Nanjing, Zhenjiang, Yangzhou, Gaoyou and Huai 'an all have dried silk. I think Yangzhou is the birthplace. This is one of the representative works of Huaiyang cuisine, and many recipes are recorded. But it's actually not a dish. Dried silk is not used for eating, but for drinking tea.

People in Yangzhou have the habit of eating morning tea. Some people say that Yangzhou people "pack bags in the morning and water at night." "Water foreskin" means bathing, and "bag water" means drinking tea. There are many teahouses in the counties of Yangba genus. Going to the teahouse is not just drinking tea, but eating steamed stuffed bun snacks. It's a bit like drinking tea in Guangdong. In Guangdong, teahouses are pushed by waiters (called "full" in the past) with built-in packages and asked by customers' fingers. The teahouse in Yangzhou is booked by customers once and moved one by one. Now that it is wrapped and steamed, it will take a while. Most people who go to teahouses want a dried silk. Drinking tea and eating dried silk not only kills time, but also stimulates appetite.

A special kind of dried bean curd, big and square, is sliced with a thin blade and then cut into filaments, which is dried silk. Pay attention to a piece of dried bean curd, 16, shredded as thin as a ponytail, one piece connected to another. At first, it seemed to be just a dry silk perm. Blanch the dried silk in a boiling water pot, drain the water, pile it into a pagoda shape in a bowl, and sprinkle with sesame oil, good soy sauce and vinegar. In the past, bowls filled with dried silk were specially made, white and blue, with slightly higher feet and deeper belly, which was convenient for mixing dried silk. Now it's an ordinary big bowl. My father often takes a bag of spiced peanuts, grinds off the skin, carries a handful of green garlic, and asks the waiter to cut it into small pieces, scald it a little, and mix it with dried silk, which has a special taste. This is probably his invention. Dried silk smells delicious and the tea is just right. Eat a handful of dried silk and drink half a cup of tea. How beautiful! Yangzhou people love to drink "double spelling" when drinking tea. They poured a packet of Longjing and fragrant slices into the pot to soak together, which was extremely inadequate. Fortunately, oolong tea and Longjing tea are not mixed together.

I don't know when the dried pork was made. Hang the shrimp in soup, put the dried pork into the pot, add the shredded ham and chicken, and cook until it tastes good. Don't worry about losing flavor, you can also add shredded mushrooms. In the season with winter bamboo shoots, you can add shredded winter bamboo shoots. In short, the taste of dried silk should be pure, and the taste of boiled silk might as well be rich. But no crabs, clams, oysters or clams. That will distract you, so you can't eat dried silk.

There is no dried bean curd suitable for cutting dried silk in Beijing. Occasionally, it is "big white dry", with loose texture and easy to break when shredding. As a last resort, take Gaobeidian tofu slices instead and finely cut Yangzhou dried vegetables, but choose thin and tough slices. This dish has become a reserved program for my occasional family dinner.

Nie Hualing, a Chinese-American woman writer, and her husband, Paul Angel, came to Beijing and asked for dinner at my house. I will cook for myself. I prepared some dishes for her. I forgot a few dishes except a big bowl of boiled dried silk. Hua Ling was full, and finally picked up the bowl and drank all the remaining soup. Hualing is from Hubei. When she was young, she ate boiled dried silk, but it was not easy to eat in America. There are Cantonese restaurants, Sichuan restaurants and Hunan restaurants in the United States, but there seem to be few Huaiyang restaurants. I cooked this dish on purpose to tease her hometown! I feel good about my dry silk. This is soup hung on scallops. As I said before, do not cook dried silk too thick.

Edited on 2020-0