Qifengchi

I remember a common cold dish called glass meat more than 30 years ago. At that time, this dish was served on the table for the Chinese New Year. Looking back on the cold, sweet and crisp, delicious glass meat, I still feel delicious.

Unfortunately, the glass meat in my memory, with the changes of the times and the improvement of people's diet, the high-fat greasy and sugary glass meat has long been removed from the menu, far away from the dining table and people's memory.

Nowadays, people's dietary concept has begun to change towards healthy nutrition and health care. So many good dishes I ate when I was a child were eliminated. If you want to eat now, you must remember. I began to recall, feel and appreciate the taste of those dishes and the lost years.

In the past, high-grade glass meat was a main cold dish on people's holiday or wedding table. Today, it has long been forgotten by people. Needless to say, people have eaten it, and even today's chefs can't cook it.

I know how to make glass meat. I've done it before. It is made of pig fat and white sugar. Peel the ribs first, then remove the lean meat, leaving a layer of white fat, then cut into pieces the thickness of chopsticks and more than one inch long, then stir them into paste with egg white starch flour, put the fat strips into the batter, dip them evenly, and fry them in an oil pan. When the meat strips become hard, discolored and float, they are taken out. Then boil the sugar with a spoon. When soaking sugar with a spoon, the sugar will be shredded after dripping, and the sugar will be cooked. At this time, take out the oiled meat strips from another stove, immediately pour them into the cooked sugar, and turn the spoon repeatedly to make the sugar completely wrap the meat strips. Finally, sprinkle the fried sesame seeds on it and take out the spoon. Then, pour them into a large flat plate and grease the bottom of the plate to prevent the glass meat from getting together. You can eat it after cooling. The characteristics of this dish are sweet, fragrant, crisp and greasy. Because the fat strips that have been fried twice have basically turned into oil, and those oils have penetrated into the hanging batter. Wrapped in white sugar, it is of course sweet and crisp when eaten in one bite.

At that time, people's living standards were low, and it was not easy to eat meat several times a month, so they were very tempted to see sweets.

I remember that it was October in the early 1970s, when my neighbor got married and the chef made this cold glass dish. After the dishes are cooked, they are put outside in a cool place. At noon, the guests arrived and prepared to serve. When the chef put the glass meat on the plate, he found that several tables of glass meat were missing. Now the chef is in a hurry. He asked the boss how the glass meat disappeared. Actually, the boss doesn't know either. Later, someone told the chef that the children pinched one at your convenience and he took one and ate it. The table is about to open. What should I do? The chef had to improvise and cook another dish to make up for the plates of glass meat that the children ate.

Nowadays, glass meat has long since withdrawn from recipes and people's dietary concepts. Glass meat belongs to the era of hunger and people's lack of nutrition.

Today, when it comes to glass meat, I still feel that the years when meat and sugar were scarce and the poor days were so kind. Recalling the glass meat that disappeared from the menu, I still feel so sweet and greasy.