Essay on the taste of local cuisine-A delicious food is natural, and a wonderful hand occasionally gets it.
When I visited the West Lake in Hangzhou that year, the beauty of this paradise on earth was actually very simple. It was full of waves, and there were some lotus flowers reflecting the sun in the inlet, and one or two banks with graceful willows. In fact, the broken bridge is just a small bridge in Yang Liuan. In winter, there is some unmelted snow, so the scenery is called? Broken bridge and broken snow? ; If it is night, the moon rises on the lake and points on the blue waves, that is? Three pools printing the moon? . In the west lake, we tasted the famous Hangzhou dish? Dongpo meat? . The tour guide said that the method of making Dongpo pork is very simple. Cut the pork into cubes, then add wine and simmer slowly. Dongpo meat is ruddy in color, thick in soup and mellow in taste. It tastes like Su Shi's "Fu on the Red Wall before and after", which is meaningful and fragrant.
Delicious is like beautiful scenery, simple but not simple. Su Dongpo has a poem "Ode to Pork", which tells the true meaning of simplicity of Dongpo meat. Wash the pan, without water, the firewood can't afford to smoke. Don't rush him when he is ripe, he will be beautiful when the heat is enough. Huangzhou good pork, the price is as cheap as dirt. You refuse to eat, and the poor don't understand cooking. Get up in the morning and play two bowls, so full that you can't worry about it. ? Real food is an art of simplifying, taking the most common dishes and cooking the most delicious taste in the simplest way.
Once tasted the chief Fujian cuisine in Fuzhou? Buddha jumps over the wall? Forgive my clumsy writing, but I can't describe its taste, so I can only pick it? Eat like a pig? The word. ? Buddha jumps over the wall? Rich in food, is there? Eighteen dishes cooked in one pot? , but the practice is very simple. During the dinner, friends talked about two legends of Buddha jumping over the wall. One is that a stupid daughter-in-law brought back delicacies from her family, but she didn't know how to cook them, so she simply put them all in the Shao wine jar. Secondly, a group of beggars put the leftovers together and cooked them. As a result, a delicious food was born between the nose and the tongue coating. There are poems to prove it: When the fragrance of meat floats around, the Buddha hears that he abandoned Zen and jumped over the wall. ?
I once invited my friends to go to Xianyou to make a fairy tour, be a fairy once, have a fairy dream and taste it once? Braised mutton? . ? Braised mutton? It is the first dish of Xianyou people's banquet. It is not an exaggeration to say that it is the chief food and signature dish of Xianyou, but it is just like the scenery of Xianyou. Few people know it in bred in an inner chamber, with no one knowing her. A literary friend who can't make an appointment is very serious. Every once in a while, he proudly told me on the phone that he learned to make? Braised mutton? Yes. Then he sent me a recipe by text message: Wash the hind leg meat of sheep and cut it into small pieces. Peel white radish and potatoes and cut into pieces. Boil a pot of boiling water. After the water boils, put the mutton pieces in the pot for 2 minutes and then take them out. Rinse them with hot water and drain them. Hot oil in the pot, add onion slices, ginger slices and minced garlic, stir-fry until fragrant, add the cooked mutton pieces, add cooking wine, stir-fry for 3 minutes, and then I smiled. I called Wenyou and laughed at him, saying, Is the dry braised mutton made by your cooking method the taste of radish or ginger or onion? Don't you know that too many condiments destroy our original sense of smell? Our dry braised mutton in Xianyou is back to nature, pure natural, just a sheep, a bucket of boiling water and a pair of wonderful hands.
