Unlike the slow-paced morning tea in Guangzhou, Wuhan people usually have no time to sit down and chew slowly, hold it in their hands or carry it in their bags, and rush to work or school. So Regan Noodles, bean curd skin and noodles nest followed people and shuttled through the streets of three towns in Wuhan.
This is a city-wide sport in Wuhan every day, which is called "premature birth".
Even if the heavy rain turns the city upside down, Wuhan people can't be too early.
The breakfast capital of Wuhan
"Little girls learn from giants and wake up in the morning; Wait a minute. It's still early to comb my hair and eat dumplings together. " In the 30th year of Qing Daoguang (A.D. 1850), the word "unripe" was first used to express breakfast in Ye's engraving of Hankou Ci. At this point, Wuhan people have been "premature" 166 years.
Indeed, among the three meals a day, Wuhan people attach the most importance to premature birth. Moreover, Wuhan people don't have the habit of cooking breakfast at home, and they all buy it at roadside stalls. The roadside stalls in the three towns of Wuhan are very developed. There used to be stalls in almost every street, but now the management is strict, but many shops still put stoves and oil pans at the gate.
Cai Lan, a Hong Kong gourmet, once called Wuhan "the breakfast capital". Its premature importance in Wuhan can be compared with dinner, and its variety is rare in the world. There was once a netizen Weibo who basked in the sun for 28 days too early. Chi Li, a writer in Wuhan, also ordered breakfast in Wuhan in her work "Whether it's hot or cold, whether it's alive or not": "Old Tongcheng's bean skin, a fragrant and big bag, Cai's Regan Noodles, Tan Yanji's jiaozi, Tian Hengqi's paste soup rice noodles, hearty assorted bean curd, old beef jerky fried beans, steamed buns in the people's livelihood canteen, Wufangzhai. In fact, this is just a famous time-honored brand in Wuhan, and there are countless names in the streets.
Every morning, the streets of Wuhan are full of such scenes: breakfast stalls all over the street, people buying breakfast all over the street, and people eating while walking all over the street. This is the most unique street custom in Wuhan.
The skill of Wuhan people is that not only Lamian Noodles and roasted plums can be eaten while walking, but even Regan Noodles and beef noodles can be pulled into their mouths while walking, and the speed is extremely fast. Three times five divided by two, a bowl of noodles was swallowed. Of course, this habit also leads to frequent accidents, such as buses or subways. If you don't agree with each other, you will deduct a bowl of noodles.
How many options are there too early?
Different from dim sum in Cantonese morning tea, Wuhan people's premature choice is very messy and there is no strict systematic division.
Breakfast in Wuhan is roughly divided into four series-
Noodles series: Regan Noodles, beef noodles, beef powder, paste soup powder and shredded beans.
Fried: bean skin, noodle nest, steamed noodle nest, soda Baba, fried buns, glutinous rice chicken, Huanxituo, sesame oil.
Steaming system: roasted plums, glutinous rice wrapped fritters, and soup packets.
Drinks: rice wine paste, egg flower wine.
Let's start with the noodle system:
Wuhan dry noodles
Regan Noodles is the symbol of Wuhan's precocity-the most famous and distinctive. When the alkaline noodles stop in boiling water, scoop them up and drain them. Pour sesame oil on them and stir well. Spread them out and cool them for later use. If it is too early, grab a handful of cold noodles and put them in a sieve with a long handle, a sharp bottom and a round mouth. Cook the noodles until they are cooked, drain them and put them in a bowl. Then, pick up the ladle and add salt, soy sauce, diced spicy radish, chopped green onion, pepper, monosodium glutamate and sugar. , and put a spoonful of brine on it, and finally drizzle with sesame sauce. A bowl of Regan Noodles usually takes only two or three minutes to make.
