Once upon a time, Luoyang's soup became the city's business card, and some people called it "Tang Cheng". I don't like this title. In my mind, Luoyang is a "holy city" and a "capital of gods".
As a native of Luoyang Old Town, I grew up eating soup. Luoyang people call "sweet soup" and "salty soup" soup, while "sweet soup" is usually called "porridge", which refers to rice porridge, noodle soup, red bean soup, mung bean soup and red date soup. Salty soup is now called Luoyang specialty, including beef soup, mutton soup, bean curd soup, meatball soup and non-turning soup. Luoyang people are used to eating soup in the morning and evening, noodles at noon and rice occasionally. In the morning, women and children usually eat porridge, steamed bread, fried dough sticks and pickles at home. Men will go to the city gate or eat bowls of "paomo" in the street, that is, all kinds of soups, mainly beef soup and beef offal liver in the 1970s and 1980s. There are only a few tables and stools in the restaurant, and men usually "hug" with big black glaze (a large bowl of coarse porcelain, which is called "hug" in Luoyang dialect). The bowl is filled with thick soup boiled with beef skeleton in the middle of the night, with beef slices or beef offal, red oil fragrance, chopped green onion and coriander, soaked in steamed buns at home, or oil whirlwinds, fires, hard-faced pot helmets and so on in the street. According to the old people, the most delicious things in steamed buns are steamed buns and hard-faced pot helmets. Serve a big bowl or sit or squat outside the restaurant and eat a bowl of spicy beef soup, which is refreshing and comfortable.
Luoyang people also pay attention to drinking soup. They usually drink beef soup, mutton soup and tofu soup for breakfast, which tastes spicy and rich. And meatball soup and non-turning soup are dinner, paying attention to hot and sour taste. I remember that people in the old city like to say "double pepper and double vinegar" when drinking meatball soup.
Luoyang decoction (continued 1)
I remember when I was a child, my grandmother would get up at five or six every morning and be busy cooking breakfast for the whole family. There is no electric light in the small kitchen, only a small kerosene lamp. My grandmother moved her feet in the light and shadow of the oil lamp to cook rice porridge, stir-fry radish and steam steamed bread. When my mother cleans for us, the family eats hot meals, adults go to work, children go to school, and my grandmother has to wash dishes, take my little sister and prepare lunch. As long as I can remember, my grandmother didn't go to bed until dawn, until she suffered from eye disease at the age of 85.
Old age, good family conditions. In winter, occasionally my father will get up early and go to the state-run restaurant in the south gate with a steel pot to sell a pot of beef soup. Luoyang beef soup can be added with soup indefinitely. Buy a bowl of soup, and you can make more soup. (I don't know the price of beef soup in the 1970s.) When I come back, grandma will roll it away on the coal fire, and everyone will soak in a bowl of steamed bread branded as thin as paper by grandma. Grandma doesn't drink beef soup and so on. She only eats a small amount of chicken. I don't know if it's because of financial difficulties or something. I think this is mainly because of poverty.
Luoyang people will also make their own buns at home. I like noodle soup. I can eat a sesame cake and a bowl of soup. Eat half a bowl of noodles. I have to stir for a long time. I remember living in my aunt's house when I was a child. In the morning, my uncle will take down the key chain hanging on his waist, open the drawer on half a cupboard, grab a handful of sugar and put it into a big porcelain bowl to pour boiling water, then break off a thick stick steamed by my aunt from the basket and give it to his favorite little daughter. The little cousin also ate a sweet smile on her face.
After junior high school, because I don't like porridge very much, my mother sometimes gets up early to make me egg buns, stir-fry two eggs with Huang Cancan, stir-fry with chopped green onion, add water, five-spice powder, salt and a little soy sauce, add vegetables or spinach in a pan, put them in a bowl, add eggs, monosodium glutamate and chopped green, and the soup is yellow, Dan and green. This is also my favorite breakfast.
My habit of eating steamed stuffed buns has not changed until now!
Luoyang's soup (continued)
Next, let's talk about the famous "soup" in Luoyang.
The earliest soups in Luoyang (now the old city) are beef soup from Nanguan, Nanmenkou and Chengpo, beef offal from Jiufumen in West Street, beef soup and mutton soup from Dashiqiao in Dongguan, and tofu soup and meatball soup served by different restaurants in Xinghua Street east of Cross Street in the morning and evening. Liu Ji can't turn out the soup at dusk at the corner opposite the Youth Palace.
To the east of Luoyang Old Town is Chanhe Hui Autonomous Region, which is a Hui gathering area with hundreds of thousands of Hui residents. Therefore, it is their tradition to make natural beef and mutton buns. They are good at making huge hard-faced pot helmets to make pancakes. When you go there, you will see mosques, imams, men in white hats, women with narrow faces and high noses, and beef and mutton stalls in street markets. The yard is spacious and clean, and there is a street outside the yard. Brooms are often stacked and tied.