Later, this literary friend came to Xianyou specially. He said that he came here for the original dry braised mutton. The foot takes one road, and the tip of the tongue unfolds another road. Food is such a special road that people can't forget to return. The comments left by Wenyou are: fat but not greasy, soft but not rotten, not fishy, crisp and mellow. Wenyou asked me in surprise, is the production method really that simple? I didn't answer directly, but told him a story: When the Japanese invaded in the Ming Dynasty, there was a sheep butcher in Longhua Town, and he hurriedly put the sheep into a wooden bucket filled with boiling soup, covered the lid and put some straw outside. I fled home the next day, fished out the sheep and cut them. It was delicious. Later, he did the same thing and made a reputation? Braised mutton? . Finally, I said that although the food is light, it has a heavy sense of culture.
Literary friends nodded and said, really, as you said, food is an art of simplifying. I said, yes, but food is also an art of time. Like Dongpo meat, it should be simmered slowly and the heat should be sufficient; Another example is dry braised mutton, which takes a night to go? Braised? . Not with low heat, but with water. Modern diet, like life, pursues a fast pace, and haste makes waste. How can we cook truly original food? The best condiment for good food is time.
Wenyou said with emotion that sometimes tasting food is also a taste of life.
Essays on local food tasting II Uncle McDonald's, a western fast food, is only over 60 years old, while KFC is only two or three years old. Peng Zu, the oldest in China legend, lived 800 years old, and Xinghua rice noodle is 1000 years old. As one of the earliest fast food in China, Xinghua rice noodle is better than? Xinghua? This ancient place name goes further and has footprints all over the world.
When we were young, we all sang a riddle nursery rhyme:? Four corners, four corners, straw tied around the waist, the answer is Xinghua rice noodles. The prepared rice noodles are spread into square blocks, and to prevent them from being scattered, the villagers tie them in the middle with straw, looking like an old farmer in the countryside. Rural rice noodles, with the image of grassroots civilians, live among civilians and become a kind of food in their daily life.
Eight years ago, I wrote an article "Xinghua Rice Noodle", in which I introduced its origin. Now I will summarize it: In the Northern Song Dynasty, Li Fan, the chief bookkeeper of Xinghua Army whose ancestral home was Guangdong, assisted Qian Siniang in building Mulanbei. Mother was sick and tired of eating rice noodles in her hometown. Li Fan invited a master to process rice noodles. Later, he made the method of making rice noodles public, so that migrant workers in Jianmu Lanpi and people in Xinghua Army could also eat this simple food. From the main information revealed by this legend, we can know that Xinghua rice noodles originated from Guangdong, but localized. Now Xinghua rice noodles are as white as snow and as thin as silk. Xinghua rice flour embodies the feelings of filial piety, affection and helping the world. Food is not only a feast on the tip of the tongue, but also full of feelings, which many gluttons don't understand.
Xinghua Rice Noodle is one of the top ten city business cards in Putian City. It has good quality and delicious taste, storage resistance, portability, toughness and unique local flavor. The rice noodles produced in Xian Yi and Xihong are popular all over the world. There are many places now? Fried Xinghua rice noodles? I have eaten in a restaurant in Fuzhou, and the making method and taste are quite different from those of Puxian folk. ? Xinghua fried rice noodles? It is the authentic and authentic way to eat Xinghua rice noodles, and this way of eating has been around since the Northern Song Dynasty, and it has a long-standing reputation. When Zhu Xi, a cultural master of the Song Dynasty, came to Putian to give lectures, did he taste it? Xinghua fried rice noodles? I can't help clapping my hands and saying: Delicious, delicious! ? Zhu Xi thinks because of Puxian cuisine? Bite the tongue? The joy and humor, every time I think of it, are enough to relieve me.
In Puxian village, every household has rice noodles in the rice urn. When I was a child, I was hungry and couldn't wait for the porridge to be cooked. My mother would take a small piece of rice noodles, add boiling rice soup, stew for a few minutes, and add a little soy sauce and peanut oil. This is a fast food for our childhood food. On holidays, tofu will be made at home, and mother will use soybean milk? Hot? Give us rice noodles to eat. Once, my mother made us fried rice noodles with soybean milk. First, put the rice noodles in soy milk (pronounced cuān, cooking method, put the food in boiling water and cook it a little. ) Pick it up, fry the bean sprouts with oil in the pot, then add the picked rice flour and cut shredded mustard, stir well, mix with scallion oil, and sprinkle some fried and crushed peanuts on it. In his later years, Guo Feng, a famous writer, was still obsessed with soybean milk rice noodles and wrote an essay specially. It seems that the taste of Xinghua rice noodles can go through the dust of the years and stay on the tip of his tongue and heart.
