Snacks in Beijing also absorb the essence of different places and form their own unique flavor. According to statistics, there were more than 2 kinds of snacks in Beijing in the old days, and they were cheap, so they were the closest to ordinary people. Even the Empress who lives in the palace, from time to time to taste all kinds of snacks as fast. The Qing Dynasty's "Du Men Zhu Zhi Ci" wrote: "Where does the Japanese oblique drama go?" Banquet and fun live in the same place, the three big money sell flowers well, and the cake-cutting ghost legs (that is, fried dough sticks) are noisy. In the morning, after a bowl of sweet porridge, I have tea soup and noodles, fried cakes with cold fruit and lots of ears, and baked sesame seeds in the furnace. I just bought a fork on fire, and I heard that hard noodles are called cakes. Shaomai (steamed dumplings) Wonton is full of dishes, and new glutinous rice balls are added. Bursting belly and pumping liver incense enema, sweet clover and yellow flower tablets soup. " It can be seen that snacks were quite abundant as far back as the Qing Dynasty.
Many pasta snacks in Beijing are made of miscellaneous grains, such as glutinous rice noodles, mung bean noodles, yellow wheat, corn noodles, millet noodles, buckwheat noodles, barley and adzuki beans. Snack traders used to be poor Han people and Hui people, or peddled with carts on their shoulders, or set up stalls in market temple fairs and streets. They have a certain hawking sound, cadence, sound in their ears; Or percussion instruments, but also have a certain musical rhythm, so that people can know what they are selling when they listen. Those who go shopping in the streets to catch up with the temple fair come across all kinds of snacks, look around and buy some to taste, which is not expensive, fresh and not full.
In the past, most temple fairs in Beijing were fairs, where all kinds of snacks were concentrated. Some are held regularly, and some are fixed on a certain festival. For example, Longfu Temple in Dongcheng will open every September and October; The land temple fair is held every Wednesday; Every Friday and Saturday is the Baita Temple Fair. There are also temple fairs held at a certain time every year, such as Changdian, Dazhong Temple, Yonghe Palace and Pantao Palace.
In addition to temple fairs, the places where snacks are most concentrated on weekdays are Dong 'an Market, Drum Tower, Tianqiao and doorframe Hutong outside Qianmen. Before liberation, the variety of Tianqiao snacks was the highest in Beijing. According to some rough statistics, there are more than 5 small restaurants and more than 15 food stalls. Few of these food stalls run breakfast. Because ordinary workers and shop assistants usually can't even drink enough porridge, how can they afford to buy breakfast? The poor man who lives in a chicken feather shop got up early in the morning and went to the "people's market" (the market where the labor force was sold) to find a job. Where did he think of eating breakfast? After 1 o'clock in the morning, more and more tourists and snack stalls were put out one by one; A set of cookware, a chopping board and a long bench are all together. Most food stalls are family-based: father-son stalls, husband-wife stalls, mother-son stalls, uncles and nephews stalls, etc. Often the two stalls depend on each other, for example, the one selling bean juice is adjacent to the one selling sesame cakes, and the one selling spiced beef is together with the one selling wine. In order to grab business, the stall owner tried every means to renovate the variety to attract customers. After a long period of operation, the Tianqiao area has formed a unique snack. Some well-run ones are famous. Like Shirun, he runs a tripe, which is called "tripe stone". Shu Yongli manages bean juice, which is called "bean juice Shu"; Li Wanyuan runs a pot cake, known as "pot cake Li" and so on.
