Inscription: "Every homesickness will make you salivate, and nothing can come to your eyes"-Dai Fugu's embedded cakes in the Southern Song Dynasty, also known as "sandwiched cakes", "pounded cakes" and "trapped cakes", are the local special foods in Wenling and the favorite foods of Wenling people. Soft glutinous rice cake skin, with all kinds of fried fillings sealed in the rice cake skin, seems to be a full "big jiaozi", coupled with a bowl of mung bean noodle soup, bone soup or tofu (also known as tofu flower), is undoubtedly an excellent choice for breakfast. Wenling people's busy and full day begins with a delicious embedded cake.
? There is a little legend about embedded cakes. Legend has it that a long time ago, there was a man who worked in the fields every day, from early morning to evening, uninterrupted, working at sunrise and resting at sunset. Because of this, he often doesn't have lunch. He wants to ask his wife to deliver food at noon, but his home is two mountains away from his work, which will tire his wife out. He thought of many ways, but each one was not perfect. One evening, when he came back from the fields, he saw his four-year-old child playing with mud: he spread the mud on the ground, with many leaves, stones and dried mud of different colors on it, and he was trying to wrap it up. Watching from the sidelines, he had a brainwave, grinding rice into powder and making a soft, white skin (that is, what we call rice cakes). It happened that his wife cooked the food, and he put the food in the skin and glued the edges together to make our present embedded cakes. The next day, he took the embedded cake to the ground and took it out at noon. He was not hungry and had the strength to work again, which doubled the labor that day. Soon, this method spread widely, and the practice of embedding cakes was handed down from generation to generation.
? Now in the streets of Wenling, it is easy to find a cake shop. There is a long wooden desk in the shop (now there is plenty of stainless steel), and small stainless steel plates on the desk are neatly arranged in a row. The plate contains all kinds of vegetarian fillings, such as onions, carrots, celery, shredded potatoes, fried noodles, pickles, eggs, spicy cabbage, "pickled shrimps" and so on. The rice cake is wrapped in a white cotton mattress to keep it warm. Next to the console table, there are two cauldrons cooking on the stove, and the fragrant braised pork and dried tofu in the pots are steaming outward.
The shopkeeper stood in front of the console table, and the customers who ate the embedded cakes came. He pulled out a steaming cake from under the thick white cotton mattress, rubbed it into a cylinder, pressed it into a thin piece with his fist, pinched it at the bottom tail a few times, like a pocket in the shape of an open boat, and quickly put the fillings required by the customers into the rice cake in turn from a small stainless steel plate. Then squeeze the left hand in, and the right hand skillfully pinch the open edge tightly, like wrapping jiaozi, and make sure to leave a cut on the top of the embedded cake. Finally, scoop a spoonful of broth from the steaming braised pork pot and pour it in from the opening. At this time, a tube of authentic embedded cakes is officially completed.
When eating embedded cakes, you can also choose several classic combinations, such as mung bean noodle soup (chopped mung bean flour), dried bean curd bone soup or raw bean curd (also called tofu flower). Among them, there are two ways to eat raw tofu (also called tofu flower). One way is to add seaweed, mustard tuber, boiled skin and chopped green onion, which is salty; The other is a sugar syrup (boiled with brown sugar), which is sweet. You can mix them at will according to your personal preference.
Holding a bowl of white and tender embedded cakes, a brand-new and satisfying day begins. People who are in a hurry to go to work can directly use a set of plastic bags and eat while walking; Those who are not in a hurry can sit down at the table in the store and let the store hold a bowl of mung bean noodle soup, dried tofu bone soup or tofu raw to enjoy slowly. In any case, as long as you pick up the embedded cake and take a big bite, the soft glutinous rice cake, the crispness of "soaked shrimp", the halogen fragrance of pork and the fresh fragrance of vegetarian dishes with delicious soup will only make you feel the fragrance and energy all over your body, not to mention how satisfied you are!
For Wenling people, "embedding cakes" is an unavoidable word, an indispensable complex and a feeling that permeates life. Many Wenling people who work, study and live in other places are obsessed with their hometown food, and embedded cakes are the most coveted hometown food. I remember an article about interviewing an old overseas Chinese living in Wenling. The article said: He left his hometown, and every time he returned to his hometown, the first thing he did was to ask for a pork dumpling and then have a nice meal. I think this embedded cake contains a lot of homesickness for this wanderer. He is not from Wenling, and it will never be easy to understand Wenling people's attachment to embedded cakes. As the writer Gu Qingsheng said: "The taste I liked in my childhood is hard to change now, and the memory of that taste is hard to be crossed out from my mind." Therefore, the sense of taste is a lifelong taste recognition system provided by the master in the hometown. With this recognition system, people can easily distinguish their hometown from a foreign land at the dinner table. "
Nowadays, many Wenling people who are away from home can't always enjoy the taste of their hometown. In order to know how to satisfy their cravings, some will choose online shopping to relieve their yearning. Search for embedded cakes online, and you can find the purchase link. The price is similar to that bought on the street. It is also convenient to heat them in the microwave oven after receiving them. Although the taste is not as good as that just cooked, it is already very good for wanderers far away from home. Others will let relatives and friends bring a few tubes to relieve their hunger. It's really "you who have come from my old country, tell me what has happened there!. Before going back and forth to the cake stall, do you want to taste the embedded cake? "
Embedding cakes, which is a microcosm of Wenling's food culture, is a kind of delicious food that people can't refuse. It has an irreplaceable position in Wenling people's hearts, and it wraps up Wenling people's life with a rub.
Tips:
① Wenling: a county-level city under the jurisdiction of Taizhou City, Zhejiang Province, is a coastal city where the first light of the new millennium and the new century shines in Chinese mainland.
② pickled shrimp: it is another special snack in Wenling. Pickled shrimp is not shrimp, but a snack made of wheat flour. Stir wheat flour and water into a thick paste, add seasoned minced meat as stuffing, wrap it with utensils, throw it into boiling oil, fry the dough until golden brown, and scoop it up with a colander to eat. Can be eaten alone, or cut into cubes and added to the embedded cake.