In my opinion, the taste of the New Year is condensed on the tip of the tongue. Year after year, we grow up slowly in this taste of the New Year.
"When you enter the twelfth lunar month, you are celebrating the New Year." Although the old saying goes like this, now, the excitement of the New Year seems to have started from the New Year. At the grand beginning of the Spring Festival in Xiaonian, dumplings were unveiled for the first time.
Dumplings are always the most important role on the New Year table. Dumplings represent the beginning of the new year. No matter how the year goes, dumplings during the Spring Festival will always be a year-end feast for the family. "It's not as comfortable as lying down, but it's not as delicious as dumplings." The dumplings are delicious, and the fillings are so varied that you won't get tired of eating them.
In my hometown, dumpling fillings are always the classic leek and pork filling. The leeks are freshly grown, tender and juicy, and the leeks just bought and picked are even more green. The family sits together with a few newspapers spread on the ground, picking leeks together. The taste of the New Year and the taste of home are here, slowly sublimating. Pork is best cut by hand so that you can chew it clearly. It is best to have some fat. The fatness of the pork but not greasy is combined with the spiciness of the chives, which is the most perfect interpretation of the taste of the New Year.
Leek and pork dumplings are the best combination, but the dumplings to be eaten at midnight on New Year’s Eve are filled with vegetarian fillings. The older generation said this symbolizes simplicity, peace and tranquility in the coming year. I don't really believe this statement, but dumplings with vegetarian fillings do have a unique flavor.
Chop the carrots, vermicelli, and tofu, spread out an egg pancake and cut it into small pieces, sometimes add some fungus, the vegetarian dumpling filling basically cannot escape the "this set", but these are the simple flavors Ingredients can make delicious fillings. The vegetarian filling does not have the strong meaty taste of the meat filling, but has a lighter feeling. It can also play a good regulating role in the big fish and meat during the Spring Festival. But what puzzles me is that sometimes some sea rice and shrimp are added to the vegetarian stuffing. Is this still called vegetarian stuffing? Maybe vegetarian stuffing is just people's sustenance for a better life and the satisfaction of trying new things.
Dumpling wrappers are also very particular. It’s a given that you have to use dead noodles. If you add yeast, it becomes boiled buns. In recent years, a new type of "dumpling flour" has appeared, which is said to be specially used to make dough. In fact, the chewy texture is no different from ordinary dumpling wrappers. Rolling out dough is really a skill. When rolling out dough, it should be thick in the middle and thin on the edges. It's not easy to roll out quickly and well. Nowadays, butcher shops sell dumpling wrappers pressed by machines, with a little flour sprinkled between the two wrappers. They look lifeless and have an average taste.
Whenever you finish eating dumplings, you always drink a bowl of clear soup in which the dumplings were cooked, which is said to be "the original soup transformed into the original food." In fact, regardless of nutrition, the taste and appearance of the clear soup are still good: the color of the clear soup is light yellow with a grain smell, and the taste is both light and delicious like dumpling skins, and the delicious meat fillings of dumplings - so when cooking dumplings, Exposed dumplings are still a must! After drinking a bowl of soup, I felt warm all over my body. The coldness was completely dissipated and the salty taste of the dumplings I had eaten earlier was diluted.
When eating dumplings, there are always a few green figures, that is Laba garlic. Take a bite of the dumplings, take a bite of the Laba garlic, and feel the spiciness spread out in the umami, which relieves the greasiness of the meat dumplings and the spiciness of the Laba garlic. It can be said to be the best of both worlds! Rice vinegar, soft white sugar, and large garlic are planted in glass bottles (originally porcelain jars and glass jars are used), and you can harvest a bottle of green Laba garlic when you are young. This year, my Laba garlic is emerald green, but the vinegar is grass green, which does not meet Mr. Lao She's standard of "beautiful color and taste".
Speaking of Xiaonian, there seems to be a custom that has been silent for a long time: offering sacrifices to stoves and eating Guandong candy. In urban areas of Jinan, the custom of offering sacrifices to stoves has long since disappeared, and Guandong sugar and sugar melons are becoming increasingly rare. But I was lucky enough to find rod-shaped Kanto candy this year. Guandong sugar is very brittle and crisp, and sometimes a lot of residue will burst out when you bite it. However, the sweetness is refreshing and incomparable with the weak and boneless white sugar in the kitchen. It has an extra layer of Chinese New Year aroma. It makes people very comfortable.
I ate white rice cake once in Fujian: although the taste was good, the texture was extremely single, as if I was biting into a glutinous rice dumpling. Shandong’s yellow rice cakes are different. The raw material is yellow glutinous rice noodles. When kneading the noodles, put the washed jujubes in whole. Just as the noodles are kneaded, part of them will be crushed into the yellow rice noodles, kneaded into a steamed bun shape, and steamed in a pot. When eating yellow rice cakes, the closer you are to the jujubes, the stronger the jujube flavor will be. You must always be careful not to get your teeth chewed by the jujube pits. How interesting!
When it comes to rice cakes, we have to talk about bean buns. Bean buns are about inner beauty, which is also the importance of fillings. The night before making bean buns, add sugar and water to the red dates and red beans, boil them and then simmer them. The next morning, the stuffing was almost simmered. It was sweet, glutinous, soft and fragrant. It was even more delicious when eaten directly. I immediately made bread and put it in the steamer, and also made some steamed buns together. The steamed bean buns look ordinary on the outside, but are red on the inside. They are really beautiful and delicious.
The last thing I want to introduce, and also my favorite, is the crispy pot. Among my relatives, only my aunt has the skill of making crispy pot, but strangely, my grandma does not know how to make it. I don’t know how to make crispy pot. It’s probably just cooking your favorite food and adding some spices to stew it. Finally, after collecting the juice and letting it cool, each food not only retains some of its original flavor, but also has an indescribable aroma that is interconnected and can only be felt but cannot be expressed in words.
The crispy pot is delicious only when it is cold, but it is uncomfortable when the ground is freezing and the weather is cold. It is also a special feature of Spring Festival delicacies. A crispy pot seller came to our neighborhood. When he opened the lid of the pot, bursts of hot steam came out. What kind of crispy pot is this? His crispy pot also has laila soup, which tastes average, but people still buy it! So I decided never to eat from him again.
The crispy pot has crispy cabbage, crispy tofu, crispy fish, crispy chicken, crispy beans, crispy kelp, crispy meat, crispy mushrooms, crispy fungus, etc. You can put anything in it, my favorite is crispy kelp.
The Chinese New Year is actually not only a grand festival, but also the spiritual sustenance of hundreds of millions of Chinese people. I sincerely hope that these delicacies will solidify into the taste of the year on the tip of the tongue, be passed down from generation to generation, and look forward to year after year.