Lin Qingxuan has an article "Sweet Potato with Red Heart", which tells about his father's deep affection for sweet potato with red heart. From the mainland to Taiwan Province Province, he experienced the baptism of war and fire. In Lin Qingxuan's father's heart, sweet potato with red hearts is closely linked with his distant hometown. People's favorite taste is the taste of hometown, which is a memory and a feeling that becomes more mellow with the years.
The moment I saw this title, my first thought was my father. On the contrary, my father likes eating sweet potatoes the least. Every time my mother and I buy baked sweet potatoes from outside, we hold hot sweet potatoes, peel off the oil skin and look at the caramel pulp in Huang Chengcheng. Father is always unmoved. I held the sweet potato to my father's mouth like a gift, and he took a stingy bite and never ate it again. In fact, my father didn't hate sweet potatoes, but when I was a child, my family was poor, there were many children, and there were many sweet potatoes. I often eat sweet potato porridge, and there are not many rice grains in the porridge. Sweet potato accompanied his father's youth with hunger, which is really not a memorable food.
Dad likes to eat preserved fish, bacon, fermented glutinous rice and bazin, which are only delicious during the Chinese New Year. Although we always have to wait for the guests to finish eating, the special food eaten in special seasons is naturally memorable, with the flavor of the year and the joy of reunion, which is a unique complex of China people.
Dad cooks bacon every year. It's not difficult. In the twelfth lunar month, he bought pork, washed it, sprinkled salt layer by layer, smeared it evenly, hung it on the pork with a hook and let it dry for a while. The cured bacon has the same appearance, cooked slices, transparent luster, bright color, red with yellow, mellow taste, fat but not greasy, thin without stuffing, not only unique flavor, but also has the functions of appetizing, dispelling cold and promoting digestion. Hubei bacon has maintained the characteristics of good color, fragrance, taste and shape, and is known as "a hundred flowers in cook the meat". Mom's fried bacon with garlic sprouts, fried bacon with lettuce and bacon noodles will be especially delicious, Dad.
The curing method of preserved fish is similar to that of preserved meat. Take freshwater fish, generally grass carp, silver carp and herring. Cut the fish belly, wash it, sprinkle a lot of salt for curing, spread it out with chopsticks and put it in the sun. When there is no sunshine, put it in a cool and ventilated place. There are fish hanging on the balcony at home, and the air smells of fish. Pickled preserved fish can be eaten directly, but dad will reprocess it, chop it into small pieces, prepare a pot of hot oil, fry the chopped fish in the pot until golden brown, then take it out of the pot and sprinkle oil on the fish pieces. I like the preserved fish cooked by my father best. It's salty. It smells like Chili oil. It tastes particularly delicious.
My family loves to eat mash. In my memory, my father did it once, and my father said that he had done it several times. I don't remember.
1. Wash glutinous rice with clear water, soak it for 1 hour, and drain it.
2. Spread gauze in the steamer, pour the drained glutinous rice on it, steam it with high fire for 1 hour, then pour it into the basin, and when the rice temperature is reduced to 20℃-40℃ with an electric fan (the origin of glutinous rice is different, even the latitude and temperature are different according to the types of distiller's yeast), then pour a proper amount of cold boiled water into the basin and stir it evenly by hand. Grind the distiller's yeast into powder, put it in a basin and mix well again.
3. Dig a small nest in the middle by hand, then add a little cold water to the remaining koji powder and sprinkle it on the surface of the rice. Then cover it tightly with a lid and wrap it with cotton wool. Let it ferment naturally.
Dad's mash is full of granules and tastes sweet and mellow, which is much stronger than that sold in supermarkets. This is the best mashed potato I have ever eaten! Every time I go back to my hometown, I don't have to eat rice, I have to eat mashed potatoes.
Ciba is a very popular food in the south. Ciba is made by putting cooked glutinous rice into a stone trough and mashing it with a stone hammer. It can be fried in cakes or mixed with brown sugar while it is hot. My favorite food is brown sugar mixed with Ciba, which is soft, sweet and full. According to mom and dad, more than ten years ago, young people in the village would pound glutinous rice together in the twelfth lunar month, shouting all the time, celebrating and being lively. Now that young people have entered the city, the elderly have no strength, and the lively scene of smashing glutinous rice can no longer be seen. The bought Ciba lacks that effort, and there is always something wrong, that kind of excitement, that kind of labor for the New Year, which is hard to taste.
There is also a unique traditional pastry food in Hubei-meat pie, which is also our favorite food. It is made of sweet potato starch, minced fish and minced pork, and then steamed. In China, meat pie is one of the necessary dishes for every family in the New Year, and there is also a saying that "no meat pie is enough". "Meat pies seem very simple to make. If the proportion of fish, meat and sweet potato starch is uneven, it will not be delicious and will spill if it is not soft. Picking it up with chopsticks is the top grade of meat pie.
My father passed on the delicious food from my hometown, brought it to my heart and passed it on to me. Although my days in my hometown are numbered, the hometown flavor cooked by my father has become the hometown flavor. Hometown, in the form of delicious food, has been handed down from generation to generation on the tip of the tongue, becoming the hometown on the tip of the tongue and becoming a thought in people's hearts.