In my opinion, the flavor of the year condenses on the tip of the tongue, and year after year, we grow up slowly in this flavor of the year.
Although there is an old saying that "when you enter the twelfth lunar month, it is the New Year", at present, the excitement of the New Year seems to have started at an early age. Jiaozi unveiled her veil for the first time at the beginning of the grand Spring Festival.
Jiaozi will always be the most important role in China's New Year dinner table. Jiaozi means to make friends when you are young. No matter how the year passes, jiaozi in the Spring Festival will always be a year-end feast for the whole family. "Comfortable but lying down, delicious but jiaozi." Jiaozi is delicious, and the stuffing in jiaozi is changeable, which makes people never tire of eating more.
In my hometown, dumpling stuffing is always a classic leek pork stuffing. The leek is tender and juicy, and the leek just bought and picked is greener. The family sat together, with some newspapers on the ground, picking leeks together. The taste of the year and the taste of home are here, slowly sublimating. Pork is best cut by hand and can be chewed clearly one by one. It's better to have some fat. The fat but not greasy pork combined with the fresh fragrance of leeks perfectly explained the taste of that year.
Jiaozi is the best combination of leek and pork, but the jiaozi you want to eat at midnight on New Year's Eve is vegetarian. The older generation said that this symbolizes simplicity and peace in the coming year. I don't quite believe this statement, but jiaozi with plain stuffing is really tasty.
Chop carrots, vermicelli and tofu, spread an egg roll and cut it into small pieces, and sometimes add some fungus. Vegetarian dumpling stuffing can't get rid of this set, but these simple ingredients can set off delicious stuffing. Vegetarian stuffing is not as strong as meat stuffing, but it has a light feeling, which can also play a good regulatory role in the big fish and big meat in the Spring Festival. However, what puzzles me is that sometimes vegetarian stuffing is also called vegetarian stuffing-perhaps vegetarian stuffing is just people's sustenance for a better life and the satisfaction of early adopters.
Dumpling skins are also very particular. You have to use dead noodles, that's for sure. If you put yeast, it will turn into boiled buns. In recent years, a new kind of "jiaozi powder" has been developed, which is said to be specially used to make dough. In fact, it tastes chewy and is no different from ordinary dumpling wrappers. Rolling noodles is really a craft. It pays attention to the thick middle and thin sides. It's not easy to roll fast and well. Now the butcher shop sells dumpling skins pressed by machines, and some flour is thrown between the two skins, which looks lifeless and tastes ordinary.
Whenever I eat jiaozi, I always drink a bowl of clear soup cooked by jiaozi, saying that "the original soup becomes the original dish". In fact, regardless of nutrition, the clear soup tastes good: the color of the clear soup is light yellow with the aroma of five grains, and the taste is as light as dumpling skin and as delicious as jiaozi meat ―― therefore, when cooking jiaozi, the exposed jiaozi is still essential! After drinking a bowl of soup, I felt warm all over, and the cold dissipated, which also diluted the salty taste of eating jiaozi just now.
When eating jiaozi, there are always several jadeite figures, that is Laba garlic. Take a bite of jiaozi and Laba garlic, and the spicy taste is scattered in the umami flavor, which relieves the greasy meat in jiaozi and the spicy taste of Laba garlic. It can be said that it is the best of both worlds! Rice vinegar, soft candy and garlic are planted in glass bottles (originally porcelain jars and glass jars), and a bottle of green Laba garlic can be harvested at a young age. This year, my laba garlic is emerald green, but the vinegar has turned into grass green, which does not meet Mr. Lao She's standard of "good color and taste".
Speaking of off-year, it seems that there is still a long-lost custom: eating Guandong sugar at the altar. In downtown Jinan, the custom of offering sacrifices to stoves has long since disappeared, and there are fewer and fewer kwantung sugar and honeydew melons. But this year I was lucky enough to find a bar of kwantung sugar. Guandong sugar is very crisp, sometimes a bite will splash a lot of dregs, but the sweetness is refreshing, which can't be compared with the soft white sugar in the kitchen, adding a layer of Chinese New Year fragrance and making people very comfortable.
I once ate a white rice cake in Fujian: it tasted good, but the taste was extremely single, as if I were biting glutinous rice balls. Yellow rice cakes in Shandong are different. The raw material is yellow glutinous rice flour. When kneading dough, directly put the whole washed red dates in, just like a part of the dough is ground out, and enter the yellow wheat, where it is kneaded into the shape of a nest and steamed in a pot. When eating yellow rice rice cakes, the closer you are to the dates, the stronger the flavor of the dates. You should always be alert to being bitten by jujube stones. How interesting!
