Compared with large dishes such as steamer, these small dishes can better show the "transformation" and "integration" of Zhuxi food culture. In terms of cooking techniques, they are classified as "brewing" by professionals. The basic link is actually fermentation, and some of them need to be dried for a long time. Its most famous is Zhuxi tofu. Long-haired fermented square bean curd blocks are processed by Zhuxi people-dipped in red pepper powder, and then put into jars and soaked in the "wine tail" of rural corn wine workshops, becoming soft and smooth, Huang Chengcheng, spicy and fragrant. Many dishes of Zhuxi people can't be cooked without bean curd, such as braised pork, dog meat and braised pork. With bean curd as the ingredient, the fragrance is overflowing. Use it to mix preserved eggs, Toona sinensis buds, bean jelly and so on. It is even more memorable. Now, the unique flavor of Zhuxi tofu has been famous all over the country, and even supermarkets in Hong Kong and Macao have put Zhuxi tofu on it.
Followed by Zhu Xi's lobster sauce. In the midsummer of June, cooked soybeans are mixed with salt, ginger and garlic, sealed in a jar, then taken to the yard or on the roof and fermented in the sun, and soybeans become fermented. Now, the lobster with the next meal is also on the elegant table, such as lobster fried with lobster and lobster fried with lobster. Although it is an ingredient, it is delicious enough.
In addition to these side dishes, there is also an appetizing bamboo creek diet, which is a local snack. Zhuxi is located in the north and south, and its ancestors were immigrants from the north and south, so there are many kinds of snacks. The new edition of Zhuxi County Records records in 1985: "The traditional snacks in Zhuxi, including Tan's sesame seed cake, Zhu Longer's mung bean pill, instant noodle jiaozi of Zengjia in Dongmen, are cheap and very popular with the masses."
Among Zhuxi snacks, pea oil layer and bowl cakes are impressive. It is said that in 1978, the famous writer Bi Ye came to Zhuxi to collect the wind and tasted the pea oil layer, which was full of praise. Before leaving, he bought dozens of them and brought them back to Wuhan, saying that he wanted to invite friends from the provincial capital to try them early. This is a story that made the villagers proud for a while.
Speaking of bowls of cakes, Jiangjiayan Town in Zhuxi County is the most authentic, and Mei Shuying's bowls of cakes made in her early years are the most famous. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, Zhu Xiren went to Sichuan to collect salt, went down to Wuchang to sell cloth or go out to study, and had to eat a bowl of cakes before he left, in order to pray for good luck and finish his work. I remember many years ago, every Spring Festival, grandma always bought a big basket of bowls and cakes in advance, and ate them when the grandchildren of the first day came to visit the New Year and took a big bag home. Now, grandma is long gone, and I haven't eaten a bowl of cake for many years. Every New Year, I miss my grandma and the bowls and cakes in my hometown, Jiang Jiayan.
When it comes to sesame cakes, besides bowls and cakes, there are several Hui restaurants under the Bell and Drum Tower at the east gate of the county, and the cakes made are the best. Sesame cake, with sesame seeds embedded in the skin and yellow pastry used by Hui people, is crisp and fragrant. There is also a famous mutton fire-choose fat and thin mutton, chop it, mix it with onion and ginger to make stuffing, fill it in the kneaded dough, make cakes in a big bowl, and fry it in a flat-bottomed iron pan with fragrant oil. Both sides are brown and the meat stuffing is delicious.
In addition, there are a series of snacks with soybean as the main raw material, which are simple to make, but delicious and nutritious, which makes Zhuxi people forget it. Soymilk "pushed" by a stone mill, with dregs and juice, is boiled in water and shredded vegetables are added to make a pot of milky white and green "mixed dregs". If soybean milk is filtered, add rice and cook porridge with slow fire, which is sweet rice; If you break off new tofu, cook it with rice porridge and eat it with spicy oil, it is called "lazy tofu"
Zhuxi snacks are profound, unpretentious, unique and unique, but the benefits are still difficult to tell outsiders. In my humble opinion, it is enough to compete with famous snack brands such as "Lanzhou Lamian Noodles" and "Shaxian Snack" and combine these special snacks for development. At the same time, people in Zhuxi who go out will not feel homesick because they can't eat their hometown dishes.