What is the Chinese New Year? When I was a kid, I posted couplets, firecrackers, new clothes, and New Year’s money; now it’s the return trip from Spring Festival travel, class reunions, WeChat red envelopes, and photos in Moments.
Many people say that the once prosperous Spring Festival has now lost its color, and it has become dull, ordinary, and ordinary. The taste of the New Year is as light as drinking water, which only quenches thirst and has no taste. The Spring Festival has become a big weekend with firecrackers, an empty joy full of expectations and knowing...
When it comes to the taste of the New Year, the most important thing is the "taste". When I was a child, I would lively clean the house with my grandpa, and then happily choose new clothes that I liked. Grandma would also buy a lot of new year's goods, such as beef, candy, free-range eggs, juice, rice, oil... the more The better.
Wenzhou people have always been very particular about what they eat, especially at the New Year's Eve dinner, which we call "fensui wine" and pay attention to "perfection." In this issue, I would like to share with you New Year’s Eve dinner – the top ten classic dishes in Wenzhou!
1. Booming - Soy Sauce Pork
Winter is here, and every time at this time, "Is your soy sauce meat ready to be dried?" has become a common greeting among neighbors in Wenzhou. greeting. In Wenzhou, soy sauce meat is a well-deserved representative of cured goods and New Year flavor. When the soy sauce meat is dried, it means that the New Year is coming soon. Wenzhou is surrounded by mountains and coastal areas, and has a warm and humid climate. Wenzhou people have developed a strong taste and a special obsession with soy sauce.
According to Wenzhou people’s custom of drying soy sauce meat, the best time to dry soy sauce meat is from the beginning of winter to before the winter solstice. Walking on the street, you can see pieces of soy sauce meat swaying in the wind on the window sills and balconies of residential buildings everywhere, bathed in the sun. The air is also beginning to be filled with the smell of New Year, and the rich aroma of meat is mouth-watering. Soy sauce meat is usually dried in the sun on a sunny day, and its skin is reddish-brown. Therefore, eating soy sauce meat during the Chinese New Year also symbolizes a prosperous new year.
The soy sauce pork made with traditional techniques is salty, fragrant and tender. You must choose pork belly that is fat and thin. The fat is thin and the oil is thin so that it is chewy and not clogging your teeth. Marinate it with special sauce for half a day, then hang it on a rack to dry, and then dry it in the sun for two days to ensure that the meat in the sauce is soft and hard.
When steaming the soy sauce meat, add a little cooking wine. Before it comes out of the steamer, the unique aroma of the soy sauce meat will attract greedy insects. The marinated fat meat is slightly soy sauce-colored and transparent when it comes out of the pot. Under high temperature, the fat of the fat meat oozes out, making it shiny, which is particularly attractive to the appetite.
A piece of soy sauce meat is a little salty in your mouth, and has a little bit of the natural sweetness of the shredded meat. The fat meat is absolutely crispy and fragrant but not greasy. Take another bite and the mellow oil penetrates into the dry and tough meat fibers. Each bite is a mixture of different amounts of salty soy sauce, sweetness of shredded pork, and glutinousness of fat lard. The more you chew, the more delicious it becomes.
2. One in a hundred - duck tongue
Duck tongue: Needless to say, Wenzhou people love to eat duck tongue, which means one in a hundred, which is both precious and delicious. In Wenzhou dialect, the pronunciation of "tongue" is similar to the pronunciation of "loss money". However, there are many business people in Wenzhou and they think the pronunciation of "tongue" is unlucky, so they changed the name of "duck tongue" to "duck profit".
One duck and one tongue is not a delicacy of mountains and seas, a gourmet feast, but for Wenzhou people, it has both a homely taste and a festive atmosphere. New Year's Eve, Spring Festival, Tomb Sweeping Day, Dragon Boat Festival, Mid-Autumn Festival, there are all kinds of festivals, big and small. This little duck tongue is an indispensable delicacy on the plate, so in Wenzhou there is no saying that there is no "duck tongue".