When it comes to rice cakes, you can't help but say bean buns. Bean buns pay attention to the beauty of the heart, which is actually the importance of stuffing. The night before making bean buns, put sugar in big red dates and red beans, boil them and stew them. The next morning, the stuffing was almost stewed, sweet and soft, and it was even more delicious when eaten directly. I immediately put the bread into the steamer and made some steamed buns together. Steamed bean buns are ordinary in appearance, but red inside, which is beautiful and delicious.
The last thing I want to introduce, which is my favorite, is the crispy pot. My aunt is the only one of my relatives who has the skill of making a pot, but strangely, my grandmother can't. I don't know how to make a crispy pot. Probably just cook your favorite dishes and stew them with some seasoning. Finally, after the juice is collected and cooled, each dish not only retains a little original flavor, but also has an unspeakable fragrance. The crispy rice is delicious only when it is cold, but it can be frozen when it is cold, which makes people uncomfortable and is also a special member of the Spring Festival cuisine. There is a crispy pot seller in our community. When the lid is lifted, there will be bursts of hot air. What kind of crispy pot is this? His crispy pot also has several miles of soup, which tastes so ordinary that some people even buy it! So I decided never to eat his again.
There are crispy Chinese cabbage, crispy tofu, crispy fish, crispy chicken, crispy beans, crispy kelp, crispy mushrooms, crispy fungus and so on. Anything can be put in. My favorite is crispy kelp.
The Spring Festival is not only a grand festival, but also the spiritual sustenance of hundreds of millions of people in China. I sincerely hope that these delicacies can be solidified into the flavor of the year on the tip of the tongue, passed down from generation to generation and looked forward to every year.
The flavor of the year on the tip of the tongue is excellent composition II. The taste of the year on the tip of the tongue, the home on the tip of the tongue. The flavor of hometown is the flavor of China people's deep bone marrow. In Anji, located in the east of Zhejiang Province, China, the taste of the year on the tip of the tongue is being staged.
(1) rice cake
As soon as the twelfth lunar month arrives, the drama of playing rice cakes from house to house begins.
The women washed the glutinous rice that had been soaked for a long time and cooked it in a pot. Several strong men lined up to play rice cakes. Only heard "out of the pot!" The women put the cooked glutinous rice into a stone mortar. A strong man immediately swung the mallet and hit the glutinous rice in the stone mortar. There was another person who needed to cooperate to turn glutinous rice balls. You hammer, I turn, so tacit, so harmonious.
About ten minutes later, the boys with rough glutinous rice became handsome white-flour scholars under the fate of wooden sticks. Smooth dumplings were invited to the chopping board from the stone mortar, and the next work was handed over to the master with 20 years of experience. I saw that his hands kept rubbing, rubbing and pressing, and the dough seemed to hit it off with him and obediently tossed with him. When the plump dough turned into a long stripe, I saw him holding a thin white thread and pulling it hard. After three, five and two times, he pulled a dumpling into several rice cakes with the same size, length and width.
The assembly line process is not over yet, and the last finishing touch is given to me. I picked up the seal engraved with the word "Fu", dipped it in red water (edible) and gently printed it on the rice cake. In the sunshine, the white rice cake is inlaid with the bright word "Fu", which means that the coming year will be higher and higher.
Adults look forward to good wishes for the coming year. Gluttonous, I grabbed a shapeless steaming rice cake in one hand, dipped it heavily in a sesame sugar bowl and eagerly stuffed it into my mouth. Small mouth wrapped in rice cake, chew hard. The rice cake is tough, and the sesame leaves fragrance, which makes me speechless.
On the first day of New Year's Day, the rice cake appeared black and pink. Fried rice cakes, soup rice cakes, fried rice cakes ... but these can't catch my taste buds. My favorite ―― Wei Niangao. There was a blazing fire. I went to the vat to get some homemade rice cakes, washed them, dried them and put them in the stove. Rice cakes began their unique debut. The bamboo raft crackled, and the rice cake in the fire took off the appearance of a white-faced scholar and became a black-faced man. Open the baked rice cake, crisp outside and tender inside, and then dip it in delicate sugar. Chew, taste, smooth rice cake in the mouth for a long time, it seems that it will not give up.
The smell of glutinous rice cake, accompanied by a faint smell of firewood and a strong taste of happiness, has started a new year.
