Every winter, when the Hui, Dongxiang and other ethnic minorities in Hezhou marry their daughters-in-law, in addition to putting some walnuts and red dates in the new house, they also put a plate of "honeydew melons" on the bride and groom. The so-called "sugar melon" is a kind of candy originated in Hezhou. It is a simple and beautiful custom for the groom to enter the bridal chamber and share the sweet and crisp honeydew melon with the bride slowly, which is both a kind of enjoyment and a poetic symbol.

There are many kinds of small autumn crops called millet in the mountainous area of Sichuan Plateau around Beixiang and Dongxiang in Hezhou. Seeds have shells, and the shells are yellow or brown. When the seed is taken out, it becomes Huang Chengcheng's "millet". This kind of millet is sticky and soft with high sugar content, which is the main raw material for sugar workers to make caramel.

Brewing maltose requires putting "flour", which is malt. This kind of malt is not barley malt usually used for brewing beer, but "malt" made from local highland barley.

If honey caramel is boiled, the process of making caramel is much and hard. First, choose the best millet, wash it, steam it in a cage, then mix it with malt, put it in a jar or wooden bucket, add warm water at about 50 degrees Celsius, and put it on a kang fire wall for heating and fermentation. About 2-3 hours, pull out the plug at the bottom of the barrel, and the sugar water will "flow out", which is the so-called "inverted" pulp. The poured sugar water can be cooked in the pot. Generally, in addition to the two times of sugar water poured out, you can continue to cook in the pot, and three or four times of sugar water should be added to the bucket just for fermentation to be used as warm water. This cycle, while pouring and cooking, the sugar juice in the pot slowly becomes saturated malt syrup.

The caramel just out of the pan is ochre red. The master of the sugar factory planted a wooden stake on the steamer table, wrapped one end of maltose as soft as dough on the wooden stake and the other end on his wrist, and repeatedly distilled and pulled it like noodles on the steamer filled with glutinous rice. This is the so-called sugar pulling. In this way, caramel changed from ochre red to grayish white. If it is pulled into strips and cut short by hand, it will become a sweet and crisp candy. Draw it into a cylindrical strip and cut it into candy pieces with silk thread. Hezhou people are called "white pimples". In the hands of skilled masters, the technique of pulling maltose on a hot plate is as fast, steady and ever-changing as Lamian Noodles, a master of Lamian Noodles. It looks very refreshing and beautiful.

The caramel industry in Hezhou can be divided into "Home of Sugar Factory" and "Home of Flower Sugar". The production process mentioned above is a matter for the sugar factory family. The so-called flower sugar maker, also known as "sugar melon customer", is a craftsman who takes syrup and raw sugar produced by sugar factories as raw materials and then processes them into honeydew melons of various varieties and colors with local products such as red dates and walnut kernels.

The raw materials used in Hezhou honeydew melon are mainly walnuts, red dates, sesame seeds, flax, peanuts and almonds. Good flour, eggs and clear oil are mixed together, processed into noodles and steamed, which becomes the bulk raw material of honeydew melon-flour kernel (also called flour cake).

The technical requirements for making honeydew melons are very high, and the honeydew melons are required to have good color, fragrance and taste. Take "walnut kernel" as an example. First of all, we should choose first-class walnuts, peel and core them, cook them and oil them, add maltose in proportion, heat them in a pot, master the heat, stir fry them repeatedly until the maltose melts, put them in a mold box for heating and pressure molding, then cut them into strips, and then cut them into thin slices until they cool and crisp, so that they can become yellow, sweet and crisp like ginger. According to this method, jujube ribose, sesame sugar, peanut sugar and flour crisp sugar can also be produced.

The twelfth month and the first month are the golden seasons for honeydew melon sales.

In the twelfth lunar month, honeydew melons are inevitably listed on the Han people's new year's goods list. Honeydew melon is an excellent tonic for the elderly and children because it has the effects of nourishing yin, clearing fire, moistening lung and relieving cough. The idiom "full house of children and grandchildren" illustrates this truth. There is also an extremely important purpose for Hezhou people to buy honeydew melons, that is, bribing the "Kitchen God" on the night of the 23rd of the twelfth lunar month to let his old people taste honeydew melons, or "God speaks well and goes back to the palace for good luck".

