Steamed dumplings from my hometown

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This year is really a good thing, in the first month of the spring snow, and then relatives from hometown came to Shanghai to visit us, and also brought gifts from hometown, wrapped in steamed dumplings. Taste the steamed dumplings of your hometown, soft and sticky, this is the taste of your hometown.

My hometown of Zhaoqing, Guangdong, was called Duanzhou in ancient times. In addition to the first of the four famous stones, the steamed dumplings are full of overseas, thousands of miles of incense, pinning every wanderer's thoughts on their hometown.

In our Yangtze River Basin, the popular rice dumplings in Huzhou and Jiaxing are popular. Most of them are wrapped in reed leaves glutinous rice and pork hind leg meat, shaped like a triangle bag called a triangle dumpling, shaped like a pillow called a pillow dumpling, small in size, generally between 150 grams and 200 grams. Zhaoqing's steamed rice dumplings are made of local winter leaves as a coat, wrapped in glutinous rice, peeled mung beans, pork belly, and are huge, such as the Egyptian pyramids, each weighing more than 500 grams. Locals add water from Ding Lake and steam it over a fierce fire for seven or eight hours before eating it. Wrapped steamed rice dumplings hot food fragrant, the entrance is smooth and sweet, full of fragrance.

When I was a child, my grandmother would wrap steamed rice dumplings every Mid-Autumn Festival and Chinese New Year's Eve. Raw materials such as winter leaves and peeled mung bean paste are all from a south goods store called Must Be Good on North Sichuan Road. That store has a lot of Cantonese specialties, attracting Guangdong customers to patronize. Every time my grandmother wrapped steamed dumplings, she would tell me the story of steaming dumplings and tell me that only when I ate steamed dumplings, I would remember the taste of my hometown. Steamed dumplings really have historical origins, according to legend, in the Qin Dynasty, Qin Shi Huang Guangzheng minfu to do servitude, in order to let the long-distance husbands eat enough, women will use local winter leaves, wrapped rice balls for their husbands to eat. According to the Qing Dynasty Li Tiaoyuan 'Nanyue Notes on the Leaves of the South Vietnamese»: "Those who have foliage are shaped like banana leaves. When wet, wrap the horns, dry to wrap the tho, seal the cylinder mouth. The land in the south is hot, and things are easy to decay, but the leaves are hidden, which can last, that is, they are not bad for a thousand years." Eating steamed dumplings in the New Year is a thousand-year custom of the Zhaoqing people in Guangdong. "Chinese New Year's Eve thick smoke cage purple mo, family dust wrapped in steamed incense." Eating steamed rice dumplings here and eating rice dumplings in memory of Qu Yuan are not the same thing.

Wrapping steamed rice dumplings requires a mold, traditionally with a pointed large bamboo hat, three pieces of winter leaves are laid in the middle of the hat in turn, and glutinous rice, mung beans and fatty pork are placed successively in a ratio of 10:6:4, and wrapped in the order of glutinous rice wrapped in winter leaves, glutinous rice wrapped in mung beans, and mung bean wrapped in fatty pork. Then cover the top (this is actually the bottom of the finished steamed wrap) with one or two winter leaves, and then bundle them with water grass or mat grass. The steamed dumplings wrapped in molds are the same size, only more than one pound, in the shape of a pillow or four-corner mountain bag, which is simply a behemoth compared with ordinary rice dumplings.

The folk favorite to eat is the freshly baked "open oven wrapped steaming", without adding any spices, directly eat. Freshly baked steamed dumplings, the long-boiled winter leaves have turned dark green, and the surface layer of glutinous rice absorbs the chlorophyll of the winter leaves, revealing a transparent light green. The fragrance of winter leaves mixed with glutinous rice and mung beans is refreshing, its taste is sweet and fragrant, the taste is soft and smooth, and the teeth and cheeks remain fragrant after eating. It is said that with the effect of tonifying the qi, as well as stopping nocturnal urine and increasing the heat energy, in the warm and cold season of spring, steamed rice dumplings have become a traditional food for people to celebrate the Spring Festival.

A wrapped steamed dumpling talks about the wisdom of life that is healthy and harmonious, and the wish to pray for blessings and blessings. Zhaoqing people use steamed dumplings as gifts to visit relatives and friends every New Year's Festival, expressing their deep blessings and love. After the people have eaten the steamed dumplings, this year is indeed thriving; after the children have eaten the steamed dumplings, they are really well-behaved; the old people have eaten the steamed dumplings, and they are really full of spirits. Steamed dumplings are auspicious foods for people's lives and are blessings in everyone's hearts. The local old man said that the rice dumplings and seeds are harmonious, the Spring Festival is distributed wrapped in steamed dumplings, and the distribution is a family affection and love, just like a seed taking root and sprouting, the more it is distributed, the more prosperous the business will be.

A wrapped steamed dumpling, for the wandering person, that is nostalgia. Every time I smell the aroma of steamed rice dumplings, I will salivate, and the full bite is the taste of hometown. It is no wonder that steamed dumplings can be famous at home and abroad, becoming the first choice for every person who travels to Zhaoqing. Seeing this steamed dumpling, I seemed to see my grandmother's kind smile again, and heard the words of my grandmother's earnest teaching, wherever we go, we must remember that we are Zhaoqing people, and our roots are in Zhaoqing.