Author, Yong Dong the Wise
In Gaoping City, Shanxi Province, there is an ancient food custom that serves guests with ten bowls of broth and glutinous rice. This is the famous Gaoping Ten Bowls.
The Ten Bowls of Gaoping originated from the Battle of Changping 2,000 years ago, and the place of Gaoping was called Changping County during the Warring States period. The Qin army killed 400,000 Zhao pawns in the Battle of Changping, and unified China after destroying Zhao. The local people of Changping hate Qin will be white, hate that they can't dig their brain pulp and grill it quickly, so they pass on the Gaoping-style snack to burn tofu. Eating roasted tofu is equivalent to eating Qin's white brain pulp. And the people sacrificed the dead soldiers of the Zhao Kingdom with meat, and as soon as they brought the meat served in the bowl to the table, heavy rain poured down. The rainwater soaked into the bowl and became a thin soup. The common people believed that the heavens also shed tears for the dead soldiers, so they sacrificed with broth and then ate the broth. Later, it became a table made of broth for the red and white events to entertain guests. Passed down from generation to generation.
Ten bowls of High Flat
The ten bowls of Gaoping are popular in the folk, and the red and white events must be made into ten bowls of wine. However, the official did not eat ten bowls, so it was not recorded in the county records of the past. The cooks who make the ten bowls of banquets are all craftsmen in the countryside, and they have been handed down from generation to generation to make special banquets. In the restaurant, there are no ten bowls of Raiji, and there is no cook who makes a table. I remember when I was young, my aunt and father were good at making banquets. Every New Year's Day, I went to his house to string relatives, and in the past, when I was poor and had no food to entertain, he would go to the meat factory in the town to get pigs to go down to the water, intestines, and then make a delicious intestine soup, pig offal water to entertain me. The intestine soup is a soup made after washing with pork intestines, and it is also a dish in the ten bowls of Gaoping.
To make Gaoping ten bowls of wine, to kill a pig, the chef will pig brain, pork, heart, liver, lungs, intestines all come in handy, not wasted at all. Before serving, four plates of cold dishes are served, namely brine pork head slices, pig lungs, pork skin jelly, and lotus root slices. These four dishes are not counted in the ten bowls, which are all hot meat dishes and glutinous rice food. Including walnut meat, water white meat, intestine soup, meatballs, lentil soup, soft rice, noodle soup, swan eggs, small crispy broth, soup.
The place to eat the banquet is in the courtyard of the farmer's house, where a square table and a long stool are placed, and the courtyard is plated with a large fire, and the table is in the courtyard. A colorful shed is set up above the courtyard, and no matter whether it is spring, summer, autumn or winter, it is eaten in the open air in the courtyard.
The banquet is only used to entertain important relatives and village officials, while the villagers in the village eat a large pot of rice with soup and dumplings. Whether you are polite or not, you can take a large bowl to eat. Those who eat the top ten bowls of wine must drink a small wine, draw their fists and guess orders, and wait for the bowls to be served on the table. "Ten bowls" of the banquet. In other places, the banquets are all plated, but the banquet in Gaoping is on the bowl, and it is necessary to connect the ten bowls, so it has the title of "Gaoping Ten Bowls".
No matter who does the big red and white business, it must make ten bowls of banquets. Square tables, stools, large bowls, saucers, chopsticks and large iron pots were all borrowed. In the past, there were special rents of table and stool tools to earn money, and later developed into a professional household that made ten bowls. After the red and white events, the main family should give the cook a few dollars, two boxes of cigarettes, and two bottles of wine as a reward. Pack a box of cigarettes for relatives and friends who help wash the dishes and serve food.
Pork head meat, first dehair the pig's head, with a special recipe brine for more than ten days. The marinated pork head meat is very thin with a blade, and the pig nose, pig brain, pig ears, and pig mouth are all good things for drinking. Mix with garlic paste and salt for a better taste. Different parts of the pork head meat taste different. The cartilage in the pig's ear area eats vigorously, the pig's nose eats the fire, the pig's head lean eats mellow, and the pig's brain eats fat but not greasy. Making pork head meat requires excellent knife skills, and the slices are as thin as cicada wings and are crispy and delicious in the mouth.
The ingredients for making the top ten bowls are processed in advance. Usually, two cooks are required. One is the head chef of the palm scoop, which is colloquially called the table. One is for the kitchen, for the ingredients. To cut the shallots, ginger and garlic, cut vegetables, steamed soft rice and swan eggs. In addition, there are helpers, responsible for peeling sweet potatoes, chopping meat filling, peeling lentils, and washing potatoes. The meat on the pig's body is used differently according to the fat and lean fine pie. For example, lean meat is used to make peach meat, fatty meat is used to make water white meat, and pork belly is used to make braised button meat. Different varieties, the processing method is also completely different. However, the main processing methods are frying, burning, steaming, and steaming.
To make peach meat, first select the lean pork and cut it into strips, wrap the eggs and small powder and fry them in a frying pan. When fried until seven minutes are cooked, fish out and steam in a cage pot. This not only removes the fishy smell of pork, but also crispy and delicious. When serving, just put the peach meat in boiling water, add salt, green onion, ginger, garlic, monosodium glutamate, soy sauce, and then put some green vegetable leaves to decorate the soup color, and a bowl of peach meat with good color and flavor will be served.
Serve a few bowls of meat first, peach meat, water white meat, and small crispy meat. Then serve a bowl of water, let the guests shabu-shabu chopsticks and spice spoons, and then top with vegetarian lentil soup, soft rice and swan eggs. Finally, on top of the intestine soup, soup, mustard powder skin soup.
At present, many restaurants in Gaoping do ten bowls of banquets, and there are also famous X.X ten bowls, X.X eight bowls and other imitation Gaoping ten bowls of banquets, and declare geographical indication protection products. However, if you want to taste the ten bowls of real Gaoping flavor, it is recommended that you go to the countryside to eat the banquet for red and white events, and ensure that you will never forget it.