When I was playing in Penghu, I often watched fishermen drying squid on the roadside. I found that there are two ways to dry squid: one is to put the squid on the concrete floor and turn it over every once in a while. In the land without cement, fishermen are afraid of steam and hang squid on bamboo poles like flags-this kind of landscape can be seen everywhere in Penghu, Lan Yu and some coastal areas of Taiwan Province Province.
Once a fisherman invited me to dinner, and there were two plates of squid on the table, one was fresh squid just caught from the sea, and the other was dried, soaked in water and cooked. Fishermen told me that squid is different from other fish. Of course, all other fish are fresh and delicious, but squid won't taste unless it is roasted in the sun. I ate squid carefully and found it fresh and crisp, but it was not as delicious and powerful as dried squid. Why? It really makes no sense. Is sunshine really that powerful?
When the fisherman saw that I didn't believe him, he picked up a bowl of shark fin soup and said, "Look at this shark fin. Fresh shark fin can't be sold at any price, because it's not delicious at all. Only dried shark fin is precious because it smells a hundred times. "
Why are squid and shark's fin especially delicious after sunlight? It's incredible. Needless to say, it's just mullet roe. The price of dried mullet roe is ten times that of fresh mullet roe.
Later, when I was traveling around, I paid special attention to this problem. I once ate Dongpo pork and braised bamboo shoots in Zhushan, Nantou, and almost didn't swallow the plate. The host said that the sunshine was particularly good this year, and the dried bamboo shoots were the best. When the sun is bad, dried bamboo shoots can't show its delicious taste. Although tender bamboo shoots have their own delicacies, they are completely different after being irradiated by sunlight.
For squid, shark fin, mullet roe, dried bamboo shoots, etc. The function of sunlight not only makes it dry and resistant to long-term storage, but also seems to penetrate it, condense the smell and make it emit different flavors. In the past, the smell of dry goods in the south goods store, the fragrance of grass and medicine in the Chinese medicine shop were all condensed by the sun. Now there are drying methods that don't need sunshine, and it is said that the taste is not as good as before. An old Chinese doctor described to me the taste of "Angelica sinensis" in those days, saying that it was not as good as before. I haven't eaten angelica before, and I don't know its taste, but it makes me feel that the sunshine today is not as delicious as before.
Not long ago, I went to a tea-producing place, and the tea farmers told me that the tea picked in sunny days is not the same as the tea picked and baked in cloudy days. Spring tea and winter tea are completely different, so it seems that the taste of sunshine is different from day to day and worse from season to season, and its prerequisite is to have a sensitive tongue. No matter what era, there are always some people who have good tongues to distinguish the magnificence and femininity of the sun-the sun is like a carefully prepared dish at that moment, which is even worse than it and has its own competition in the mouth of the eater.
It makes me sad to think so, because the taste of sunshine on the plate seems to be getting weaker and weaker in the process of the times.