Eat at home, eat at home

According to the custom in the south, on the third day after the new daughter-in-law goes through the door, her in-laws will test her cooking methods and promote them to her tutor. A scholarly family married two daughters-in-law at the same time. The eldest daughter-in-law got up early to wash her hands and cook. Sure enough, she cooked a good dish and was praised by her in-laws. The eldest daughter-in-law said modestly that there are oil and onions, and the dung is fragrant. They looked at each other. Daughter-in-law then held a table food exhibition, slurping. Daughter-in-law is blessed and humble: not a clever daughter-in-law, but more seasoning.

The result is obvious, no doubt.

After my grandmother repeatedly taught the above story in Zhangzhou dialect, I realized that one of the elements of cooking essence is seasoning, which is also the word "elegance" emphasized in China's food culture.

So my grandfather added: When I was a teenager, I wandered to Xiamen alone, ate two big cakes and ordered the cheapest soup on the menu, which was euphemistically called "taking the dragon across the river". It only cost a copper coin, but it is nothing more than a bowl of clear soup with two pieces of onions.

People by the sea have an exquisite way of eating fish. There are two kinds of shad in Sanma, and shad has the highest rank. When a large family takes an examination of their daughter-in-law, they use this proposition to write a composition. The bride held out a plate of steamed shad without weakness, and the aroma was overflowing. My mother-in-law touched the chopsticks and saw that the fish had been shaved, and her face sank. It turns out that the value of shad lies in the scale, and only the scale can cook golden fish oil with special fragrance. However, when the fish finished eating, it was found that the scales were put on with silk thread and clustered at the bottom of the dish. This is not only convenient to eat, but also maintains the original flavor. So my father-in-law screamed: "After all, it is it runs in the family!" The family finally got the princess and peas.

This story is one of my father's most proud mentors. This shows that father not only attaches importance to the quality of diet, but also attaches importance to form. Even at the small table, he ordered a corresponding set of dishes. A few dishes have to be fried before they have a name. At family dinners, radishes are dyed and tomatoes are carved. This extreme formalism led several children to unanimously conclude that the fun of father's cooking is all in his hands, not in his mouth.

In my father's spoon, there are probably no inedible animals except human flesh. When he fell from the position of bank manager to the right wing, he was sent to an open-pit coal mine to dig coal, and all the food designated by Thaksin was sent home like water. When he was in trouble, he caught voles, skinned them and hung them on branches for roasting. He picked chestnuts and simmered them in ashes; Pick sweet potato leaves, pumpkin leaves and even fry locusts. If the bug doesn't have a strange smell, it may have become a worry-free dish. Everything that can be bitten by teeth is absorbed into protein by hunger, which makes my father survive in the harsh labor, but many companions who retch at the sight of voles and locusts leave one by one.

My mother died young and my father always dominated the kitchen. The three brothers and sisters are full of food with joy. Although I don't steal art from the kitchen, I have my own recipes at the dinner table. When they have their own families and families, they will be launched into their own systems during short-term raids. It's my dad's turn to go door to door for inspection, but he still puts on a pair of heads: green is not as good as blue.

If you eat too much at home, you will spoil your tongue. Going out for a business meeting, you will definitely lose half a circle when you come back. China is indeed vast and rich in resources, and the methods of eating oysters vary from county to county. Fried oysters in Xiamen are different in Quanzhou, but they are two different things in Fuzhou. Going abroad, I will unite as an enemy, and I will miss this country. Compared with sandwiches, jiaozi in the north, spring rolls in the south, and even sunny noodles in the north and south are all painful. Although I have tasted French snails, Japanese raw fish and Dutch roasted liver, my throat is always narrow and my stomach is empty. I wonder if I have been hungry for several days. Whenever a foreign friend invites him to dinner and asks about western food or Chinese food, he immediately points to a Chinese restaurant. Although it's really useless to know that you won't taste exotic flavors in the west.

Put yourself in others' shoes and come back from London. Write to a good friend who works very hard and often eats sandwiches: "Take care of yourself and eat at least one China meal every day."

Eat south and eat north.

Maybe not all southerners, but for me, the diet in the south and the north is very different, no less than that in two distant countries.

In recent years, many imperial meals have been unearthed in Beijing, and the packaging has become more and more exquisite. It's a little more royal than paying tribute to the emperor, and it's just flour with a lot of sugar. I admit this is prejudice, absolutely. Please calm your anger in the north.

