Although Suzhou people like sweetness is a dietary habit since ancient times, the taste of Jiangsu cuisine is by no means so single. Subang cuisine has never been famous for its good use of spices, but that doesn't mean it can't use spices.
In Suzhou, there is a kind of stew called "Cihuo", which is a non-mainstream food with less "Soviet-style" flavor. The appearance of the product is shiny, the meat is fresh and tender, sweet and delicious, the aroma is attractive, the meat is crisp but not rotten, the oil is not greasy, and the teeth and lips remain fragrant after eating, which makes people linger. This dish is not a new dish recently developed, but a traditional food that has been circulated for many years in the suburbs of Suzhou, such as Changshu and Xiangcheng District.
There is a fried vegetable shop named Ming Sheng old game shop near the bridge in Yangyuan community of xin zhuang zhen, which is at the junction of Jiangsu and Changshu. This is a lovers' shop. The master's name is Pu. He wears a pair of glasses and is nearly sixty years old. The storefront is a two-story new building built by itself on the street. There is a bedroom upstairs, a storefront on the first floor below, and a front shop and a back room.
Yangyuan and even people around him know that this old shop has been buying cooked food since the mid-1980s. Ming Sheng's wife Zhai Ahui specializes in sales in the store. Occasionally, her son and daughter-in-law will come from the city to help look after the business in the store.
In his thirties, Ming Sheng began to learn from his grandfather to make exquisite goods. The fancy goods he made are more in line with the tastes of the public and are widely sought after. In Ming Sheng's hands, his fame spread gradually.
For more than 30 years, his delicacies have been known to women and children in xin zhuang zhen and surrounding towns, and even foreigners working in xin zhuang zhen have come to buy early adopters. Anyone who has bought and tasted his delicious food appreciates that Ming Sheng's delicious food is authentic and unique, which is unique in Suzhou.
Every time I pass Yangyuan, I always like to go to the shops in Ming Sheng to buy things. Because it is convenient to buy fried food, you don't have to cook more when you go back. By the way, you can drink two cups and mix cooked food with wine. It's still quite comfortable. I bought it many times and got to know the boss's wife, Hui. It's all villagers. Every time I go, the boss's wife, Hui, greets me. After a while, I knew each other.
Yangyuan has a history of 100 years. According to the older generation, in the 1980s, when Yangyuan was still a town, several delicatessens opened one after another. Now Yangyuan has eight delicatessens. Some even open online stores and sell Yangyuantang products all over the country.
In the dictionary, "eat" means "simmer and cook" and can be used to "boil". However, in Suzhou dialect, the pronunciation and meaning of "one" and "endure" are completely different, so obviously they cannot be equated. "Cue" is a special term in Suzhou, which refers to this kind of halogen product with unique fragrance.
The practice of mixed goods is very similar to that of halogen products, with emphasis on its spices, which are the soul of mixed goods. Yangyuan roasted seeds and nuts adopt traditional technology and add 10 kinds of natural spices, such as clove, cinnamon, fruit, angelica dahurica, cinnamon, star anise and nutmeg. Mix them in proportion, put them into gauze bags, and make them into "old soup" with yellow wine and vegetable oil. A pot full of spices depends on this exclusive secret bag.
A pot of dark red brine looks like a pot of Chinese medicine. The freshly prepared brine will have a strong taste of traditional Chinese medicine, and you can smell the rich aroma from a distance. Every store has a different spice formula, and every household has its own unique formula, which must not be spread abroad. Many shops will keep their own old brine, and each kind of cooked meat has left a delicious mark in the soup.
In slow fire, chickens, ducks and geese gradually drain the excess oil from the pot and blend it with the essence of Chinese herbal medicines and spices. Every inch of the restored body is full of delicious food. Cooked dishes without soy sauce, bright skin color, yellow, fragrant. It tastes tender but not rotten, rich and full, and the lingering fragrance in the hand shows the subtle charm of Jiangnan.
There are few vegetarian dishes in Yangyuan, except goose, chicken, duck, pig's head, pig's ear and pig's foot. There are mainly ten varieties, namely: goose, chicken, duck, rabbit, chicken claw, goose claw, pig head, pig foot, beef and quail. All kinds of delicious fresh stews are stored in cabinets and sold now every day. When they are sold out, customers can get fresh loans every day.
The most classic taste of Yangyuan is gooseberry. Even in many people's minds, "gooseberry" is equivalent to "gooseberry". Goose is tougher than chicken, easier to taste than pork and beef, and the ratio of oil to lean meat is just right, so it is most suitable for stuffing.
The selection of geese is also very particular, generally weighing five or six pounds, fat and thin should be uniform, thin, oil is not enough, the fragrance will not come out; Fat and full of fragrance, this meat head is tired of eating.
When the old goose meets the pot, when the homesickness meets the delicious food, these whimsy, which shuttle between heaven and earth, linger in the tongue and roll in the soup and fire, construct our own delicious food, and also create a touching "Yangyuan flavor" invisibly, which has gradually become a representative food specialty in the eyes of Changshu and Suzhou, and has become an old-fashioned restaurant memory in Changshu and Suzhou.
With the development of traffic information and the flow of population, the delicious food, which was originally popular in a small area at the junction of Changshu and Suzhou, has gradually become familiar and loved by people around and new citizens from other places, and has become the favorite of many diners. At the same time, with the development of logistics, Yangyuan has gradually stepped out of Changshu, Suzhou and even the whole country.
For a long time, Yangyuan's local food business cards have won high recognition from diners for their unique cooking techniques and excellent reputation for pure taste. People in Xinzhuang, eating Yangyuan cuisine, have become a lingering nostalgic complex. No matter how history changes, we can't help but be moved by the magic between man and nature and the tacit understanding between life and food when we mention the business card of "nourishing yuan and delicious food".
Local accent is easy to change, and memory will fade. Only the experience between lips and teeth will remain the same for life: only the tongue is down and the heart is up. Commodities have the taste of river water, wind and rain, time and space, human feelings and memories. ...
All the smells are the real present, the living water of the present. There are subtle differences in food in various counties and towns in the suburbs of Suzhou. Like accents, although they are all Suzhou dialects, they will be different every few tens of miles or even a river, which shows the diversity of Suzhou food culture.