The sense of belonging of food memory is a deep cultural force, and it is the strongest emotional connection between the wanderer and his hometown except family.
My hometown Longchang, which has stayed for nearly six years since birth, is definitely a special place for me.
My hometown Longchang is a small county, located in the southeast of Sichuan Basin, which is the junction of Sichuan and Chongqing and the bridgehead. In the first year of Zhenguan in the Tang Dynasty (627), the county was named after the Ming Dynasty. Since ancient times, it has been an important transportation hub connecting Sichuan and Chongqing and radiating Yunnan and Guizhou. Since ancient times, it has been known as "Qin Long in the north, Yunnan and Hainan in the south, Ma Xu in the west and Jingxiang in the east, which is the impact of the six roads with bullets and the southern Sichuan extending in all directions".
? Historically, Longchang was also a large-scale "hometown of immigrants". Its history, culture, customs and people's feelings have strong Hakka characteristics, and its food is also rich and varied, such as Longchang mutton soup, roast duck, hot pot, griddle, glutinous rice, Ciba (glutinous rice and Ciba are Hakka dishes) and old duck soup. But what really haunts me is the "taste of memory" that is unknown and unpretentious, and maybe only the old Longchang people know.
Speaking of this memory taste, the first thing to bear the brunt is the "soybean oil" that Longchang people said. As far as I can remember, my grandmother often told me to take a glass bottle to the street to hit a catty of soybean oil. At that time, soybean oil was sold in bulk, and the price was thirty or forty cents a catty. Watching the boss scoop out the reddish-brown liquid from the jar and transfer it to my glass bottle through the funnel, smelling the sauce, the little greedy bug came out. Thinking of the delicious bean oil bibimbap makes me even hungrier. I think this heartless kid can actually sweep up a bowl of bean oil bibimbap in a few minutes without adding any food. What delicious soy sauce! At that time, grandma used soy sauce instead of salt, and the salt pan on the stove was hardly used. MSG is unheard of. The taste of the dishes made with such a simple seasoning is the height that the exquisite seasoning on the tall now can't reach. Old Longchang people like my grandmother have a soft spot for soy sauce. As an essential condiment in life, many families in the past could not find a grain of salt all year round, but their kitchens and stoves were filled with soy sauce bottles. Hakka diet pays attention to the original flavor, without too much seasoning. Light and delicious, good for digestion. Therefore, the soy sauce produced by the soy sauce workshop run by Hakka people is natural, with strong sauce flavor and outstanding ester flavor. Soy sauce is reddish brown, which is an essential condiment for Hakka cuisine and enjoys a high reputation at home and abroad. Li Yingfa, a professor at Sichuan University and deputy director of Sichuan Hakka Center, described Sichuan Hakka culture as very suitable for Longchang soy sauce: "It originated in the Eastern Jin Dynasty, spread in the Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties, and inherited the skills of brewing exotic incense in Sichuan, Fujian, Guangdong and Jiangxi in the Central Plains."
For hundreds of years, using soy sauce, a little lard and (fire) rice has been a traditional food for all ages here. Both dignitaries and ordinary people are "good at this."
After leaving Longchang for many years, I often inadvertently think of soybean oil and rice. Perhaps, the meaning of bean oil bibimbap to me is not only delicious, but also contains too many childhood memories and tastes. ...
? When I really can't think of it, as a persistent foodie, I just used the original soy sauce and rice bought at home, which tasted better. I finally ate this delicious food that I thought for a long time, and later I made several upgraded versions of soy sauce fried rice.
As a result, soy sauce rice is delicious, but it is not my own wishful thinking. Maybe it is not authentic Longchang soybean oil? Or is it that not all the delicious food in memory can be copied? The warm childhood that I worked hard at grandma's knees is gone forever after all!
I clearly remember that in summer, what adults and children look forward to most is that Mrs. Shi is carrying the burden around 4: 30 in the afternoon. Yellow bean jelly, cold cake and ice powder on the bag are our favorites.
? Yellow bean jelly was originally a very common snack, but after many places, the tasted yellow bean jelly is always not as delicious as this. Finally, under the guidance of my grandmother, I finally copied the delicious food in my memory, which turned out to be exquisite in materials and exquisite in craftsmanship. Write down the recipe specially.
1, raw material preparation:
Dry pea powder 1000g, wet pea powder 500g, salt sauce 80g, red pepper 200g, homemade sesame sauce 10g, ginger and garlic juice 160g, pepper noodles 10g and chopped green onion 50g.
