Enema is a traditional snack unique to old Beijing.
The earliest enema in Beijing was to make a soup of more than a dozen spices with starch, make it into paste, pour it into the cleaned pig's large intestine, and puncture it with a bamboo stick while cooking. After cooking, tear off the casing, let it cool, cut it into thin slices, fry it with the net on the pig's large intestine on a big iron pan until it is crisp, and dip it in salted garlic juice to eat.
by the middle of the 2th century, this craft gradually disappeared. The so-called enema has no direct relationship with the "intestine", but the starch is steamed into a large lump weighing more than ten kilograms with clear water, and even the shape of the intestine is gone. When the steamed starch lump is cooled, it is spun into irregular water-shaped tablets with a knife, fried in a big iron pan and poured with salt and garlic juice, which is called fried enema.
The common enema is steamed with sweet potato starch, which is bluish gray in color and slightly transparent. It feels strong when you pat it, and there will be white starch particles that are not completely melted when you cut it. Although it doesn't look good, it tastes delicious when fried.
The authentic enema is not cut out, but is made by holding the starch lump in one hand and "spinning" it with a knife in the other. It is irregular rhombic tablets, and each piece should be thin and thick. Only in this way, the fried place can be crispy and crispy, and the thick place is tender and soft, with a fat and tender taste, and it feels like eating meat when chewing. If it is all cut thin and fried crisp, it will become a fork. Nowadays, the enema sold in many restaurants that claim to be Beijing-style is not a taste, often because it is not "spun" but cut. It is said that this is done to save labor. It looks neat on the plate, but it tastes boring.
Eat enema without chopsticks, but stick it with a toothpick, because if it is fried, it won't stick; Fried tender, scattered, unable to tie up. This eating method itself is also a means to test the quality of enema.
In the past, fried enema used to use net oil, or you could use the floating oil on the top of the pork stew, so that it was not only crisp, but also crisp, accompanied by a mellow meat flavor. Unfortunately, now almost all shops in fried enema have switched to vegetarian oil, saying that it is for health, and enema has become a vegetarian diet. The enema fried in this way can only be said to be crisp, but not crisp, and it will be cooked badly.
fried enema must be watered with garlic juice. Put the garlic cloves in a bowl, sprinkle some salt on them, mash them with a wooden garlic mallet, and then stir them with cold water to make the garlic juice light green. Note that garlic must be mashed, and you can't cut or pat it with a knife, because it won't give off the fragrance of garlic. Then you must use cold boiled water, because garlic stinks when water is hot. In addition, put salt before mashing garlic so that garlic doesn't jump around. If you can order a few drops of sesame oil, it will certainly taste better. Enema can suck out the taste of some meat, and the mystery lies in this spicy garlic juice. For southern diners who can't eat raw garlic, they will probably never realize the beauty.