It is not difficult to find that many tourist attractions, such as Wangfujing and Nanluoguxiang, are under the signs of old Beijing. A foreigner stood at the door, screaming at the top of his lungs about authentic old Beijing flavor, noodles with dregs sauce, tripe and mustard tuber. I don't know which master came up with it, so he went to eat three different dishes.
Strictly speaking, mustard heap is a traditional New Year's dish in old Beijing. As the name implies, it is specially eaten by Beijingers during the New Year. Few people usually eat it. Beijingers have a rule for Chinese New Year. From the first day to the fifth day, cooking is not allowed at home. This is before the New Year and in the twelfth month. This kind of food can be eaten in advance when it is cooked in the pot.
In the past, Beijing people's living standards were low, and most of the Chinese New Year was chicken, duck and fish. There are no green plates on the table. The highest standard family dinner is "eight bowls", including stewed chicken, yellow croaker, elbow, braised pork, loose meat, ribs, rice noodles and four welcome balls. Look, it's all hard goods.
The average family in Beijing is not so particular about eating. Before the Chinese New Year, my hometown people always make a frying pan, first fry the goods, such as hairtail, meatballs and tofu, then stew the meat on the stove and steam the steamed bread. They used to live in a painting, which is colder than now. After the food is cooked, put it in the pot and put it in the shade of the yard.
Take whatever you eat, but no one can stand eating these big fish and meat one day, so you have to prepare two vegetarian dishes. One is to cook for two winters. To put it bluntly, mushrooms and bamboo shoots can be fried together, and they can be eaten directly as hot dishes, even cold dishes, because the oil is small, just like assorted vegetables sold in supermarkets in niujie.
Another is today's protagonist's stubble pile, which can not only help you scrape your intestines and eat too much, but also make you cry. In the past, the old Beijing tabloid introduced mustard heap, saying that it could enlighten elegant people and help the poor in trouble. At that time, in old Beijing, every winter when Chinese cabbage came on the market, Beijingers and families began to buy vegetables and prepare mustard tuber.
Whether it is a big hotel or a small restaurant, this dish will be prepared. The most typical time-honored casserole house, the fixed collocation of Chinese cabbage and mustard, has continued to this day, and its reputation has never been reversed. Authentic old Beijing mustard mound has a refreshing effect, and mustard is carefully selected.
The mustard powder used by Beijingers is ground from the mature seeds of mustard, followed by the pure Chinese cabbage. The old sticks outside should be peeled off to make other food. At present, the mustard piles sold in restaurants are all made of cabbage cut into leaves and rolled into a roll, purely to reduce costs and fool people.
You know, the mustard mound in old Beijing is favored by Beijingers, and it is not just a simple Chinese cabbage mixed with mustard powder. Every step is exquisite. If you don't want big leaves, you need a cabbage with cucumber strips in the middle. You don't need to roll it by hand at all. You can cut it directly. It's all fragments, and then you can put it in the hedge and blanch it a little. Time can't be too long.
Prepare a porcelain lining basin, put cabbage hearts one by one, pour yellow mustard powder into cold boiled water, adjust mustard sauce, add some salt, sugar, white vinegar and sesame oil, and then pour it on the cabbage. Even if the mustard mound is made, the amount of mustard powder on each layer should completely cover the cabbage, and the sugar added is almost half of that of mustard powder.
Marinate for 24 hours, and this pot full of mustard mounds should also be placed outside and served directly when eating. I am tired of eating big fish and meat. Come to mustard mound, it's cold, sour, sweet and crisp, and the strong road runs straight from my mouth to my nose, making you burst into tears and tired. Besides, it is appetizing.
Mustard stew in old Beijing 100 years ago, the emperor especially liked this dish when he was in the Forbidden City for the New Year. Like Beijingers, he lives entirely by storing Chinese cabbage in winter. Because Beijing always pays attention to not eating out of season, so does the emperor's family. The last emperor Puyi wrote a memoir called "I was the first half of my life".
There is a record on the imperial menu that the emperor often eats in winter. Puyi ate three courses in addition to chicken, duck, fish and meat in the palace that year, and added a little vitamin. One is stewed cabbage with sliced meat, the other is stewed cabbage with braised pork, and the other is fried shredded cabbage with pepper oil. Braised pork is a traditional food in old Beijing. To put it bluntly, it is to put the meat in the roast duck oven and eat it directly when it is cooked.
In a word, we Beijingers can't have a New Year's Eve without this refreshing and appetizing mustard mound. Now only old Beijingers can do it. On the contrary, it has become the specialty of major restaurants, with the price rising exponentially and the taste long and complicated. In fact, Beijing cuisine is only cooked by old Beijingers.
With mustard, crispy fish, fried meatballs and aspic, this is the real Beijing-style New Year's Eve. The taste of the year has faded, and Beijingers can only look for memories from these delicious foods!