Another important feature of snacks in old Beijing was that they changed varieties with different seasons. As far as one day is concerned, the first thing that comes out in the morning is to sell hard flour cakes, followed by carrying small baskets to sell sesame cakes, fire and big twists. When the sun came out, there were stalls selling almond tea, bean curd, noodles and fried meatballs in the streets and lanes, and stalls selling oil cakes and fried dough sticks were also everywhere. People who are a little more particular should go to the breakfast shop to eat: a bowl of soybean milk and two sets of "baked wheat cakes" will be fine. When people who go to work in the early morning leave, the streets and lanes are dominated by the old people and children. Vendors, carts or baskets, start to do business for these people: selling spiced rotten broad beans, bean cakes and pea cakes. In the afternoon, we often sell glutinous rice lotus root, cut cakes, grilled cakes, mung bean balls, old tofu and so on. Soy juice is available all day, and raw soy juice is usually sold after sunset for housewives to purchase. After dinner, there are many cooked donkey meat, sheep head meat and spiced beef tendon. Late at night in the middle of winter, the seller of radish with beautiful heart lit a calcium carbide lamp and shouted along the street: "Radish is better than pear!" " On the day of midsummer, before sunset, there appeared a cart selling ice cream, sour plum juice, dried fruit and snow cream, and two copper cups stacked together in one hand rang. Throughout the year, different seasons sell different snacks. Sell pea yellow, snowballing, aiwowo, fried triangle, fried back and dried fruit in spring; Sell almond tofu, cheese, iced sour plum soup, fish leakage, grilled cakes, cut cakes, etc. in midsummer; With the arrival of golden autumn, there appeared glutinous rice wine, chestnut cake, eight-treasure lotus porridge, honey twist and so on in the market. In the middle of winter, we sell more noodles tea, hot pot cakes, white water sheep's head with sesame cakes, fried enema, mutton mixed noodles, baked sweet potatoes, etc., to keep people warm and warm.
in the late 195s, many snacks were almost extinct, and those sold along the street were gone, and their flavor was also lost. But in recent years, many snack varieties have gradually recovered.
Flavor snacks
Aiwowo is mostly sold by Hui people, and the cry is "Aiwowo stuffed with rock sugar!" This product is made of cooked rice flour and cooked rice, and stuffed with sand, golden cake strips, cooked sesame seeds, sugar, etc., which looks like a small steamed bread and is sweet and delicious. There is a bamboo branch that sings: "White sticky rice is steamed in the pot, and the assorted stuffing and noodles are rubbed, which is as muddy as glutinous rice balls, and it is called Aiwowo." Aiwowo is a traditional snack for Hui people in Beijing. Pea Yellow Boil peas, peel them, stir-fry them with sugar, condense them into a dark yellow cake in a mold, and cut them into small pieces when eating. This quality is delicate, soft and refreshing, and has a strong pea flavor. Originally a folk snack, it was introduced into the palace and became one of the famous palace snacks.
The corn flour, soybean flour, sugar, etc. are used to make the steamed corn buns, which are the size of dates, and then steamed in a cage. This product has a round top and a small hole at the bottom. The inner and outer walls are smooth and moist, exquisite and unique. It is said that when Cixi fled to China during Eight-Nation Alliance's invasion, she ate folk cornmeal steamed buns and ordered the imperial kitchen to copy them after returning to the palace, so this kind of snack was left in the Qing palace.
The bean flour cake is made of yellow wheat (millet and rice flour) into dough, steamed, rolled into pieces on a fried fine yellow bean, rolled into bean paste, cut into pieces, and sprinkled with sesame seeds and sweet-scented osmanthus sugar. Because there is a thick layer of bean flour outside the roll, it looks like a donkey covered with loess, so it is generally called "snowballing".
Baked cakes are made of buckwheat flour into dough, which is made into round cakes with a diameter of about 5 cm by hand, steamed in a cage, taken out and soaked in cold water. When eating, it is cut into small strips and dipped in sesame sauce, garlic paste, soy sauce, vinegar, shredded cucumber, coriander powder and Chili oil, which is a delicious food for summer in Beijing.
Zaner cake makers have stoves and pots. Generally, it is a small copper steamer. The steamer drawer is a wooden mold, which looks like a steamer (small flowerpot), with a live bottom and a concave middle. When making, put a little rice flour in the concave bottom, add a little sugar, then fill the concave with rice flour, sprinkle with green silk, rose, melon seeds and other fruit materials, cover and steam. When cooked, put the wooden model on a short stick and push it out. Beijingers have a two-part allegorical saying that "Zhen 'er cake is on the cage-one drawer tops one drawer". This cake is hexagonal from the top, but round at the bottom. It is very small and can be eaten in one bite. In the old days, it was mostly children's snacks, but it was rare in recent twenty or thirty years.
