The last meal before going to school in other places must be noodles, and the first meal after returning from school holidays in other places must be noodles.
Eating small noodles has become a ceremony for me and my friends who went abroad to study like me to start and return.
It can be breakfast. After eating it, I will rush to high-speed railway station contentedly. It can also be dinner or midnight snack, take a low-cost airline in the middle of the night to arrive at the hometown, drag your tired body downstairs in the dimly lit community to find the noodle restaurant that is still open sporadically, and say "Boss, let's have some noodles".
In Chongqing, a city where rice is the staple food, many people start their day with pasta.
This habit has continued to this day, so that I still remember the shock on my face when my college classmates first saw me eating noodles in the morning. Perhaps shocked that I am a southerner, perhaps shocked that I have such a heavy taste in the morning.
"yellow", "green", "come to the bowl for a dry walk", "less sea pepper" and "more spicy" ... these argot-like demands with local accents always haunt the small noodle restaurant in Chongqing in the morning.
The so-called "yellow-lifting" means that the taste of noodles is harder. The so-called "green" means adding more vegetables. As for "dry-sliding", it means scooping less noodles, so that rich condiments can be mixed with noodles separately, which makes them strong and dry.
Compared with Zhajiang Noodles in Beijing, Regan Noodles in Wuhan and Lamian Noodles in Lanzhou, Chongqing Noodles looks nothing special. But it doesn't work less than any of the above bowls of noodles.
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Noodles making
Chongqing small noodles are not ordinary dry noodles, but water surface, which is called "water leaf noodles" by locals.
In fact, it is fresh noodles that have not been dried. First-class flour is mixed with water, added with alkali, stirred, and the dryness and humidity are grasped by hand, and noodles with different widths, widths and thicknesses are cut as needed. Shopkeepers of small noodles often make noodles themselves or go to a trusted noodle factory to customize them to ensure the taste of noodles. By adjusting the alkali content in noodles, we can cut out the noodles of our own size, so that the noodles can be more closely combined with seasonings.
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condiments
What Chongqing Xiao noodles eat is seasoning.
There is no secret weapon in the seasoning of small noodles. Onion, ginger, garlic, pepper, pepper, pickled mustard tuber and chopped peanuts are all common condiments available in the market, and they are used to it in every household.
Pickled mustard tuber generally chooses the first-class Fuling mustard tuber, and ginger should use old ginger, which is peeled first and then cut into particles.
Garlic can't be directly mashed with garlic. Garlic should be chopped and mashed, and then poured into boiling broth to make garlic water, so as to prevent the fragrance of garlic from overshadowing the fragrance of the face.
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spicy oil
Oil chili pepper, or Chili oil, is the soul of seasoning.
Chongqing noodles pay attention to spicy, hemp depends on pepper powder, and Sichuan Dahongpao is generally used. Spicy depends entirely on oil, chili pepper.
First, remove the pedicle of each dried pepper, cut it into small pieces, then pour it into an iron pot and stir-fry it with low fire. When the pepper tends to be red and bright, the spicy flavor overflows, turn off the heat and heat it with the remaining temperature of the iron pot.
Then, the fried dried peppers are pounded into Chili noodles in an iron mortar.
Finally, the hot oil of about 80℃ after boiling was poured into the mashed Chili noodles. With the light sound of "Yi Yi" and the ensuing fragrance, chili pepper Oil was finished.
At least a dozen, more than 20 kinds of spices are put into the bowl together, and the bowl has been submerged by nearly one third.
It is these common condiments that have been brought out by everyone who cooks.
This is also the reason why everyone in Chongqing has a good heart.
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meat or vegetables poured over rice or noodles
I didn't realize until I went to college in other places that "small noodles" is a term that only exists in Chongqing, and it is the general name of Chongqing people for local noodles with various tastes.
The most authentic Chongqing noodles are called plain noodles by Chongqing people, and they are also Chongqing noodles in a narrow sense.
There are only a dozen kinds of common condiments, such as oil and salt sauce vinegar, onion, ginger and garlic, Chili oil, broken sprouts and peanuts. In a broad sense, facets have various toppings.
Beef, pork intestines, tendons, miscellaneous sauce, etc., can be said to be toppings as long as you want.
Among them, peas and miscellaneous sauce are the most popular toppings in Chongqing, and their combination has made Chongqing's unique peerless delicacy-pea miscellaneous.
Miscellaneous sauce is also ashamed of meat. Pork belly is chopped into minced meat, first stir-fried in oil pan, and then sprinkled with various spices to stir-fry and color. When the fragrance is overflowing, miscellaneous sauce can be cooked.
Dry peas are soaked in cold water one day in advance, and then simmered with bone soup on low fire the next day, until the peas are soft and sticky, they can be mixed with fried miscellaneous sauce and poured on the noodles.
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stewed noodles
A small earthen bowl or an unremarkable enamel jar, noodles that can be grabbed by one hand.
After the water boils, put a few stems of green vegetables, boil them and change them to slow fire. They will be cooked in two or three minutes, and then scoop in a ladle of clear water, which is called "broken white". After that, you can scoop up noodles and put them into the bowl.
I prefer to fish hard first, and I like to fish soft later. Such noodles are integrated with seasonings. Chopsticks are flying around, overflowing with light.
At the beginning of the year, I chatted with a cousin who worked in Shanghai. She said that when she used to work in Chongqing, she often ate small noodles, and her colleagues always laughed at her for being cheap and not paying attention to nutrition, but she told me that she really just liked small noodles.
Now that she has left Chongqing, what she misses most is still just the bowl of noodles.
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