The elegance of Jiangnan in the spring breeze stimulates the greedy nature of every child.
Pickled tuk fresh. This year's Lichun grabbed the runway of the Spring Festival and came to the world half a month early. The temperature during the holiday season is also very friendly, and on two days it soars to 20 degrees Celsius, people who cycle or walk around the park are still sweating in a T-shirt, and several flowery girls come side by side, or Tang costumes, or short skirts, and eat ice cream. Wearing bloated winter clothes, I quickly stepped aside.
When I was a child, my mother would prepare three major casserole dishes before the Spring Festival, which were roast pork with moldy dried vegetables, roast pork with bamboo shoots, and roast pork with yellow croaker. I also have to prepare a tank of water to grind glutinous rice flour, and I will contract the grinding work. My mother also washed and drained the black sesame seeds, fried them with a shovel left and a shovel on the right, and then asked me to drag out a shiny stone mortar from under the vegetable cupboard and lick it with thousands of pestles. Many years later, I got a piece of Hu Kaiwen's old ink and 100,000 pestles of light glue, and the scene of licking sesame seeds when I was a child immediately appeared in front of my eyes.
The pork lard black crispy soup ball is a masterpiece of rice civilization, and the elegance of the south of the Yangtze River in the spring breeze stimulates the greedy nature of every child, and one by one falls into the bottomless pit until he rubs his stomach and screams in pain. Glutinous rice flour is packed in a brown glazed cup, and if you want to eat it, you must scoop it out in advance and put it in a cloth bag and drain it. As soon as the beginning of spring is over, my mother will worry about the pink hair soaked in the water sour and turning red. The shrimp oil marinated chicken made by my mother will have a silent chemical reaction after the beginning of spring. I'm not afraid of this, the taste of the "stinky gimmick" is consistent with the style of the foothills of Huiji Mountain. The subtle relationship between the beginning of spring and food was discovered and awed by me.
Sea urchin saury ravioli.
Now that the family has become miniaturized, several major casserole New Year's dishes and the scene of grinding glutinous rice flour in the alley have turned the page, talking about the children, as if the past is in the past. But I am obsessed, and I still have to go to Shao Wansheng to buy two bottles of shrimp oil marinade every Spring Festival to reminisce about my hometown. On the third day of the Lunar New Year, we reunited with our three brothers and sisters in Shanghai at the third brother's house in Meilong, and brought a shrimp oil braised chicken over, and everyone happily shared the taste of our mother. At the foot of Huiji Mountain, by the Mash River, there are lying salaries to taste gall and qu water flowing, and ancient cooking skills such as mold, smell, bad, drunk, and dry also constitute our taste genes, which are the blessings that outsiders do not take.
Ten years ago, I ate a farmhouse-style straw cake in Taicang, which was like a moon cake, with white sesame seeds on both sides, fried until golden brown, and when I bit into it, it was fragrant. The grass head is the messenger of early spring, and the stem is thickly cut off, and it is tender and refreshing. Bad oil is a specialty of Taicang, and Yuan Mei spoke for it categorically in "Suiyuan Food List": "Bad oil out of Taicang Prefecture, the older the better."
One day, Jin Yucheng and Shen Hongfei invited me to eat at the "Shangzhijiao" restaurant on Changle Road, and there were two young people in the crew of "Flowers" in the private room. The next generation did not know much about the life of Shanghai citizens in the 70s of the last century, and the three of us drove trolleybuses, and the young people bowed their heads to record. This restaurant is doing very well, and Brother Hongfei is the driving force behind it. Come up with a white duke hoof, plain face to the sky, soft but not collapsed, glutinous but not rotten, dipped in Suzhou shrimp roe soy sauce, open and close, deeply in line with my intentions. Now I watch, it's a pity that there is no such white hoof in the TV series that is especially hot, I think Mr. Bao and Miss Wang should be good at this, and the intimate lungs of the people in the alley are all in this "flesh and skin" affection.
Fried dumplings with bad oil and grass.
Later, Li Hui, the proprietress of "Shangjiao", "retro" a seedling bale (the grass head in Shanghai, also called seedling grass and golden cauliflower in southern Jiangsu), the hidden menu was just posted on WeChat, and I placed an order for two boxes. It was still hot when I got home, and when I bit it open, the breath of early spring hugged me tightly. The old yeast dough is soft, and the seedlings that have been cut a few times have been fried with vegetable oil, which is green and green, and the wine is fragrant, and there is a simple beauty. After the "upper corner" changed the courtyard, the seedling bales disappeared in the port. If you want to eat, I don't know if there is anything else in Taizhou or Yangzhong.