Chestnut Cake: Mash cooked chestnuts, knead them into mud, and make them into cakes, with sand stuffing and golden cake slices in the middle, and cover them with patterns decorated with green plums, melon seeds and golden cake strips. When eating, cut into small cubes and pour with sugar juice. This cake * * * is divided into five layers, with yellow chestnut paste on the top, middle and lower, and red and brown colors (red golden cake and brown sand) in the middle. It is thick and gorgeous, and should be eaten in autumn and winter.
inby is said to be fried food from the Qing palace. Also known as gizzard, twist, fried ghost (in the past, Beijing's east, west, south and north cities were called by different names), the best just out of the pot, fragrant and crisp. The raw materials are flour, salt, alkali and alum, which are first made into dough blanks and then fried into bracelet-shaped brown circles one by one. This product is resistant to storage, and its brittleness can still be maintained after seven or eight days. In the past, Beijingers used to eat inby in sesame seed cakes, which were collectively called "one set".
when frying the triangle, first cook pork skin and diced meat into a skin jelly, and then add the leeks and mix them into stuffing. Cut the round dough piece (about 16 cm in diameter) into two halves in a semicircle. First, stick the two corners of the bottom edge together in a cone shape, put 25 grams of stuffing, seal the mouth, make it triangular, and fry it. Its skin is crispy and the stuffing is thin and mushy. When eating hot, first put a few holes in the skin to let out the hot air so as not to burn your mouth.
After frying, chop the beef, add yellow sauce, ginger juice, minced chives and apples to make stuffing, make it into a jiaozi shape with a white flour bag, then bend the two corners back to the middle and knead them together, that is, "turn around". Frying in oil, the skin is golden yellow. It is one of the traditional snacks in Beijing. It's thin and crisp, but it's much thinner than oil cake, like paper and bigger than oil cake. The materials used are the same as those used to make inby noodles. The finished product is brown, thin and crisp, crisp and fragrant.
enema was a snack in the Ming dynasty. Originally, the pig intestines were filled with starch, monascus water and various spices, cooked and sliced, fried in pig oil in an iron pan, and watered with salted garlic juice when eating. After that, it was prepared with starch and monascus powder water, steamed into a thin cylinder, then sliced and fried in pig oil, still called "decoction enema". In the past, it was mostly sold in markets or temple fairs. The hawker took a shovel and fried it while shouting, "Jiao Oh-enema!"
In the old days, tea soup was mostly sold by vendors along the street, with a burden and a wooden box at one end filled with spices. At the other end is a hot copper teapot, which is more than half a meter high. The pot is double-layered, with water in the outer layer and charcoal in the inner layer. When eating, put the cooked millet noodles into a small bowl, add a little water and mix well, add sugar, and wash them into a paste with boiling water. This product is mostly sold in the spring and autumn and early summer.
Bean juice This is a unique food in Beijing. According to Yan Dou Snacks, "Bean juice is also mung bean paste, which is gray-green in color and bitter and sour in taste." It is fermented with mung bean paste, which is a by-product of the flour mill. It can be cooked when eaten. Drink bean juice with shredded spicy pickles, sour and spicy, and the taste will turn sweet after drinking it. People who drink for the first time are not used to it, but they become addicted after they get used to it. Bean juice is rich in nutrition, which can increase appetite, help digestion and soften blood vessels. Therefore, old Beijing, which has been away from Beijing for many years, still remembers to drink bean juice.
Stir-fried liver is actually stewed pork intestines, and there is no need to "stir-fry". Predecessors doggerel said, "Fat intestines are cooked in thick sauce, and the fair trade is judged. Proverbs spread among pigs and pigs, and the liver is fried in the market." The hawkers selling along the street shouted: "Fried liver, it smells bad!" The earliest fried liver was cooked with pig heart, liver, lungs and intestines without thickening. At that time, there was a slang saying: "Fried liver does not thicken-boil the heart and boil the lungs." Now it has been changed to thicken, and the heart and lungs are omitted, and only the liver tip and fat intestine are selected. The practice is to pour the cooked and cut liver slices and pig intestines into a boiling water pot, add soy sauce, garlic paste, broth, etc., thicken and stew. The juice is crystal clear and mellow, and it is best to eat with baked wheat cake and steamed stuffed bun.
sheep's head meat, also known as white water sheep's head, was often sold by Hui people in the old days. Its practice is to boil the sheep's head in white water, add seasonings such as pepper and aniseed (no colored seasonings such as soy sauce), take it out after cooking, remove the fleshy head, cool it, cut it into large slices, and sprinkle with spiced salt to eat, which is crispy and tender. In the old days, vendors sold sheep's head meat and cooked sheep's eyes and hoofs.
