Article | Tang Ma

When I was taking the postgraduate entrance examination in my senior year, I applied to a school in Shanghai. What I worried most about at that time was not whether I would pass the exam or not, but what I would worry about if I passed the exam. Now, how can I stand eating rice every day? Fortunately, he lost his reputation and didn't get the chance to eat rice every day.

I just didn’t expect that after eight years, I would still come to Shanghai for other reasons.

More than two months have been enough for me to exhaust my curiosity and satisfaction about new local food. I remember when I first came here, I had a bowl of Luohan vegetarian noodles in the alley next to the Bund. People in the north also eat noodle soup, but it’s not like Shanghai. The toppings are served in separate small plates. The sauce is very thick. I can tell that there are bamboo shoots and shiitake mushrooms in the ingredients. It’s a bit sweet and the noodles are a bit like stick noodles. , put in a bowl, the soup is very light and sweet. The first time I ate it, I thought it was very fresh and delicious, but no matter how delicious the local noodles are, after eating it three times, I couldn’t eat it anymore.

It was also at that time that I realized that I was ignorant: people in Shanghai don’t just eat rice every day.

One day I was a guest at Baoer’s house. I woke up early in the morning and Baoer took my husband and me to have breakfast. It is a time-honored soup dumpling restaurant. I had eaten crab roe powder dumplings on the Bund not long ago, and I couldn’t get used to them. I always felt like they were made from unfermented noodles, and they left a mark on my teeth when I bit into them. So I ordered two bowls of small wontons before Baoer asked for soup dumplings. In the end, she ordered a basket of soup dumplings made from dead noodles. I haven't liked eating steamed buns since I was a child. A long time ago, I still had the bad habit of eating only the skin and not the fillings. I have only tasted the tender and juicy soup dumplings. The steamed buns in the north are made of fermented dough, and the dough is soft. My mother calls unfermented noodles dead noodles.

After eating wontons three times and soup dumplings twice, I added two more things to my dislike list. One time I came back late, and because my husband wanted to eat auspicious wontons, I felt sulky, and I didn't like wontons even more.

The express delivery in Shanghai is so convenient that I started ordering Malatang from takeaway. When I go out to eat with friends and ask me what I like to eat, I usually can only think of hot pot and spicy rice noodles. I know that I am eating local food and my mouth is full of food, and I want spicy food.

I tried five mala tang restaurants in the surrounding area. Except for one called Queen, which has a very beautiful packaging bag, the taste is really not that different from my hometown. I’ve gained five pounds of pork belly, but I still can’t find a good Malatang restaurant.

This plan was finally abandoned.

It’s really better to rely on yourself than to ask for help.

The apartment we rented had a kitchen. I brought a pressure cooker from all the way and made the kitchen my own as soon as I arrived. In less than a month, my empty kitchen was filled with pots, pans, oil, salt, sauce, and vinegar. I couldn’t eat anything outside, so I had no choice but to roll up my sleeves and start cooking.

Although my cooking skills have not improved by leaps and bounds in the past two months, compared with two months ago, I can still use the word "impressive".

At the beginning, I just made simple porridge, porridge in the morning and evening, red bean porridge, mung bean porridge, white porridge, preserved egg and lean meat porridge, black rice porridge with rock sugar adzuki beans, and brown sugar steamed buns from Babi Mantou. And sour bean buns, paired with sweet and sour cold lotus vegetables, a boiled egg per person, counting on your fingers: carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins, everything is there. After eating it for a month, the thought of Babi steamed buns makes me sick.

At noon, I realized what I had been worrying about many years ago: eating rice. Supor's pots are really good, whether you are making porridge or pressing rice. Of course, you cannot rigidly follow the proportions in the instructions: there are scales on the inner wall of the pot, and only a little water is put in two bowls of rice, but if you follow that proportion, the rice will be cooked It is always on the hard and dry side, so I summed up my experience and found that you need to add one-half more water to two bowls of rice, and the water should be placed at the level of three bowls, and the rice will be springy. However, I have always used Northeastern rice, and I don’t know if Chongming rice is still the same.

The rice needs to be stir-fried. There are three of us, so we cook three dishes.

There is a small supermarket downstairs, and the food is very fresh. My favorite things to buy are tomatoes and potatoes. I started with scrambled eggs, scrambled eggs with green onions, and scrambled eggs with tomatoes. Later, I went to a friend's house as a guest. For the first time in my life, I ate something that was not bitter. Bitter Melon Scrambled Eggs got out of hand. I ate Bitter Melon Scrambled Eggs for several days in a row, and I didn’t get tired of it until the end of last month. It was only then that I realized that bitter melon is not bitter. It needs to be blanched with hot water. It cannot be blanched too much. It should be done as soon as it changes color. Bitter melon and scrambled eggs are delicious and beautiful.

I don’t know if it can be considered as following the local customs and adapting to the local conditions. In short, I remember that when the vinegar from Shanxi was eaten in Shaanxi, it was so sour that it was hard to eat. So, no matter how I improved it, the dishes I made were still better than those eaten in Xi’an. Much lighter, the skin benefits and becomes brighter and brighter.

My food was smooth and smooth, but my mouth still tasted terrible. I wanted to eat noodles, especially noodles. I started to miss the hand-rolled noodles with slivers and picky tips, the toppings of fried eggplant with green peppers, and the side dishes of braised beans and potatoes. Unfortunately, the noodles sold in supermarkets are all stick noodles. If they are cooked for a short time, they will be raw; if they are cooked for a long time, they will become soft. I tried many times but couldn't get the heat and time right.

