Before going to Huizhou, when talking about food, the first thing that comes to mind is Su Dongpo's braised pork with plum vegetables. However, after leaving Huizhou, the most unforgettable thing is Hakka bean curd.
At the first meal in Huizhou, I was immediately attracted when the waiter served tofu with minced meat in the middle.
I have never seen such tofu, fried golden tofu, square, hollowed out in the middle and stuffed with meat. Meat stuffing is the stuffing we made in jiaozi. The main body is pork, mixed with mushrooms, onions, ginger and minced garlic. Pick one up and put it in your mouth. Tofu is thin and soft, and the meat is greasy and fragrant, which is hard to describe.
Someone told me that this is Hakka tofu.
Brewing is said to be Hakka, which means putting stuffing in something.
From then on, in a few days in Huizhou, no matter where you eat and see a foreigner, the store will recommend Hakka tofu.
This way of "filling" makes me curious. I soon discovered that stuffing with meat is a common practice in Huizhou. Not only tofu, but also eggplant, bitter gourd and pepper can be stuffed with meat, which are called stuffed eggplant, bitter gourd and tiger skin pepper respectively. In order to let guests eat a variety of stuffed dishes at one time, some restaurants directly offer "three treasures of stuffing", that is, they can put stuffed tofu together on a plate.
The most unforgettable meal, Hakka bean curd brain, was not in a grand hotel or a high-end restaurant, but in Luofu Mountain.
At noon that day, I climbed the mountain halfway up the mountain and went to the dining area. I found an open-air table at the railing and began to order. Hakka bean curd, of course.
Tofu is different at the first bite. The meat stuffing is salty, but the soup is sweet. If you eat it, your taste buds will burst. There are many kinds of tofu in Huizhou, but I always remember the tofu in Luofu Mountain.
I found that in Guangdong, tofu as the ingredient is south tofu, and the unique tofu brewed by Hakkas is north tofu, which is the kind of brine tofu. It is said that in Guangdong, only Hakkas order brine tofu, because they have inherited the customs of the Central Plains.
Yes, Hakkas come from the Central Plains. It is generally believed that a large number of Central Plains people moved south in the late Northern Song Dynasty to avoid the war of the Jin Army, but it is also said that the Central Plains people moved south from the Eight Kings Rebellion and the Five Rebellions in the Western Jin Dynasty.
They settled in Hunan, Fujian, Gannan, Lingnan and other places, and some continued to move far away, crossing the Strait to Taiwan Province Province and Nanyang.
I thought, since Hakkas are from the Central Plains, making tofu must have something to do with the Central Plains, so I want to check whether there is tofu or close relatives' food in the Central Plains today.
When I was traveling in the Central Plains, I paid special attention to finding fermented bean curd. From Luoyang in western Henan to Kaifeng in eastern Henan, from Zhengzhou in northern Henan to Nanyang in southern Henan, and even in Shangqiu, the birthplace of Zhao Kuangyin and Zhao Gou, I didn't find the existence of sufu, nor did I find any special tofu.
It seems that making tofu has nothing to do with today's Central Plains. I guess it may have something to do with the war in the Central Plains, which is thousands of miles away and desolate. Therefore, there is a saying that the locust tree in Hongdong, Shanxi Province immigrated in the early Ming Dynasty. People are gone, and of course the eating customs are gone.
At the same time, I also found that no matter where they are, as long as they are Hakkas, they all speak the same language. It is said that Ella of S.H.E spoke in Hakka in a documentary, and the Hakka people in northern Guangdong fully understood it. However, in today's Central Plains, that language has disappeared. Does that mean that the dietary customs in the Central Plains, like the language, disappeared with the disappearance of the population in the Central Plains and the southward migration?
I didn't give up. I thought of the words and novels of that year, which may be recorded there.
I searched Tokyo Dream and Water Margin, and the words describing the life of the Song people were exquisite enough, but I still couldn't find the piece of fermented bean curd. Not in the famous Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival.
Later, a chef told me that the relationship between Hakka tofu and the Central Plains has nothing to do with tofu, but with the form of brewing-meat stuffing.
People in the Central Plains love jiaozi very much, but in the south, they seldom see flour. Hakka people who can't eat jiaozi in the New Year must scratch their heads, so they will change their minds when they are poor (poverty means exhaustion, and there is really no way out). They hollowed out the bittern tofu in the Central Plains, put in the meat stuffing, and wrapped it in jiaozi, and there was tofu. Later, according to the prescription, there are eggplant, bitter gourd and pepper. Later, yuba, eggs, taro and green garlic ... formed a Hakka food culture that could not be brewed without vegetables.
According to textual research, the fermented dishes in the eight major cuisines are all from Hakka cuisine.
There is no record of making tofu in Tokyo Dream, but there is a record of jiaozi. It records the grand banquet of the court like this: "From the royal banquet to the three lanterns, there must be wine and meat, salted black beans, fried meat and double hump horns." Hump trough is the jiaozi of hump meat. Hump is said to be an ancient delicacy and extremely expensive!
Hakka bean curd originated in jiaozi, but it is no longer confined to jiaozi, jumping out of the category of jiaozi and becoming an independent food series. It has not only dishes but also desserts.
Outside the gate of Luofu Mountain, there are a wide variety of brands and flavors of tofu desserts at the entrance of street pavement, which are colorful and make people feel a little dizzy for a while.
Unlike Hakka tofu flower, dessert tofu flower is more like southern tofu flower, also called tofu flower. There are bean curd flowers, red bean curd flowers, and then subdivided, there are crystal sugar bean curd flowers, kidney bean crystal sugar bean curd flowers, and even bean curd double skin milk.
The most famous dessert tofu is landscape tofu and Hakka po tofu. And the most unforgettable dessert tofu I have ever eaten is iced tofu.
It was very hot in summer on the day I went to Luofu Mountain. I ordered a box of iced tofu, and I ate a spoonful. Tender tofu is sweet and slippery, while My Sweetie is greasy. Take a bite, and the sweet and cold feeling is refreshing. Compared with ice cream, it is low in calories and rich in nutrition.
The production of sufu is very simple. Cut tofu into pieces, dig holes and put meat in it. The meat stuffing is similar to our dumpling stuffing, except that mushrooms are added and fried on both sides, onion, ginger and garlic are added and fried in oil, water, soy sauce and oyster sauce are added, and tofu is added and fried until the juice is collected.
The production of tofu flower is also very simple: first, soak soybeans in clear water for 4 or 5 hours; Squeeze into soybean milk, and filter the bean dregs with filter cloth; Boil the filtered soybean milk to 95℃, then pour in a proper amount of gypsum water, stir well, and after cooling, the white and tender tofu flower will be freshly baked.
Brewing tofu is the nostalgia of Hakka people for the Central Plains through eating and drinking, and it is the constant concern of their descendants for their ancestral homeland.
Behind the food is the bitterness of a thousand-year migration of an ethnic group. Tofu is delicious, but the history of tofu is very vicissitudes.
I think, in the future, I will forget everything I ate in Huizhou, and I will not forget to make tofu. And I will always tell people who want to go to Huizhou that Huizhou has not only Daya Bay and Luofu Mountain, but also braised pork with plum vegetables and Hakka tofu.