On the fourth day of the Lunar New Year, when I went to Suzhou, Mr. Xu Hefeng, a master chef, was developing a new spring dish at the Wujiang Hotel, and he invited me and Brother Guobin to eat steamed dumplings with oil and grass. The hot noodles are rolled into a thin skin, the grass is cut off the stems and leaves and then stirred slightly, and the flavor is marinated with Baoding dregs, and then sugar and white wine are added. After serving on the table, eat it hot, the dough is as thin as crepe, the green filling is faintly visible, and the strong local flavor lingers on the tip of the tongue for a long time.
Stir-fried shredded winter bamboo shoots with artemisia.
There is also a fried winter bamboo shoot shredded with artemisia. It was surprising that Artemisia came so early. I have tasted chopsticks, and I believe that Wang Zengqi said in the article "Food of Hometown": "My so-called 'fragrance' is like sitting by the river and smelling the smell of newly rising spring water when I eat it." I asked Master Xu: "The puffer fish has not yet been listed, why did Artemisia grab the runway?" Master Xu smiled: "February reed, March artemisia, the spring water is rising, and it is the right time to eat artemisia." Su Dongpo wrote in the poem that the artemisia that was on the plate with the puffer fish was already a little old. He also said: "At this time, go to the eaves to cut a piece of home-pickled sauce meat, slice and fry Artemisia, the fire is vigorous, it is much more delicious than stir-fried Artemisia fragrant and dry." ”
The day before I went to Suzhou, I gave Master Xu a question: I want to eat radish dumplings. And picked the "radish glutinous rice balls" from the "Suiyuan Food List" and sent it over: "The radish is cooked with a shredded gread, deodorized, slightly dried, mixed with green onions and sauce, put the dough in the dough as a filling, and then burn it with sesame oil, and the soup can also be boiled." Spring garden Fang Bo's family radish cake, buckle child learned, can be used according to this method to make leek cakes, pheasant cakes to try. ”
Radish dumplings. When he got his wish, Master Xu explained: The sauce mixed with shredded radish is best the yellow sauce from Beijing Liubiju, and it is not possible to purchase it temporarily, so he has to use hoisin sauce and oyster sauce instead. Shiitake mushrooms and fungus are soaked and shredded, and then a handful of Kaiyang is steamed with rice wine, finely chopped and mixed in, wrapped into a ball-sized dumpling, steamed under the rice dumpling, and then taken bamboo chopsticks dipped in carmine and dotted with a "cinnabar mole" on the top of the dumpling. Because the glutinous rice flour is mixed with a small amount of japonica rice flour, it has a slight bone and does not collapse or paste.
Compared with the three ups and downs of the dumplings in the boiling water pot, the shredded radish dumplings are more in line with the character of Suzhou people. Last year, I also ate the cauliflower head dumplings in the folk food customs in Wujiang, the size is similar to the radish dumplings, and I also ordered the "cinnabar mole", which is stuffed with the unique cauliflower head on the edge of Taihu Lake, and bites the skin of the tough knots, which can harvest the full "old taste", and the Renchangshun of Zhenze Ancient Town is still there. This cauliflower head is not easy to come by, every spring in February and March, farmers take the "vegetable tip" on the edge of Taihu Lake, especially the leaf tip decorated with fine yellow flowers is the most tender and fragrant, harvest with dew, wash the boiling water, and bask in the sun on the rope one by one. If you go to Suzhou and are interested in walking through the streets and alleys, you can see cauliflower heads hanging in front of the mottled white walls, an old lady sitting on the threshold peeling bamboo shoots, and a big yellow cat squatting on the stone steps.
I went back to Shanghai and bought a handsome white radish, half of which was made into shredded radish with scallion oil, and the remaining half, referring to the "Recipe Collection" published in 1960 and actually edited by Shen Jingxiang, shredded and filled, added oyster sauce, barbecued pork sauce, sugar and cooked ham, and fried it slightly, wrapped it into two palm-sized shredded radish pies with soft hot dough, put less lard in the pan, fried yellow on both sides, and ate very satisfying lunch.
Mrs. cut off the top of the radish and raised it in a saucer, and after two days, it will grow tender green leaves, the leaves are slightly wrinkled, and the leaf stems are distinct, like a green ceremonial flower blooming to the fullest, which can be used in the painting. Spring is coming, and everything sprouts, but radishes must take root in the earth to thrive!