Nature has always gifted people with different cuisines in different seasons, and after the spring thunder, the spring bamboo shoots, snails, capers, and toon trees have sprouted young shoots....... It's better to eat according to the time. It is said that the spring light is infinitely good, the charm of spring is hidden in this fresh and tender flavor, only to awaken the silent taste buds, to feel the gentle breath of spring.

Delicious Pickled Dukes

In the South, the dish of Pickled Dukes represents the ritual of spring in the hearts of many people.

Pickled dukkha is a seasonal dish in the spring in Shanghai and other places, and is known as the famous dish "Pickled dukkha with bamboo shoots". It's seasonal because the bamboo shoots in this dish are available in abundance at this time of year, and the ingredients are readily available and fresh.

In addition to bamboo shoots, the ingredients used to make pickled bamboo shoots include fresh and salted meat. Gourmet Wang Zengqi in the "meat eaters do not despise" wrote pickled duxin for Shanghai dishes, "salted meat and fresh meat stewed with flat-tipped bamboo shoots", "pickled" is the salted meat after curing; "fresh" is not only the The word "fresh" not only refers to the fresh bamboo shoots and meat, but also highlights the savory and fresh flavor of the soup. As for the "Duk", there are two meanings, one is the cooking method, that is, small fire gently cooking slow stew; the second is the onomatopoeia, meat and spring bamboo shoots in the soup slowly stewing, bubbling, "Duk Duk" sound, some of the living color and aroma of the feeling.

Pickled duchess was originally a family dish in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, and the people around Jiangsu and Zhejiang are known for their gentle and refined life, even if it is a family dish, it is full of color and flavor. Hangzhou people like to call it "salted fresh", in the Huaiyang area called "stewed fresh". In the 1930s, when Shanghai was booming and there were many restaurants, some local restaurants improved their pickled dukes on the basis of farmhouse cuisine, and they became popular.

Although pickled duksuan requires very few ingredients, the quality is very high.

Bamboo shoots are one of the freshest foods. Fresh bamboo shoots are sweet and fresh, but their freshness doesn't overpower the other ingredients, and they absorb the flavors of the other ingredients. Therefore, bamboo shoots are one of the most delicious foods in pickled dukkah.

Spring bamboo shoots throughout the south of the Yangtze River, Anhui, Jiangsu, Shanghai and Zhejiang have output, but the four places, Zhejiang is the most. Zhejiang's spring bamboo shoots and to the west of Zhejiang around the yellow mud bamboo shoots for good, such as the famous bamboo township Anji, Deqing, its surrounding mountains on the yellow mud bamboo shoots. Yellow mud bamboo shoots is actually grown in the yellow mud in the bamboo shoots, is about to break the ground, will be out of not out of the time, the texture is crisp and tender, slightly sweet aftertaste, the most delicious flavor. There are actually many varieties of spring bamboo shoots, such as thunder bamboo shoots are the main varieties of early-maturing, late bamboo shoots varieties of red shell bamboo shoots and so on.

Two or three days after digging out the spring bamboo shoots, they lose their color and flavor, so the stewed pickled duksun is usually in the evening. In Anji and other places, farmers early in the morning on the mountain digging bamboo shoots, 10:00 or so to bring to the market to sell, loaded trucks and sent to Shanghai or Hangzhou, to the local food market time is exactly the afternoon. Therefore, the evening market can often buy the day of the fresh bamboo shoots. If you buy early in the morning, you are very likely to buy overnight bamboo shoots. The variety of spring bamboo shoots and the freshness of the bamboo shoots have already decided the success or failure of a pot of pickled dukkha.

Then the meat. Salted meat is best when it has been salted for a month and has been exposed to the sun three or four times. In the past, many people killed a pig on New Year's Day, because it is not good to keep made of salted meat, and a month or so later when the spring bamboo shoots are on the market, it is the time to eat pickled dukkha fresh season. In pickled meat, the role of salted meat is both to increase saltiness and freshness. After curing, all the freshness in the meat is snowed in and slowly released during the stewing process.

Fresh meat needs to choose five-flake meat, fat meat is too greasy, lean meat is too firewood, five-flake meat is just right. The more sophisticated people to do a pickled dukkha need to use four kinds of meat, fresh meat and pork ribs, salted meat, salted chops and salted pig's feet, pig's feet in the collagen can make the soup become more thick. In addition, these people do pickled dukkha, in addition to adding a little wine, even salt and MSG do not have to put, to be the mouth of the natural and pure taste.

In fact, this can be completely according to their own preferences to play, which is the meaning of this dish, after all, spring should be inclusive.

Late snail fat

Every spring, China's large and small lakes, especially in the southern region of the lakes, from the bottom of the lake wafted a wisp of snail freshness, and fish, shrimp, and other river freshness, together, will be the spring of the lightness of the fine sketch.

Spring is the best time to eat snails. When the snails wake up from their dormancy, they are the most plump, thin-shelled and fat snails in the world.

After half a day in water with salt or oil, put it in a cool place to slowly spit out the sand, and then cut off the tail, the first step of snail cooking is completed.

How the snail is eaten next is entirely up to the palate of the diner.

In the south of the Yangtze River, the most common way is to fry the snail meat with spring leeks. Toothpick out of the snail meat with flour and salt wash, and cut into sections of leeks together into the oil and stir-fried, exuding the spring of spring leeks fried snail meat will be made, with the spring flavor of "two fresh" with the plate, to become an unparalleled spring wine dishes. Fried snail to pay attention to the fire, not enough fire will be too raw, fishy; fire over will make the meat old, not fresh.