Once, a group of military writers came to Xiamen for a pen meeting, stayed in the most luxurious Jinbao Hotel, and offered live shrimps and drunken crabs every day. But they are sad and haggard, and their poems and songs are difficult to produce. When the hotel owner learned that they were invited to eat jiaozi, the men immediately came to life, shouting and showing their true colors as heroes. I went to see my friends, which coincided with the sex party and shouted bad luck.

Never liked jiaozi. Sometimes when I go to a meeting in Beijing, my old friends treat me wholeheartedly, calling on five or six helpers to rub, cut and chop. Shrimp, lean meat, shredded ginger, etc. do not hesitate to spend money, but it is just a dish. In my brother's words, a pair of chopsticks has nowhere to go and is always in the big plate.

Last year, Tian Lin, Yang Mei and Chen Suoju were waiting for their poetry friends to come to Xiamen and invited them to taste Cantonese-style "morning tea". Breakfast on the table is a palm-sized steamer with three shrimp dumplings or a pair of chicken feet inside. The guest was afraid to say a word, and the bill was staggering. Yang Mei couldn't help feeling the general's fairly flat stomach and said, "Shu Ting, come to Xinjiang. I treat you to watermelon. You can't hold half a melon in your hands. It is only a dozen or twenty pounds. " Chen Suoju muttered in a low voice, "At least tea can be drunk in a big cup." Everyone looked at each other and couldn't help laughing.

Then, I remembered many years ago when I didn't wait for a few Beijing children to spend the summer vacation in Xiamen. When they came back, they wrote to advise me: "I found that you are so thin and all you drink is porridge." What's more, they drink porridge in my house every day and have porridge phobia. My father likes this group of small employees best. He can eat vegetables, drink three or five bowls of porridge and scrape the plates clean. If we open a can, our whole family has been staring at the oil slick and worried, but we can drink it all before we pick it up. These northern youths have been driven crazy by the light taste of the south, and their father always thought it was his superb cooking.

Xinjiang hasn't arrived yet, so I went to Inner Mongolia. Poetry friends meet thousands of miles away, perhaps this is the only time in their lives, and everyone is particularly enthusiastic. I got up in the morning and saw two bottles of white wine poking on the table to wait on me. Pork, mutton, beef, dog meat, all kinds of meat. Fold high into a arhat disc. He actually said, "It's too extravagant. It's better to have a plate of vegetarian dishes." But in this festival, even cucumbers are shipped from far away, cut into filaments, and a few are placed on the edge of plates as ornamental plants. When I arrived in Qiqihar, I was invited to dinner again. This time, an extremely rare fish appeared. Dare to have a bowl of soup. My friend was very anxious and soon brought a big steel pot to my side. Although it is just a cucumber and an egg, it is infinitely delicious. When you drink it again, your stomach is like a drum. If you can't finish it any more, sell it to your owner. The host replied heroically: We northerners don't drink soup.

Even abroad, foreigners from the south and the north of China will not be confused. I remember someone invited Jason to go home to eat jiaozi. The listener was a northerner, so he immediately left his seat to chase after him. Only I am still playing fried chicken legs. Only at Chen Ruoxi's house did I eat porridge cooked by her for several days. Take kimchi in Taiwan Province Province as an example. We think I still have a stomach, which has disappeared in steak and French fries for a long time.

The difference between Taiwan Province cuisine and Xiamen cuisine is only between street and street.

Otherwise, how can a song of roasted meat dumplings be sung all over the Taiwan Strait? Only the noses of Taiwan Province people and Minnan people can smell the smell of roasted jiaozi every three blocks.

There are so many famous brands in the south that they often attack friends in the north, saying that they only have the theme of jiaozi. Last year, I was a guest at my home in North Island, England. I had a sandwich for breakfast. North Island handed me a toothpaste-like caviar, which even Europeans thought was delicious. Unexpectedly, the North Island couple were still disappointed: "I really want to eat Zhajiang noodles in Beijing again." God, I don't want to miss the slag river!

eat snacks

Today, I don't need to rely on the ticket to supply two kilograms of pork. I shredded and chopped mud slices for cooking. Except for not chopping my fingers, I made a New Year's Eve dinner.

