I remember Cai Lan, a Hong Kong foodie, saying to Henan: "When I mention Henan, I think of water mats (all kinds of dishes cooked in soup), including a fake bird's nest. Radish is cut into filaments and cooked in soup, and the taste is really comparable to bird's nest." Summer sleeping mat is a special food in Luoyang. Cai Lan's fake bird's nest consists of shredded white radish, sea cucumber, squid, chicken, fried egg skin, ham sausage and chicken. Colorful "peony flowers" float on the soup, which are fragrant and delicious, hot and sour and silky, refreshing. The real name of this dish is "Peony Swallow". "Luoyang water mat" originated in the Tang Dynasty and has a history of 1000 years. It consists of 24 dishes, 8 cold dishes, 4 big dishes, 8 Chinese dishes and 4 table dishes. It is said that the water cushion has two meanings: first, all hot dishes have soup; Second, all the dishes are eaten one by one, just like a flowing mat.
Speaking of Luoyang water mat, there are too many dishes to make people see things in a blur. Unfortunately, space is limited, so I won't go into details here. Luoyang cuisine has everything except water mats. Let's start with breakfast Luoyang people like to drink all kinds of soups, such as mutton soup, beef soup, bean curd soup, meatball soup, donkey broth and non-turning soup. Every morning, Luoyang Tangwu will open its doors to welcome guests before dawn. The difference lies in the amount of meat. Tofu soup and meatball soup are five yuan, and fried meatballs are sold separately, ranging from one yuan to four to six. With shredded pork or scones, one or two yuan is enough. Diners who served soup in the good soup house lined up in a long line, and those who liked peppers did not forget to shout: "Double peppers!" " Those who like thick soup don't forget to shout "Be fat!" When you come back from soup, find a place to sit down and put the shredded pork cake into the soup, or break the sesame cake into small pieces and put it into the soup, holding the soup in your left hand and chopsticks in your right hand, or squatting or standing, which becomes a unique street scene in the sunrise; In addition to soup, there is also a delicious food that cannot be ignored-Camellia oleifera. Flour is fried and cooked into a paste. There are peanuts below and fried fruits above. If a bowl is not enough, then a whole bowl; In recent years, Hu spicy soup has also become popular. Before those Zhengzhou Hu spicy soup bosses entered Luoyang, there was a small shop that insisted on making Hu spicy soup for decades, not following the trend, not kitsch, quietly located in the alley, expensive and delicious.
Let's talk about lunch. In Luoyang, Sichuan and Hunan dishes are the most popular, and there are many small restaurants, which are very delicious. They are suitable for three or five friends to get together, push a cup for a change, and they are still sweating. The only drawback is that the place is not fashionable enough, not up to grade, not suitable for official occasions. The second is Xinyang cuisine. The most famous Henan cuisine is probably Xinyang cuisine, which is mainly stewed and good at cooking fish. Xinyang dialect might be better. Here, I want to mention Chaozhou-Shantou cuisine, which is an important part of Cantonese cuisine. Chaoshan cuisine has a supreme position because of its exquisite ingredients and cooking skills. The selection of materials is exquisite, the knife work is exquisite and the cooking methods are diverse. Known as the highest-end food in China, the price is really high. It is good to eat seafood and porridge once in a while.
Let's talk about hot pot and barbecue, which are most suitable for dinner. Hot pot in winter night and barbecue in summer night, three or five friends sit around the table, chatting and eating happily. Hot pot is generally divided into three categories. The first category is old Beijing instant-boiled mutton, which is characterized by copper pot, clear soup and large pieces of mutton. Dipping in sesame sauce is a pleasure, and occasionally you can meet freshly cooked tripe. The second category is Hong Kong and Macao seafood hot pot, called Doulao. The word Doulao is created from the Chinese transliteration of the English word DOLLAR, which is homophonic with the Chinese word Dulao, meaning that everyone can fish together and make a fortune. Of course, the specialty is seafood. It's a pity that Luoyang lives inland, and deep-sea seafood pays attention to the word "fresh", feeling that everything it eats on weekdays is frozen. The third category is Sichuan-Chongqing hot pot. The Yuanyang pot refused, and a large pot of red pepper was enough. Pure pot pepper is better than seasoning package. The dipping material must be sesame oil, with garlic at most. The only meat dishes are beef slices marinated with beef tripe, yellow throat, venetian blinds and crispy meat. My favorite vegetarian dish is dictyophora indusiata. The only drawback is that it is too oily to continue writing this topic. Spit.
