The word "dried meat" makes people drool at first sight.
I can't remember when these words entered my life and when they entered my brain, but in my consciousness, I liked them at first sight. The word "love at first sight" also applies to describe my feelings for these two characters.
In this life, people are destined to have a fate and friendship with whom, and they are destined to love or annoy you at first sight. This loves or annoys, in addition to its name, but also the person himself.
The same is true for things. Air-dried meat, I fell in love with the name as soon as I heard it, and I fell in love with the taste as soon as I ate it.
One winter, my wife and children did not know where to change the ingredient formula, suddenly rose to make a dried duck, went to the market to buy a slaughtered duck to sneak home, inside and out coated with ingredients, hung on the balcony to dry for a winter. In the meantime, when I saw the shiny surface of the duck, I kept asking to eat it, but she kept pressing it, saying", "Dry again, dry again." Later, it dried thoroughly, steamed on the pot, and the taste was really great. Maybe I fell in love with air-dried meat, the deep temptation that began with the air-dried duck she made.
Once, someone gave me three pieces of air-dried duck, each half a duck. At the beginning of the old partner steamed a piece, after the pot I tasted, the taste, taste are good, the taste is thick, fragrant, and tendon, salty and light is also suitable. During the meal, I tore the wine little by little, and felt that my heart was full of sunshine. When my wife saw that I loved to eat so much, she said, "Those two pieces are not too dry, I will hang them up and dry them again, right?" I immediately agreed, and she gladly took the order and left.
A few days ago, my wife was visiting the supermarket in Hainan, and found that the dried duck leg was five pieces and ninety cents a piece, and called me to ask if I wanted it. "This still needs to be asked!" A week later, she gave her back twenty. After taking a look, Long Yan was overjoyed and gave her a pot of millet porridge. Although this duck meat is not too dry, it is refreshing and particularly clean, not as gray as the air-dried meat in the north. It turned out that Hainan was in the rainy season at this time, and the meat was not easy to dry. I steamed two of them in a pot and tasted them, and they felt tender in the middle of the ligament, and the taste was very different from the air-dried duck in the north. Most of the ducks in Hainan are stocked on the seashore and feed on crustaceans and various small fish, and the taste and texture are naturally somewhat different from the northern ducks that are fed and grown. I sent a few relatives and friends to those duck legs, and the rest, put on the balcony to continue to dry, after a while, I think it will be more difficult to eat.
One year when I went to Wuhu, I saw that there were air-dried duck claws and duck gizzards wrapped around duck intestines, so I did not hesitate to buy some. When I came back to steam, my mother couldn't bite and didn't eat; my wife and children didn't like it and didn't eat it. In the end, I was all rewarded for myself. I originally liked duck claws, and the duck claws were air-dried, and there was my favorite duck intestine on it, and the air-dried duck gizzards were also particularly chewy, of course, I couldn't calm the hungry worms in my stomach, and calmly followed them.
Duck claw chicken feet and other things, eating is the most pleasant to eat. Not much meat, but a lot of flavor. Like Lin Yutang's essay, this "is the product of Chinese spiritual life." Foreigners never eat duck claw chicken feet, and foreigners living in China rarely have the hobby of Chinese, and I pity for them: it is not a pity that they have less appetite, it is a pity that they cannot use this to better understand and understand Chinese.
Lin Yutang said that the essay reflects the Chinese "fun of leisure life". Nibbling on duck claw chicken feet embodies this theme. Writing a skit essay is a touch of life, and nibbling on duck claws and chicken feet is also a touch of life. Chinese pay attention to seeing the micro-knowledge, pay attention to a leaf and know the autumn, in fact, a chicken claw, a duck claw, revealing is also the taste of food, the taste of life, fine bites and touch, its wonderful infinity. I think that foreigners who have come to China for many years and have not fallen in love with chicken feet, duck claws, rabbit head and lungs, haggis, pigs, miscellaneous beef, and other delicacies will never really understand Chinese.
There was once an old gentleman who often served a chicken claw with a meal of wine, and I listened in awe: such a person is a high person, a graceful person, and a first-class character of the gods.
The old man's eating demeanor often reveals the calm after the wind and rain. One day, I watched CCTV's "China on the Tip of the Tongue" and photographed an old fisherman on the southeast coast. When eating, the old man sat barefoot on a wooden stool, holding a steamed dried fish in his left hand, and tearing and eating with his right hand, his facial muscles bulging and twisting, showing good teeth; the old man looked up into the distance, and did not even look at the meat of the fish. It was as if he were not eating delicious food, but eating his daily meals—perhaps, in itself, his daily life. At that moment, the calmness on the old man's face when he ate dried fish suddenly touched me. Of course, under the sun, the sauce-colored dried fish in the old man's hand also made me hungry enough. Hungry, but full of joy and willing to be seduced by delicious food, is the most direct feeling of watching "China on the Tip of the Tongue".
One year I went to Tibet and ate authentic dried meat at a Tibetan house. It was a dried beef leg, served in a large dish, and everyone could eat it with a knife. This beef leg is raw, the lower part is still with cow hair, no oil and no salt, it is difficult to chew, but cut a slice and stuff it into the mouth, the more you chew, the more fragrant it is.
