Speaking of which, Beijing has undergone earth-shaking changes in the past two decades, and these changes are reflected in various aspects: the sky is blue, the water is green, there are more trees, the roads are wider, the high-rise buildings are lined up, and the urban environment is changing with each passing day. Of course, in addition to these "grand narratives", there are also those details that are specific to the life of each of our citizens, such as food, clothing, shelter and transportation, all of which are becoming richer and more convenient. But there are also some changes that are particularly nostalgic to say.
For example, breakfast, one is gradually westernized, milk bread replaces soybean milk fritters, becoming the protagonist; the second is gradually inconvenient, from going downstairs in the morning to buy freshly fried, newly boiled, to either buy ingredients in advance to heat up in the morning, or have to ask takeaway to eat some "warm food". The older generation of people who are old often nagged: when we were young, we ate a baked cake charred fried ghost in the morning, and drank soybean milk and bean juice tofu brain. If you can't help but ask "Is the fried ghost a fritter"? Then the quasi-insurance will be taught a lesson: you look at you young people, you don't even know the fried ghost, can that be the same thing as the fritters?
So I aroused the author's thoughts on the evidence, and wrote about the "patriotic breakfast" that was once the most commonly eaten in old Beijing - fried ghosts.
The old Beijing morning stall under the lens of German photographer Haida Morrison.
One
Erlong Road can not be "fried ghost"
Beijing was once the ancient capital of the Four Dynasties of the Jin, Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties, and for nearly a thousand years it had great political and geographical advantages, with an unparalleled protagonist aura, able to absorb the strengths of all parts of the country, and early snacks are no exception. In the poem "Dumen Bamboo Branch Words" at the end of the Qing Dynasty, it was written: "Three big money children buy good flowers, cut cakes and ghost legs, eat tea soup and noodle tea in the morning, eat tea soup and noodle tea in the morning; cold fruit cake fried sweet ears, hanging stove roast cake Ai Wo Wo Wo, fork fire just sold, and listen to hard noodles called gluten; roasted wheat wontons are listed on the plate, newly added to hang powder good soup balls, Song Gong curd milk name is empty, horse dung smoked yellow tofu dried, fruit filling dumplings to Chengsha, fresh fish is the most expensive yellow flower, sweet mouth sweet as honey, Soler grape cantalou, fried belly oil liver sausage, wood yellow vegetable slice soup ..." If you look carefully, these are not considered to be the "dinners" of old Beijing, but just snacks and fruits, which have been abundant to this point. Among them, what is the specific "ghost leg", there are different theories, some scholars believe that it refers to the fried ghost.
In the author's extensive examination of the historical materials and memoirs of old Beijing in the late Qing Dynasty and the early Ming Dynasty, I rarely see fritters and oil cakes, and the three words "fried ghost" are at most common. The real name of the fried ghost is fried fruit, Mr. Qi Rushan said in the "Beijing Dialect": "'Fruit' is commonly pronounced as 'ghost', the ancient pronunciation of the north is also", and some scholars have further examined the evidence, saying that the word fruit is pronounced as a ghost character pronunciation is a Shandong dialect, because the old Beijing sells early in porridge shops and baked cake shops, and most of the people who do this kind of livelihood are Shandong Linqing people, so they bring Shandong accents.
Old Beijingers also pronounced "fried juniper" as "fried juniper", and the late Qing Dynasty master Yu Fan said: "Oil burning ghost, commonly known as oil burning juniper, Yunhang people evil Qin juniper and do." In the books of the two old gentlemen, dong baoguang and Zhang Shanpei, famous literary and historical scholars, it is also recorded that the origin of this name is related to Qin Juniper: "It is rumored that after the Southern Song Dynasty traitor Qin Juniper and his wife murdered Yue Fei, the whole country hated it, so they created this food, mixed the noodles with good material, rolled out pieces, and cut into rectangles. The two pieces are stacked on top of each other, and a vertical knife is drawn in the middle, keeping the two ends connected, and the long protrusion is opened and exploded. After cooking, it is oval in shape, the two ends are slightly connected, crispy and caramelized, and the grilled cake is eaten, which is a delicious breakfast, and the 'ghost' word of the fried ghost is the harmonic sound of 'juniper', and the two sides represent Qin Juniper and his wife, so that they are cut and fried by the knife and then eaten, in order to vent the anger in the chest of the people. ”
From this matter, it can be explained that two points can be explained: the first is that traitors must not do anything, otherwise they will be molded into kneeling statues and beaten by tens of millions of generations, and they will become chewed by tens of millions of people early; the second is that fried ghosts are really a kind of "patriotic food" that is uncompromising, and every morning while eating their stomachs, they will relieve their hatred, and this patriotic education is really clever.
