Chen Shuo gourmet jiaoyou

Have fun,

I'm cooking in Sanlian

Waiting for you.

Text/Mei Shanshan

Figure/documentary "Looking for Dongguan"

Twenty-seven years ago, Sigh and his wife in Mayong decided to turn their first floor into a small shop specializing in ribs and rice.

Fresh ribs, bought and cut into small pieces of the right size. Marinate with salt, corn starch, garlic oil and fermented soybean, and steam in a large stove for 3 minutes. Rice is ordinary rice, and it is steamed faster by heating water. Steamed ribs and rice were detained, and several spoonfuls of homemade lard and leek soy sauce were the only food in this store at that time.

Even without a name, Sigh's shop is simple in decoration, content and taste. Across China, there are not tens of millions of such mom-and-pop shops. Only one thing is strange: the old materials open at 3 am every day and close at 6 am when they are sold out.

Even today, it is difficult to find a second snack bar with such business hours, which has been open for 27 years.

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When it comes to Dongguan, the first thing that appears on many people's faces is meaningful smiles. Then I thought of mobile phones, "the world factory" and friends who moved to Dongguan to "go to sea".

No one will associate Dongguan with food, and few people remember that less than 30 years ago, this place called Dongguan was only a collection of 28 rural towns.

"Golden sunshine, green banana forests and silver rivers are all bright colors ... around the village, by the river, in the small garden, on the wall of the house, litchi trees, longan trees, guava trees, banana trees and papaya tree are all in full bloom, as if people can smell fragrant flowers and fruits ..."

This is the pen tip of the writer Chen Canyun, which looks like Ma Yong in Dongguan in the early 1990s, and it is also the Ma Yong when the old man opened the ribs rice.

Today, Mayong is the largest professional town of plastic and electronic products in Dongguan, but in the year of 1993, bananas were the most famous here.

At that time, almost everyone in the town was planting bananas. The criss-crossing rivers and fields, as well as the high-temperature sunshine that never stops all year round, make bananas that like water and heat grow with high quality.

The life of banana farmers is very difficult. Because the sun is too hot during the day, most of the most tiring work will be finished in the early hours of the morning. Therefore, banana farmers rest at sunset, get up at two or three in the morning, eat a high-calorie breakfast enough to support their physical strength, and start busy at noon.

This is why Uncle Cai opened the door at 3 a.m. and why he chose ribs rice, which seems to be a staple food: meat, fat and carbohydrates, and the calories are high enough to support the physical strength of banana farmers for enough time.

After work, the banana farmers came home with green bananas that were not sold during the day, and the wives began to cook.

Green banana has a high starch content, which is hardly converted into sugar. As long as the gum and sour taste inside are cleaned, the cooked taro tastes almost the same, a little tighter than taro. It is a basic dish unique to Ma Yong.

Blanch the green banana first, cut it into pieces with the same thickness, then cook it in sugar water in brown sugar ginger, and finally add the soaked laver. This is Ma Chong's banana seaweed syrup. You can drink it while it is hot or while it is cold.

The seemingly dark cooking is actually a simple imagination of banana farmers to make the best use of it and replenish their physical strength. Although 27 years have passed, Ma Yong has long lost the scale of industrialized banana cultivation, but eating green bananas has long been everyone's eating habit.

Braised goose with green banana, braised meat with green banana, fried eggs with banana flowers, and banana buds as soup ... you can see these dishes in any small restaurant in Mayong. They represent the past that this town has given up, and they also give the soul of this now fully industrialized city.

You know, Dongguan is not without food, but it is hidden behind the supersonic development of the times, and we need to dig hard.

As one of the only four prefecture-level cities without districts in China, Dongguan * * * is divided into 28 towns, 4 streets and 1 economic functional zones, and its topography includes mountainous plains and coastal water towns. Almost every town has its own characteristics, because the specialties, plants and farming history are different.

Mayong is a typical water town.

In textbooks, Humen, Dongguan, which is famous for destroying opium by Lin Zexu and Humen, is a seafood town.

It is no exaggeration to say that Humen's natural conditions are simply a reward for marine products: it is located in the alluvial plain of the Pearl River Estuary, where salt and fresh water meet and there are many plankton. Marine life is only strong and fat, with the sweetness of fresh river and the compactness of seafood.

Ma Xia is a local specialty, named for its sesame-like spots on its back. In order to adapt to the salty change of seawater, the body will produce more free amino acids, which are commonly called umami substances, which is the best in shrimp.

Heat a dry casserole, add onion, ginger and garlic, stir fry, add shrimp paste, and then sprinkle with rose wine-in an instant, the smoke filled with rose fragrance filled the casserole. Cover the pot and stew for a few minutes. Shrimp meat is fresh and sweet, and it absorbs the aroma and essence of rose wine. Take a bite, heaven and earth.

There are also local Humen crab cakes, which are made from seafood restaurants to roadside food stalls: as soon as the crabs are opened, they are mixed with minced meat and egg liquid, sprinkled with a lot of white pepper and fresh nine-story towers, steamed first and then baked, and forced out by fierce fire. A bowl on the table is still sizzling, quite imposing.

Take a bite, the burnt smell is mild, with the spicy taste of white pepper, and the aftertaste is a bit similar to the herbal smell of perilla mint. People with light tastes may not be used to eating at first. Compared with highlighting the sweetness of crabs, this dish emphasizes the fragrance of taste and the first-class food.

But this season, the best place to go is the mountainous area in the east of Dongguan. First, the seaside is still a closed fishing season, and there is no particularly fat taste; Secondly, the litchi in the mountains is just ripe, which is a good time to taste.

It takes less than an hour and a half to drive from Guangzhou, and you can reach Xiegang Town, the easternmost town in Dongguan. There is Yin Pingshan, the highest altitude in Dongguan, and one of the oldest litchi forests in Dongguan, which mainly grows two kinds of litchi: cinnamon and glutinous rice paste.

This year is the year of litchi.

Move a straw mat and lie under the tree. Open your mouth and you can eat litchi that is about to fall to the ground. One turns over and the other hits the face, and you don't have to sit up when you are sitting. It is simply a fairy way to eat litchi.

Eat enough lychee, and then go to the farmhouse next door to eat a freshly baked roast goose with lychee wood, so that the fragrance of lychee wood can be moistened in crispy and juicy goose meat. As long as you are good at making friends, come to Dongguan this season. Litchi and roast goose in the mountains alone can make you eat it forever.

When you are full of food and drink, and then under the litchi tree, you can see litchi everywhere hanging like flames, and you will have an illusion: is this Dongguan? Is Dongguan famous for its mobile phones, factories, immigration, technology and speed?

There is no doubt that it is Dongguan, a city where future and reality coexist.

It also has an ancient soul, but it is hidden in the smell of the streets of this city, waiting for you to dig one by one.

(This article was inspired by the documentary "Looking for Dongguan")

Author file

Mei Shanshan

Obesity addict

I used to eat and drink in new york for six years.

Now living in Beijing

Engaged in writing about eating and drinking.

Welcome to Sanlian Cuisine.

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