What impressed me the most was Jiufumen's Zagan Decoction. Jiufumen is now in the middle of West Street, facing Nanji Street. It used to be an old collection in Luoyang. Before liberation, it was the largest commercial market in Luoyang. There are shops and restaurants inside and outside Jiufumen. Because my aunt's house is close to Jiufumen, I am familiar with it. There is a restaurant opposite my aunt's house, which specializes in beef offal and is very famous in the city. Zagan Soup is cooked with beef offal such as beef skeleton, beef liver, intestines, stomach and lungs, and served with chopped green onion, seasoning, chili pepper oil, pancakes, oil whirls or sesame cakes while they are hot. It is really fragrant and spicy, stimulating your taste buds, satisfying your appetite and stimulating your fighting spirit. Man, three days without soup, itchy all over.
I once saw a tricycle pulling a bloody cow skeleton in front of a hotel, and some spices such as star anise and cinnamon packed in sacks. My cousin and I secretly took a small piece of cinnamon from the mouth of the sack and chewed it in our mouth for a while. A pungent, sweet and peculiar mixed taste stimulates children's taste buds, which is also an unforgettable taste in childhood. Opposite Jiufumen, there is a wonton shop in the south of West Street, which specializes in selling wonton.
They all said, "smelly liver, smelly, delicious." Every summer, half the street smells bad. At this time, I remember that there was a big mouth of an air-raid shelter in the hotel, and cold air was continuously pumped through the exhaust fan to relieve the heat and drive away the smell. The cool mixed air still smells of smoke.
(Note: Jiufumen is a city gate in Luoyang, located in the middle of the present Market Street. The gate is tall and majestic. The doorway is about 89 meters high and 20 meters long. It is very cool to sit under it in summer, and there is water flowing through it. It was demolished in the urban reconstruction in the 1980s. )
Luoyang's soup (continued)
Tofu soup is a vegetarian soup without meat. It seems that it only became popular in the 1970s and 1980s. It first started from Zhenbu Hotel in Luoyang. At that time, I was still in high school, and sometimes I would accompany my mother to work the night shift in the shop. When I get up in the morning, my mother will take me to Zhenbu Hotel to eat tofu soup.
A large iron pot with snow-white tofu blocks rolled on it, and a soup bowl full of ingredients was placed on the stove. There are soaked vermicelli, vegetables soaked in water, yellow and white oily tofu, green chopped green onion, and a soul seasoning is mashed ginger juice and salt, pepper and Chili oil. I saw the master skillfully pour the boiling hot soup into the soup, then drain a spoonful of white tofu with a colander and add it to the bowl. The soup in the bowl just reached the edge of the bowl. There are chopped green onion and red pepper oil floating on it. At that time, tofu soup was very cheap, like a bowl of 50 cents, including more than half of the bowl of tofu, and then a dime to buy a sesame seed cake, that is a beautiful breakfast. I especially like the oily tofu in the soup. Its production method is to cut white tofu into pieces with a thickness of two centimeters, fry it, cut it flat from the middle with a knife, split it in two, and then cut it into pieces. It tastes crisp, fragrant, soft and chewy. Tofu soup is relatively refreshing, and women, children and the elderly prefer it.
My father prefers meatball soup, which was first sold in Zhenduo Hotel and Chaoyang Hotel. This soup was made in the evening after sunset. People wander in the street and drink a bowl of hot and sour tofu soup to get rid of the fatigue of the day, which is also a reward for their hard work. At that time, it seemed that the men sitting in the shop and squatting outside the shop were all men drinking soup. The meatballs in meatball soup are almost half the size of a fist. They are fried with mung bean noodles and soybean sprouts into golden brown, full of bean flavor. This soup is made of pig leg bones. You can add four big mung bean balls to a bowl of soup. With chopped green onion, coriander and spicy oil, it smells delicious, and vinegar is added, which is sour and delicious. Adding a sesame seed cake is enough to eat a round mouth, which is hearty, satisfying and bursting with happiness.
Non-turning soup is a unique soup, which is different from the above soup. Its ingredients are extremely exquisite, including kelp, day lily, vermicelli, fungus and laver. It is neatly packed around the edge of the pot, with a bowl-sized grate in the middle, and the soup boils slightly below. Soup is made of beef bones, pig bones and chicken bones. "No turning" is a kind of pancake, which is made by soaking peeled mung beans until they are soft, grinding them into paste, and then baking them with small iron seeds. The finished product is only the size of the palm of your hand, so it is called "no turning" because it does not need to be turned over when making. There are many kinds of side dishes in the bowl, and there are two "no turning". Pepper is added to the seasoning. Adding vinegar is another hot and sour taste. It can also be called Luoyang people's "midnight snack", which is generally spread near Luoyang Theatre, where there are three theaters, cinemas, open-air stages, storytelling courts, card courts, cold drinks shops, game halls and so on. After nightfall, the lights there are flashing and people are crowded. After watching the movie, the entertained people will feed in that area, and a bowl of soup is sour and delicious, which is not pleasant.
I remember the snacks near the cinema, small cans of rice wine, and the sound of bellows calling him was very attractive! There is also a ruddy spiced rabbit head, a round red sugar-coated gourd and a sweet baked sweet potato in the glass cover. Thinking about it is also mouth watering! The past is so beautiful, let it stay here!
Now the night market in Luoyang Cross Street has become a punching place for network celebrities, with hundreds of snacks gathered, but it is no longer my old city. My old city is in my memory! (End)
There may be something wrong with my mobile phone, so I can't upload photos. Please forgive me!