Hezhou caramel was once sold in Qinghai, Gannan, Xiahe, Maqu and other Tibetan areas. Tibetan compatriots living on the vast grassland appreciate Hezhou caramel, which has become a traditional habit. For example, in the first month of Maolan Festival like Labrang, Tibetans from snow-capped mountains and grasslands will compete for honeydew melons and bring them back to their accounts to share with the youngest people. In the old days, the sales of caramel in Hezhou were considerable, and the output was also quite a lot. By the early 1950s, there were more than 20 sugar shops in Shaleng Street of Linxia City alone, all of which were run by Hui craftsmen, and the candy business was very prosperous. Later, because of the impact of "foreign sugar", this industry declined rapidly. Happily, in the 1980s, some people inherited this technology and resumed small-scale production, which was quite popular with customers and sold well. Out of curiosity, many people will buy some and take them home to taste them carefully before they know that they are sweet and delicious, and their unique flavor is irreplaceable by modern high-grade candy.

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Author: Thin Dog 2005-11-1713: 57 Reply to this speech.

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2 reply: Linxia snacks

In the early 1990s, with the strong northwest wind, Dongxiang Hand-grabbed Meat Store once occupied Linxia market, and the fragrance of "Dongxiang Hand-grabbed Meat" floated all over the streets of Linxia, which attracted many people's attention. This kind of wind spreads everywhere, and the brand of "Dongxiang Hand-grabbed Mutton" is often seen in Lanzhou and neighboring counties, Qinghai and Ningxia. And Mahasan is the pioneer of Dongxiang to grasp the market.

How does "Dongxiang grab mutton" quickly open up the situation in the highly competitive commodity society? This should first be attributed to its excellent quality. Dongxiang mutton is not only nutritious, nourishing, warm, strong and aphrodisiac, but also tender but not greasy, mellow and delicious. After a long illness or after a woman gives birth, several "Dongxiang fingers, fingers, fingers, fingers, fingers, fingers, fingers, fingers, fingers, fingers, fingers, fingers, fingers, fingers, fingers, fingers, fingers, fingers, fingers, fingers, fingers.

Dongxiang area is located in the transitional zone between the Loess Plateau and the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, with an altitude of about 2,500 meters. It is a hilly area of the Loess Plateau, with a cool climate and four distinct seasons. It is cool in summer, short in summer, cold in winter and long in winter. It has the characteristics of continental monsoon climate and plateau slope climate with dry winter and warm summer. The soil belongs to mountain black soil, white hemp soil and red clay, and contains many trace elements. Although the rainfall is only about 300 mm, there are more than 8,000 kinds of grass, which belong to arid grassland vegetation. Herbs mainly include Bletilla striata, Artemisia selengensis, mustard and thyme, as well as many seasoning herbs such as wild onion and garlic. Dongxiang sheep used to be Mongolian sheep. In the 3rd and 4th centuries, nomadic people such as Tuguhun and Xianbei who moved to Hezhou from the northeast brought a large number of Mongolian sheep breeds, and later they imported a large number of Mongolian sheep breeds for political and economic reasons. Under the soil, water, climate, forage and natural conditions here, people of all ethnic groups, especially Dongxiang people, have crossed with Tibetan sheep with great differences in long-term production and life, and cultivated excellent breeds with Mongolian and Tibetan hybrids. This cannot but be said that the local people of all ethnic groups are right.

Secondly, due to reasonable modulation. Dongxiang sheep pay attention to the whole pot, first attack it with fierce fire. When the water boils, break up all the foam with many impurities and blood, add spices such as pepper, pepper, ginger, tsaoko, garlic sprout, red pepper and green salt, and then slow down the fire, and the blood will dry up, so as to take chopped pieces to eat or eat as "equal partners". Friends from the same town, sitting together, blowing three fortresses, eating meat with their hands, talking and laughing, harmonious and harmonious, have a different taste. Among them, "station mutton" is the "best" in meat.

Dongxiang mutton is very famous in history. As early as the Southern and Northern Dynasties, it was a tribute of the emperor. In the Ming Dynasty, there was a record of "87 Gongtang sheep" ("Ming Jiajing River State Records Volume 1"), which was called "Lianhan Red Pit Capricorn", also known as "Liandi Sheep". Dongxiang sheep, also known as "Jidi sheep", came from this.

Now, Dongxiang County Party Committee and government regard "Dongxiang Hand-grabbed Mutton" and "Dongxiang Potato" as one of the two major products to develop Dongxiang, and they are brave in calling for vigorously developing animal husbandry and serving Dongxiang economy. I remember in the early 1980s, someone said: Don't vigorously promote Dongxiang mutton, for fear that diners will flock to eat it all at once. It's obvious by contrast!

Recently, someone completed "Dongxiang Hand-grabbed Mutton", which opened up a new way for deep development. The development of this product has opened up a new way for Hezhou famous mutton to hit the domestic and foreign markets.

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