I find that the older I get, the more I like and miss the old things and traditional food. However, with the development of society, old-fashioned things and food are becoming more and more popular in rural areas. The harder it is to find, every time I go home for vacation, I can find one or two old things that make me excited for a long time.

The Mid-Autumn Festival will be in about a week. Even before the school holidays, I have been thinking about eating the old-fashioned meringue mooncakes from my hometown. They are different from the Cantonese mooncakes with soft skin, but they are different from many other mooncakes. The old-fashioned mooncakes from rural areas in northern Jiangsu are different in shape from round to round.

An important feature of this old-fashioned mooncake is that it is "oily but dry and crispy". Although it is very oily when held, it tastes very crispy when eaten. The outer layer of the mooncake is clear and crispy, and it becomes crispy when touched. A lot of meringue will fall off. If you bite into it, the crispy skin of the mooncake will flutter and fall down. At this time, the importance of the oily paper skin is revealed. After finishing the mooncake, there will be mooncake residue hanging on your mouth, and the oily paper skin will be there. The top is covered with pastry residue. At this time, the cake residue on the oil paper is often shaken, and then the cake is poured into the mouth while tilting the neck.

There are generally three kinds of fillings in Northern Jiangsu old-fashioned mooncakes: old rock sugar filling, Wu Ren filling and salt and pepper filling. "Small cakes are like chewing moon cakes, with both crisp and glutinous rice in them." Crisp refers to ghee, and glutinous rice refers to maltose, which refers to the fillings of ancient moon cakes. The old rock sugar filling is made of mashed old rock sugar, cooked peanuts, black sesame seeds and green and red silk, plus fried flour and oil; the Wuren filling is made of peanut kernels, melon seeds and sesame seeds. , walnut kernels, almonds, etc. are fried and chopped, add crushed rock sugar, green and red shreds, orange peel sugar, and mix with cooked flour and oil to prepare; the salt and pepper stuffing is made from fried sesame seeds, Sichuan peppercorns, and peanuts mashed with a stone mortar Flour is made by adding cooked flour and oil. Most of the traditional old mooncakes are greasy and sweet, but they taste "spicy and fragrant" in the words of an elderly person. This kind of old-fashioned mooncake with high calories is probably very popular in the era of material scarcity. Food full of happiness, but in today's era of light taste and healthy eating, it seems out of place and gradually forgotten.

I saw a paragraph on Zhihu describing the reason why Wuren mooncakes are now disliked by people. I think it is very good: "Why are Wuren mooncakes disliked by thousands of people? Because it is ordinary but has a high cost. There is nothing new about tradition, because it silently accompanies generations of people to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival, which may be sad or reunited. Lotus paste can be made from potatoes and essence, bean paste can be made from coffee grounds and essence, and coconut paste can be made from broken fruit residue and essence. All kinds of fruit fillings can be made with pumpkin and flavoring. Even the black sesame filling cannot be guaranteed to be made from undyed sesame. Only Wuren mooncakes, peanuts are peanuts, sesames are sesames, melon seeds are melon seeds, and rock sugar is rock sugar. , take a look and you can’t find it fake. Maybe this is why Wu Ren is hated. The reality is not like this. The more genuine it is, the more it will be disliked.”

There are really more and more types of mooncakes on the market. As time goes by, mooncakes with all kinds of strange fillings that satisfy modern people’s curiosity are emerging in endlessly, but does anyone still pay attention to the most traditional and original mooncakes? I have seen many older people look satisfied when they eat old-fashioned mooncakes, and I have also heard them sigh, "It's been a long time since I've had this kind of old mooncakes, and the old mooncakes are still delicious!" Many children and even adults throw the old-fashioned mooncakes aside with disgust or spit them out after taking a bite, and then comment that they are "too oily", "too sweet", "too greasy" and "too unpalatable". Such negative comments. It is said that greasiness is unhealthy, but traditional original ecological seasoning ingredients such as rock sugar and lard are healthier than various additives in mooncakes on the market. The cooking method is rough, but the ingredients used are indeed natural and original. How can such delicacies be so good? It can be compared with industrial "delicacies" blended according to the tastes that modern people like. Old-fashioned mooncakes use heavy ingredients and have a greasy taste, but they can be innovated and deleted as appropriate. In fact, when you put aside your long-standing prejudice against these old-fashioned mooncakes and taste them carefully, you will taste the good taste of this old-fashioned mooncake.