Enjoy delicious food in Chongli (three chapters of food essay)
Qifengchi
1. Chongli people love to eat pickles
Come After Chongli, every time my friends invited me to drink, I noticed a phenomenon: the food was not served, but a plate of mustard greens and pickles was served first. The white mustard greens and pickles are unevenly chopped. The stir-fried vegetables were not served, so people put a pickle in their mouths and chewed it. I often have pickles when drinking. I told them that eating less pickles is not good for the body. It is easy to get high blood pressure and arteriosclerosis, which are all caused by eating salty vegetables. People in Chongli probably know this, but they have long been used to it. I always feel that the taste is bland and tasteless. I found that Chongli women’s hair turns gray early, and beautiful women in their thirties turn gray too early, losing a lot of their appearance. Whether it has something to do with eating salty food, I can't say. A few years later, I gradually understood why Chongli people love to eat pickles. Because Chongli is cold, eating pickles can increase calories and physical strength. However, no matter what the reason is, eating too many pickles is definitely not beneficial.
Pickles are the most common home-cooked side dish for people in Chongli. I don’t know whether foreigners eat pickles, but I remember that in the 1960s and 1970s, every family would pickle a jar after autumn and eat them for a year. When my mother was alive, she would pickle a large vat of mustard greens every year after autumn and eat them all through the winter. By the time the fresh vegetables arrive next spring, we will have already eaten up that jar of mustard greens and pickles.
After the 1980s, life at home got better and my mother stopped making pickles. If you want to eat pickles, you can spend a few dollars to buy one in the supermarket and you can have several meals.
Nowadays, pickles are also popular in the market, and pickles are very expensive. A few years ago, a pound of red pickles cost 50 cents, which was considered expensive by people. Now, a pound of pickles costs 5.8 yuan, and they are selling very fast. What does this mean? It means that people's consumption concepts have changed, and it also means that people's living standards have improved. Besides, who eats pickles every day? I heard Liu Peiran, an old Chinese medicine doctor, say that eating pickles all the time is not good for the kidneys and can also lead to high blood pressure and hardening of the arteries.
I understand that when people in Chongli pickle pickles nowadays, firstly, they want to pass on the traditional habits left by their ancestors; pickle a jar of pickles and eat some yourself, and then give some to the other shop. They regard pickles as a bond of emotional communication; secondly, they must pickle pickles to prevent this traditional craft from being lost. In fact, pickling pickles is a laborious task that requires patience. It takes at least a year to pickle a jar of pickles. Today's young people don't know how to do it, nor are they willing to do it, let alone do it. Even the elderly people are very few who are willing to pickle pickles.
In order to prevent the traditional craftsmanship left by my mother from being lost, I buy hundreds of kilograms of mustard greens every year in autumn when the price drops to three or four kilograms for one yuan. Use a knife to cut off the tail, mustard hair and mustard top, then wash the mustard greens and put them in the jar. Place a layer of mustard greens and sprinkle with salt. To pickle one hundred kilograms of mustard greens, you need about twenty kilograms of salt. Cover all the mustard greens with salt and press them with a big stone. Put it in a cool place for half a year. When the mustard greens are thoroughly pickled, you can take it out and eat it.
I like to make sour sauce every spring. After the spring onions and radish are on the market, I drink the spring onions and radish and eat them with sour sauce every day, especially when drinking. When the sour sauce is no longer edible, add salt, boil a pot of pepper water, add a few kilograms of soy sauce, dilute the sauce, put it into a large vat, let it cool, then put the dried pickles into the vat and pickle them. After a few months, take out a pickle and cut it open. If the inside of the pickle turns black and red, the pickle is considered to be pickled successfully.
I calculated the time and found that it would take a whole year to pickle a jar of pickles.
I like pickles, not for anything else but to eat some for myself and then give some to everyone. In addition, I don’t want to lose the skills my mother left behind in my generation.
2. Chongli Steamed Buns
Chongli District is not a big place, but there are many steamed bun shops. There are at least a dozen of them. The most famous ones should be Zhang Xiaosheng's steamed buns on Cross Street, followed by Shangpin's hand-made steamed buns, Mom's flavor steamed buns, and Hangzhou Xiaolongzi steamed buns. Of course, some small street restaurants also sell steamed buns. Chongli's buns also have different prices. Zhang Xiaosheng's buns are very standard, one, two or three, and even in size. It tastes great. The fillings include green onion meat, celery meat, leek and eggs, etc. Shangpin's hand-made buns have many kinds of fillings, and they cost two yuan each. Maybe it’s because Mom’s flavored buns are a bit more expensive. Three yuan a piece. The steamed buns from other unnamed restaurants not only taste bad, but also the prices are not low.
China’s stuffed pasta is called professionally. The one with one side is called Tie, the one with two sides is called Lao, the one boiled in water is called dumplings, the one steamed in a pot is called steamed buns, and the ones that are open are called steamed buns. wheat.
The locals are not sure which category Chongli’s steamed buns belong to, whether they are meat, vegetarian or assorted. Based on the stuffing of Chongli buns, I named it steamed stuffed buns with mixed fillings.
Chongli’s steamed bun fillings include pig, beef, and mutton fillings, dried tofu, tofu, potato vermicelli, leeks, and bean sprouts. With so many kinds of fillings mixed together and eaten after steaming, the taste is not only rich, but also very appetizing.
