Source: Foodie Institute
Before in Fuzhou (upper) introduced lychee meat, rotten eel, southern fried liver... Many friends have complained about why the famous meat swallow is not mentioned, of course, because there are too many snacks, and one article can't fit it! This Fuzhou (part 2) will continue to fill in what cannot be filled in at that time.
01
Stew pot
/ Shaxian Snack Deluxe Edition /
My first morning in Fuzhou started with a small stew pot. Choosing the super affordable Xuejun Shengji, the price of a single stew pot is about 20 yuan, and a person can fill his stomach within 40 yuan.
Although it is said to be "stew", in fact, steaming is the real means of cooking.
The rich ingredients are stuffed into small jars in proportion, stacked layer after layer of steaming drawers, and experienced several hours of high-temperature steam baths to transform into a jar of fragrant and durable stew tanks, maintaining the most original taste and aroma of food, which is more addictive than ordinary stewing.
When you see a stew pot, you may not think so - isn't this the small pot of soup that is very common in Shaxian snacks? Yes, there is nothing wrong with these two being the same thing. After all, Shaxian snacks are the essence of food in Sanmingsha County, Fujian, and the east of Sanming is Fuzhou. The stew pots we eat at Shaxian snacks can be regarded as a minimalist version, the ingredients are bland, and the dishes are only about three or five options. In Xuejun Shengji, you can find more than 20 kinds of stew pots to choose from, the richness of ingredients and the variety of tastes are absolutely beyond your imagination.
■ First jar: seafood chowder
Don't look at the name casually, this can is called its home's signature, the small jar of ingredients are surprisingly many: there are stewed soft and rotten tube bone meat, chopsticks gently steaked into the soup, as well as teeth dancing claws, a delicate and sweet crab meat before drinking soup, prawns full of elastic teeth, soft and slippery shiitake mushrooms... Eating and fishing is almost like developing a small treasure.
Super rich seafood chowder with ingredients
With so much meat and so much miscellaneous, isn't the soup so messy that it can't be drunk? Not really, the soup is even more delicious and tasteful than meat.
This has to say about the seasoning of the stew pot, steaming can be regarded as the cooking method of the road to Jane, removing too many condiments, leaving only the fresh flavor of the ingredients themselves. With a lot of ingredients, it is inevitable that the tastes will compete with each other, so it is necessary to use the right amount of old wine to blend the aromas of all parties, while leaving a long aroma of wine.
This piece of meat is fragrant and tender
Even the order of different types of stew pots is also exquisite, such as seafood on the upper level, and the steamed essence of the soup can also penetrate down the steaming drawer layer by layer, so that other stew pots can also bring the freshness and aroma of seafood.
The seafood is placed on the upper level, allowing the umami to penetrate layer by layer
■ The second tank: mesh barrel bones
The ingredients in this jar are fairly simple, but the taste is the most memorable, and the soup is light and fresh and sweet.
Barrel bones, naturally pig bones, provide abundant fat aroma, as well as the pleasure of eating meat in large bites. The eye fish, which is actually cut into strips, is a very typical local ingredient. When I first tasted the fish, I was very confused, soft and thick but chewy, a bit like a tough version of the apricot abalone mushroom, but clearly full of meat flavor. After studying for a long time, I realized that the eye fish is actually... cuttlefish.
Tofu yellow flower tube bone, there are also eye fish in it
There are three kinds of mollusks that we are familiar with: eight brachiopod octopus, and ten brachiopod squid and cuttlefish.
The biggest difference between squid and cuttlefish is that cuttlefish have a fusiform calcareous bone inside the body, while squid has only a thin piece of plastic bone. In addition, there is a tough film on the surface of the cuttlefish, which can be completely torn off the surface when processed.
On the left is a plastic-like squid bone, and on the right is a cuttlefish bone
Dried cuttlefish becomes dried fish, after soaking the soup or directly burning to eat, not only retains the taste of the cuttlefish itself, but also will accumulate more flavor during the storage process, it is the more aged and fragrant. In addition to the stew pot, many soups will use dried fish, which can be called a universal flavor adder.
I also have a piece of dried fish at home, which I want to take to stew on a day
■ Third pot: chicken kidney fish
I admit that I chose this jar just to taste the chicken kidneys. The characteristics of chicken kidneys are also fresh and sweet, but there is also a strong fishy smell, which belongs to the point of "loved by people who love very much, and people who don't love can't eat at all".
