However, with the content of the "vegetable basket" getting richer and richer, on many occasions, bacon gradually faded out of people's sight. For example, hotels and restaurants in the city, it is difficult to find cold cuts of pork belly slices as before. However, scarcity is the most precious thing. If you accidentally touch bacon while eating, you will inevitably move your index finger and say yes. Not long ago, the author and his friends visited a farm in the suburbs. On the dinner table carefully prepared by the host family, there was a square, shiny, red and white knife cutting homemade bacon, and the diners cheered in unison, and the plate turned upside down in the blink of an eye. The guests are still wanting more, and the careful host specially prepared a copy for everyone and took it home to taste it slowly.
Traditionally, people classified bacon as bacon. China's diet is world-famous. The variety of bacon alone is dazzling. The similarities and differences between bacon and bacon are that both need to be salted, and then bacon can be dried for a few days. Lean meat is bright red, fat white or yellowish, salty and delicious, and has a little more water than bacon. Bacon must be baked or exposed to the sun until lean meat is dark red or light yellow, fat meat is dry or transparent, sweet and delicious, with unique flavor and more suitable for storage. It can be said that you have me and I have you. It is said that there have been written records about bacon since the Zhou Dynasty, and Confucius is the one who knows more, and the reward is "binding bacon". The reason why our ancestors made bacon was to prevent meat from spoilage and make it suitable for storage, travel and marching. Although the value of bacon is not as good as bacon, it is simple to make and delicious, so it has also been favored by Pengmen, entered Zhumen and formed an indissoluble bond with the tip of the tongue of Chinese people!
The author's old mother doesn't know a few words, and Bao jiaozi is as good as Bao jiaozi. As long as she can move, she enjoys it. Every twelfth lunar month, the old man will find out all the big jars and small jars in the house, buy good pork, put fried pepper and salt on them, pour them with white wine, press them with stones for four or five days, turn them once in the middle, string them one by one with ropes after pickling, and hang them on a drying rack to dry. When the surface of the bacon is dry and fragrant, it just happens to catch up with the bamboo shoots, greet the children to take care of their families and children, and smell the fresh fragrance of the bacon when they enter the door. After all the excitement and satiety, the young students went home with heavy rucksacks in their hands. After that, the bacon in the refrigerator can be kept for several months. My mother is over eighty, and her children try to cancel the "old imperial calendar" of curing bacon every year for various reasons, but no one can stop her from doing what she wants, even though she is gentle. It was not until my father died six years ago that my mother could not take care of herself because of illness. Watching the children get rid of the pickled meat jar, the loss on the mother's face is distressing.
The topic of bacon reminds me of a trip to Changxing ten years ago. It was the second day after I arrived in Changxing, and I went on a trip with some good friends. I got up early and wanted to buy some local products to take away. After visiting a long street, I returned to a large vegetable market empty-handed. There are all kinds of chicken, duck and fish in the market, so it is not convenient to carry them with you. Fresh food goes bad easily in hot weather. I was at a loss when I arrived at the bacon stall. I was happy at that time: although there is bacon in Shanghai, it may be better here, and it is strong and easy to deteriorate. Let's bring some back to try! The rest of the plot of the trip to Changxing has long been blurred, and the only thing I can remember is the delicious red and white bacon!
Zhang Xiong, a friend of that trip, chatted a few years later and even thought of the distant bacon knife. Brother Zhang often goes to familiar restaurants to eat. The storefront is small and exquisite, because the food is delicious and the diners are full. In recent years, Brother Zhang often found a reason to invite me to a small restaurant, and then he would call the proprietress: save a table and prepare a plate of bacon with a knife. The steamed bacon in that small shop is fat and thin, old and tender, square, shiny and smooth, and won't let go of a slap! Eating bacon has gradually become synonymous with my gathering with Zhang Xiong. When Zhang Xiong remembered, the opening line on the other end of the phone was "Guang Chen didn't meet, and the boss's bacon was steamed!"
Oh, the taste of this bacon is unforgettable. Like many tiny and warm-hearted details in life, they are deposited in the long river of life. (Gan Jianhua)