Lightly oiled and light-flavored duck tongue is a cold dish, and its cooking essence is the word "stewed". Every Wenzhou mother who knows how to make braised duck tongue has her own unique secret recipe. Each family has its own flavor, including light soy sauce, dark soy sauce, cooking wine and balsamic vinegar. The duck tongue is wrapped in a hot pot and goes slurping. Different recipes, the same delicious food, it’s the taste of home and my mother’s taste.
The braised duck tongue is purple in color, fragrant, and tastes mellow and sweet, making it a perfect accompaniment to wine. It is very tough when chewing. Chew it left and right, and the flavor of the duck tongue is released. A duck tongue is like the cartilage of a spring wire, like an armless water bug ready to fly away at any time.
3. Lots of money - flower clams
The most delicious is to make raw pickled blood clams. First blanch the blood clams, add chili soy sauce and minced garlic to taste and then eat. When you peel it open with your hands, there is "blood" flowing inside the shell. The soy sauce blends with the "blood" just right, exuding a sudden fragrance. When you bite into it, the meat is tender, smooth and delicious. The blood flowing into the throat is rich in fragrance. It has a unique flavor. Although I still occasionally eat one or two blood clams with soil in them, the juicy deliciousness still tempts my taste buds.
4. The East wants to dawn - White-cut chicken
White-cut chicken: means "the East wants to dawn". In an era before watches, mobile phones, and alarm clocks, people relied on the crowing of roosters to know when to get up. In Wenzhou, if you get up earlier than others, you will have more opportunities than others.
The white chopped chicken meat is served with butter, and the scallions are decorated with flowers and have a strong fragrance of scallion oil. When eating, dip it in a little special soy sauce, which not only retains the original flavor of the chicken, but also the saltiness of the soy sauce.
5. Ebb and flow - jellyfish skin
Jellyfish skin is a product made from jellyfish, a large edible jellyfish in the coastal areas of Wenzhou. It is umbrella-shaped, translucent, white, cyan or slightly yellow. It has been eaten as early as the Jin Dynasty more than 1,600 years ago. Before eating, be sure to wash it with clean water to remove salt, alum, blood and sand, then boil it in hot water, cut it into shreds and eat it with vinegar, or mix it with enoki mushrooms, dried bamboo shoots and other cold dishes.
Be sure to add some vinegar when eating cold jellyfish, otherwise the jellyfish will "smell off". Because the jellyfish is a creature without eyes, it can only follow the ebb and flow of the river, so the jellyfish symbolizes the ebb and flow of the river.
6. Dried shrimp with head and tail
Wenzhou is close to the seaside, and there are many delicious dried shrimps and other processed seafood. Sun-dried without any seasoning, the shrimp meat is full of fiber when chewed, and it is hard to stop eating it as a snack without a meal.
In the old days, a piece of dried shrimp dipped in soy sauce, vinegar and a bottle of beer is now an indispensable delicacy on the New Year’s Eve dinner table. It means having a beginning and an end, at the end of the year and at the beginning of the year, working hard and conscientiously.
7. Smart and progressive - Eel Kun
The pronunciation of "鲞" in Wenzhou dialect is the same as "thinking", which means smart and progressive. Legend has it that in the Ming Dynasty, the Wenzhou area paid tribute to the imperial court every year, so it was also called "Mingfu Xiang", which later evolved into the word "鲞".
During the twelfth lunar month, every household in Wenzhou will make homemade light eel. Go to the fish market to select fresh eels, cut them open from the back, and hang them in a ventilated and shaded place to dry naturally. The eel meat is delicate and fresh, and the color is light yellow and silvery white. Steamed slices are sandwiched with fatty meat slices, then dipped in sauce and vinegar to serve.
8. Gold and white jade - fish cakes
Wenzhou’s fish cakes are white on the inside and yellow on the outside, which symbolizes gold and white jade. Its meat is tender, fresh but not fishy, ??low in fat and extremely nutritious. When eating, dip it in some soy sauce and vinegar, which not only maintains the original flavor of the fish, but also enhances the unique flavor of the fish that is delicate, smooth, tough and without fishy smell.
