Enshi Grand Canyon, Geocentric Valley, Tusi City ... There are many beautiful scenery and many mouth-watering foods here, such as miscellaneous dregs, crested ginger, Tujia bacon, sesame oil, Gexianmi, Kang potatoes, dried poplars, oil tea soup and so on. These are exciting ideas.
However, the food I want to introduce to you here is not a dish, but a Tujia hanging pot banquet with local characteristics. Tujia people are ethnic minorities living in western Hubei, eastern Chongqing, western Hunan and western Guizhou. They live in a diaojiao building, and the biggest room in the middle is a hall. In addition to gathering or discussing affairs as guests and families, the hall also has the functions of a fire room and a restaurant. Every family likes to cook on the fire pit in the hall.
At first, the main function of fireplace was to keep warm in cold weather and drive away cold and dampness. However, Tujia people use fireplaces for many purposes, and also for cooking. There is a tripod pot hanging in the middle, and the bottom is lit. The burning smoke can be used to smoke bacon, pig's trotters and other wax goods, while the hanging pot banquet uses this hanging pot on the dining table.
There is a grand sense of ceremony when eating the hanging pot banquet. I saw two men dressed in Tujia costumes carrying hanging pots to the dining table. This hanging pot is also different from the farmer's hanging pot. Obviously, it is optimized externally, with a diameter of about one and a half feet. Different from the ordinary wok, it is rainbow-shaped, and there is a twisted metal wire between the two ears. There is a hook hanging on the roof, and the pot is hung on the hook. This hanging pot is a bit like the mother pot of Chongqing hot pot, with soup inside and vegetables outside.
In fact, there is more than one hanging pot, there is also a hanging pot, and there are some other dishes around. Local friends said that the solstice of winter was coming, and the country began to kill Nian pigs, so we just caught up with soup. We ate a lot of dishes when drinking soup, such as pig blood, pig liver, slippery meat and crisp meat.
The dishes in the hanging pot are very rich, including fish and meat, as well as baked potatoes, fried flowers, preserved pig's trotters, preserved ribs and so on. When the dishes in it are almost eaten, I will put the prepared local tofu, bean sausage, mushrooms and vegetables into the hanging pot and eat them very hot. This atmosphere actually gives me the same feeling as Chongqing hot pot.
On the dining table, besides the delicious food in the hanging pot, there are Zhang Guan slag, Tujia bacon, small potatoes on the kang, dried poplars and other local foods. The staple food is golden potato rice, which smells delicious. Finally, everyone has a bowl of authentic Tujia oil tea. It doesn't look good, but it is a unique tea culture in China with a long history. According to the Records of Laifeng County in the Qing Dynasty, "The natives called it' Camellia oleifera' by frying soybeans, corn, rice flowers and green burnt things, taking water and oil, making tea and soaking in water."
Travel is not only to see the scenery, taste the culture, but also to experience the local specialties. So when you arrive in Enshi, you must try this unique color hanging pot banquet. Otherwise, you won't really understand Enshi's catering culture. what do you think?