The season of fall and winter, it is the best time to eat sour soup. Manxiang people table every now and then always appear this food. Especially when you are tired of eating fish and meat, or poor appetite, in front of your eyes set out so a big bowl of sour soup, it is definitely a blessing, sour soup is a traditional Manchu snacks, was used by the Manchu family to entertain the guests of the delicacies, is a staple food out of corn grain. Its production process is also quite time-consuming, the first corn soaked in cold water for more than a dozen days, so that its natural fermentation, to be a little sour when fishing out the cleaning, and then ground into a paste, and then use gauze packages to control the water, that is, the said soup noodles.
With soup noodles, the pot of water boiling, and then the soup noodles into a few small balls, put into the boiling water hot, fish and noodles, and then in the thumb with a good soup set (made of iron special artifacts), take out a ball of the right size of soup noodles to the hands between, and squeezed at the same time flinging the arms, a golden soup noodles leaped out of the soup set, flinging the arc to the pot of boiling water, a moment of work fell more than half a pot of water, a moment of work, and then the soup noodles, and the soup noodles. The work will fall more than half of the pot, after boiling is a delicious sour soup.
If you come to the Manchurian countryside in the northeast, you will often hear this simple conversation. "The first thing you need to do is to get your hands dirty. I don't have an appetite." "Then let's eat sour soup, and some egg sauce or hot sauce." Yes, when you pick up a big bowl of steaming hot sour soup, use chopsticks to pick up the long, yellowish and smooth soup sticks and put them into your mouth, the light corn flavor and the light acidity will instantly make you have a big appetite. Add a little bit of egg sauce, drink a mouthful of slightly thick sour soup water, and then a mouthful of pure green food - mountain wild vegetables, to ensure that you until you eat the stomach bulging, full of forehead oozing out of fine beads of sweat, will feel satisfied.
I have a deep affection for sour soup, not only because of its delicious, more mainly because it is also cohesive thick ` can not be separated from the family love.
Every year after the fall harvest, my mother was early to soak the corn, ground into soup noodles, divided into a few large groups, bags of bags, and then bring their own pickled sauerkraut, dried radish, groundnut, all kinds of vegetables, small tofu, etc., ride a hundred miles by bus, and personally delivered to the hands of a few of the sons and daughters to forget a pile of her wishes.
Before coming, the caller would always keep asking: "Soup noodles, pickled vegetables, small tofu, sun-dried mountain vegetables, groundnut, what do you want to eat? Mom knows you like to eat soup, I'll send it to you when I have time." I on the other end of the phone quickly excused myself, "Mom, you can buy all of these in the market, you always have back pain, don't get tired this year, besides it's so far away, let's go home to pick them up ourselves when we have time." And the mother immediately said: "buy these have to spend how much money ah, and buy on the market can be compared to our homegrown? There is no chemical fertilizer, so it's safe to eat. You are all busy, I'd better deliver them to you personally." The mother's words make my heart warm, but more is the guilt, the guilt is not often go home to accompany the parents.
Every time I receive a bag full of food from my mother's hand, I look at my mother's face with a solid and satisfied smile, and look at her rough hands, my heart is always a burst of pain, this heavy bag is clearly loaded with the mother's heart of the children ah! Every time I ate the soup noodles sent by my mother, I felt especially familiar and affectionate, as if I had eaten out of the sweetness of the soil of my hometown, the flavor of the fireworks of my hometown, and the feeling of returning to my roots.
A colleague said sadly the other day: "Go to the market this afternoon to buy soup noodles to eat, in the past is the mother personally sent, this year the mother can not come." I saw her say this when the tears are left in the corner of the eye, my heart trembled, yes, her mother died a few months, she wanted not sour soup, but to think of it behind the mother's love and affection without support.
Like to eat sour soup, it's a love affair, not only because it is the authentic Manchu cuisine, but also because it is behind the cohesion of the mellow native affection.