This passage actually reminds me of a childhood memory. That year, my parents were on a business trip, so they sent me to my uncle's old mother's house and asked the old man to take care of me for a few days. The old lady has fair skin and an oval face. She is handsome and kind.
But I have been afraid of strangers since I was a child, and my lacrimal glands are naturally rich. When I first arrived in a strange place and stepped into the door of the old lady's house, I shrank in the corner and kept sobbing and wiping my tears. It's no use letting the old lady convince me.
"Grandma will make you a sweet duck, ok?"
As soon as I heard the word "Babel Duck", I was refreshed immediately. The old lady bought a freshly killed duck in the street, washed the duck inside and out, filled the raw glutinous rice with eight kinds of "precious" fillings, such as lotus seeds, red dates, bean paste, ginkgo, scallops and diced ham, then put on reading glasses, took out the needle and thread from the wooden box, narrowed her eyes and sewed the knife carefully.
She took a hemp rope, wrapped it around the ducks and tied it into a gourd shape. Finally, she put the sewn whole duck into a big casserole with cold water, added rice wine, star anise, cinnamon and ginger slices, boiled it with high fire, and then simmered it for several hours with low fire.
"When you grow up, learn to be a sweet duck."
"Why?" I asked curiously.
"Because girls who can cook sweet ducks taste good."
Later, with cooking experience, I realized that the production process of glutinous rice babao duck is complicated, time-consuming and laborious, and it is a great kung fu dish.
Especially, filling duck cavity with raw glutinous rice is a practice with high difficulty coefficient. Once the amount of glutinous rice is not properly controlled, the duck belly will be at risk of bursting during stewing. There are disadvantages, but there are also advantages. The advantage is that the glutinous rice cooked by the duck's own soup permeates the essence of the duck and tastes fresh, but it has evaporated to the fullest.
Grandma lifted the lid of the casserole, and a fresh fragrance mixed with glutinous rice, duck and ham came to the nose and was deeply rooted in people's hearts. Grandma used scissors to break the hemp rope tied to the duck, cut the thread sewn on the duck's tail, and quickly pulled the whole rope out with a shake. She scooped up the eight-treasure rice in the duck's stomach with a spoon and put it in my bowl.
I ate a sumptuous Babao duck dinner, but I didn't make any noise. I fell asleep after eating and slept until dawn. A glutinous rice babao duck brought me closer to the old lady.
The old lady is from Tongli, a thousand-year-old town, and glutinous rice babao duck is a local holiday dish in Tongli. As early as "Jiangnan Festival as usual", it was recorded: "On the 25th day of the first month (during the Qianlong period), Suzhou woven Pu Fucheng glutinous rice duck, stewed meat in the spring of ten thousand years, dried bamboo shoots and broken chicken, shredded chicken and bird's nest ..."
Qianlong was a wayward emperor. He visited the south of the Yangtze River for six times, took a fancy to Yin, a village girl in Xishan East Village, Taihu Lake, and "got married in dew" with her, hiding her in Xu Zhai. He was fascinated by Su Bang cuisine, so he packed Zhang Dongguan, a famous Suzhou chef, into the Forbidden City to cook Suzhou cuisine for him as a royal chef.
In the book "How to Eat by the Emperor" published by the Palace Museum Press, the practice of glutinous rice eight-treasure duck is introduced in detail: "Eight-treasure duck, as the favorite royal food of Emperor Qianlong, ...
The whole duck should be boned, leaving a complete skin with duck meat, which can be' watertight'. After cleaning, eight different ingredients should be filled and boiled for about five hours, and a complete and beautiful duck will come out, paying attention to' crisp bones without losing shape'. "
This technique of "removing bones and leaving skin" to fill ducks originated from the Eight Treasures of the Western Zhou Dynasty. It is recorded in the Book of Rites, "If you take a dolphin with a gun, it will be in its belly." It means slaughtering pigs and sheep, eviscerating them and stuffing them with dates. It can be seen that Jiangnan people have brought wealth and willfulness to the extreme.
This reminds me of the article "Little Match Girl" in Andersen's fairy tales. Roasted goose with apples and plums in its belly symbolizes abundance and warmth.
When I grew up, I learned from my uncle that the old lady was an intellectual woman when she was young. She married a "suitable" landlord in the town, devoted herself to educating her children, and regretted her husband's early death. She is both a father and a mother, and has worked hard to raise several underage children. At that time, a single woman had to support her family by herself, as hard as drinking water.
Fortunately, her children have been well trained by her, all of them have successful careers and are extremely filial. When her husband was alive, on holidays, she would cook and wash her hands to make a glutinous rice duck. People in the ancient town attach importance to family ethics, and Babao Duck symbolizes the happiness of family reunion. After the death of her husband, the rule of making reunion ducks every year was interrupted due to financial difficulties.
When the children grow up and the days are booming, the old lady begins to cook sweet ducks again. Every year on "little reunion", I will make a sweet duck myself. The duck is still the Babel duck of that year, but the most important person in life is always missing from the reunion table. I think this is probably the biggest regret in the old lady's heart.
Not long after I graduated from college and joined the work, I heard the bad news of the old lady's death. I always felt that I had plenty of time when my grandmother wanted to teach me how to cook the eight-treasure duck. Now I think, for a dying old man, "coming to Japan" may not mean "square inch", but may just mean "square inch"
This year's Spring Festival, I went to the hotel for a reunion dinner, and specially ordered a glutinous rice eight-treasure duck as the finale. Its main ingredients are still glutinous rice and duck meat, and the stuffing of Babao is always the same as before, only slightly changed, which generally includes diced bamboo shoots, diced ham, diced mushrooms, diced scallops and diced chicken. Mix well with glutinous rice after cooking.
And processed according to the traditional deboning method, the whole duck is deboned, leaving a complete duck skin, filled with "eight treasures" ingredients, buckled in a big bowl, sealed with wax paper, and placed in a steamer. The auxiliary materials stewed with Babao duck are also very rich, including bamboo shoots, taro, bacon and so on. The eight-treasure duck stewed in the pot is rich and full, and then poured with shrimp mixed with the original brine.
Zhang, the "last celebrity", has done a good job in the eight-treasure duck. She was super luxurious when she cooked the eight-treasure duck, and specially invited Ambassador 13. As a result, the alley was blocked.
Years later, her precious daughter Hong Huang missed her mother: "She (Zhang) loves life very much and is good at cooking. She cooked the best babao duck I have ever eaten. No matter how she teaches others, others will never learn. "
Yes, even if the hotel's ingredients are upgraded and the chef's skills are superb, the best babao duck I have ever eaten is still the glutinous rice babao duck cooked by my grandmother in my memory.