To make Chongli steamed buns, first stir-fry the meat filling, fry the tofu until browned, boil the vermicelli until soft and chop into small pieces, chop the leeks and mushrooms, then stir the filling evenly and use a fermentation method. Make good bread into buns and steam them in a pot for ten minutes. The buns are ready.
According to the Chongli method of making steamed buns, on the night of the second day of the first lunar month this year, I also made a pot of noodles.
On the morning of the third grade of junior high school, I went to the market and bought a pound of minced meat, a pound of leeks, and a pound of tofu, and soaked a handful of Chongli wild mushrooms in advance.
I put the meat filling into the frying spoon, just like stir-frying meat, add the onion and ginger to the pot, then put the meat filling into the frying spoon and stir-fry. After the meat filling is cooked, put it in a large basin, and then put it in a large pot. Divide the tofu into two parts, cut one half into thin slices, fry in a pan until browned, and then cut into cubes. Then cut the unfried tofu into cubes, wash and chop the leeks, chop the mushrooms, cook and chop the vermicelli. After cooling, add it to the meat filling, add some salt, MSG and sesame oil and mix well.
After the stuffing was mixed, I started to prick the noodles with water and alkali. When the noodles were pricked evenly, I felt that the noodles were strong. I patted them with my hands and made a popping sound, and the noodles were pricked. Then make the dough into evenly sized dough and roll it into a skin. Use a spoon to put the mixed stuffing into the middle of the dough. Starting from the edge of the dough, use your fingers to make eighteen pleats and then lift them up. Then put them one by one in the drawer, cover the pot, and steam for eight minutes.
When I opened the pot, the snow-white buns were evenly sized and looked very nice. Each bun has eighteen pleats. I broke open a bun and took a bite while it was still hot. The filling of the bun was really unique. The aroma of the meat also has the fragrance of leeks, mixed with the special fragrance of mushrooms, which is really a complete five-flavor.
After tasting Chongli stuffed buns, I realized a truth. The stuffing of Chongli steamed buns contains not only the eating habits of the Chongli people for thousands of years, but also the simple wisdom of the Chongli people and the Chinese food culture.
As the saying goes: The meat in a bun is not in the folds. In the little buns of Chongli, not only the national culture is wrapped, but also a huge world is wrapped.
3. Spinach mixed with sesame oil
The spinach that springs in Chongli is the rapeseed that was sown after autumn last year. After autumn, farmers in Chongli level the rapeseeds, fill them with enough water, scatter spinach seeds evenly in the beds, and then sprinkle a thin layer of fine soil or fine sand on the rapeseeds. Within a few days, a layer of fluffy, green spinach seedlings would fill the vegetable patch. When the spinach seedlings grow to about an inch high, if there is another snowfall, cover the spinach, and when spring comes next year, there will definitely be a crop of green and tender spinach.
After the Spring Festival, the large area of ??snow in Chongli has gradually melted, and the earth-green spinach has not yet cheered up, as if it has not yet woken up. If there is a light rain in three or two days, the spinach will be more energetic, as if they have just taken a shower, and they will start to be lovable. There are water droplets hanging on the black and green leaves, just like a naughty child who has soiled his body and hasn't wiped himself after taking a bath. The clean water is clear and fragrant. .
After entering March, add another batch of water, and add some fermented feces in the water, and the spinach will grow upwards, the same every day. When the spinach is almost a foot tall, it's time to harvest. The spinach in this season is fresh and tender, and you can buy it at a good price in the market.
The spinach that has just been put on the market costs five yuan a pound, and it will be cheaper in a few days.
Spinach is now on the market, and spinach has become the protagonist in the entire Chongli market. If you want to eat spinach, eat it quickly during this season. Eat in various ways. Because the spinach season is short, the seeds are harvested after it grows to one foot tall. Spinach stems cannot be eaten until they reach half a meter in height. If you want to eat baby spinach, you have to wait for the spinach in the greenhouse to be on the market. However, although the spinach in the greenhouse is fresh and tender, it is still not as good as the spinach in the open field, which has high green content and full flavor. After all, spinach in the greenhouse lacks some photosynthesis. Comparing the two types of spinach, you can tell them apart immediately. The open-air spinach has thick leaves, thick stems and dark color. Spinach grown in greenhouses has thin leaves, thin stems and light color. It doesn't taste good either. The spinach in the greenhouse loses its value as soon as it is blanched in boiling water. This is the difference between the two types of spinach.
I like to eat spinach mixed with sesame oil, but Chongli people rarely eat it this way. Mix spinach with sesame oil. First blanch the spinach in boiling water, then soak it in cold water, squeeze out the water, cut it into half-inch sections, and put it in a basin. After that, add an appropriate amount of salt and minced garlic, and stir evenly. Finally, pour the fried sesame oil into the spinach basin. If you like to be jealous, you can use some. If you don’t like eating it, try not to put it away. If vinegar and soy sauce are added, spinach will react. The green spinach will turn yellow and the color will not look good. I never add soy sauce or vinegar when mixing spinach. Friends who ate my spinach mix said it was better not to add soy sauce and vinegar.
In fact, there are many ways to eat spinach, and chefs are studying new ways to eat spinach every day. In fact, I am also exploring, practicing, and renovating people's dietary concepts and innovating people's old tongues.
2018--3--23