Guobazhou

In the early years, I used primitive cookers to cook, and the iron pot was very easy to make rice crust. The crispy rice is attached to the bottom of the pot, which is especially hard when eaten. Jiangnan people like to mash crispy rice and add water to make crispy rice porridge, which is more delicious than normal rice. The best crispy rice is the crispy rice stewed in a firewood stove. Golden crisp, but not burnt. When cooking with rice soup, you only need a few salted radish strips to stimulate your appetite. Now there are also special hotels that make crispy rice and cook it with rice soup. This is a kind of pop production, like online literature, but it tastes good. Last year, I was in Huanggang, and I had a big drink with Xiong Wenxiang, He Cunzhong, Chen Minggang and Wang Brothers on the edge of Dongpo Chibi. After drinking, I drank crispy rice porridge, and chopped vegetables (shepherd's purse) were added to crispy rice porridge, which was not only fragrant.

But what I remember most about eating crispy rice porridge in Huanggang is the ancestral temple in Huangmei the year before last. The famous temples in Huangmei are Sizu Temple, Wuzu Temple and Laozu Temple. The first two temples were presided over by Dao Xin and Hongren respectively. Wuzu Temple wants to say a few words. Wuzu Temple is located in Dongfeng Maoshan, or Dongshan Temple for short. The Biography of Huineng, the Sixth Ancestor of Buddhism, said that Huineng was surnamed Lu and was from Zhuoxian County, Hebei Province. My father was an official in Lingnan and adopted his mother by selling firewood. I heard it from the Diamond Sutra, and I inquired about Zen forbearance from the Maoshan Mountain in Dongfeng. He chased the Pearl River to the Yangtze River, arrived at Wuzu Temple, and found himself there. One day, in order to test the understanding of Zen and prepare to teach it, Hong Ren ordered everyone to do a test. At that time, Shen Xiu was recognized as a successor, so he published a sentence: "You are a bodhi tree, and your heart is like a mirror. Wipe hard and don't make dust. " . Hong Ren looked at it and said to Zen: If future generations can practice according to this, they will also win. Please recite it. Huineng heard more than 700 monks chanting loudly in his room. He felt very ordinary and had no Zen intention, so he also made a poem. He can't read, so he asked someone to write it on the wall. He said: "Bodhi has no trees, and the mirror is not a stage; Nothing, where is the dust! " . It was a great success, and even if Master Hongren changed his mind, he decided to pass on the mantle to Huineng. There is a strange tree behind Wuzu Temple. The lower end of each branch has many bends, and the upper end is straight, like the reflection of a bamboo pole twisted by waves in water. I wonder what it has to do with Zen.

After seeing Wuzu Temple, I think I have to go to Laozu Temple. The ancestral temple is located in Wei Zi, the hometown of Huangmei bitter bamboo. Wei Zi has many huge stones, bamboo forests grow on the stones, and wild goats cry proudly. When I arrived at the ancestral temple, it was dusk, and no one came and went, only insects chirped. I lived in the temple and ate vegetarian food. The only owner is Master Wei, a 69-year-old woman, with her upper front teeth hanging alone and wearing a black monk's hat. She cooks with a wooden stove and an iron pot, and a pot is buried next to the stove. When cooking, she added some rice soup to it, and after eating, she soaked the crispy rice with hot rice soup, which was really delicious. There are only two kinds of dishes, fried tofu strips with clear oil and salted radish strips, which are delicious. The lamp is a long candle, and there is a bright moon hanging on the top of the mountain outside the door.

The ancestral temple was bombed by the Japanese air force. The temple on the ruins was rebuilt a few years ago, and its spirit is not as good as before. When sleeping in the guest house of pilgrims, there is a big hole in the bed, and the night wind is like a scratching hand.

It is said that there is a new trend in cookers, and chip-controlled electric cookers can't burn rice crust. Think about this pot, Ding Gang. Dinggang can only be seen occasionally in the backcountry. Like the iron pot, it is made of cast iron and looks like a tripod in the Forbidden City, but it has no ears and three feet, a pointed bottom, a circle of straight sides, and four symmetrical holes on both sides, with iron wire as the handle. Generally, the tripod is covered with wood or cast iron, which is matched with the tripod. A rice cooker can be used to simmer soup or stew rice. Last year, in a blacksmith's shop in Majiacun, I saw an iron pot hanging on the iron stove, with soybeans and pig's trotters stewed in it. According to historical records, Ding was a kind of cooker that existed in Xia and Shang Dynasties, and many words expressing grandeur and power used the word Ding. Winning the world is "winning the Central Plains", and the rich family is the home of "Zhong Ming Shi Ding". Shi Ding said that he ate while eating, and when he ate, he ate a lot, just like the buffet in Tongli Bar in Sanlitun, and the richness of the food can be imagined. Ding is also much more noble than iron pot. The word "Ding Dangyu" means "using a tripod as an iron pot and jade as a rotten stone", which means wasting food indiscriminately. It's just that it's hard to figure out why a clumsy and ugly iron pot for cooking and simmering soup is regarded as a symbol of power by emperors. In the Forbidden City, the tripod is gilded. According to the report of Eight-Nation Alliance Commander Vadexi to the German emperor, Russian soldiers scraped gold from the tripod.

Cooking used to be a pot, and it was easy to carbonize rice. Without this shortcoming, the pot is really good. Braised rice crust contains the balance of life, or the doctrine of the mean. When the rice crust is stewed, it is not so fragrant, and it is more bitter and worse. It's just that the temperature is moderate, crisp but not fragrant, and the porridge is cooked in golden color and fragrant. Elegant Suzhou people call crispy rice porridge "soup with a hundred shovels", which reminds people of the way housewives shovel crispy rice.