Original title: Dongxiang tastes rough but delicate

Quinoa porridge

Covering a bowl of tea

Twinking

In addition to the scenery, food is also essential during the trip. Dongxiang Autonomous County, Linxia Prefecture is located in the hilly region of the Loess Plateau, with high terrain in the middle and low terrain around it, showing a "convex" shape. The Yellow River, Taohe River and Daxiahe River flow around the county, and there are rich tourism resources such as Gaoxia Pinghu, Xingyuan scenery, Danxia landform and cultural sites. Dongxiang cuisine with regional characteristics is even more worthy.

1. Free-range sheep hang like drifting clouds between the mountain ridges and gullies.

In the Dongxiang finger food shop in the old West Lake Street and the alkali gully in Lanzhou, I always hear a guest say, "Tell the master, it's better to catch it by hand."

the so-called "getting better" is naturally exquisite. First, it should be served hot by hand, torn by hand, and the bones can be torn apart, so that it will be soft, rotten and delicious in the mouth and melt in the mouth; The combination of the two mutton should be fat and well-proportioned, and the meat should be red and white. Whether it is ribs or sheep backs, it is always too fat to eat, and too thin to eat.

Although their taste is commendable, I have a vague feeling that the chef must have fine-tuned it when making it to suit the taste of Lanzhou people.

I have been to Dongxiang Autonomous County, the origin of this delicious food. On several occasions, the food I ate was cold, but the taste was very delicious and I can't get rid of it in my memory.

If you have the opportunity to go to Dongxiang this time, you must carefully appreciate the differences.

When driving on the country road in Dongxiang, you can see the sheep that are kept in free range from time to time, hanging among the mountain ridges and gullies like drifting clouds. Dongxiang is dry and rainy, with an annual rainfall of only about 3 mm, but there are more than 8, kinds of grasses, which belong to arid grassland vegetation. The grasses are mainly Benmao, Artemisia selengensis, mustard and thyme, and mixed with seasoning grasses such as wild onion and garlic. In order to get enough food, the sheep here can only walk around all day looking for pasture. The special geographical environment makes Dongxiang mutton fat tender, with little and delicate fiber, rich in protein and various trace elements. Eating more mutton has the functions of warming kidney, nourishing stomach and supplementing physical strength.

2. Congratulations, you have found the best local finger food store.

In Dongxiang local towns and villages, the signboards of finger food stores are numerous and dense. You don't have to ask which store is the most famous, but whenever the restaurant is full of cars and people are buzzing inside and outside, congratulations on finding the best local restaurant.

The hospitable host has already set a plate of sunflower seeds and a plate of dried apricots on the coffee table. In this plate of dried apricots, there are both large grafted apricots and pit apricots.

I took a piece of dried apricot with many folds, which was slightly sour, hard and chewy. Try another piece of dried apricot with core, which is smooth and almost transparent, sweet and sour and tough at the entrance, and the more you eat, the more fragrant it becomes. While speaking, the cup of tea with blue and white porcelain was brought up, and it was another feeling to soak the dried apricots in the tea and try them again before leaving. The owner said that these dried apricots are all dried by pure natural fresh apricots, without any additives, which are completely different from the preserved apricots processed with sugar stains.

It is said that there are three treasures in Tangwangchuan of Dongxiang, and the dried apricots made of sunflower seeds and apricots are two of them, so what else is there? The answer lies in our bowl of tea, burnt big red dates.

Drinking Dongxiang covered tea is very particular. There are spring tips, crystal sugar, longan, chrysanthemum, red dates and so on in the coffee table tray. Guests can choose a few according to their own tastes and put them into the tea cup, then pour boiling peony water, cover the bowl lid, and then take up the bottom of the bowl with their left hand, pick up the bowl lid with their right hand, and scrape it slowly with the lid from inside to outside, from shallow to deep.

tea smells good, and the tea juice is clear and the water vapor is curled up. It tastes bitter in astringency, sweet in bitterness, sour in sweetness, and fragrant in acidity. Taste it gently and swallow it slowly, and a pure and rich tea fragrance instantly permeates the internal organs.

cover a bowl of tea and drink it slowly. While sipping, keep adding boiling water until the sugar is light.

3. Dongxiang hand-grabbed a wild taste of Gansu.

Another function of covering a bowl of tea to quench thirst is to counteract the satiety brought by eating hand-grabbed food.

after a while, the hand-grabbed meat was served on the table, and it was a large piece of cooked meat, which was divided into ribs, chest forks, sheep backs, sheep necks and other parts, and placed in the plate respectively. The owner said that this was a "series of hand-grabbed" pendulum plate.

the second method is the "integrated version" of the pendulum plate method, that is, the chopped large pieces of meat are placed at the bottom with chest forks, backs, etc., and the ribs are placed on them. This kind of arrangement is distinct and full of three-dimensional sense, which makes people drool at it.

grab a rib on the plate, tear it off, dip it in salt and pepper, Chili oil and vinegar, and serve it with fresh garlic cloves. A bite of meat and garlic is tender and tender, fragrant and delicious, and it is the best meat.

Dongxiang's hand-grasping, after cooling, also has its reasons. It is chewy but not rotten. The shredded pork has clear roots, fat and thin collocation, compact meat and full of flavor.

people with light taste can eat it directly, while those with heavy taste can eat it with fresh garlic, pepper with oil, fine salt and even a little vinegar.

some foreign tourists say that Gansu is long and narrow, with different customs. Only this hand-grabbed mutton, from east to west and from north to south, unifies the long and narrow Gansu into one flavor, a wild Gansu flavor.

Dongxiang people can carry forward the hand-grabbed mutton, make it into a national cultural business card with high gold content, and become a wonderful flower in the Chinese food garden, which shows that its food culture is rich.

4. Hand-grabbed+quinoa porridge+covered bowl of tea, with a light and luxurious taste of Dongxiang

This time, the pasta matched with hand-grabbed is not a famous riverside noodle, but a large basin of quinoa porridge. When one end is served on the table, the special aroma of grain diffuses in the air.

The host greeted warmly again, "Come and try the quinoa from Dongxiang!"

Dongxiang can also grow quinoa? The host said that in recent years, hardworking and capable Dongxiang people have found their own way out of poverty-planting quinoa. The promotion of quinoa industry in Dongxiang was not smooth sailing. Embarrassed, quinoa was almost exactly the same as a local weed called "grey stripe" in Dongxiang at the early stage of its growth, but when it matured, many foreign tourists drove to take pictures, and local talents found that quinoa had a very high face value.

The ears of quinoa are all red. From a distance, the whole field seems to be on fire. Compared with the online celebrity grasses such as Daidai Luanzi grass and Verbena, which are popular in recent years, they have become the new favorites of girls. They spare no effort to show themselves in Tik Tok's fast hands, so that everyone is asking, where is this red plant? It turns out that quinoa originated in the Andes of South America, and it is a traditional food of Inca aborigines, with a planting history of about 6, years. What is even more exaggerated is that the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization believes that quinoa is a single plant, which can basically meet the basic nutritional needs of human beings, and formally recommends quinoa as the most nutritious food suitable for human beings.

It crossed the ocean from far away South America, first settled in Tibet, then settled in Hexi Corridor, and then went to Dongxiang, which is a good place for quinoa to grow. Take a sip of quinoa porridge, which has a fragrance similar to that of nuts. The small germ on it is crisp to bite, and it feels a little full like a sweet preserved fruit when chewed. It is delicious with crispy Dongxiang dumplings.

Eat a piece of hand-grabbed food, drink a spoonful of quinoa porridge, and take a sip to cover the bowl, which will make Dongxiang's taste trip perfect.