The beauty of eating snails is sipping. Sip the snail, pay close attention to the mouth force, the secret lies in the "stable, accurate, ruthless", in a short way to force, can be a "sip" and on. Almost all southerners are masters of snail eating: no chopsticks, only three fingers to the snail fixed pinch, a sip and a bite, tender and sinewy snail meat should be heard in the mouth, a person enough to kill a plate.

Although the hands are full of soup, but the mouth is full of flavor. After eating the snail, you can not waste the plate of flavorful soup, rice into a little snail soup, and then mix, still delicious.

In Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, the drained snails have garlic cloves, millet pepper, green onions to support, in a hot pot of cold oil, stir-fried over low heat made of red oil, add beer stew, cooked through the sugar out of the pot, it is a plate of soup red sauce burst snails. After cooking the snail, soup wrapped in meatballs, can be called a miniature can. Therefore, Suzhou people also call snails "canned meat".

Compared with the delicate and elegant Huaiyang cuisine, the color of snail in sauce is slightly saturated, while the freshness of snail in soup is the most authentic Huaiyang characteristics. Peel an egg, cut a few slices of cured meat, peel a bamboo shoot, roll out the soup over high heat, and then throw in the washed snail, let it in the rolling milky white soup, soak up the soup.

Wuxi people eat snails, is more elaborate. The delicate snail meat is removed, mixed with pork, and chopped into minced meat, and then stuffed into the snail shell stir-fried. If it is not enough to enjoy, Xinghua people also provide another way to eat - snail meat is removed, and goose stewed together, to make a snail roasted goose. The tenderness of the snail meat is accompanied by the fragrance of the goose meat, and the addition of Xinghua people's unique sauce water pepper, fresh and addictive.

Hangzhou people have "snail Dudu Dudu, Daodai do not do" "snail over wine, the past life has not rested", which shows their love for snails. Bad snail is indispensable. The snails are boiled, covered directly with wine lees, and put into the refrigerator for a few hours before they are ready to eat. Sip vigorously, cold snail meat slipped into the mouth, crispy and tough with a light flavor of wine, so people can not stop.

And the snail eat out of style, also belongs to Guangxi. Tender and firm snail, in the hands of Guangxi people, change out of a thousand flavors. In particular, the famous Liuzhou snail powder, attracted all kinds of curious tongue of the country "jumping".

In fact, Liuzhou snail noodles, there is no snail, but the snail is everywhere. After boiling over a large fire, the tender meat of the stone snail, dissolved in the bone broth, the illusion of invisible. Afterwards, the ivory white rice noodles, golden crispy fried bean curd bamboo, refreshing pickled bamboo shoots and turquoise green vegetables are taken into your arms, wafting out gusts of hot air and releasing a very recognizable fragrance. If this is accompanied by a bottle of chilled soybean milk from Liuzhou, it is the most authentic Liuzhou fireworks.

From Guangxi to the west, the snail that grows in the Erhai Sea is large and thick, and the most common way to eat it is to cook it with the Paha vegetable, which is the most common vegetable in Yunnan. Add mint leaves, sour bamboo shoots, bacon, spicy pork rinds and other ingredients, pour a spoonful of old tofu water to remove the fishy, very Yunnan flavor.

There are also some regions that like to stew snails with chicken soup. Cleaned snails into the chicken soup, and ginger, wolfberries, red dates into the pot with the cooking, in the rich soup and tender snail meat *** with the creation of the iron, to bring people full of energy spring-like flavor.

Springtime Shrimp

One night the east wind blew the rain, full of new river water long fish and shrimp. The first bite is always in the spring.

Buy half a catty of river shrimp, piggybacking on a small leek, is a meal can not be found in the spring of good taste. Leek released a strong fresh gas, the texture is very sweet, with a small river shrimp stir-fried, excellent flavor. River shrimp beauty in small and playful, thin shell meat bullet, cleaned and drained first through the oil once, ginger and garlic popping incense, and then with the leek section of the stir-fry, add a little thin salt soy sauce can be. It's a great way to get the most out of spring.

This method of cooking is somewhere between deep-frying and stir-frying, with a light green color. The shrimp shells are crispy and flavorful, and the meat is sweet and moist and firm, and the leeks are a breath of fresh air, which makes it a great dish for dinner and wine.

There are also crispy river shrimp, hanging wrapped in a thin layer of egg batter, fried crispy, with pepper and salt. The first time I ate it, I heard the sound of "cackling", and I couldn't stop chewing on it.

Suzhou's Biluo Shrimp is made with Biluochun tea and freshly peeled river shrimp, which is light and tasty, with an elegant aftertaste.

Biluochun is one of the top ten famous teas in China. The second tea into the dish, not only to sweep the usual fishy smell of river freshness, but also added a wisp of tea flavor, after the mouth fresh teeth, and very rich sense of hierarchy.

On the fried shrimp recipe, the writer Lin Wenyue in the "Dining Journal" recorded insights: ingredients to be fresh, shrimp must not be peeled first in the market, to wait to take home, with the shell with the head in the faucet rinsing, and then peeled, draining, picking line; fried shrimp action do not want to be heavy, and can not be repeated back and forth to stir, so as to avoid damage to the shape of the shrimp.

And cooking Biluo shrimp, is to be unusual on the basis of another process, that is, after the first high-flame stir-fry, shrimp sheng out, drain the oil. After reset the frying pan on a high flame, the shrimp again back to the pan, cooking Bi Luochun tea, the frying pan a few times upside down, sheng out of the plate, and finally sprinkled with drained water tender tea leaves can be. The fried shrimp is crisp and flavorful, with a rich fragrance between the milky white and the tender green.

Boiled, deep-fried, stir-fried, river shrimp rough and fine, in itself, full of delicious, what is the constraints on the production?

(Wang Ning synthesized)

China Food News (April 15, 2022, 06)

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