Even on ordinary weekends, brothers go back to their hometown to get together, and the 70-year-old father studies tirelessly, and the recipes in his hand always keep up with the trend. Fennel chicken and sizzling fish skewers are always full, so withdraw. Only vegetables are always in short supply. At present, the taste of southerners is so bad that even southerners themselves feel guilty. Needless to say, turtles, lobsters, sea cucumbers and fresh shellfish, even the palatal membrane and chicken feet of pigs have become magnificent and elegant halls. Until one day, the seven-year-old son picked up a piece of pork and said with emotion, "Mom, are we poor?" The son added that on the way to school, he heard his neighbor's grandmother say: now the rich eat kimchi and the poor eat diced meat.

Even so, a university professor left four dishes and one soup on the table. Vegetables are real vegetables, Chinese cabbage, melons, lentils, bean sprouts, and soup is tofu soup. This professor doesn't work in the Buddhist College, but he is quite famous in the Chinese Department of the whole country. The reason why he was forced to be a vegetarian is easy to understand, because his monthly salary can only buy 10 kg of pork.

After Xiamen opened the special zone, the catering industry was so developed that it completely controlled the market.

In July and August this year, the tourism industry was depressed and many restaurants closed down one after another. The citizens are very happy to eat live shrimp. In the past, these raw seafood were concentrated in the water tanks facing the street in restaurants.

Because of the false reputation, there is always the possibility of being invited to dinner. Reject everything as much as possible According to a vegetarian professor friend, today's society should be eating well and being an official. There are many people who are promoted and made a fortune at the dinner table. I also heard that one of the reasons for the sluggish catering industry is that newspapers have repeatedly called for new regulations prohibiting public funds from eating and drinking. So, there must be a lot of people who want to fade out of their mouths.

I had to come back from dinner, so tired that my two corners of my mouth hung on my ears and I couldn't recover. Worst of all, there is a man sitting next to me who has eaten half-baked food. There is nothing to talk about, and it is not good to lower your head to eat. The difficulty of finding a topic gives me a headache or pretends to be drunk. At this time, I am most eager to sneak into the street to find a snack bar. I was steaming and crowded in the crowd. I dare to suck loudly and knock on the plate and hit chopsticks. Once I ate in a luxury hotel in Guangzhou, the last course was pangolin, which I knew was to protect animals and refused to move chopsticks. Whether it's fur seals or protecting animals, my heart is full. So I walked away, and a young friend took me to the food stall, leaned against the wall, and held a plate of fried snails with 50 cents in his hand, as confident, presumptuous and happy as a chirping kiss. I also bought some bamboo kebabs along the way, and the soup was dripping. No one cares about the people coming and going in the street. It's better than sitting in a garden hotel and scooping sesame paste with a small spoon of blue and white porcelain. Anyway, there is no orchid finger in a dream of red mansions.

I wonder if there is a relationship between eating snacks and liking folk customs? There are many kinds of snacks in Xiamen. The most popular one is to take a pair of bamboo chopsticks and fry tofu in a pot. Some men in the literary and art circles often squat under the pony lamp, sweating, craning their necks to sip sorghum wine, and their eyes are shining. Occasionally passing by, someone raises a glass to invite. Finally, because of his thin face, greedy bugs crawled from a distance. Literary friends in food stalls also regard this as elegance, which proves that Lu Xun is also an old horse, so the front skirt is always covered with oil stains, which is also a major symbol of people who cover fried tofu.

I often go out. Everywhere I go, I often refuse to eat. I crossed the street to hunt wild food without permission. I have been cheated repeatedly and never change. Occasionally, I can dig out the original work and tell it to my friends, who scoff.

At the Sichuan Star Poetry Festival, my friend invited me to eat Chongqing hot pot. My tongue was swollen and my lips were black and purple, so I tried my best to eat pea tips and then I tried my best to have a stomachache. I was even helped to see the Leshan Giant Buddha. The Buddha knew at a glance that he had a good appetite and looked at each other affectionately. In the dim light on the other side, there are a bunch of people sweating around spicy tofu.

Since then, I have never missed Chongqing hot pot. However, due to diarrhea, I finally failed to taste Sichuan style. There is a restaurant opposite my hotel called "Meimei couple's lung slice shop". I see it every day and I will never forget it. If someone asks me what is the best snack in the world, the answer is: husband and wife lung slices.

Because I haven't tasted it yet.