Smoked green beans are a specialty snack in my hometown and are popular in just a few villages. During September and October, edamame matures in large quantities. After picking off the bean knots and peeling out the bean flesh, blanch them in a large iron pot with boiling water while they are still fresh. Sprinkle in some refined salt, which can not only enhance the freshness, but also make the beans greener. When the beans change color, take them out and dry them, then spread them flat in an iron sieve. A large piece of charcoal is set up in the stove. The fire does not need to be too strong. A faint red charcoal fire is best, and it must be smoke-free, otherwise the smell of smoke will affect the taste of the beans.
Place the sieve on the stove with the iron pot removed, and then turn the beans in the sieve from time to time until the skin of the beans shrinks and the fragrance overflows, it is considered done. Pour it into a bamboo basket to let it cool, then bake it for the second time?
If smoked green beans are not stored properly, they will soften and change flavor after a period of time. In the past, the old family’s secret to preserve the smoked green beans was to put the smoked green beans into a bag sewn with gauze, put it into a pot with lime on the bottom, and seal the pot tightly. After leaving it like this for a year and a half, the smoked beans will still look as good as new. Will break. It's just that the water is completely absorbed by the lime, making it crunchy when you bite it. But when used to make tea, the taste of the beans will not be affected after being soaked in water. Nowadays, the refrigerator has replaced lime. If you put the smoked green beans in the freezer of the refrigerator, even if you take them out months later, after a few hours at room temperature, they will still taste the same as when they were freshly sifted.
If a rare guest suddenly arrives in my hometown and cannot bring out a cup of smoked bean tea, the host will often apologize for being impolite and say in a panic: "Oh, I'm sorry, smoked bean tea." I haven’t soaked it for you to drink. “Some more sophisticated people will also mix fried white sesame seeds, self-pickled tangerine peel shreds and diced carrots into the smoked green beans. The tea in the cup is rich in color and blends of five flavors, which is eye-catching, throat-moistening and appetizing.
Eat dried smoked green beans and have an endless aftertaste. Pinch a few pills into your mouth, chew them carefully and swallow slowly, savoring the sweet and slightly salty fragrance, and the joy of enjoying food, which is about the same as Su Manshu taking out a pill in his pocket at any time. Just chew the spiced beans. Mix smoked green beans with fresh soy sauce and serve as porridge. The flavor is absolutely as good as that of pickles, fermented bean curd, pork floss, or peanuts.
Most of the women in my hometown bake smoked green beans, but I always feel that among the smoked green beans I have ever eaten, my grandmother’s ones taste the best.
Grandma bakes beans and is very particular about the ingredients she chooses. If the edamame is too tender, the baked beans will not be chewy; if they are too old, the beans will be chewy. Grandma often chooses eight-quarter-full bean knots. The peeled edamame is neither tender nor old. The baked beans are like jasper, and the taste is neither salty nor bland but moderately soft and hard. Roasting beans is a job that requires patience. It often takes two to three hours to roast a sieve of beans. If you are not careful, the beans will be burnt on the outside and undercooked on the inside. But grandma has never had this kind of demolition, so people in neighboring houses often ask grandma to check on them.
When I was about ten years old, my grandmother started a smoked green bean business in order to supplement the family income. Every morning at dawn, grandma would put the roasted smoked green beans into a Hangzhou basket, cover them with a towel, and sell them in the vegetable market. After selling, I went to buy edamame to continue the business the next day. All this must be done secretly, because this is speculation and the "tail of capitalism". Once discovered, it will be cut off! Finally, one day, my grandmother mobilized the whole family to peel smoked green beans that had been roasted all day and all night. The inspectors mercilessly threw the basket and the beans into the city river under the Diding Bridge.
Things changed, and a few years later a smoked green bean purchase store opened in the town. After the purchase, the smoked green beans were sold to Suzhou and Shanghai. Although the life of my grandmother's family had improved by this time, my uncle worked as a technician in a social factory, my aunt became a land worker, and my cousin opened a daily necessities wholesale department, but my grandmother, who was nearly seventy years old, was baking smoked green beans in full swing. Tianlehehe is doing her small business freely.
One autumn, when some people from the city's literary and artistic circles were invited to visit a certain country, they presented smoked green beans as a specialty of their hometown. After the other party ate it, they repeatedly said, "It's delicious! It's delicious!" I went home to visit my grandmother and told her about this. My grandmother, who was nearly eighty years old, asked excitedly: "Azhen? Azhen?" It was as if she baked the smoked green beans herself.
It’s smoked green beans season again.
For many years, every time this time came, my grandmother would always pick out a package of smoked green beans and send them to me. After dinner, grab a handful and put it into a transparent glass, sprinkle some Longjing or white flakes on it, pour it into the boiling water, and the beans will float like jade in the tea. Drinking smoked bean tea, watching TV and chatting, such a night is enjoyable.
Counting on my fingers, it has been fifteen years since my grandma left me.