When I was a child, I ate more amaranth fried rice noodles. At that time, the countryside was poor, and the most planted vegetables were mustard and amaranth, which had high yield and long edible period and could cure hunger. In this way, we inadvertently ate a lot? Gourmet? . The juice of amaranth is red, as if it exists to match fried rice noodles. The fried food seems to be dyed red and looks good. Rice flour is soft, amaranth is juicy and chewy, and the two simplest foods are just right together. A few years ago, I ate this long-lost dish in a restaurant in Haiting Jiayuan, and even ate several bowls.
There is another kind of Puxian folk? Onion rice noodles? , is to add fried onion, ginger slices and lobster sauce to rice noodles? Triple soup? It is said that it is a folk cure for cold and cold, and Xinghua rice flour has turned into a health food. I read Guo Feng's prose collection "Notes on Shame Zhai" and found the special custom of Puxian folk to celebrate Pudu Festival in July and a half. Begging? Tofu and Chinese cabbage, Xinghua rice noodles at home, etc., are arranged in the fields, and incense is offered to worship the Tibetan Bodhisattva. That night, each family cooked the Chinese cabbage, tofu and Xinghua rice noodles offered to the Buddha together, each with a bowl for dinner.
During the Mid-Autumn Festival, do families eat? Fried rice noodles with taro? . Before the Mid-Autumn Festival, the married daughter will go back to her parents' home? Send autumn? One of the essential gifts is Xinghua rice noodles; During the Mid-Autumn Festival, every household? Do autumn? Fried rice noodles with taro is an essential dish. Peel taro (usually betel nut taro) and cut into pieces, fry in oil, add shredded pork, mushrooms and chestnuts, and stew in water for 20 to 30 minutes. After the taro is cooked thoroughly, add rice noodles and fry together, and a unique food of Puxian is made. I once asked a folk expert, and the expert said: rice flour is white, and eating rice flour means eating until the beard is white, which means eating it will lead to a long life; In Puxian dialect, Taro? With? Endure? Homophonic, eating fried rice noodles with taro means? Get through it? Just arrived? Boss? I hope that life will turn around. The custom behind hometown food is really intriguing, which contains both good wishes and profound philosophy of life. No matter how hard life? Get through it? Just arrived? Boss? After all, the philosophy of a plate of fried rice noodles with taro is better than many words.
In the era of food shortage, rice noodles are delicious, no matter which method is used. At that time, children were greedy, watching other families eat rice noodles, their noses were full of fragrance, and their tongues were spitting. Seeing that the water vapor on the bowl floated gently into the sky, the children could not help shouting: (Rice noodle) Get out! ? Get out? , in the local dialect? Hot? . Therefore, a local proverb is derived:? Others eat rice noodles, you shout get out! ? It means that my business has nothing to do with you, but you are blindly involved and happy. We did such a thing when we were children.
At that time, many people in the countryside were hungry and full, and more or less had stomach problems. My father has suffered from it before, and he gets indigestion when he eats rice noodles. When cooking rice noodles at home, he can only watch us gluttonously. Later, when life got better, his stomach trouble improved a lot, but he never dared to eat rice noodles again. This is a trivial one among many regrets left by country life. This is beside the point.