I once angrily went to a wet market two kilometers away to buy Chongqing handmade noodles, but the taste was still bad. The noodles were fried with oil, and the noodles were mixed with dry noodles. I lay on the bed and thought about it sadly. I knew I was homesick. The tired bird returns to its nest, Mr. Cai Lan said in one of his books: "What we eat is a habit and a kind of nostalgia."

I miss my mother's river fishing very much. Damn it, I miss Xi’an’s pulled noodles and pulled strips of dry noodles so much. I've been feeling extremely homesick recently, and I can smell the heating at home even when I call my mom.

The most direct experience of so-called homesickness is nothing more than missing the delicacies of my hometown. The delicacies are insignificant or even inedible in the eyes of outsiders, but homesickness is so overbearing. It takes advantage of the opportunity and gets in. Covered in the guise of gourmet food, it shows an extreme prejudice: I just want to eat noodles, the kind that are steaming hot and the oil and spiciness of the noodles can overflow.

I am from Shanxi. There are many types of pasta in Shanxi, but the toppings are not the same. Xi'an excels in toppings. My husband is from Xi'an, so I became a Qin-Jin banana person. I miss the noodles from both places and am craving for them.

The first thing I made was oily noodles.

I’m not very good at making noodles, especially hand-rolled noodles, and I’m the worst at it. I have never kneaded noodles before, so when I made the noodles for the first time, I used noodles from the supermarket. It's not stick noodles, but it's similar to hand-made noodles, but it looks like it's made by a machine. It's the same thickness and thickness, and it's also difficult to cook.

Fortunately, the fried noodles are chewy. I boiled the noodles, poured them into cold water, and put them in a big bowl. The green vegetables are cooked in advance and placed aside. The middle position is reserved for seasonings: extremely fresh (I think light soy sauce can also be used), salt, sesame seeds, chopped garlic sprouts, and one garlic sprout to mix with both bowls of noodles. More than enough. The seasonings were put on the garlic sprouts, and finally the dried chili noodles. The oil that was hot enough in the pot was poured on the chili noodles. With a sizzle, I was surprised by my own talent. It was like this for the first time. success. Success makes people proud. I ate oil noodles again at noon the next day. I made the same recipe, but I didn’t feel satisfied with the noodles the first day. I doubled the noodles and almost ate the three of them to death. I was temporarily not satisfied with the oil noodles. Po Mian lost interest.

The pursuit of delicious food is tireless, and I soon became obsessed with a new way of eating: sipping Ge Dou. This is the way to make it in Shanxi. The one that is eaten more now in Xi'an is called "Zi Jie'er". I have never eaten it or seen it, but from the description, it should be made in a similar way: they are all very small pasta, in my husband's words. He said: The area covered by the soup is large, so it tastes good.

I don’t have the tools at my disposal, and I don’t have enough raw materials, but none of these can stop my morale to open up new territories. I bought a potato grater from the supermarket, added salt to the dry flour, kneaded it into a dough, and slowly poured a large ball of dough into the pot. It was very honorable to be injured heroically during the first operation, and a piece of skin was severely rubbed off on my thumb.

Despite this, I still completed the combat mission with determination and achieved complete success. I was highly praised by the leader, our husband: I could not leave the line of fire even if I was slightly injured, what a comrade! The zigeledou that I put so much effort into was delicious, mainly because the pickled cabbage and tofu toppings were delicious. What's more, I quietly added pickled beans to it, but none of them tasted it.

After eating the squid, I started thinking about the noodles again.

The so-called sauerkraut is actually small dices, and all the ingredients are cut into small dices. This was something I didn't like to eat before, but now I'm extremely greedy for it. Saozi has both meat and vegetables. When it comes to taste, meat saozi is the most delicious.

I specifically searched for the recipe of Qishan Sauce Noodles, bought a piece of leg meat with skin, and fried a bowl of pork noodles. There was less fat and a little lean meat. I was very unwilling and decided to make it again.

One pound of pork belly, one pound of refined meat, cut into fingernail-sized dices, marinated with cornstarch and cooking wine for one afternoon (basically the time it takes me to make a meal of squid, two hours ). Turn on the heat and heat oil, two kilograms of meat. I poured two ounces of oil into it. I put in the fat meat first and fried it. In fact, when I say frying, it is better to say stir-fry. I want to stir-fry all the oil in the fat meat. The white fat meat is white. It would be nice if it turned into a golden little rice dumpling. There is more and more oil in the pot, add lean meat, add dark soy sauce cooking wine, green onion, ginger and double the salt, then add vinegar. Aged vinegar is the best. The Zhenjiang balsamic vinegar I used tastes a little too sweet. Heat. The last thing is the sesame seeds and chili noodles. When they are put in, it is almost time to turn off the heat.

After frying, it will be a big bowl of oil. White sesame seeds are floating on the red oil. Let it cool and store it in the refrigerator. When you eat it, the red oil has solidified. Take a spoonful of noodles and mix it. Eat an extra bowl.

The eating habits developed since childhood are probably unchangeable throughout your life. No matter how exquisite and delicious the side dishes of rice are, they are still not as comforting and warm as a bowl of noodles.

Winter in Shanghai comes late, but it’s still cloudy and cold. When I don’t want to move, I get into the kitchen and cook up a delicacy that I’m almost tired of eating at home. Dingdingdongdong is mixed with my own taste. The unnoticed homesickness allows me to draw strength and comfort in this winter when everything starts again.

Missing me is just a matter of thinking about it. After my desire for words has been resolved, there are still many other things.

Xinkeng is still saving manuscripts~