2, production steps:
(1) Making bean jelly:
A, selecting white beans to remove impurities, and hulling with a rice husker;
B, processing into fine pea powder with a stone mill (in the form of dry flour, the finer the better);
C, soaking white beans in water, and grinding into fine slurry with a stone mill;
D, uniformly mixing with cold water according to the ratio of 1 part wet pea powder and 2 parts dry pea powder;
E, pouring clear water into a pot for boiling, and pouring the stirred pea powder slurry into the pot for uniform stirring;
F. Bring the fire to a boil, turn it down for about 20 minutes until it is cooked, scoop it into a basin covered with salad oil, and let it cool to form jelly.
(2) homemade seasoning:
A. Red pepper: 1 serving Chili powder is fried with 5 portions of vegetable oil (rapeseed oil is more fragrant);
B) Sesame paste: white sesame seeds are fried and ground into fine powder, and 4 times of vegetable oil is added;
C, ginger and garlic juice: peeling ginger and garlic, mashing, and brewing with 25% cold boiled water;
D. salt sauce: after frying salt in the pot, add appropriate amount of boiling water to thicken it.
(3) Bowling: Take out the yellow bean jelly from the bowl, cut it into strips with a thickness of 0.5cm with a knife, then cut it into thin strips with a length of 15 ~ 18 cm, put it into the bowl evenly to form a small steamed stuffed bun, and add the above seasonings in turn.
3. Tips:
(1) Choose large white peas with more starch;
(2) Dry pea powder should be ground finer than flour, and the good ratio of dry pea powder to wet pea powder must be 2/ 1, so that the bean jelly made will be soft and not broken;
(3) When mixing bean jelly, the spatula should not touch the crispy rice, so as not to smell bad;
(4) Sesame can't be fried, so it has a crispy taste;
(5) Avoid using iron knives when cutting bean jelly, so as not to produce peculiar smell such as rust; You can choose copper knife or stainless steel knife.
? As for ice powder, we once bought ice powder seeds on T Bao, and the ice powder made by the above method feels good! Later, I found out that there was cold water well bright powder in the supermarket. Just follow the method on the packaging bag. It is really convenient! Personally, no matter ice powder or cold cake, the brown sugar used in your own brown sugar water is very important, so you must use the homemade brown sugar block. Sprinkle this thick and sticky red syrup on the noodles, which is the proper ancient taste. Add some delicious peanuts, sesame seeds and some mint water, and the cool breath of summer will come to your face.
Eating side dishes is also a feature of Longchang. Cold carrot rolls, cold kohlrabi, cold kohlrabi ..... all drool at the rhythm. Longchang red tofu is tender, fragrant, fine, hemp and spicy. Grandma's dishes are delicious. The craft is exquisite and complicated. First of all, you must choose the tofu taste of brine, not to mention the choice of materials behind. ...
Speaking of which, I think of the rice I used to eat, and it always tastes better than the rice cooked in any pot now. The so-called retort is also an instrument that can make rice cooked thoroughly. Unlike the current rice cooker, it has to go through several manual processes: for example, people in the city basically eat old rice or organically produced rice, like the rice that farmers have worked hard to grow, and then steam it in retort, which is not delicious at all.
One of the biggest and best by-products of Zanzi rice is "rice soup". It can be said that many people have not eaten this pre-meal drink now. Hot rice soup is slightly sweet and delicious. It is said that this rice soup contains a lot of inorganic salts such as nicotinic acid, vitamin B 1, vitamin B2, phosphorus and iron, and certain nutrients such as carbohydrates and fat. Rice soup is sweet and has the functions of benefiting qi, nourishing yin and moistening dryness. Drinking rice soup regularly is beneficial to children's health and development, and contributes to the digestion and absorption of fat. It is also ideal to give the baby rice soup as an auxiliary drink. It's no wonder that even my children have been thinking about such a good thing after drinking it once, and they specially dug out the small retort I bought at home in Zhuhai to cook rice. Therefore, this meal is more abundant than any other meal.
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What makes people drool is, of course, the wild roots of wild vegetables such as broken ears, cold horse teeth and wormwood that can be seen everywhere in my hometown. ...
? Being in the Jianghu is the most unforgettable taste of hometown. Perhaps, no matter how nostalgic memories, yearning for thousands of things, or copying delicious food, it is far better to go back and see her 90-year-old grandmother, listen to her more, seize those moments when she is getting old, taste the taste of her hometown all over again, and stay in every detail in the future. Those fading smells always seem to linger in front of my eyes.