▲ Dragon Boat Festival, come to the bowl of sweet pickles to refresh ~ photography / serious
-Fengwujun Language-
Compared to eating rice dumplings in the Dragon Boat Festival
This bowl of wheat is more "northwest"!
During the Dragon Boat Festival of the northwestern people, eating a zongzi is far from enough.
Around the Dragon Boat Festival, mai xiang filled the streets and alleys, "your family is not sweet" has become the most tacit topic of relatives, friends and neighbors, until the day of the Dragon Boat Festival, it finally unveiled the veil and entered the room. Everyone's appetite was left to this bowl of snacks that best represented the flavor of the Northwest Dragon Boat Festival: sweet sauce.
▲ Take a spoonful of soul grabbing. Graph/Network
Can wheat be eaten without being ground into flour? Looking at the sweet pickles like wheat grains mixed with water, people who have not eaten them feel unremarkable, only northwestern people, when they hear the name, they can't stop drooling.
Not a staple food but better than a staple food, not wine but full of wine aroma, eating a bowl of sweet sauce, the northwest only counted the Dragon Boat Festival. What kind of divine magic does it have that makes people who eat it addicted?
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="21" > how much Northwesterns love noodles</h1>
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="22" > how sweet-pickled he is</h1>
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Wheat is like Sun Wukong, the "seventy-two changes" after grinding into flour, which is the diet label of the Northwest. In fact, even if the wheat grains are not ground into noodles, the original appearance that pops out of the "stone" can also become the heart of the northwestern people. The raw material of sweet pickles is a variety of wheat grains grown locally, which are directly fermented with koji. The taste of the wheat varies, and the taste of the sweet sauce also varies.
▲ Three kinds of wheat commonly used to make sweet pickles. Drafting/Liu Hang
In Gansu, sweet wheat and wheat are mostly used to make sweet sauce, and in the plateau and mountains of Qinghai, hardy, high-yielding and early-ripening barley (plateau barley) has become the first choice for sweet pickle raw materials.
Quinoa is a kind of oats, and there is a nice name in Gansu: jade wheat. Its color and taste are really as yellow and warm as jade, and the entrance has an oily taste; wheat is flexible and elastic, and it is extra Q-bomb to chew. Barley is large and rounded when eaten, and the particles are clear. Regardless of the type of wheat, the steps to make a sweet pickle are similar.
▲ After beating, rub the wheat by hand and peel it. Graph/Network
First peel and wash. Barley and wheat also need to be completely peeled off the shell beforehand, and the elders often put the wheat grains in bags and stumble and peel them. After washing the wheat is soaked overnight, it is ready to cook on the heat. Simmer over low heat and cook until eight ripe.
▲ The white and tender wheat kernels are exposed, indicating that the wheat grains are cooked. Figure/Figureworm Creative
To eat wheat sweet pickles, it is even more important to grasp the heat and time of boiling wheat grains. Cooked too soft, a fermentation almost into a soup; boiled too hard, and will eat like chewing stones, there is no soft texture. Seeing that the wheat has just "flowered", loose but not rotten, revealing white tender and full of wheat kernels, indicating that it is cooked.
When cooking wheat, the smell of wheat lingers in the house, the sweet sauce is not ready, the child is already "hungry", stealing a handful of cooked wheat first passed the mouth addiction.
▲ The farmer's mind is all on this wheat cut, photo/visual China
The sweet pickle is made directly with wheat grains, and the raw materials are simple and easy to obtain. It is said that Sweet Sauce also has a source of food cherished by northwestern people. Northwest drought, more people and less land, good wheat are taken to grind into flour to eat, some bad, looking at the "moldy" wheat left, people are reluctant to throw it away, directly eat and too rough, just see if it can be fermented and eaten, did not expect to be particularly delicious, after generations of improvement into today's sweet pickles.
▲ Is it a snack or a staple food? Photography/A Color Optoelectronic Advertising 15117131323, Photo/MarketMap Network
Without grinding into flour, you can eat wheat grains even more enjoyably. There is a saying in the northwest that "sweet and sweet, the old man doll salivates, one bowl and two bowls can appetize, three bowls and four bowls top meals." "A bowl of sweet sauce, eaten is the temperament of the Northwest people, is the most simple and direct understanding of "noodles". Even with snacks, Northwesterns can eat portions of staple foods.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="51" > can Northwesterns drink? </h1>
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="52" > are all practiced from snack sweet pickles</h1>
The grains range from rough to sweet and delicate, just sprinkle a handful of koji.
The wheat grains are left to room temperature, and the latter method is similar to the mash rice wine made of glutinous rice, mixed with koji, put into a clean and sterile porcelain pot and sealed fermentation. It seems simple, but every step must be careful.