Chicken kidneys still have some fishy smell
■ Fourth pot: stone olive abalone
Both Fujian and Guangdong commonly use stone olives in soup, which is refreshing and slightly bitter, with a strong plant aroma. Although the name has olives, it has nothing to do with green olives, but is a creeping herb of the orchid family.
For tourists, many ingredients in the stew pot can be regarded as strange, want to get unexpected, can stew soup, in addition to chicken kidneys and bone marrow, chicken gizzards, crisp bones, pig brain and so on... It belongs to the way of special taste and endless aftertaste, but it is also a little exciting, if you try it for the first time, it is recommended to start from the basic model.
■ Fifth drawer: Red crab rice
In addition to the stew pot, this same steamed rice must also be tasted. Half a fat red crab lay in the oily sticky rice, the rice grains soaked in the sauce, full of fresh flavor, and the strong aroma of crab meat came to the nose.
The menu in the shop reads "sturgeon rice"
What's more surprising is that in order to enrich the taste, the sticky rice also adds shiitake mushrooms, dried scallops, shredded carrots, etc. In one bite, the rice is sweet and fragrant, the crab meat is tender and soft, and this rice is more delicious than the dish!
This mouthful of rice is more fragrant than the dish
After drinking a soup, the next step is to move on to the snack. As a tourist, it is difficult to find the most authentic shops in a short period of time, but you can find a different taste by tasting the most famous shops in each category.
02
Small sweet soup
/ Peanut Soup & Sweet Bean Blossom /
In the old Fuzhou snacks, there are two names that are particularly similar, one is the deaf uncle who makes the Lantern, and the other is the toothless uncle who makes peanut soup. Originally, they were all specially made for their own snacks, but later they slowly added other dishes, such as my peanut soup and taro puree, which were tasted at the deaf uncle's house.
The raw materials for peanut soup are really simple, and it is simple to simply put peanuts and white sugar. But to make it delicious, it takes a long wait. A full peanut needs to be carefully removed first, and then tumbled in the water for a long time, in order to retain the complete shape at the same time, have a soft glutinous taste that melts in the mouth. The soup is milky white, the taste is sweet, and the nut aroma of the peanuts itself melts into each bite of the soup, and only a little sweet embellishment is enough.
Peanuts have been boiled to melt in the mouth
Peanut soup was originally a special food from the Quanzhou region, and at the banquet of Quanzhou people, there are always bowls of peanut soup, whether it is with sweet pickles, it is refreshing enough. With the pace of people's migration, peanut soup has gradually traveled all over Fujian and become a familiar sweet soup.
Of course, people who don't like it may find the peanut soup a little greasy, and it doesn't matter, there are sweet bean blossoms worth a try.
Red bean blossoms
03
Taro and rice
/ Flowers played by Fujian people /
Min cuisine loves to use taro, especially minnan cuisine, which uses taro to be fascinating. Can be used as a dish, can be used as a staple food, can be fried, steamed, fried, burned, the taste is more sweet and salty.
The most commonly used taro, called betel nut taro, is soft and fragrant, and is most suitable for making taro puree. Compared with the taro puree that we often eat in milk tea, the dessert taro puree of Fujian cuisine is particularly rich and delicate. Among them, there is the credit for the choice of taro, but more because the hot lard injects the soul into the taro paste.
Taro puree with lard
After the steamed taro is crushed into taro puree, add white sugar, lard and mix well, and finally sprinkle with a handful of fragrant sesame seeds to achieve this fragrant taro puree. Smooth and delicate, the fat and sweet fragrance are integrated, and the small bowl is gone in a short time.
However, you must be careful when eating taro puree, it looks like it is not hot at all, like ice products. In fact, the inside is extremely hot, and if you are not careful, you will burn your tongue, and you must be patient to eat the beauty of taro paste.
Taro can also be made into taro kon, also known as triangle cake, is one of the breakfast choices of local friends, but also a traditional Fuzhou snack. The crust is crispy fried in the frying pan, but the inside is still tender, because the introduction of rice is an ingredient, and there is a little more lingering sticky teeth than the simple taro puree.
Taro kway, also known as triangle cake
It can be a bit choked up when eaten dry, just in time to accompany another classic breakfast , Dingbian paste.