So is the barbecue. By the time I wrote the article, it was difficult to suppress the secretion of saliva. I am used to barbecue in Luoyang, but I can't find the taste here anywhere. Ten years ago, I went to Beidaihe, Qinhuangdao for training. At that time, I was in full swing and tired of eating local seafood. I wanted to have a barbecue, so I searched all the barbecue stalls in the city and didn't get it once. From then on, I only ate barbecue in Luoyang. There is an old saying: "When a person is in a string, he is talking about his mood;" Two people are in a string, and it is tacit understanding; A string of three people, it's Jianghu again. "The summer night is long, street stalls, close friends, blowing bottles. This is a wonderful memory. Now everyone is very busy, and getting together has gradually become a luxury. Barbecue pays attention to temperature, technique, pickling and seasoning, which are indispensable. There are also many kinds of barbecues. Roast mutton kebabs, beef kebabs, roast waist slices, roast lamb loins, roast breast forks, roast ribs, roast sheep's eyes, roast cow's eyes, roast large intestine, roast tripe, roast chicken wings, roast chicken seeds, roast gluten, grilled fish tofu, roast peppers, roast mushrooms, roast leeks, roast potatoes, grilled fish and scones.
In recent years, foreign dishes have also entered the Luoyang food circle one after another. American fast food, Korean barbecue, Indian restaurant and French teppanyaki are not attractive to me. Two days ago, I listened to my wife's recommendation and tried Korean rice cake hot pot together. I was not interested in Korean food before. Bibimbap is too hot, cold noodles are too cold, and Korean barbecue is not as delicious as Luoyang Street barbecue. Anyway, I didn't like Korean food, so I followed my wife with a grain of salt. This is a buffet hotpot restaurant. Choose vegetables from the selection area, put them in the pot and serve them on the table. They look bright and beautiful. After opening the gas tank, you can eat it directly without dipping it. Alaska King Crab, Shrimp, Bacon, Tofu and Kelp all taste good. Finally, rinse vegetables are equivalent to hot pot. Unfortunately, the only fly in the ointment is buffet, which has been banned this year.
The night before yesterday, a friend told me that several Japanese dishes were opened in a business district, and we made an appointment to go together. At the destination, both of them were full, and the bars and booths were crowded with people. The queue at the door is desperate. For this delicious food, we made up our minds to order the number, waited patiently for nearly an hour, and finally it was our turn. Fortunately, we were lucky enough to wait for a booth. It was an accident. The waiters wear Japanese clothes, and the decoration in the store also has a Japanese flavor. He ordered thick egg roll sushi, shredded eel rice, warship octopus sushi and other specialty dishes, and brought a bottle of 300 ml sake. They ate and talked. Sake is not very strong, so it is very suitable for drinking. The taste of mustard stimulates the taste buds and enjoys delicious freshness. At this moment, I remembered Jiro Ono's office building in Ginza, Tokyo. From the appearance, it is simple and even a little shabby. Although the small shop behind the wooden fence has only ten seats, although their restaurant has only ten seats, and the toilet is even outside, even if it needs to be booked one month in advance, even if a meal is limited to 15 minutes, even if the per capita consumption is several hundred dollars (minimum consumption is 30,000 yen), people who have eaten it will still lament that it is "sushi worth waiting for a lifetime". Jiro Ono is 92 years old this year. I wonder if he will be lucky enough to taste sushi made by Jiro Ono himself in his life.
Finally, snacks. I dare not talk about it. Too many snacks, like a running account. There are fried dumplings on the roadside, almond tea deep in the alley, egg cakes, Daobei Caoji rice noodles, Chinese hamburger in Xinjie wife's rice noodle shop, pot stickers in Xigong restaurant, jiaozi across the street, Dandan Noodles in Tianfu, crossing the bridge rice noodles, Yu Ying rice skin, many rolled noodles and a small food market. Yanshi Guxian Rouhe, Xin 'an noodle soup dumplings, Jin Meng Chaoyang fried noodles, Yiyang Wangdianzi roast chicken, Ruyang Caidian braised pork, Songxian reservoir fish banquet, Luanchuan tofu banquet, Luoning sour beef, and baked wheat cakes specially sought for the 28th twelfth lunar month (see the article "Leisure on the 28th twelfth lunar month" for details).
This is the end of my pen. I have a feeling about food. Let me explain.
[1] Food is hard to find, everyone has different tastes, and what others strongly recommend is not necessarily your favorite. You need to look hard. I believe that fate has arrived, and you will meet it, read books, make friends, watch movies, and have food.
[2] Food is like a friend. When you meet something delicious, it's like meeting a congenial friend, chatting happily, meeting each other late, treating each other sincerely, and wishing to be together every day. Lin Chong and Lu in "The True Color of Heroes" hang out together every day, just like gay friends; I missed a snack every day and couldn't help thinking of it, so I drove more than ten kilometers to relieve my hunger.
[3] Food is like love. I hope to win a person's heart, and I don't want to leave each other. When I meet a kind of food I particularly like, I have no other desire.
[4] Food is the carrier of memory and a part of life. For details, please refer to the articles "A bowl of beef soup is enough to dispel the smog in your heart" and "That bowl of dreamy tofu soup"
[5] Food depends on mood. Even the best food, eaten with people with different aspirations, is tasteless and tasteless.
[6] The food you eat with the person you love is the best food in the world. Only food can be worthy of it, and so can love!