The tools and frying methods of the fried ghost are all said, the knife used to stroke vertically in the hair surface is a small tile knife, and when it is fried in the oil pan, it should be opened with iron chopsticks, and it should be turned over to half of it, which is smooth and good-looking, and pays attention to "like a goose swimming in the kettle". When he shouted, he had a special passage: "Big and big, white and white, thrown in the pot and floated up, racing past the fried ghost of the roast goose!" ”
There are also blind yelling and drinking. Mr. Bai Tiezheng, an art educator, lived in Beiping for many years as a child, and he recorded such a thing in the "Old Classics of Old Beijing": Legend has it that Xidan Erlongkeng (now Erlong Road) is very remote, and pedestrians often encounter "ghosts hitting the wall" at night, there is a Shandong brother, who is particularly bold and never afraid of ghosts, just build a straw house to open a porridge shop, every day five days up to burn cakes, fry fried ghosts, and shout loudly: "Fried ghosts come, fried ghosts come, this is the new fried fried ghosts!" Not long after the opening, one night, the bricks and tiles like raindrops on the doors and windows of his grass house were beaten, the stove outside the door was also overturned, the table was also overturned, and a lot of sand and stone blocks were sprinkled in the oil pot, which frightened the Shandong brothers to move quickly, and from then on they did not dare to "blow up the ghosts" in the Erlong Pit, and the story is said that "everyone in the western half of Beiping knows." Now think about the financial street where the land is scarce, it really makes people feel that the world has changed.
Two
What is the relationship between fritters and fried ghosts?
Mr. Bai Tiezheng divided the fried ghost into three kinds, the first is the scorch circle ghost, the fried heat is relatively large, the color of the burnt baking, the taste is crisp, this fried ghost sells the most; the second is salty, also called the ring, the shape is round, the heat is relatively small, the color is yellow; the third is the sugar cake, especially like the later sugar oil cake, "shaped like a round plate, one side is slightly bulging, there is a small opening in the middle, made of two levels, one layer is sugared, one level is no sugar, so after frying, there is a piece of sugar That is darker in color, There is no sugar and a piece of light color", the most popular food for children is sugar cake.
No matter which kind of fried ghost, the most "authentic" way to eat is sandwiched in the baked cake, accompanied by almond tea to eat, even if the lack of almond tea, that burnt cake is indispensable.
According to Mr. Zhang Shanpei, there were many bakeries in old Beijing, and in a short street in Yangshikou, Huashi, where he lived, there were five or six bakeries. There are two main kinds of baked cakes, one is the sesame sauce baked cake, which is made of coarse white noodles, and the noodles are added with alkali, alum, and salt, and every twenty or thirty or forty are burned in a furnace: spread out the noodles, smeared with sesame paste, sprinkled with pepper salt, and then wrapped up, divided into small pieces, rolled into cakes, brushed with alkali water, dipped in sesame seeds, first baked and then baked; the other is horseshoe baked cakes (or donkey hoof baked cakes), more use of good white noodles, and one of the biggest differences with sesame sauce baked cakes is baked with a hanging oven (sesame sauce baked cakes are baked with a stuffy stove). In the "Sound of One-year-old Goods" compiled by Cai Shengwu, it is said: "Its furnace is like a four-foot house, and the hot, slightly smaller and sharpest ones are called donkey hooves." "Referring to this thing, the hanging stove for making horseshoe cakes is rectangular, made of brick, and underneath is a coal fire, with holes in the top, and several horseshoe concave round impressions on the top of the stove." When baking the cake, the half-haired cake that has been made on the board is dipped with some sesame seeds, and then a layer of oil and sugar water is brushed into the mold on the top of the stove, and the cake becomes a horseshoe shape. "Such a baked cake is baked, charred and hollow, and it is broken open just to clip in a fried ghost, and it is delicious to eat... However, for some reason, this kind of hanging stove has gradually become rare, according to reports, in the early 1950s, an old bakery shop in the south street of Chaoyangmen Inner South also had a hanging stove, and later almost completely withdrew from the historical stage.
Some people may ask, what is the relationship between fried ghosts and fritters? Is it exactly the same food? Are highly similar "brothers"? Or is it a "father and son" who inherits from each other? Judging from the historical data I have found so far, there are two different views.
