noodle machines are simple in design. Even a piece of iron with a dozen tiny holes drilled in it can immediately produce rice noodles.
Next, Master Tob became like a primary school student, listening blankly as the Mountain explained the principles of a noodle cutter and the manufacture of molds. He had never heard of chopsticks before, and even when the Mountain broke a twig in two to demonstrate, he only vaguely understood.
What the Mountain said was something Master Tob had never heard of before. But the master had a foundation, and it wasn't long before Master Tob grasped the basics.
The master craftsman had also worked on winch mechanisms for city gates, so he was familiar with the principle of gears rotating and using ropes to lift the gates. The same applied to the noodle cutters; a single lever could rotate two noodle cutters, and the tiny gap between them could produce noodles he had never seen or heard of before.
The Mountain told him that he could eat noodles raw or boiled, however he pleased.
Furthermore, the technology for food storage in this world is unparalleled. Because winter can last for up to ten years, people rely entirely on stored food to survive these long winters. Even cooked noodles can be stored for a very long time.
That night, the group stayed in the town of Aigle, within the territory of the Salot family in the western border.
Just after they finished eating, Master Tob knocked on the door of the Demon Mountain.
He came in awkwardly, followed by a puzzled Gendry.
The Mountain knew that Master Tob had come to ask him for advice on how to draw the mechanical blueprints for a noodle-making machine. The master was completely fascinated.
To make machinery, you first need blueprints.
The blueprint resides in the heart of the Demon Mountain.
Tob seemed to have completely forgotten how terrible the Mountain was; he forgot everything as soon as the topic came up.
The noodle knife, a mechanical device unlike anything he had ever heard of, deeply captivated Master Tob. Although he was a master of weapons and armor in this world, his limited level of civilization meant that his knowledge of mechanics was far inferior to that of the Mountain.
As for why the Mountain would come up with such a strange but seemingly feasible mechanical device, it was not within Master Tob's consideration at all. His focus was solely on mechanical manufacturing, and other matters were irrelevant to him.
After achieving the pinnacle of his craft, Master Tob lost interest in creating monotonous swords and armor; what he truly loved were more complex and intricate mechanical devices. Weapon crafting was his livelihood, a profession he had mastered to the highest level among his peers, and indeed, to the pinnacle of his own skill. The Mountain's novel face knife offered him a fresh direction, revitalizing his previously languid life.
The Magic Mountain design removed many components such as the electric motor, roller slide, etc., and only provided a dough knife, a triangular iron frame to fix the dough knife, and a groove design to hold the dough knife, plus a hand crank with gears.
Two days later, when they arrived in Clegane, Tob had completely lost his fear of the Mountain and was focused solely on perfecting the design and details of the pasta cutter. Now that he fully understood the Mountain's requirements and ideas, all that remained was his practical work—the manufacture of the pasta cutter mold.
Everyone has a favorite kind of work, and creating novel machines is Tob's favorite, and he also has the talent for it.
When the Mountain and his party returned, outside Clegane Keep, Lord Gavin, the Mountain's father-in-law, his fiancée Jenny Westerling, Mrs. Ellen, the kitchen steward, Julie Clegane, the adopted daughter, Maester Harry, the stable steward Thomas Mann, the Clegane Keep general steward Notebook, and the landowners who had finished their farm work and helped build houses in Clegane Village all came out to greet them.