(2) jiaozi
Jiaozi, an indispensable victory general for Chinese New Year, is also a representative of Hua Dan.
Both northerners and southerners have a soft spot for jiaozi. But the difference between jiaozi in the south and jiaozi in the north is dumpling stuffing. In the north, dumpling stuffing emphasizes taste, sauerkraut stuffing, fennel stuffing and so on. They pay more attention to taste. Southerners pay more attention to the meaning and nutrition of dumpling stuffing, which is generally light. Southerners don't know how to mix dough like northerners. Most of them buy ready-made dumpling wrappers from the market, so they put all their emotions into dumpling stuffing.
In Anji, door-to-door tastes different. Various dumpling fillings also have different meanings. Our mushroom stuffing represents drum wealth; Your celery stuffing means hard work and wealth; There is also Chinese cabbage stuffing, which means treasure. It's freezing in the Spring Festival, and the seasonal vegetable at that time was shepherd's purse. In the cold winter, shepherd's purse has revealed small green shoots with hairy leaves and a cross crown on it. Cut it from the roots and wash it. Pick a few winter bamboo shoots, chop them up, and put them in jiaozi, a favorite of southerners in winter.
Shepherd's purse and winter bamboo shoots jiaozi have the meaning of gathering wealth, indicating that wealth will roll to my home in the coming year. On New Year's Eve, from eleven o'clock to one o'clock in the morning, it was called "Zi Shi" by the old Hangzhou people, also called "Hao and Jiao Zi", so Jiao Zi evolved.
Cooking jiaozi is also a technical job. Make a fire and boil water. We can't invite our main characters-shepherd's purse and winter bamboo shoots jiaozi into the pot until the water bubbles. Jiaozi stepped onto the big stage with grace. Spin, dance, roll and dance. Jiaozi's "gauze skirt" becomes transparent and clear. Jiaozi also began her charming life. ...
(3) Bamboo shoot banquet
Anji is known as the "Bamboo Country of China", and a bamboo shoot banquet is essential in the festival with full flavor of the year.
Whether the bamboo shoot feast is rich or not requires gathering the right people at the right time. If this year is a big year, the output of bamboo shoots will be greatly reduced. People will consciously not dig young bamboo shoots, but just dig a few small bamboo shoots at the bottom of bamboo to solve the problem, because it is necessary to ensure the growth of bamboo production; If this year is a small year, then we will have luck to eat. All kinds of bamboo shoots and tastes can satisfy you.
The first bamboo shoot feast is the variety, which is suitable for both young and old.
Cold dishes include spiced shredded bamboo shoots and green beans, original hand-peeled tender bamboo shoots, spicy thunder bamboo shoots and multi-flavor dried bamboo shoots. After the sketch, open the taste buds and eat and quit.
Braised bamboo shoots are oily and bright, and the color is about to drip. The thick sauce is wrapped in sugar flavor, accompanied by fresh bamboo shoots, which beautifully interprets the artistic conception of bamboo shoots.
Salty and fresh is the most representative dish in winter. Spring bamboo shoots peel off their thick shells and soak them in cold water for 20 minutes to lock the snow-white skin. It's really a good way to whiten. Bacon is prepared after winter, which will be useful at this time. Wash the three layers of pork belly with warm water, and pour it into the casserole after decontamination. Bamboo shoots should be rolled up and cut to ensure that the taste can penetrate into the bone marrow. Good dishes need to be stewed slowly. 10 minutes later, the fire is slowly stewing, and the smell of bacon has permeated the whole room. The greasy meat has already been sucked away by bamboo shoots, which is both an opponent and a partner. Preserves the original flavor of bamboo shoots, mixed with the aroma of meat, and is really an extremely harmonious partner.
Cooking in winter, that is, winter bamboo shoots and winter pickles, has moderate salty taste and crisp taste, and is also a good choice for the next meal.
Stir-fried bamboo shoots, braised bamboo shoots, mushroom bamboo shoot soup ... you can find anything here if you like. The so-called bamboo shoot banquet is a family banquet, in which people of all surnames and natures of the bamboo shoot family are invited to get together and celebrate together.
The flavor of the year is a myriad of weather that can show the breath and atmosphere of the Spring Festival in the new year. The flavor of the year is a special holiday smell that people express their inner happiness and peace. What we can see, hear, smell and taste can be left in our memory.
Anji on the tip of the tongue, the taste of the year on the tip of the tongue, let me remember.