Once I went to Hohhot, put down the luggage and came out to hang out, found a shop sign on the side of the road with the words "air-dried meat" written impressively, naturally it is Longyan Dayue, after entering the store, from the waiter's hand to take a piece of dried beef into the mouth to chew, only to feel the aroma overflowing in the mouth, I thought, this is really a good thing to drink, immediately buy two packs. The next day in the city, and the driver chatted about air-dried meat, the driver said: "The current air-dried meat is not very authentic, most of them are mass-produced by manufacturers, and most of them are not air-dried, most of them are fried and dried." In the past, the Mongolians made air-dried meat by hand, and it was really authentic air-dried meat. That kind of meat is delicious! I asked him how delicious it was, and he couldn't say anything else, but said, "Incense, incense, that's the real incense!" The more you chew, the more fragrant it becomes! "Perhaps, the air-dried meat of the Mongols comes from the same source as the air-dried meat of the Tibetans.
However, what kind of air-dried meat will be flavored by hand by the Mongols? I really hope that one day when I go to the steppe, I will meet a Mongolian housewife who is making air-dried meat, so that I can buy a dried leg of lamb from her yurt and carry it home.
Another year I went to Kanas, Xinjiang, and heard the tour guide say that the air-dried meat made by the Tuvans was very delicious, so I went to the Tuvan village to inquire around and wanted to buy some, but unfortunately it was not the season when they made air-dried meat, and it was a pity that they did not buy it.
Later, I heard a brother say that he went with a construction team to the mountains of Sichuan, and there was a family of mountain people who were particularly simple and enthusiastic, and when they saw them coming, they hurriedly plucked dried meat from the roof beams and made them eat, which was the highest etiquette for the people in the mountains to treat guests. But the guy saw that the meat was smoked black on the top of the stove, and he didn't dare to eat it. I stomped my feet and stinked the guy without a head and face: You, you are simply blind, no heart, no lungs, no good villains, no smell, no good smell, there is a good skin bag in the air, there is no blessing to consume that delicacy, and you have failed to live up to the kindness of others! The direct scolding caused his seven souls to float out of the way, and the three spirits slowly followed the current.
The strange thing is that people who don't like air-dried meat often encounter air-dried meat, but I like it mostly and can't ask for it, and I miss it again and again.
One year I went to Lugu Lake and found that the Mosuo people often dried a piece of pork belly by the fire pond, and it was said that the meat was particularly delicious, but unfortunately, at that time, the house was only allowed to visit and did not sell to tourists, which made me very disappointed. The tour guide said that there is a fixed procedure for making this kind of pork belly, usually slaughtered in early winter, removed from the bones after killing, and then smeared with spices, after sewing, squashing, drying and other steps, and finally placed, short put for one or two years or three or four years, long or even placed for eight or nine years, and put more than ten years, it is said that the longer it is put, the better. The reason why this kind of meat is not bad for a long time is probably related to the local geographical location, Lugu Lake belongs to the plateau lake, the climate is cold, the air is dry, and the production process is exquisite, so the pork belly can be preserved for a long time. But because I didn't eat it, I didn't dare to waste the taste.
I wondered if the Mosuo process of making pork belly might be similar to the process of making air-dried ham by the Spaniards.
One day I saw an article saying that the most popular food for rich Chinese people at present is Iberian-dried ham in Spain. Because of the large amount of purchase, the price of the ham was raised to the sky, causing the Spaniards to complain, because they themselves were almost unable to afford it. Some people ask: Won't you produce more? Manufacturers answered: production can not be ah, because from cutting and freezing to salting and salting, and then from storage in the warehouse to natural air drying, the whole program down to two or three years, want to produce more can not be, the cycle is too long, simply too late.
This air-dried ham is delicious because the meat is sourced from Iberian black pigs raised in forest pastures in the central and western parts of Spain. These pastures have a large number of oak trees, and pigs often feed on acorns. Especially from October to January, when the acorns are in full bloom, the pigs eat almost exclusively acorns every day. The rest of the time the feed fed by the owner is also mixed with acorns. So, air-dried Iberian black pork with a fruity aroma of acorns. I went to Taobao to search for this ham, and from the photos, the sliced meat was thin, as transparent as Chengdu's dengying beef, and it was said that it could be eaten raw. Look at the price again, good guys, a ten pounds of whole pig legs, generally seven or eight thousand to one or two million yuan. It's really not something that ordinary people can afford.
I've always been particularly interested in books about food. Liang Shiqiu's "Yashe Talks About Eating" and Zhou Zuoren's "Zhitang Talks About Eating" I have turned over several times, and I feel that each text is so short that it makes me feel painful, and I just hooked my hungry worms on the end of the article, making me read more and more hungry. Some time ago, I read Meng Yuanlao's "Tokyo Dream Hualu", and saw that it wrote a lot of food in the capital of the Song Dynasty, Tokyo, but unfortunately most of them were some food names, and rarely wrote the methods and eating methods; but just by looking at the names of those foods, you can also imagine the prosperity of the city at that time and the richness of the cuisine. Seeing that there are so many delicious things written there, I really want to go up the river of time, walk into the streets of the Song Dynasty, and taste the delicious taste of Bieliang! If you really want to do that, you have to go to Zhouqiao Night Market to eat fried sheep, white intestines, smeared dirt, batch cut sheep's head, hemp rotten chicken skin, pan rabbit, spin hot pork skin meat, wild duck meat, dripping crispy crystal fish, fried clips, and then go to the streets and alleys of Dongjiaolou to eat belly lungs, red white loins, pigeons, and then eat hu cakes, soup bones, milk cooking lamb gizzards, hot loins, weeping sheep's heads, goose, onion rabbits, golden silk belly soup, raw fried lungs, and eat them the same way, Oh, how good it should be! The characters of the Great Song Dynasty, the poetry, and the food are also so popular!
However, on the recipes of the Song people, why didn't you see the shadow of dried meat?