The first one says that they are not a food at all, for example, the folklore master Mr. Deng Yunxiang held such a view: "Decades ago, Beijing was called 'fruit, twist, fried ghost' three names, everyone understands, although there are some differences in the habit of going to the East City and the West City, but it is not obvious, but Beijing does not call it 'fritters', fruits, fritters are not a thing, leaving Beijing two hundred and forty miles away from Tianjin Wei called fritters, that is a straight one, the same as Shanghai, and Beijing does not have this kind of thing." Mr. Zhang Shanpei also said: "The fritters on the stalls are introduced from Tianjin to the city around the time of the founding of New China, and the old Beijing does not recognize it, because it is thick, and it is jokingly called 'bar'." ”
There is also the view that the two are the same thing. For example, in the late Qing Dynasty's book "Yanshi Jiyi", it is said: "The outer city of Beijing is called twist flowers for oil fruits, the inner city is called fried ghosts, and there are people in other provinces called fruits and fritters." This kind of food is everywhere, each kind of material, inseparable from alum, alkali, salt, each pound of noodles have three dollars, there is a monthly order to put two dollars and five dollars, according to the spring and autumn seasons, you have to consider the appropriate. Mr. Dong Baoguang also believes that "the fried ghost is today's scorch circle and fritters" - but in the author's opinion, the difference between the scorch circle and the fritters is no smaller than the difference between the bench and the chair.
The relationship between the fried ghost and the fritters is something that can never be said, just like many folk art or food, rough mixed with a little chaos, just right, what doesn't look delicate enough is often more real. Mr. Bai Tiezheng ate a soybean milk fried ghost in Tianjin Beimen Bird City, and the next pen was particularly interesting: "Tianjin people do business, talk about gimmicks everywhere, if you talk about the pot that cooks soy milk and the frying ghost's pot, they are all too big to be frightening, the pot mouth diameter is four feet, placed on the stove, burning coke, fried fritters, and soy milk, it seems to have a style, from the busy chatter, showing a handsome appearance, smiling at the guests, chanting in the mouth, so that the diners are comfortable in their eyes." ”
I don't know if you noticed, between the lines, Mr. Bai has confused fried ghosts with fritters.
Three
Come to "a set" early
Just because most of the fried ghosts have to be eaten in the baked cake, they are also sold with help, called "a set", some guests come, the seller's mouth is "how many sets do you come"? Because they are all freshly made and sold, fresh and delicious, especially in winter, eat a set hot, not only full stomach, but also warm up, so it is deeply loved by people. Mr. Deng Yunxiang said: "Beijing dozens of years ago to eat breakfast, a bowl of soy milk or a bowl of almond tea, plus one or two sets of roast cake twist flowers, eat full and fragrant, this is the most ordinary, most affordable and the most delicious breakfast of that year." There is also a saying in old Beijing: "The east group, the west group, eat horseshoe cake and fruit early." ”
In my childhood, in the 1980s, the fried ghost seemed to have completely disappeared in Beijing, and the biggest problem of early life was undoubtedly fritters and oil cakes. I remember when my family lived on the first floor of Fucheng Road South, just now the location of Exit C of Baiduizi Station on Metro Line 9, there was an early stall for many years, two people opened, even if it was ten winter moons, more than five o'clock in the morning, or when they were frozen hands and feet, they were already busy: wearing oil-stained clothes, supporting the oil pot, setting up the table, the man's rolling noodle rolling noodles into the oil pot, the woman holding a long bamboo clip flipping back and forth, the sound of nourishment fluttering in the street along with the oil fragrance. When it was fried, it filled the big full fritters with golden glow into a wire basket next to it. Because everyone in the neighborhood comes to buy it, it is basically sold with the clothes. There is also a little guy, I don't know if it is the children of these two sons, responsible for collecting the bills and beating soybean milk to the guests, next to a steamer steaming stacked with a few drawers of buns, you can buy and sit on a long table to eat, you can also use plastic bags to eat while walking, when the morning light illuminates the whole street, you will find that whether it is fried fritters or buy fritters, everyone's face is red.
At that time, I often ran in the morning, from the downstairs of my house to the east gate of the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse, and when I ran back, I stopped by the morning stall to buy fritters, and the fritters that had just been fried were crisp and soft, and the aroma and heat rushed to the brain. Later, for a while, Beijing spread the rumor that these selling early fritters were fluffy for fritters, and they all added washing powder to it, which led to our family changing breakfast to bread for a long time, and later fang knew that this was a rumor, and when I went again, I saw a blackboard erected in front of the breakfast stall, on which the big words wrote "fritters do not add washing powder", and I can't help but secretly sigh the bitterness and difficulty of these small businessmen.
Later, around 2000, these street food stalls seemed to disappear overnight, replaced by some breakfast carts. In recent years, with the advancement of various convenience projects, fritters and oil cakes have reappeared in many restaurants and even foreign fast food restaurants, although the taste is different from the past, but whenever faced with the loss and recovery of traditional food, I always have two words in my heart - true fragrance.
Source Beijing Evening News
Author Hu Yanyun
Process Editor Tai Shaofeng