Xinghua rice noodles contain sincere wishes. Some festivals in Puxian, such as the winter solstice and the Spring Festival, usually prepare a plate of Xinghua fried rice noodles. The most common fried rice noodles are pork, chicken, eggs, mushrooms, shrimp, winter bamboo shoots, onions, leeks, kale and other condiments. The production method can be found in Baidu, so I won't go into details here. One year, Putian City took a couplet about rice noodles in the Chinese test paper for the senior high school entrance examination, which I still remember. The first part is Xinghua fried rice noodles, which is well-known in all directions for thousands of years, and the second part is Putian stewed tofu, which is famous all over the world. If I were to add a horizontal batch, I would choose four words: cook life.
Essays on local food tasting Three-simmered fish is a favorite dish for most people in Bailitan to eat at breakfast.
The traditional skill of killing fish is too rigid and conservative. It's as conservative as a woman with little feet in the late Qing Dynasty who can't bear to throw away the smelly and long foot-binding cloth and put on breathable and sexy black stockings.
Traditional bad habits are emphasized. For example, no fish scales, no fish guts. It's acceptable not to remove the scales, just like when you just got out of a big ceremony, you only have branches and grass leaves around you, and you can also wipe them. If you don't gut the fish, it's equivalent to lifting your pants without even branches and blades, which is unacceptable.
Some people stick to the traditional method of stalking fish, not removing the internal organs of fish, and stalking a pot of stickleback. Who would have thought that stickleback ate a lot of stinky mud, and after opening the lid, there was no fish smell, which rose completely, and it was the smell after opening the manhole cover.
Traditionally, it has been emphasized that mustard brine must be used. That's a good idea, old mustard, and Chinese medicine. Fish marinated with good mustard is the best seasoning for marinating fish, which is hard, chewy and has mustard flavor in the aftertaste.
The old people in Bailitan basically live in bungalows, and there are several big jars and pickle jars in each yard. Dry shrimp sauce in the jar and pickle pickles in the vat. Marinate mustard with sea salt. After the salt brine does not pass through the mustard on the top floor, it must be fully exposed to the sun in summer, so that the salt brine can absorb the hot sun, and the mustard brine begins to turn golden, and the aroma of mustard is dissolved in the brine. When you marinate the fish with this mustard, you put it in a bowl and a half, and the fish is hard and stiff, and it tastes like a carrot. However, with the disappearance of bungalows, pickle jars are very scarce. There are mustard greens in the market, which are packed in mineral water bottles. They are turbid as urine, and the taste is basically salty but not fragrant. The effect of this mustard greens is imaginable.
Bailitan people can't live without the simmering fish, and they can't get good mustard. What can we do? We can only improve it. We can only keep pace with the times, take shape with the shore and follow the trend.
First of all, the improved version of the fish requires that the intestines of the fish must be removed, and if it is a barracuda, the black membrane in the belly must be erased. If you are diligent, you should scrape the scales clean. Some people say that fish scales are rich in trace elements, so it is a pity to remove them. We are now overnourished for three meals a day, and we still lack the nutrients on the fish scales.
Pickle brine can be replaced by shrimp oil, and the effect is better.
If there is no mustard brine and shrimp oil, you can refer to the following methods:
The first step is to boil the brine.
First put clear water in the pot (it is recommended to put the water purified by the water purifier), then add a lot of cooking wine, a little vinegar and a lot of soy sauce (mainly soy sauce). Light soy sauce can be used for color matching), tomato sauce (also used for color matching, a little can be used), oyster sauce, a little white sugar for refreshing (if you have diabetes, you can not put white sugar), pepper, aniseed, onion, ginger and garlic, and large sea salt. How much to put in the big sea salt depends entirely on the taste. If the mullet fish is hard and chewy, put more.
The second step is to make a system.
Boil the pot full of bittern soup, scoop out a pot for later use, and put the cleaned barracuda into the pot in an orderly manner. Stew on high fire for 10 minutes, then turn to slow fire for glug, glug, glug for about two hours. In this glug process, the marinated soup just scooped out is added to the pot.
The third step is to pour soup.