Regan Noodles quickly mixed with hot air, and the aroma of sesame paste mixed with the aroma of noodles itself, which immediately aroused people's appetite. The core of Regan Noodles is sesame sauce, which is so good that people feel fragrant. But now, in order to save costs, many merchants use peanut butter instead of sesame paste or mix the two, and the taste of Regan Noodles is greatly reduced.
Speaking of being the best booth in Regan Noodles, Cai is well known, and many tourists come to Wuhan to ask for Cai. However, with the chain expansion in recent years, Cai's taste has declined, but the price has been rising. "China on the Tip of the Tongue" once chose to shoot Tianji Noodle Restaurant on Jianghan Second Road in Hankou. "Everyday Regan Noodles" and "Bearded Regan Noodles" are outstanding representatives of Hankou and Wuchang Regan Noodles respectively.
Beef noodles beef noodles
Unlike Lanzhou beef noodles, which pay attention to "one clear 230 red, four yellow and five green", Wuhan beef is marinated, and the soup of marinated beef is spicy and sweet, with a unique taste.
The beef noodles in Wuhan are also halal. The earliest beef noodle restaurant in Hankou was first opened by Muslims. There used to be a Muslim community at Liudu Bridge and Sanmin Road in Hankou. Chi Li also specifically mentioned beef rice noodles in Qinghe, Hankou, but now Qinghe no longer exists.
To test the quality of a beef noodle restaurant, in addition to the lack of taste of noodle soup, there is also the question of whether the rice noodles will break soon after being sandwiched in.
Paste powder
Paste soup powder is a special snack in Wuhan, which is full of the characteristics of the land of fish and rice.
There are many rivers and lakes in the three towns of Wuhan, and many fish and shrimps are shot down every day, especially small fish and shrimps. In the early years, there were no storage conditions. If you don't sell them, they will stink the next day, so some people think of using them for breakfast.
Boil the small fish and shrimp in water until they become soup, skim off the residue and leave a thick soup as thick as rice soup. Blanch the rice flour, take it out and put it in a bowl, pour a spoonful of thick soup, then sprinkle with salt, pepper, Jiang Mo and chopped green onion. They are unique in color and rich in flavor.
It's too early. You should eat the soup powder together with the fried dough sticks. Some fried dough sticks are dipped in the soup, and some fried dough sticks are torn into small pieces and soaked in the soup, but they are all full of flavor.
Broken beans
Bean shreds are a specialty of huangpi district. They are made by grinding mung beans and rice into pulp and scattering them in peaches to dry. It is cooked with beef soup or other ingredients when eating. If the amount of mung beans in this mixed food of rice and mung beans is less, the taste of shredded beans will be much worse.
Tang Zeng, a culinary master, wrote in an article: "Wuchang's shredded beef and beans are very famous."
After the noodle series, let's talk about the early fried series.
skin of soya-bean milk
As the name implies, bean skin is related to beans. Mung beans and rice are mixed according to a certain proportion, soaked for several hours and ground for later use. Heat a large iron pot, pour the oil, then scoop the rice slurry into the pot and spread it into a thin round piece. Spread the eggs on the rice paste and turn them over. At this time, they appear shiny golden yellow.
Then, mix steamed glutinous rice, boiled diced mushrooms, fried diced pork or diced beef, diced dried pork and Jiang Mo, spread them on the rice paste, sprinkle with pepper, salt and a lot of chopped green onion, then turn them over, sprinkle with a spoonful of oil and water, cover the pot and stew for two minutes, and a large pot of golden bean skin is ready. The small shovel cuts the bean skin into a grid, and each bean skin is basically two or three small squares. Put it in a small bowl and those chopsticks can be eaten.
The amount of oil is the most important factor to make a good bean skin. Too much oil will lose the tender and crisp taste, and the surface of soybean skin without oil will dry.
Laotongcheng is the most famous bean skin shop in Wuhan. Like countless time-honored brands, it was a public-private partnership that kept the store name after it became famous. At present, the founder of Master Wang's bean skin museum, the most famous in Wuhan, used to work as a cashier in Old Tongcheng, and absorbed many bean skin masters in Old Tongcheng to open this bean skin museum.
