Zheng Zhaohui: At the Sackbu House in Taikoo Hui, I ordered Shiyu boiled beef minced tea and rice to eat.
Shiyu boiled is a traditional Japanese way of cooking, in which the ingredients are boiled with soy sauce and sugar, and then boiled with ginger slices and burdock. It is said that in the past, it was boiled clams, but now it is mainly beef. "Tokiyu" means "light rain in late autumn and early winter" in Japanese, because it can't be cooked for too long, so it's like light rain is fleeting.
The reason why you still have to order it to eat is not because of the minced beef, but because of "chazuke" and "boiled in the rain". Eating chazuke in Shanghai, my favorite is the plum chazuke of Heisei House, except for wasabi, seaweed and plums, rice and brown rice tea, nothing else, the salty and sour taste of plums forces the sweet tea aroma of rice and tea, and suddenly there is a thought of distant mountains and wide waters. Many people think that this way of eating is Japanese, but in fact it is Chinese, and historical records record that there was such a Xi custom in the south during the Six Dynasties. We often say that "coarse tea and light rice" refers to this simple meal. In the forty-ninth chapter of "Dream of Red Mansions", it is recorded that Jia Baoyu "only took tea to make a bowl of rice, and then hurriedly swallowed it with pheasant melons." "I have always said that Cao Xueqin's wealth cannot be pretended by others, and a writer who has never experienced wealth would never dare to say that a rich son eats tea and rice. It is said that Dong Xiaowan likes to eat chazuke rice very much, which makes Lu Xun's Hua Xiaoshuo's chazuke have its own elegance and charm.
Shi Yu cooks", listening to such a name, I feel very poetic. In the autumn rain, it doesn't matter what you cook, the court steps are silent, the cold rain is coming, and the food is bubbling out of the small stove in the room, and the fragrance of the food is like a mountain light mist. There are too many places where Japanese people need to thank our ancients, if it weren't for such a few Chinese characters, and ** come to such an earthly thought?However, in Japanese, "Tokiyu" has a certain meaning of mourning, because the arrival of "Tokiyu" means the decline of autumn and the advent of winter. The Japanese call the month of October every year "the month of the rain", and Matsuo Basho died in October, so his death day is also called the "time of the rain". ——It is said that it is now in October, and it can be regarded as "the rainy month", but the weather is as hot as summer, which can be described as "Meng Chunxing Summer" (this sentence comes from "The Book of Rites", which was mistakenly written by Lu Xun as "Autumn Summer", which is wrong for the occasion), and it is really not a good thing from the perspective of the festival.
Shiyu is a good word in Chinese, which means that it should rain from time to time, the so-called "good rain knows the season", so when I first came into contact with this word, my first reaction was Du Fu's "night rain cuts spring leeks, and yellow sorghum is in the new cooking room". However, in Japanese, "tokiyu" refers to the rain between autumn and winter, which means "impermanence", and it is because the Japanese feel the impermanence of life because of the rain that starts and ends nowhere, so they can't help but feel the feeling of sorrow. The use of "time and rain" to describe the cooking of cooking food makes the diet also give rise to a little wind and rain thoughts for no reason. When the rain is cooked, the basic flavor type is sweet and spicy, and the boiled items are beef and pork, which inevitably has a greasy feeling, so adding ginger slices and burdock to let the spicy taste and slightly bitter taste remove the greasy and increase the flavor, it is also extremely scheming. The slight bitterness in the food is very charming, Shen Congwen said that the mushroom is "higher" than the potato, largely because of the bitterness of the mushroom, this bitterness is the vague and inexplicable sad synaesthesia of autumn, although not easy-going but not cold, so that after all the taste swept over your taste buds, leave a little bitter aftertaste in the root of your tongue and heart. The bitterness of food cannot be overwhelmed, although it will be usurped by other flavors for a while, but when everything is gone, that bitter taste will still slowly diffuse from the edge of your mouth, and it will probably only take time to eliminate it.
When Japanese people use these words, they are just "but the Tao is ordinary", but in the eyes of Chinese people like me, who have been immersed in Chinese culture for many years, the meaning is different, such as "Qiujin" (dragonfly) and "flower raft" (the appearance of flower petals floating with flowing water), which will cause many interesting reveries. Therefore, this bowl of chazuke with Shiyu boiling has triggered a lot of delusions in my heart, and I feel that this bowl of rice is not eaten in vain - although, in my heart, I still think that the simplest chazuke with only one salted plum seems to be higher. However, after thinking about it again, I feel that I am eventful, and the so-called "hungry to eat, tired and sleep", how can there be so many truths?Suddenly, I felt that I was just a layman.
This ** has been published with the author's permission.