Rushing pea cake

Nie Xuejian

"Pea cake hot mile, hot mile pea cake!" No matter whether it is spring, summer, autumn or winter, the morning of the small town is always awakened by this hoarse and sharp tenor shout. Outside the window, there will still be a bright night, but this very characteristic shouting outside always makes people feel that the lively day is about to start, and they can't sleep in bed. Cloaked and seated, at that time, the little daughter would call "Mommy" and mutter, sleepily, "I want odd (eat) pea cake!" The wife reflexively jumped out of bed, wrapped herself in a trench coat, and opened the door to run at the series of shouts.

More than ten years have passed, and my daughter has gone to her junior year. One morning during the winter vacation, she actually heard a shouting sound that seemed to be "hot pea cake--", and she shouted through the door: "Mom, Mom!" There seems to be pea cakes sold outside! The daughter got up with a strong sense of anger and was actually awakened by the cry of pea cakes. We listened intently, but we didn't catch a similar shout. Perhaps, there is such a shout, it is another shouting tone of the city. From the small town of that year to this small city a hundred miles away, I never heard the clamor of pea cakes again. In particular, the distinctive shout, as if it had been burned by the steam that had just come out of the pot, only stayed in the memory.

I don't know why foods such as pastries are called "dim sum", Baidu took a look, and there is really a head. Legend has it that a great general in the Eastern Jin Dynasty was very touched to see the soldiers fighting bloody battlefield day and night, heroically killing the enemy, and repeatedly making battle achievements, and then ordered the baking of delicious cakes loved by the people, and sent people to the front line to comfort the soldiers to show "dim sum". Since then, the name "dim sum" has spread and has been used ever since. They undergo a complicated process, fermented and steamed, the recipe is not revealed, the taste is smooth, warm and pleasant. Originally, these things had a petty bourgeois complex, and it was no wonder that girls loved to eat them. Thinking about it carefully, "pea cake" is relatively more special, those peas are originally less produced, and the rarity is expensive, and the pea cake is even more rare. The pea cake is steamed completely by a thousand turns, and the hard grain is steamed into lumps, evenly cut into each small rectangle, which looks particularly cute. It is only suitable for eating at a hot temperature when it is fresh out of the pan. Take a bite, the noodles are crisp, sweet and fragrant, and the puffs are yellow. It was the fragrance of a pure grain, with the local flavor of the Plains. After all, it is only a multi-grain, once it is cooled, it restores its hard nature, almost useless, even if it is re-distilled back to the pot, it is completely powerless, and there is no difference between it and the leftover buns.

Pea cake is niche. No wonder pea cakes must be sold while they are hot. Its taste is only fleeting and locked in at the moment when it first comes out of the pot. To corroborate this statement, I searched all kinds of pastry shops, and they didn't sell pea cakes because they were not operable. The explanation made me feel quite emotional about the taste of pea cake.

Its identity is both niche and simple. It is destined not to be noble, it is just a grain, it is only suitable for running around the streets and selling. However, it is also delicate, and only sooner or later will it meet the seller, which is considered to be encounterable but not sought.

At dusk in the Year of the Rat, mengxia, after the spring flowers bloomed, the epidemic situation just improved. As I rode through an alley, I heard a "hot pea cake-" I immediately braked and stopped, and when I looked back, I saw an uncle riding an old-fashioned bicycle, and there was a clean plastic box in the back seat, just in front of his car faucet, and the small horn repeatedly played the male voice recording "Hot pea cake-" I rushed forward to buy it. The pea cakes lay quietly in the box, wrapped in tiny food bags, covered by layers of quilts, like sleeping babies, with the body temperature of a freshly released cage. Five dollars per piece of pea cake. When I talked about the price of the small town more than ten years ago, the uncle smiled and said that it was only one or two dollars back then.

Looking at the back of his bicycle leaving, a kind of bitter kindness, feeling warm. All the pea cakes are on the run. Because their selling point lies in the warm taste. Those sellers worked hard through the streets just to sell the snacks in time when they were still warm. Holding the two pieces of pea cake, imagining that the daughter who was stranded at home for online classes due to the epidemic opened the door to pick them up, I must be happy and happy. This long-lost reunion delicacy, it is similar to the father's love of the dim sum? Ordinary and niche, running around for a small home all day, silent and always with temperature.