China donuts
Mianwo is an authentic Wuhan specialty. Although it's called a noodle nest, it's not pasta. It is made by mixing rice and soybean into paste, adding appropriate amount of chopped green onion and salt to taste and frying. It looks simple, but it is not easy to do.
The ratio of rice to soybeans is very important. Without soybeans, the taste of noodles is not fragrant. If there are more soybeans, the dimples will be very oily, so it is not that the more soybeans, the better.
The spoon of fried noodles is also very distinctive. This spoon is concave around and convex in the middle. When frying noodles, scoop a spoonful of rice paste to one side, scrape it in the middle, then sprinkle with sesame seeds and put it in the pot. There is a lot of rice paste in the pit, which is soft and glutinous when fried; The convex part has less rice paste and is brittle when fried. One kind of food, giving consideration to two tastes.
Mianmianwo
Sweet potato is sweet potato in Wuhan dialect, and sweet potato noodle nest is also made of sweet potato.
Wash and peel the sweet potato, cut it into dices and put it in the rice slurry. When frying, scoop the spoon into the frying pan and pat the oil pan. The characteristics of noodle pits are crisp outside and soft inside, salty and sweet.
Whether it is a noodle nest or a noodle nest, it can be used alone too early, or it can be used as food together with Regan Noodles, rice flour or noodle soup.
Soda Baba
Soda Baba, that is, rice Baba, is not only found in Wu Hanyou, but also in all parts of Hubei.
This is a pure rice food. After the rice is ground into pulp, it is slightly fermented with mash, so that the mouth of Baba has a soft sweetness, but the aftertaste is a little sour and the taste is three-dimensional.
The iron pot for making soda Baba is very big, with a diameter of one meter to one and a half meters. There is a pit in the center of the iron pot, and the periphery is flat. After the pot is hot, add rice paste into the pot, and two pieces of rice paste are connected together to be a complete rice Baba. After adding rice slurry, add water to the middle pit, cover the lid and increase the fire. In this way, the rice slurry below will soon explode into a hard shell, and the water in the pit will generate a lot of steam to steam the other side of rice Baba. Soda Babali's "soda" refers to this.
One side of the rice Baba made by this method looks like a crisp cake, and the other side is as soft and waxy as a cake. There is no shop specializing in soda Baba in Wuhan, and street stalls can be seen everywhere. Some people put a noodle nest between two pieces of soda Baba, which is called "Wuhan sandwich".
Fried steamed bread
Fried buns are not unique snacks in Wuhan. In terms of fame, fried buns in Suzhou and Shanghai are more famous. However, the status of fried dumplings in the immature world of Wuhan is not low. Nowadays, Regan Noodles, bean skin, rice wine paste and fried dumplings are essential snacks in Minsheng candy stores in Wuhan.
The fried dumplings in Wuhan are smaller than those in Shanghai and different from those in Suzhou, Shanghai. Fried buns in Wuhan are all dipped in sauce, and each sauce tastes different. The demand for fried buns in Sanzhen Minsheng candy store is largely due to the delicious dipping sauce.
Glutinous rice with lotus leaf
There is a lotus leaf glutinous rice chicken in Cantonese tea, but the glutinous rice chicken in Wuhan is completely different from it, because there is no chicken in Wuhan glutinous rice chicken.
To be precise, this snack should be called Tangyuan, which is made of glutinous rice wrapped in pork belly, mushrooms, diced bamboo shoots and diced dried mushrooms, then wrapped in batter and fried in a pot until golden, with crispy outer layer and soft and salty inner layer. As for why it is called glutinous rice chicken, some people think that the fried glutinous rice chicken is golden in appearance, uneven in surface and shaped like chicken skin, so it is called glutinous rice chicken.
Glutinous rice chicken is one of the most common snacks in Wuhan. Any stall with fried snacks will be served with glutinous rice chicken.