Text: Shen Chuan Steaming a few steaming baskets, heating a few pots of rice wine, and some snacks to go with the wine. Relatives and friends gathered around the firewood stove to drink and chat. This was an indelible memory of the Hakka people in southern Ganxi in the past.
This kind of food, collectively known as "獍粑" in the early years, is golden in color, chewy and refreshing, and has the fragrance of natural plant ash. In the era of food shortage, people were only willing to cook it during the holidays.
When making it, the whole family needs to work together, with the adults grinding and the children adding ingredients. Before eating, the elders at the table called it "Tui Jian Qi (獍)" based on the homophony, giving this food a "family unity"
” means.
As the older generation gets older and young people move out to settle down and no longer return home, "Tuijianqi" has also been given a foreign name - "Mozhai", and no one cares about the meaning behind the name.
The preparation of Mozhai is tedious and complicated: peel the branches of the "eggplant tree" commonly known as the "Diao Eggplant Tree", put them in a pot and add water to make soup, then use the ashes burned from straw or soybean stalks to mix with the soup, stir evenly and filter, and wait until it is filtered.
After the amber "grey water" cools, put the stem rice in it and soak it - this rice is also particular, you must choose unpalatable stem rice, otherwise the finished rice will be very sticky and not tough.
The soaked rice must be ground into rice paste with a stone mill with the cooperation of the family. The rice paste is then poured into a large firewood pot, simmered over low heat, and slowly turned and squeezed with a spatula until the rice paste is dried.
Moisture, people soaked their clothes.
Scoop up the sticky rice paste, put it in a large dustpan, apply some camellia oil, and knead it into a long and flexible strip, or shape it into a shape like a dumpling "jizi", and then wrap it with fillings.
Put some straw on the bottom of the bamboo steamer, put the rolled (wrapped) mozhai on it, steam it for half an hour, open the lid, and a different kind of fragrance will hit your nose.
When I was a child, as soon as Mo Zhai came out of the pot, I would clamor to eat it. No matter how hot it was, I would sit on the doorstep with it, pouring it back and forth in my hands, blowing my cheeks, and reluctant to put it down.
The fillings of Mo Zhai are often made from radish, winter bamboo shoots, pickles, etc. Once you take a bite, they are soft and crispy, with the flavors of the four seasons.
My family likes spicy food, so there are a lot of red and yellow chili peppers in the stuffing. After eating a few, my mouth is salivating and my forehead is sweating, but my mouth will never stop chewing.
The mozhai is rolled into long strips, sliced ??into cubes, dipped in sauce and eaten, stir-fried or added to soup.
Chili pepper, minced garlic, chopped green onion, soy sauce, and sesame oil are used as the base. When boiled water is washed, various aromas are dispersed in the air little by little.
Dip Mo Zhai into the soy sauce and enter your mouth. First, the salty aroma of soy sauce mixed with the aroma of plant ash pours into the nose, and then the taste of chili garlic sesame oil comes one after another, filling the mouth. When the various flavors are mixed together, it makes the mouth full.
It feels sweet inside.
If you want to stir-fry and make soup, go to the fields to pick up tender cauliflower, pinch the tips and put them into the soup or stir-fry to eat. The green and fragrant cauliflower, coupled with the pink and yellow texture of Mozhai, is full of color, flavor and aroma.
In addition to festivals, my mother would sometimes do Mozhai during the spring rain season.
The continuous rain made it impossible for people to go to the fields, so acquaintances would come to chat with my mother, and while chatting, someone would suggest doing Mozhai.
My mother would heat up some home-brewed rice wine, and we would prepare the ingredients while drinking. I would often squat in front of the stove, holding a blowtorch and tongs to help my mother watch the fire, while listening with relish to the women's business affairs.
The sound of raindrops outside the window.
Sometimes while listening, I would fall asleep leaning in front of the stove. When my mother woke me up, the steaming mozhai had already come out of the cage.
At home and outside the home, my mother never stopped working. She was like a donkey blinded by life, only circling the millstone along the route given by life.
My father, who is the secretary of the village party committee, often comes back late at night. In my daze, I can hear the sound of unlocking and the old wooden door being pushed open.
If he could smell the smell of mozhai through the door, his father would yell to his mother: "Huh? Why did you do a push-up today? Another day wasted! Get up and help me warm it up!" If it were a normal day, he would still be beaten so late at night.
A mother who has been tired for a day will definitely be annoyed when she is called to work. A quarrel is inevitable, but when it comes to the matter of Remo Zhai, no matter how late it is, mother will get up from the bed without saying a word and prepare everything for father.
, and then sat next to his father with his clothes on, waiting for him to finish eating and clean up before going to sleep again.
Sometimes I get annoyed because my father wakes me up, and I ask my mother not to spoil my father so much. She always laughs and scolds me: "Why do you care so little about me?" I didn't know the reason for this until later.
When my father was a child, his grandparents got divorced. His grandfather taught in another town and took several children away from home. In anger, my grandmother also took several children back to her parents' home, leaving my father alone at home.
The young father was unable to take care of himself and had to stay with his grandmother.
My great-great-grandmother was very stingy and didn't like the idea that the family would have new mouths out of thin air. She often hid the rations that the collective distributed to my father on a per-capita basis, and only gave my father one meal a day.
At that time, my father often lay motionless by the side of the road because he would faint when he moved. People in the village saw that his neck was so thin that it could be broken by pinching it with your hands, and they all thought that he would starve to death sooner or later.