Fish cakes are not only delicious when steamed, but also have a unique flavor when fried. But it should be noted that when frying the fish cakes, they must be defrosted and cut into slices. This will not only make it easier to cook, but also prevent the outside from being burnt while the inside is still raw, and it will also make it easier to taste.
Wait until the oil in the pot is warm and you can put it in the pot. When the sides of the fish cakes are slightly raised and the surface is golden, you can put them into a plate. The fish cakes made in this way will be extremely fragrant! The fried fish cakes not only have a richer fish flavor, but also have a smooth texture and a strong aroma in your mouth. They are perfect as a side dish for wine and are a must-have for the New Year’s Eve dinner!
9. Happy and harmonious - Jiang Crabs
Jiang Crabs means happiness and harmony. It is a traditional local dish in Wenzhou. It is a cold food in Wenzhou cuisine and is often used in families. Ordinary dishes that go with "wine" become high-quality cold dishes when served at banquets.
Jiang Crab Raw uses swimming crabs from Oujiang River, which are finely split and decomposed, then soaked in vinegar, soy sauce, rice wine or supplemented with other secret raw materials. The soaking time is half an hour to one hour, so Jiang Crab Raw The surface taste is sour, sweet, soy, and fresh. When dipped in mustard, it becomes fresh and spicy. It tastes non-sticky and non-smellous, and with a slight puff of your lips, the crab meat slips out of the shell and slides into your mouth.
10. Like flowers and jade - crickets
Grasshoppers are a traditional dish in Wenzhou. The finished dish is lively in shape, bright in color, with two flavors in one dish, and the meat is as creamy as fat, extremely delicious. "蝤蛳" is the customary name for blue crabs in Wenzhou area. It inhabits warm shallow seas with low salinity. Its body is oval and green in color, its head and breastplate are short and wide, and its meat is tender and juicy. It is a top-quality crab.
Double-flavored cockroaches: Steam the cockroaches and place them on a plate, then pour in the prepared egg liquid, steam them in a steamer for about 8 minutes, and pour a little lard and soy sauce on them when they are out of the pot. , sprinkle a few wolfberry berries for decoration. The clam shell is bright red, lined with yellow eggs, and the color is bright. The custard is smooth and tender, wrapped around the plump crab meat, and the fragrance is fragrant. It is euphemistically called: hibiscus clam. The taste and artistic conception are all there.
Juniors should remember table manners
We often hear that eating Western food requires etiquette, but what are the requirements for New Year’s Eve dinner?
1. Don’t grab your seat, give up the “highest” position to your elders.
3. When you want to say goodbye in the middle, turn the chopsticks in your hands so that the head of the chopsticks faces you and the tail of the chopsticks faces other people to apologize to those present.
4. Chopsticks cannot be held in your hands all the time. When you take a bite of food and put it in your mouth to taste, you can put the chopsticks down first. This is called "take a bite and then put it down." You can't eat food in your mouth while using your chopsticks to pick up other dishes while your eyes are still staring at the dish that was just served.
5. If you are a junior, when each dish is served, the elder should take the first chopsticks.
6. When picking up vegetables, you should not pick up from the middle first, but from the four sides first. You can't pick and choose on the plate, or poke it back and forth.
7. After eating, it is best not to stack the bowls on top of each other. The pronunciations of "stack" and "collision" in Wenzhou dialect are the same, which is a taboo behavior among the elders.
The thousand-year-old traditional Wenzhou New Year wine, this taste is not only a dish, but also a full flavor of the year, a meticulous care, and a warm friendship.
The New Year’s Eve dinner is the end and starting point of the end of the year and the beginning of the new year, it is the recovery after laughing and crying, it is the shore of wandering, and it is also the desire for reunion.
Just as Zhang Xiaoxian once wrote: What we miss about the taste of the New Year is not just the delicious food, the fragrance of flowers, the gathering of friends, the taste of love, the warmth of home and the water and soil of our hometown, but all of it. It all adds up! The taste of the New Year is actually the taste of reunion.