The production process of Dingbian paste is very interesting, the pot is cooked with a delicious soup base of various seafood such as clams and shrimp, and a circle of rice milk is drizzled on the edge of the pot, until the rice milk is slightly dried and formed, and then shoveled into the soup, and after cooking, it becomes a large bowl of steaming and delicious Dingbian paste. In the past, this was the breakfast that everyone in Fuzhou would make, and the side dishes could change with the fresh dishes purchased every day, eating every day and not getting tired of it every day.
Dingbian paste
In addition, dingbian paste can also be eaten with oyster cakes. Mixed with oyster meat and leeks, plus rice milk spread out into small cakes, the shell is crisp, the oyster meat is soft and tender, with a strong milk aroma, one is enough for breakfast.
Sea oyster cake
Speaking of which, you may find that Fuzhou snacks can be described as extremely good at using rice, and there is a type of snack that is directly made of rice - kueh.
Kway is a general term for rice cakes in Hokkien dialect, which is a small cake made of molds after grinding japonica rice and japonica rice into rice milk, in addition to adding different ingredients or steaming to fry and fry, so as to make a series of snacks such as fried kun, sweet kun, caitou kun, grass boy kun, taro and so on. Walk into a random kon shop on the street and you'll find dozens of koeh.
Mille-feuille cake
04
Flat swallow
/ Tired Teacher Fu /
Speaking of which, it seems that Fuzhou people only know seafood? In fact, it is not, after all, the most famous meat swallow (flat meat swallow) in Fuzhou is unable to live with pigs.
Meat swallow, also known as Taiping Yan, is the largest of The famous snacks in Fuzhou, because of the complexity of the production process, it has also become a cooking punch card dish for major food bloggers.
Each piece of swallow skin is a milestone on the way to the training of the teacher's Qilin arm. Select lean pork legs, lift a few pounds of wooden mallet is a pounding, until the meat fibers are scattered, becoming a delicate meat paste. In this process, it is also necessary to constantly feel the elasticity and toughness of the meat puree with your hands, and carefully pick out the meat tendons in order to ensure the final taste.
Then, the meat puree is mixed with sweet potato starch and salt, and then replaced by fine force to continuously shoot, pluck, roll, whisk, press, fold, cut, and finally get a piece of thin as white paper, the color of the jade white swallow skin. The thin swallow skin can even reveal the shadow of the hand against the light, and although it is thin, it is not fragile and can be picked up in its entirety.
The next step is to wrap the stuffing. The swallow skin spread out in the palm of the hand, the chopsticks were dipped in some meat filling, and the fingers flew dexterously, and a small, flattened swallow shaped like a flying swallow appeared.
The cooking of the swallow is extremely simple, and the water is enough to stimulate its aroma. Cooked meat swallow, the skin is translucent, crystal clear, very clean and lovely to see. Pour a spoonful of clear soup to serve, of course, add some shrimp and seaweed will be more delicious.
It takes a long time to make swallow skin, and ordinary people who are too lazy to make swallow skin can go directly to the store to sell ready-made. The swallow skin can also be directly cut into stacks to make silk, into swallow silk, boiled in water to form a bowl of fresh snacks.
Also need to chop the meat into mushrooms are Fuzhou fish balls, Fuzhou fish balls with eels, grass carp or silver carp, after the fish is peeled and deboned, it is also a miracle chopped into mushrooms, and then add sweet potato starch to make fish ball pulp. There are many kinds of fish balls, the unique feature of Fuzhou fish balls is that there is filling, the filling is made of pork, and the fresh on land meets the fresh in the water, colliding with a beautiful spark.
Fuzhou fish balls stuffed with pork
However, Fuzhou fish balls are big, half a fist is large, if you taste it, I suggest that you want one on the line, more really can't eat.
Fuzhou fish balls are very large, and eating one is quite top
Finally, in Fuzhou, you can naturally find special snacks from other parts of Fujian. For example, In Xinghua, the soup base is generally a broth made of pork bones or beef bones, and sometimes there are seafood soup bases. When ordering, you can mix any ingredients according to your own preferences, pig blood, pig bone marrow, pig intestine, tripe, pork loin, etc. are common choices.
Seafood fishing
Pig offal salvage
Another example is the same noodle paste and brine noodles brought from Quanzhou Yi... In Fuzhou, breakfast alone is enough for you to see the flowers. There are still many snacks mentioned without word count, welcome to the comment area to share ah~