I can't answer a question about the past historical stories of old Beijing and Zhajiang. It's just the smell of home printed in my memory. Like many people, it is a common food from small to large.
Generally, it is stir-fried in a big bowl of sauce, which can be put for many days all year round. It's very hot in summer, and hot meals and hot dishes always have no appetite. A big bowl of noodles has been cooked in cold water. Put the serving code and put a spoonful of sauce on it. After this, find a cool place to cry, spit, and suck, and it will be fine for a while.
Zhajiang Noodles, a seemingly simple way to eat, actually has thousands of changes. Different sauces make different noodles. In addition, the menu code pays attention to seasonal changes, and even the ingredients of pepper oil, Chili oil, mustard oil and vinegar are different. This is why people say "my Zhajiang noodles are the best".
Let's start with fried sauce. My family's practice is to put a lot of diced fat meat, stir-fry it with a small fire, and then put the water and dried yellow sauce in a large iron pot and cook it slowly until most of the water is boiled and all the oil is cooked. A large pot becomes a big bowl.
It sounds simple, but it's all kung fu. Grandma has been frying sauce at home for as long as I can remember. Every time she fry sauce, she will move a small bench and sit in the small kitchen transformed by the balcony, stay in front of the gas stove and stare at the sauce. Every once in a while, she would turn it over with a big shovel to prevent it from burning. It is said to be fried sauce, but it is actually cooked. It doesn't look like "fried" sauce until the water is consumed and lard emerges on the surface to cover the sauce.
The fried sauce is ready. Noodles will take a while to start cooking. The fried sauce just out of the pot is thick and bright, giving off a thick sauce flavor. Pick some diced meat while it's hot. Salty and delicious. Adults put some out, eat cucumbers and peppers in the sauce, wait for the new garlic to come down, and then mix a dozen garlic cloves in the sauce, which is the best appetizer. Have some white wine and beer to chat first, and wait until the noodles come out.
Every family has its own unique method of frying sauce. I have been to other people's homes and said that the sauce used for fried sauce is different. Liubiju's dried yellow sauce and Tianyuan's dried yellow sauce have their own merits. Some people like to put sweet noodle sauce in their mouths, while others need salt and soy sauce in their mouths. Besides diced meat, there are eggs, dried seaweed and mushrooms in the sauce. Some people like thin sauce, some people like dry food, some people like oil, and some people don't. After eating at home for several years, the dregs of the river have been continuously improved, and gradually found the most perfect taste that belongs only to your home.
Fried sauce is a good partner and goes well with many foods. Putting them together will not completely cover up the original unique taste of another food, and sometimes it will stimulate each other to be more delicious.
Zhajiang Noodles steamed bread and Zhajiang Noodles steamed bread are completely different experiences. It is unique to dip green onions in sauce oil. You can eat a big bowl of fried sauce without pickles in cold water. Stir-fried sauce with green peppers, carrots, white radishes, celery, and those dishes that you don't usually like doesn't look so bad.
In order to save money, I took a big glass jar of fried sauce to school, secretly got a rice cooker to cook noodles, bought some dried noodles and some lettuce with my classmates in the dormitory, mixed with fried sauce, ate it three or four times a week, and put another jar at home after eating. This sneaky way of eating was also unique at that time.
Let's meet again. Noodles are made in a variety of ways. Judging from the types and shapes of noodles, you can eat them in different patterns for a long time every day without repeating them.
Everyone in my family has different preferences, so every time I eat dregs, I have to distribute them. Machine-cut noodles, dried noodles and even instant noodles can be made into Zhajiang Noodles. Of course, handmade noodles at home are the best. They are wide and narrow, long and short, soft and hard. You can choose whether to pick the pot or water it. It's just trouble for the mother who is in charge of cooking. Everyone has requirements and can only meet them one by one.
I love noodles, but I always like to roll them into wide strips, mix them with fried sauce and tear them into small pieces. I think only in this way can the delicious fried sauce be brought into full play.
Grandma will also make a special kind of pasta, which is made of white flour and miscellaneous flour into a soft and sticky batter, and then put it on a pot with a tool with many holes, and squeeze the fine flour out of the holes to make many small round strips. Scraped with a shovel, they all fell into the boiling water pot and became short pieces of noodles. Take it out while it is hot and serve it with fried sauce, which has a special flavor of mixed noodles.
There is also an interesting "fishing" method. Put the dough into a large bowl and press out one side of the dough from the bowl with chopsticks. When the chopsticks are slightly bent and waved again, a noodle is squeezed out under the mutual squeezing pressure of the chopsticks and the bowl, just falling into the basin by the force of the chopsticks, and countless small white strips jump into the water like small whitebait.
Finally, I have to talk about the menu code. In slag river, old Beijing, the menu is very particular. But every family also has its own characteristics. The most commonly used are bean sprouts, cucumbers and Chinese cabbage. According to different seasons, there will be various side dishes. Radish, carrot, white radish, celery, spinach, leek, green garlic, pepper, green pepper, soybean, kale, and all kinds of wild vegetables in spring will be prepared every time you eat them and added to the slag river. If you choose at will, you will get different flavors of the four seasons. There are even snow red, lunch meat, sausages and eggs, and you can eat whatever you want.
I like noodles. I like all kinds of noodles except Zhajiang Noodles. My family's craftsmanship is different, too. Anyway, I am delicious.
It is best to put yellow flowers, fungus and lean meat in tomato noodles. Even if I don't eat noodles, I often feel delicious just drinking noodles. Dad often teases me to close the window quickly, saying that drinking it will turn into a swallow and fly away.
Eggplant Daoxiao Noodles and dried noodles are mom's specialties, and no one can compare with them. Dad's mutton and mung bean noodles are especially delicious, but grandpa always says that he taught my father. Grandpa will cook some hard dishes when he is free, such as braised beef, stewed ribs in white soup and a bowl of noodles in clear soup. It is really delicious.
Grandpa's braised pork noodles can't stop eating. Small diced meat is fried and cooked with soy sauce and other seasonings, which looks inconspicuous and somehow tastes particularly delicious.
However, I only remember eating, but I didn't learn their skills. Fewer and fewer people eat together, and those who spend time and energy don't often do it. I regret not eating every day when I was a child.
No matter how fast the years pass, noodles will always be my favorite. After all, my best dish is cooking instant noodles. But the taste of home I have eaten is hard for children to taste again. When my family is getting old and leaving, I can only grit my teeth and look for the favorite bowl of noodles in my memory.