After nearly two hours of glug, there was still half a pot of fish soup in the fish pot. Cover the pot and start to pour the soup. Remember, you must pour the fish soup to the bottom, just don't dry it. The fish soup is sticky and has the best effect.
The fourth step is to get out of the pot.
Be sure to cool the fish thoroughly before cooking. The rotten fish at night is best cooked in the next morning. After thoroughly air-cooling, the preserved fish will become hard and hard, and it will not be broken when it is taken out of the pot. When it is put on the plate, the hue is the best.
It needs to be repeatedly emphasized that if the curing process is short, the fishbone is not easy to be tender and the fish is not easy to taste. If you put less soy sauce, the fish will lack the sauce flavor. If you put less cooking wine, the spoiled fish will easily return to fishy smell after cooling.
There is no definite way to spoil a fish. People have different tastes, and it is ok to add or subtract the ingredients slightly. If the fish is too dogmatic, it will fall into a rut. Arguing about a certain detail of the fish, everyone claims to be authentic, that is, the two children will argue with each other.
No matter how high the level of the fish is, the fish is not good, and the fish that is spoiled is not good.
Essays on the Taste of Local Cuisine IV In the winter of 20xx, more than 20 famous writers from the province came to visit Xianyou for sightseeing. Every day, they enjoyed the beautiful scenery of the places visited by the immortals, and local snacks, where Xianyou has a long history, feasted. Ruixiang (Shuilong) is like a dragon ball swimming in clear soup, and the sleeve is like a music that goes back and forth, lingering on the tongue coating?
The observant writer noticed that the first course of every meal was braised mutton, and asked me a little surprised. I said, this is a feature of the Xianyou banquet, and the hospitable people take out the best food for the guests to taste. In Xianyou folk, the best dish is not abalone and lobster, but braised mutton. The writers were a little surprised. I briefly introduced its practices, such as selecting goats and stewing them in an urn all day. The writers suddenly realized and nodded in succession.
An old writer asked doubtfully, if mutton is put into a pottery urn for stewing, what should it be called? Braised mutton in a jar? Ah. I replied: actually, both names will do. Call? Cylinder stew? , focusing on the instruments used in production; Call? Dry stew? , emphasizing the production process. Good dry braised mutton, the pursuit of authenticity, almost no ingredients, except salt, other condiments are rarely used. Pure dry goods, the most capable cooking technology, bring the purest taste bud experience to diners, which is? Fuck? The original intention.
A Xianyou writer at the same table introduced the history of braised mutton. First, the Japanese invaders attacked. A family in Longhua Town slaughtered goats and hurriedly put them in a barrel filled with boiling soup. The next day, they fled home and the stewed sheep became delicious food. It seems that this dish is also a wonderful one. Another way of saying it is very similar, but the character is replaced by Chen Hongjin, the king of Nankang County in the East China Sea. For most delicious foods, people like to climb relatives with celebrities, and it is not uncommon to dry-stew mutton. But most Yi people still agree that food comes from the people. The writer said that Cai Jing in the Northern Song Dynasty used it to entertain Song Huizong, and the emperors ate their teeth and cheeks, and the dry braised mutton could be hyped with royal dishes or royal delicacies. However, the dry braised mutton in Xianyou is clanking and clinking, but it stubbornly retains its own folk color.
The writers present applauded the low-key of this delicious food. A writer in the province said that coarse clothes don't hide the national color, and the more folk food is, the simpler and more original it is, the closer it is to the true meaning of food. Writers feel a little sorry. Some people say that if Xianyou's dry braised mutton can also be commercially packaged and mass-produced, perhaps it would have been famous both inside and outside the province, unlike it is now? Bred in an inner chamber, with no one knowing her? . However, the writers say that if that happens, the homesickness on our tongue will disappear.
An old writer has been enjoying the pleasure of gluttony when he interjected a sentence: I finally understand, why stew? Braised? Word, which is in the middle of the right? Heart? To make this dish, you must use it? Heart? .
The writers pondered and nodded.
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