In the sixth season of Lonely Gourmet, Goro came to Ueno-Urmachi, Tokyo on business and suddenly became hungry. He walked into a Chinese restaurant called "Mutton Flavor Restaurant" on the roadside. Adhering to the excellent genes of Chinese food, rice and vegetables were quickly served in the store. The first course is "Fried Mutton with Onions". Goro described him as "soft mutton wrapped in sweet onion juice, soft and super delicious, and won the lottery as soon as it came up."

Seeing this, I smiled angrily: What kind of fried mutton goes with scallions? Isn't this the classic Beijing-style snack: fried mutton with onions?

Cai Lan said that among all meats, mutton has the most personality. Whether you like it or not, there is no middle way. "Mutton is the same as liquor. It's a pity that if you like it slowly, you will fall in love with the taste. Some people in the middle can't stand giving up. "

For people who are used to eating mutton, beef is coarse, pork is vulgar and chicken is mediocre. It seems that other meat is just a cloud in front of tender mutton.

And a good mutton cooking method must also revolve around the word "exquisite". Just like the chopped green onion mutton eaten by Goro, the standard practice is to heat the pot, stir-fry it with a big fire and boil the oil. Shredded mutton is sandwiched in the sauce. It is best to "shout" the fire when pouring the pot, and then take the chopped green onion out of the pot in a few tens of seconds, which is what Goro said is "soft". After half a minute, the mutton became old and its taste declined.

A friend of mine in Beijing is good at cooking. When studying in Australia, she cooked scallion mutton in a rented room. The sound of frying pan "Hua" alarmed her neighbors, who thought the kitchen had exploded and called the police. She said to the police helplessly, "China mutton is delicious only in this way."

The routine of instant-boiled mutton is similar to that of fried mutton, as prosperous and thin as it is, and it will be cooked in a few seconds. The difference is that the heat transfer medium oil is replaced by water. Legend has it that it was invented by Nurhachi on horseback for convenience and quick success. I think this should be credible, because as early as before the Tang Dynasty, there were records of northern nomads cooking large pieces of mutton with firewood pots and snow water. With the acceleration of the war in Ming and Qing dynasties, the iteration of cooking technology and fuel, pot and knife will naturally cook thinner meat at a faster cooking speed.

However, boiled mutton lacks some flavor after all. Even the later improved soup with mushrooms, shrimps and ginger slices can't deviate from the light theme, otherwise it will become an old Sichuan hot pot. Therefore, it is necessary to dip it in carefully prepared small materials to expose it. The mutton hotpot shops in old Beijing all have their own recipes, which are generally inseparable from the flavor of leek, sesame oil, garlic paste, sesame sauce and vinegar. However, in the eyes of many gourmets, instant-boiled mutton, which needs the blessing of small materials, is not the best way to eat mutton. Just like a beauty with heavy makeup and a charming country, in the eyes of sour literati, it is always inferior to a small jasper with clear water and lotus flowers.

Cantonese mutton hotpot is better. In cook the meat, it was not water or soup, but a pot of thick porridge with rice grains filtered out. They call it "rice porridge hot pot". Rice juice is rich in starch, just like starched mutton. A protective layer is naturally formed in the cooking process, so that the gravy and fresh and sweet taste will not leak out and will not age for a long time. Some people say that Guangzhou is called Yangcheng because this mutton porridge hot pot is so delicious!

In addition to mutton, glutinous rice porridge is also suitable for boiling kidney flowers, shrimps, fish fillets and shellfish. Other things that are easy to overcook in hot pot are a perfect match here. At the end of eating, pour the filtered rice grains back into the porridge soup with various flavors, which is the old fire porridge that sobers up and warms the stomach. Even if the hostages are suspected of "high purity", what's wrong with the food now?

White-cut sheep meat, which is widely spread in Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, explains another kind of "tenderness": mutton with skin, which is stewed for a long time with low heat-often all night. Stew until the sheepskin is gelatinized, dissolve it in the soup, then take it out and press it with a big stone. After natural cooling and freezing, slicing will get an extremely delicate and elastic taste. From the tender mutton at the beginning, to the old firewood, and finally to the tender, China's classical philosophy has been fully demonstrated at this moment.

I have also seen a kind of mutton in warm soup in Putian, Fujian, which is similar to instant-boiled mutton in Jiangsu and Zhejiang: boiled water is poured into a wooden bucket and immediately sealed and insulated. When I opened it the next day, it was a barrel of mutton soaked in "warm soup", which was smooth and tender. A chairman of the local catering association told me that in a Michelin restaurant in Paris, there is a kind of A Niu forest, which is made by soaking olive oil at 70 degrees Celsius for two hours. The chef who invented this dish is a local.

The person who pursues the perfection of mutton tenderness is the lamb sashimi I tasted in a izakaya in Okinawa, which is worth mentioning. Japanese people like to be cold. Fish, shrimp, crab, shellfish, beef, horse meat and even chicken can be sashimi, but mutton sashimi is unique. Japanese sheep and goats in the south of China are the same species, which usually have a strong smell, unlike Mongolian sheep in the north of China. However, the way Okinawa people handle the fishy smell is superb-the mutton sashimi is extremely thin, the lean meat feels cold, some meat is still frozen, and lemon slices are added, so the fishy smell is not obvious, only highlighting the delicate texture. Although the word "instant in the mouth" is vulgar, it is really appropriate. Yangwuhua with skin is roasted with a cooking spray gun until slightly burnt, and served with Jiang Mo and iced grapefruit juice. It is sweet and sour and tastes like shrimp.

In fact, no matter how many means there are, the quality of mutton itself is the most critical, and the meat quality should be fine enough to enlarge the aesthetic feeling brought by cooking; The texture should be smooth enough to adapt to the characteristics of different cooking methods: the black-headed sheep in Xinjiang tastes sweet and has distinct layers of fat and thin. Even the simplest open-fire barbecue, sprinkled with cumin, can be tender and juicy; Gansu Minqin sheep is rich in flavor and suitable for scallion explosion; Hu sheep in Taihu Plain was brought from the north to the south of the Yangtze River by the Southern Song Emperor when he crossed south. Its meat tastes fat and thin, and it is a must for making braised mutton. Hainan Dong goat has a strong fragrance, but it is fat and thin, and it is best to stew it into milky soup.

But when it comes to the best mutton, I think it belongs to Ningxia Tan sheep. As an excellent breed of Mongolian sheep, its meat quality is the best in the world. Tan sheep in Yanchi County of Ningxia have the best quality-you can tell by its name. Mutton growing on the saline-alkali beach is full of water and naturally seasoned. Even simple cooking without oil and salt can trigger a feast of lips and teeth. Just like the mutton mentioned by Feng Tang in Search for Ji Shen, "Put two pounds of meat in the pot and you can stew a pot of mutton with your own water."

Well, women are made of water, and good mutton is also made of water.

Produced by | Shiwei Yizhi (micro signal: foodoor)

Author | Wei (micro signal: qyqy 1 18)