▲ Seal with a plastic sheet first, and then wrap several layers of cloth to keep warm. Graph/Network
How much koji to put, according to the amount of wheat to decide, put more and less will be bad. The porcelain pot should be wrapped tightly so that it will not be corrupt and sour, so the towels that are not used and the old clothes that are not worn will be tied to it by the mothers. In order to ensure the temperature, the porcelain pot will be placed on the kangtou or stove head, and it must be smelled from time to time to see if it has deteriorated.
▲ Fermented sweet pickles. Figure/Figureworm Creative
During fermentation, the starch in the wheat grain is decomposed into glucose, the protein is decomposed into amino acids, and then a small amount of yeast converts the glucose into alcohol through the glycolysis process, which is the origin of the sweet wine aroma and the name "sweet". For about three days, the porcelain pot smelled of fragrant wine, and the fermentation was almost complete. But when to open the seal, or depends on the climate and temperature at that time, a slight deviation will also affect the taste of sweet sauce.
Layer by layer, the cloth cover is lifted, the lid is opened, and a strong aroma of wine comes to the nose. The grains are soft and sweet, and the juice underneath is as viscous as honey and as mellow as a jelly. It is no wonder that sweet pickle also has the alias of sake, the word "pickle", which means "unfiltered wine". This wine is more mellow than fruit wine, more rich than mashed rice wine, and children blush after eating two bites. It is said that the amount of alcohol in the northwest is trained from the sweet sauce of snacks.
▲ Sweet sauce, as mellow as wine. Photo/Serious
In the Dragon Boat Festival, all over the country will drink Xionghuang wine and calamus wine, and the northwestern people eat sweet pickles, which not only relieves hunger and satiety, but also responds to the custom of drinking. However, the custom of drinking sweet wine is recorded as drinking during the New Year, "On the first day of the first lunar month, sacrifice to the ancestors, recommend cold food, and drink sweet wine for a long time, in order to perform rituals." As for its later dragon boat flavor, it is probably related to the summer grain harvest and the most suitable temperature for fermentation of sweet sauce in early summer.
▲ Sweet pickle with water added. Graph/Network
Although the alcohol content of sweet sauce is very low, people who eat a few bowls dry and are not able to drink are also prone to "floating". In Lanzhou, most of the sweet sauce will be added to drink, which is more like rice wine. However, wheat is more chewy than rice.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="77" > the Dragon Boat Festival in the northwest</h1>
A little sweet, a little drunk
Around the Dragon Boat Festival, it is the most beautiful season in the northwest.
In early summer, the sky is bright, the willows are green, the flowers in front of the door are in full bloom, and the seasonal fruits are ripe. People freshen up, bathe and shower, whether it is people or scenery, are in the best state of the year to greet the Dragon Boat Festival.
▲ Dragon Boat Festival, do you plant willow or mugwort at home? Drafting/Liu Hang
Children wear colorful "hand models" (hand ropes) to show off everywhere, and adults pick wormwood willow branches and insert them on the door to pray for blessings. When you are done playing enough, go home and eat a bowl of sweet sauce, "give the mouth to relieve hunger, sweet sauce first", no other food can comfort the mood of the festival.
Fermented sweet sauce, looks like a white and tender grain, taste like meat, if you chew carefully in the mouth, you will taste the first, middle and last three different flavors. The front flavor is malt aroma, light and fresh; the middle taste is sugar water aroma, sweet and moist; the aftertaste is wine aroma, mellow and intoxicating.
▲ The grains are full of sweet sauce and chewy. Photography/Seriousness
If you don't do it at home, go to the sweet pickle stall on the street and eat a bowl. The peddlers who carry two baskets on a flat shoulder and walk the streets and alleys will scoop up a bowl full of sweet sauce, sweet as food, and eat with their mouths full of food.
▲ Sweet pickled milk tea in Lanzhou, equivalent to tea color in Changsha, has become a city's taste business card. Photography/Seriousness
Sweet pickles can also be combined with the popular milk tea, drink a cup of sweet pickled milk tea in Lanzhou, Q bomb wheat grains with silky milk tea, full of blessing drops!
In the impression of many northwestern people, the Dragon Boat Festival is to eat a rare bite of sweet sauce. After this season, the delicacy seems to have mysteriously disappeared. Therefore, making sweet sauce becomes full of rituals, and eating sweet sauce is the way that the northwestern people greet the Dragon Boat Festival in the way that is closest to the earth.
▲ Seemingly the simplest sweet sauce, it is the snack that best represents the flavor of the Northwest Dragon Boat Festival. Photography / Liu Yunze
For Gansu people in other places, eating sweet sauce is like returning to their hometown, back to the early summer with the rich sweet aroma of wine in their memories.
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Wen 丨 Li Yi
Design | Liu Hang
Cover photo | serious
*Special thanks
The photographer is serious
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