My relatives in Yuyao have always had the habit of making dried plums with their own hands. Although I have not seen the whole process of pickling dried plums, I know that it is quite time-consuming and laborious to do so, and every year my relatives will personally send their own dried plums to Shanghai to be distributed to their favorite friends and relatives to taste. I received two large packages of dried plums every year, one for my own consumption and the other for a few small packages to give to my friends who were waiting to taste them every year.
Due to the special production process of dried plums, the finished product will emit a particularly strong fragrance of dried plums. If you don't tie the pocket where you put the dried plums tightly, the fragrance will come out of the pocket and fill the whole room.
Because of this regional bond, our family's favorite dish is roast pork with dried plums. When I was young, I often liked to eat my mother's roasted pork with dried plums, when it was a time of material scarcity, I didn't understand food, as long as I could eat meat, I would be very happy. I remember eating stewed pork with dried plums, and after my mother passed away, I went on to eat this family dish cooked by my father. My father did not pass on my mother's cooking techniques, and as I remember it, he did not like the stewed pork with dried plums, but preferred steamed pork with dried plums, saying that this way the dried plums were chewy. Now I recall the version my father made, in fact, he cooking kung fu did not reach home.
Later, I took over the baton to continue to put the family roasted pork with dried plums this dish to push out the new, carry forward. Now Yuyao relatives to do the process of dried plum vegetables also improved with the times, modern people respected to eat healthy food, so now the dried plum vegetables salt reduced a lot, and added dried bamboo shoots, nutrients are more rich, more delicious flavor. Seeing this improved dried plum, I also had the idea to improve the dried plum roast pork process, not to live up to such a good ingredient.
I was born with a love of innovation, and then I don't know when I became a foodie, and I became a part-time home cook without a professional license. So I've tossed out many versions of the family dish of roast pork with dried plums.
In the past, I always feel that the meat inside the roasted pork with dried plums is too little, so I first came up with a meat version, that is, the meat and dried plums 7:3 ratio, to eat meat, eat meat, not happy; later heard that we need to eat less meat, so a version of the meat, that is, the meat and dried plums 3:7 ratio, in order to eat dried plums as the main, the meat is just an accompaniment.
I feel like I'm in my fifties, and my cooking skills are growing, and the dishes are getting more and more refined. At this time, it is not bound to this dish more meat less, but think of how to make this dish on the stage. So there is a restaurant version of the dried vegetables roast pork, pork must buy black hairy pig, and require the chopping master to chop the pork into the same size; dried vegetables soaked soft chopped into the end of the restaurant version of this dried vegetables stewed meat, dried vegetables wrapped in meat, meat through the vegetables, vegetables infiltrated with the meat flavor, moist with the oil in the red, it is the perfect companion to the wine and rice.
Later, I got a home banquet version of the steamed pork with dried plums, in order to meet the gourmet standards of color, flavor and shape, with bacon meat instead of pork, in the dried plums above the neatly laid bacon meat, steamed for more than an hour under water. This steamed pork with dried plums is suitable for banquets and guests, with a beautiful plating, fresh aroma and tantalizing, and those who don't like to eat meat will have a big appetite when they look at it.
In recent years, I have been more open-minded about how to eat this dish of steamed pork with dried plums. For example, the leftover steamed pork with dried plums in the next day with it to fried rice, this do not have to put any seasoning fried rice with dried plums has become our family's original cuisine, such as when you find that the loss of appetite, then a bowl of fried rice with dried plums. I also eat the leftover steamed meat with dried plums used to make buns, into the dried plums meat buns, absolutely more delicious than outside the bun store to buy the dried plums buns, soup penetrates the inner wall of the buns, the meat has been crispy, a bite to bite down, simply can not stop.
Recently, I remembered that my father's steamed pork with dried plums was not very authentic, and decided to improve the cooking method. First of all, the dried plum with water soaked half an hour, the precipitation of soy sauce color water squeeze dry to be used; blanch pork, pot put a little peanut oil, under the ginger, star anise, sesame seeds burst incense after fishing; into the rock sugar burned to caramel color, into the pork instead of the old soy sauce coloring; and then into the cooking wine and soy sauce, and then put the dried plum stir-fried for a few moments. Take a deep pot, a layer of dried plum cabbage layer of five-flower meat spread, and finally martial arts fire on the cage to steam for more than an hour.
The 2018 version of steamed pork with dried plums is characterized by the use of icing sugar instead of old soy sauce for coloring, which reduces the salty taste, and the use of icing sugar instead of white sugar is healthier, and the dish is more oily; the dried plums are layered with five-flower meat, and the fat juice of the fat meat drips into the dried plums, which absorbs the meat aroma, while the five-flower meat is fat but not greasy, and the dried plums are oily but not faggy. The ingredients complement each other's strengths and weaknesses. The taste reaches an unprecedented height.
Every family will have one or two watchman dishes, and each watchman dish will inherit some memories or stories. If your family members one day proposed to eat the long time not to do the family dish, it must be a moment of the moment to wake up her memory of the taste, the feeling must also be very good.