double intestines of sheep are also called "frost intestines". The practice is to pour the washed sheep intestines into sheep blood and sheep brain, cook them in a pot, and then simmer them in brine soup. When eating, cut into sections and add coriander and pepper juice. The hawker shouted, "lung leaves-sheep belly!" " Cheese is also called "long", "cheese", "goat cheese" and "beef crisp cheese". It is a semi-solidified food made of fresh cattle, goat's milk and white sugar. It is jelly-like, creamy and creamy, and melts in the mouth. It is said that this kind of food came from the nomadic people in the north and has been "settled" in Beijing for hundreds of years. At first, it only appeared on the street as a cold food in summer, and later it was sold all the year round. "A Brief Introduction to Doumen" wrote: "If you spit on the street at leisure, your throat will be moistened with nectar, and you will feel like fat when you swallow it, and your heart will feel cold and refreshing like autumn." Praise this product for its sweet, cool and refreshing taste. There are many kinds of cheese. Add hawthorn to the cheese, which is called hawthorn cheese, and it is red; Add sweet almonds, called almond cheese, as white as snow; There are also all kinds of melon seeds, which are called babao cheese. Cheese is served in a bowl, put in a wooden bucket, and iced with ice, which is sweet and sour and cool. In the old days, cheese vendors also brought milk rolls and cheese. People who have been eating cheese for a long time say it: "Hungry people are willing to eat, thirsty people are willing to drink, to nourish their lives inside and to nourish their spirits outside."
Sour plum soup is cooked with sour plum (Prunus mume) or pitted apricot with sugar, cooled, filtered to remove dregs, added with rose, osmanthus fragrans or osmanthus fragrans, and chilled. The color is light yellow (crystal honey color). In the old days, after long summer every year, the banner with the words "iced plum soup" fluttered in front of the dried and fresh fruit shop like the curtain of the restaurant. Sour plum soup sellers often sell dried fruits, and some vendors even sing, "It's thirst quenching and cold, with roses and sugar. If you don't believe me, make a bowl to taste. Suzhou made meat is a famous traditional snack in Beijing. Legend began in Suzhou folk, and was brought back to Beijing when Emperor Qianlong of Qing Dynasty went down to the south of the Yangtze River, so it became a court snack. As for how to spread to Kyoto folk, there is still a story. In the past, when the emperor went to court, officials went to the palace at dawn, and their bellies were hungry. After a long time, eunuchs colluded with a few small Suras (palace handymen) to set up several stalls outside Longzong Gate to sell breakfast (some said they were stalls outside Donghuamen Gate) for the lords of the court to eat. In addition to selling fried liver, almond tea, hanging stove biscuits and other snacks, there are also Soviet-made meat. After Puyi came out of the palace, the rules of making meat in Suzhou spread to Shichahai, a stall in the lotus market. Its preparation method is to cut pork, liver, lung, heart, intestine, belly, fried tofu slices and fire into a bowl, hold them in a colander, soak them in Suzhou-made soup (hot brine soup), scald them several times, put them into the bowl, pour hot brine soup on them and eat them while they are hot.
drinks
in the past, democracy in Beijing was mainly about drinking tea (especially scented tea), and the extremely poor drank white water. In the past, the flag bearer (referring to the family that originally belonged to the Eight Banners of Man and Han) talked about drinking tea the most. When he was free, he would sit and drink tea in the teahouse, chat while drinking, and sing a few words when he was happy. "Kyoto Zhuzhi Ci" says: "Little hats and long gowns are wearing new clothes, and there are many fragrant dust on the streets. I am free to sit in Sanwu Tea House, and half of them are Zeng Dengshi. " Note: "The flag-bearers in the inner city will wear casual clothes after their official duties, and have a chat with friends and teahouses. This trend has been going on for a long time." "Han people rarely set foot in it, and most of them are people from the Eight Banners. Although they are officials to three or four products, they also use toilets (teahouses), carry birdcages and sit around chatting." The general public also loves drinking tea. Regardless of winter and summer, you must have a few drinks before breakfast. Old Beijingers think that if you don't drink tea in the morning, you will not only be listless for a day, but also can't open your mouth. Generally, a "water jar" (a long iron tube with a handle about 1 cm in diameter) is inserted into the stove to boil water for tea, and some people go to the teahouse to drink tea or bring their own tea to the teahouse to buy boiled water for tea.
With the development of the times, household appliances such as refrigerators have been widely used. In recent years, citizens have also enriched their drinks, including coffee, beer, champagne, soda, cola and various fruit juices. There are guests at the door, so you can choose your drink. Drinking tea or coffee in winter is more pleasant. In many families, coffee has replaced tea.