China's culture of nostalgia is incomparable to that of any other nation. In my childhood, the memory of taste carved on the tip of my tongue, from time to time, aroused the nostalgia that is not easy to perceive when I traveled abroad. I've lived in Finland for a long time, and it's the second most boring country in the world, so I don't have to tell you how much I miss the flavor of my hometown.
Even though I'm a lazy person who doesn't cook well, I still cook a lot to satisfy my cravings.
Yesterday, I was making lamb noodles in soup, and I just took out the pot, and I remembered my mother's voice: "Roast (bei, go to sound) some peppercorns, and the flavor will come out.
This voice immediately brought me back to my childhood. I'm a native of Shijiazhuang, and I speak the authentic Shijiazhuang dialect. The old Shijiazhuang dialect, which has been covered by Mandarin and almost forgotten, contains delicious flavors, ancient languages, cultural encounters and fusions, and sometimes people's ways of thinking and attitudes towards life over the centuries.
Today, I'm going to write about a few dialects that are unique to the Shijiazhuang kitchen.
Hush, that is, smoke with the heat of fire or vapor. Among the Shijiazhuang dialect, yam is sweet potato groundnut.
Shijiazhuang Hutuo River basin of the beach is a good place to grow sweet potatoes, sandy and soft sunshine long time, out of the sweet potatoes sweet and tasty, especially suitable for roasting.
When I was a kid, winter seemed to be a little colder than it is now. A few little monkeys in the family, all like to warm up in the grandmother's home on the kang, and the kang is connected to a diameter of about half a meter of low-lying basin-shaped stove, coal fire in the middle of the puddle, and around the walls of the stove, but it is the best place to hush yam. On snowy winter days, Grandma would often make us a pot of yams with a broken washbasin on top for air. We kids waited for half a day without feeling anxious, or play or write homework, until wisps of sweet aroma wafted out of the broken hole in the washbasin, through the nostrils, drilling into the spleen and stomach.
Now that my grandmother is gone, the old family kangtou disappeared a long time ago, baked sweet potatoes are still one of my favorite foods, every time I go back to my country, no matter what the season, I will definitely buy a roadside stalls hush out of the baked sweet potatoes, that is the closest to the taste of childhood, the smell of a lot of snowy winter, but also a very long time of childhood idleness, and even more inexhaustible memories of my grandmother.
Hush, hush, hush, can soothe the soul, because it has temperature.
Distillation, is the second heating processing of food. Shijiazhuang people put the dumplings that were not eaten for the first time, put them in a cage drawer and steam them, called distillation dumplings.
Shijiazhuang is located at the junction of the three cultural circles of Yan, Zhao and Jin, so culturally it is also subject to the interaction of these three cultural circles. Shanxi distilled rice, which stretches back thousands of years and is often found on the table at weddings and funerals within Shanxi, is a delicacy that is heated a second time before it is made.
I'm not sure that dumplings have anything to do with distilled rice. I want to write about it not because it is delicious, but because there is a kind of attachment called "jieji" in it.
The thoughts tied into a knot, firmly remember the other end of the thoughts, that must be the longest love of the attachment, Shijiazhuang people to this kind of bone hanging called "knot mark". The most "knot remember" us, is the grandma, every year distillation dumplings, as a kind of secondary heating food, has become this kind of thoughts in the life of the direct projection.
When I was a child in the era of general material poverty, my family would often eat dumplings in the first month of the year, because every year we went to my grandmother's house, my grandmother would be in the push and shove to give us a basket full of food, and the most of them are dumplings.
As the saying goes, it's all about the dumplings. As a mother, she was afraid that her daughter could not eat dumplings in her husband's home, and even if she did, it was not a familiar flavor, so she had to take advantage of this rare opportunity to visit her family to stuff some, and then stuff some more ...... After we could not see the tearful eyes of the mother-in-law, could not see the small feet under the broken steps, could not see the cane that drew her to the entrance of the village to look at the only see The table meal after meal of distilled dumplings.
The distilled dumplings had an average flavor, were not fresh, and did not look good. The reason I think of it today is because of the increasing intensity of the "Knot Memory".
In the late 70s and early 80s, the rural North China Plain could not find anything particularly tasty to eat, one of the country's largest wheat producers, so wheat flour was the main ingredient for people back home. Although you can not change the composition of carbohydrates, change a pattern, change the flavor is also good. In addition to pancakes, steamed buns, rolling out noodles, mixing with pimple soup, spreading savory food and these regular practices, steamed buns slices are also one of my favorite ways to eat.
Still the kind of basin type of stove, above the two thin a little bit of the fire frame, steamed buns gently spread on the fire frame, less than ten minutes, the buns began to dry, the surface of the yellowish later, it became crispy. Originally noisy buns, after a simple system, immediately changed the texture, even if there is no salt and pepper, do not put any seasoning, is also a good enjoyment. Parents occasionally invited three or five neighbors, chewing on the original flavor of the steamed bun piece of gossip, but also very pleasant.
When there is a lack of material, people's cooking methods slightly change, eating immediately become flavorful. You see, our fathers didn't know anything about literature and art, but they also made the immediate past into an idyll.
Braising this cooking method is to put different finished dishes in the same pot, and again heated to cook.
It is said to have been recorded in the Western Han Dynasty, and the inventor was Lou Gui. This person has served as a Beijing Zhaoren, Tianshui governor and other official positions, the official put aside, the key is that his circle of friends in the food segment is relatively high, such as the then famous "five" are his old iron. These five families from time to time to give him some food, once he had a whim, "is trying to combine the five marquis paid mackerel and food", the five families of food braised together, but very tasty, and then sometimes add some staple food, braised food from then on has been spread.
People building protection as a high-ranking official, braised food ingredients is very elaborate, and my family braised food ingredients is very will be, leftovers with what with what, completely out of savings considerations. The same letters are used in pinyin, but the flavor of the chowder is very different.
The highest frequency of braising in my family is during the Chinese New Year. When guests come, they are treated with good wine and good food, and when guests leave, their own families eat chowder. At this time, the most common materials in the braised vegetables, eggs, mushrooms, seasonal vegetables, chicken, duck, fish and meat, etc., and my favorite is the braised vegetables "vegetable root pool" - vegetable juice. When you break a piece of soft white bread and dip it in, the vegetable juice climbs up along the holes of the bread and melts in your mouth, satisfying all your taste buds instantly.
The braised dish originated in the high and mighty, and was popularized in the short and poor. The cultural memory of braising in my life is that I treat my friends well, and I don't have to be hard on myself about material things. It's not a question of face, this sort of thing, comes from respect for friends and family.
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