The first time I ate tea cakes, I was in a big hotel opposite the new city and the old city. Their family is very famous in the local area.
When we put forward several "special dishes", the waiter recommended them to us. Because tea cakes are "our unique snacks here, and tourists must order them."
In addition, the display of tea cakes in the hotel album is really attractive: the white and tender skin faintly reveals the ruddy stuffing inside, and the hot air almost floats to the tip of the nose, making you feel sweet and delicious through the picture. After all, we have old people and children at this table, so it is a good choice to have a soft snack. All right, let's have a drink. But it never occurred to me-
After the tea cake was served, it was actually stuffed with meat.
Ah, this ...
what can I say? You see, this small cake is square and watery, and its skin is the rice cake noodles commonly used for dessert. Arguably, the brown stuffing wrapped here should be bean paste, right? Even jujube paste, brown sugar and purple potato are logical ... in short, it is "not" maotai-flavor emotionally and intellectually. This operation ... is really unexpected.
After a pause, I ate one steadily. Don't tell me that this tea cake is very strange, but it tastes good.
The "glutinous" rice paste and the "muddy" meat stuffing, together with oral liquid, taste a bit like meat dumplings, but taste more elegant than dumplings; It's a bit like meat buns, but it's better than buns.
After eating the meatballs in the tea cake, I found that the "shell" with meat soup outside is better to eat alone, and the sweetness of the slightest bit is the sweetness of glutinous rice.
The clerk said: this tea cake "can't be eaten any more" after leaving the new town, and there is no similar Jiangnan town around it.
Indeed, almost all the "rice cakes" we have eaten from north to south are sweet, and we rarely see meat stuffing. However, we have to say that the exquisite craftsmanship and exquisite ceremony of Jiangnan cookies have impressed everyone. For example:
Nanxun Town Orange Cake is made of special honey kumquat, which is simple and hard to find.
Shaoxing rice cakes seem unremarkable, but their history can be traced back to the Han Dynasty, and more than a dozen practices have been derived so far.
There is also a kind of cake that looks like a rose, rose red, with high face value and looks good.
The real thing looks "fake", but people say that this cake has no artificial additives at all, but uses the juice of pitaya (after removing seeds) to color the rice noodles ... You have to sigh that the "natural selection" of the land of fish and rice has given the people of Jiangnan unlimited creativity.
Later, I got used to it. The first thing to do when going to a tourist destination is to "fix" the food first: what to eat, how to eat it, and why to eat it ... Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai have wonderful humanistic interests, which let us a group of northern tourists see a lot.
But how can we just "watch"? We need to find out how the tea cakes in this new city came from and where the root of "the only share in Jiangnan" lies. This trip to glad you came.
Tea cake, as its name implies, is a snack related to tea. After calculation, since 15 17 was listed as a "new city product" in Fairy Pool, it has been an old specialty of this town.
It is said that it originated in the Southern Song Dynasty, but this statement has no historical facts to test. Ten thousand steps back, even from the Ming Dynasty, it has a history of about 600 years-
Let's start with the Ming Dynasty.
In the early Ming Dynasty, the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal flourished. I shared in my travel notes a few days ago that there will be a "unique" big market (Silkworm Flower Temple Fair) in the south of the Yangtze River as soon as the Qingming Festival arrives in the new ancient town.
This market is held once a year, and the scene is extremely spectacular-but you can imagine that the new city people said to me: What is such a market? Aside from the Ming and Qing dynasties, it is not new at all. We have unexpected "markets" like Shixiang, Morning Market and Night Market, which can be said to be "See you every day in new cities".
Tea cake, a snack, came into being with the development of "Canal Fair".
At first, tea cakes were only sold in teahouses in Xincheng, but at that time (probably) there was no meat stuffing, ordinary rice cakes, sweet ones, or no stuffing at all. Legend has it that the earliest practice of wrapping meat in rice cakes was accidental:
New citizens attach great importance to Tomb-Sweeping Day, which stems from the development of local sericulture-at that time, almost every household in Xincheng raised silkworms and planted mulberry, and the breeding of spring silkworms almost decided this year's harvest.
Therefore, whenever we go to Tomb-Sweeping Day, people in Xincheng (and surrounding areas) will spontaneously give incense to the "Silkworm Flower Empress" and wish the whole family all the best.
One year in Tomb-Sweeping Day, it came later than before, and the cook of a family docked at Xin 'an ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
When the cook offered a sacrifice to the silkworm god, it occurred to him: Why not make this sacrifice look like "I don't want to eat at home"? The "fairy" will be very happy after eating it, and our family will have a good harvest this year. All right, let's do this:
She "spent a lot of money" to prepare a lot of ingredients that she would like to eat at home once every holiday. First, grind the first-class glutinous rice into powder with a stone mill, then wrap the minced meat in rice flour with diced bamboo shoots and bean jelly, and steam it in a pot.
Jiangnan rice cake has been improved by new people, and it has a "high-grade taste" since then: the housewife found that the steam in the hot pot washed away a small mouth on the meat pie skin, and the soup of tender lard flowed down the cake body, which was fragrant and particularly attractive.
Immediately, the practice of this kind of rice cake was learned by the neighbors who opened the teahouse, and it soon became popular throughout the new town.
As an important transportation hub on the Jiangnan Canal, Xinshi Ancient Town has many teahouses.
I found that the habit of drinking tea in new cities is a bit like that in Guangdong. Old people in Xincheng also like to gather together a table in twos and threes early in the morning, chatting and eating snacks. Throughout the country, the life customs on the docks always have the characteristics of communication between the north and the south, so this brand-new "new town folk custom" gradually took shape with this small tea cake, and then, with the Qingming Xiangshi and the Ming Dynasty.
Just like Shaoxing people drink a little wine with a plate of fennel beans, now new people drink tea with a tea cake, and this day's life is complete and complete.
It is worth mentioning that the tea cake in Xinshi ancient town has been called such a name and shape since the first day of its birth. The difference in packaging is such meat stuffing, which has never been renamed, but has been changed again and again.
Some people tried to improve it, but they all failed.
From this, we can see that the word "tea cake" is not only a kind of food, but also a kind of recognition in the hearts of new people. Perhaps we can better understand that tea cake is a new city people's determination and persistence in their hometown culture.
In the eyes of my northern tourists, the tea cake in Xinshi ancient town is the best "hand gift" on the way to Deqing, Huzhou.
Nowadays, tea cakes in new cities are no longer exclusive to teahouses.
Tea cakes, as the necessities of new citizens' daily life and dining table, entered the small restaurant and boarded the big hall. Perhaps in the future, as a unique specialty of Jiangnan ancient town, Xinshi Tea Cake will be protected like many "intangible cultural heritages".
In the long history, in the dazzling list of Chinese food culture, although the figure of tea cake is unremarkable, "birthright" is indispensable.
A small tea cake is a "water town evolution history" of the Canal New Town.
I'm Sister Dahong, the anchor of the audio radio travel channel, a professional traveler, focusing on minority games and sharing unpopular destinations. Travel is not an attitude, but life itself.