Kunshan, bordered by Shanghai in the east and Suzhou in the west, is the eastern gate of Jiangsu. With its unique geographical location, Kunshan has a close-range, high-quality tourism market with a population of more than 200 million. In recent years, with the operation of high-speed rail, subway connectivity and provincial highways, the pace of Kunshan's integration into the Yangtze River Delta has accelerated, attracting tourists from surrounding cities has become the driving force for Kunshan's tourism to continue to climb.
For Shanghainese, Kunshan is a tourist destination that can be reached with a single step on the accelerator. Kunshan's ancient town has a deep historical heritage and the charm of Jiangnan water town, which is favored by Shanghainese. Since the opening of the Kunshan section of Shanghai Rail Transit Line 11, the first inter-provincial rail transit line in China, the average daily passenger flow has continued to grow, and it has become an important channel for seamless docking between Shanghai and Suzhou.
Geographically similar, the taste of food is also almost the same. Jiangnan fish and rice aroma, water beauty river fresh fat. The food experience tour allows gourmet diners from all over the world, especially In Suzhou, Zhejiang and Shanghai, to enjoy the taste of Kunshan. However, for the people of Kunshan, these water village delicacies represent not only the taste of home, but also the inheritance of culture.
Centennial Stove Noodles Have a secret to taste
Whenever they go to the foot of Yufeng Mountain in Kunshan, people always forget to go to the AozaoGuan to eat a bowl of hot Aozao noodles. For more than 100 years, Yufeng Mountain has remained verdant, and Aozao noodles have become famous all over the world and have become a must-eat food for people to visit Kunshan.
Why did "Ao Stove Noodles" get its name? According to legend, the Qianlong Emperor of the Qing Dynasty made a private visit to Jiangnan Weifu, and after visiting the Yufeng Mountain View through Kunshan, he was hungry, so he came to a noodle restaurant at the foot of the mountain and ate a bowl of red oil fried fish noodles. The delicious and unusually explosive fish noodles amazed the Qianlong Emperor, who was busy asking his entourage to inquire about the cooking method. However, the Kunshan dialect made the entourage seem to understand non-understanding, and in desperation, they had to report to the emperor in a hurry: "The red oil tastes good, mainly the mystery on the noodle stove." Qianlong listened to Long Yan Dayue: "The noodle stove is mysterious, the mysterious noodle stove!" Since then, this small noodle restaurant has had the reputation of "Ao stove noodles". There is also a saying that more than a hundred years ago, a noodle restaurant called "Tianxiangguan" was poorly managed, and the creditor gave the restaurant to the local embroidery lady Chen Xiuying to run, named "Yan Fuxing". Chen Xiuying is old, his eyes are not good, and his hands and feet are not flexible, but because he is good at making various fine snacks and noodles, he has made the noodle restaurant famous and the diners are full of doors. As a result, he was jealous of his peers and called the red oil noodles "bad noodles", that is, not very clean. Local scholars in Kunshan believe that the second theory is more credible. This strange name made the reputation of the noodle shop go away, adding to the legend of this bowl of noodles. Later, it was named "Okuza Noodles" in the harmonic sound of "Bad Noodles".
"Singing opera depends on the cavity, eating noodles depends on the soup", Aozao noodles inherit the characteristics and essence of Jiangnan soup noodles, and make sufficient efforts in soup and toppings. The biggest highlight of the soup base is the red oil, with green fish and rapeseed oil, after boiling and frying the fish, the rapeseed oil becomes sauce red, and the red oil also becomes delicious and abnormal due to the absorption of fish body and sauce shallot ginger aroma. As for the toppings, the fried fish are all made of blue fish, and the marinated duck is made of "Kunshan cannabis duck", which is fat but not greasy. The noodles are processed into dragon noodles with fine white noodles, and when they are cooked, they are quickly fished to make them taste soft and hard. Ao stove noodles pay the most attention to "five hot one, small ingredients to make soup". "Five hot" is noodle heat, soup heat, bowl heat, oil heat, topping heat; "small ingredient soup" means that the soup is not used in a large pot, but according to the need to use the current combination, to maintain the original taste. Ao stove noodles also have the characteristics of "three hot", that is, "hot noodles, hot soups, and hot bowls". Therefore, if diners eat a bowl of Ao Stove noodles on a cold day, they must sweat and be happy.
In 2009, "Kunshan Ao stove noodle making technology" was included in the list of intangible cultural heritage of Jiangsu Province. In 2010, Kunshan Aozao Noodles was rated as a chinese time-honored enterprise by the Ministry of Commerce. "Red Oil Fried Fish Noodles" and "White Soup Marinated Duck Noodles" were rated as "China's Top Ten Noodles", "Jiangsu Top Ten Noodles", "Chinese Famous Snacks" and "Jiangsu Famous Snacks" respectively.
Nowadays, driven by the radiation effect of the integrated development of the Yangtze River Delta, Aozao noodles have long become a business card of Kunshan, which can be traced everywhere, and the century-old Aozaoguan has also become a golden signboard under the Kunshan Cultural and Commercial Tourism Group, and is embarking on a new journey of brand development, more and more Aozaoguan branches have become the "happy taste" of the people with affordable prices and delicious tastes, and the new Aozao series of instant noodles and packaged foods have become popular fashion new favorites under the fast-paced life.
Jinxi sock bottom crisp hidden in the ancient town of "court food"
In recent years, with the continuous deepening of Kunshan's global tourism layout, more characteristic water towns are rising, and Jinxi Town, located in the southwest of Kunshan, is one of them.
Jinxi, named after the creek and also because of the bridges, has the reputation of "thirty-six bridges and seventy-two kilns". Since the Spring and Autumn Period, Jinxi has been a gathering place for literati and rioters, and more than 2,500 years of historical accumulation have created Jinxi's profound cultural heritage.
The flexible water of the "Five Lakes and Three Waves" moisturizes Jinxi to the soul of the people, and at the same time brews the beautiful food of Jinxi. Walking in the streets and alleys of Jinxi, you can see the sign of "sock bottom crisp" everywhere. This unassuming but crispy snack is closely related to the imperial court meal. Legend has it that in the last years of the Southern Song Dynasty, Jin soldiers invaded the Song Dynasty on a large scale. The Song army collapsed at a touch, And Emperor Gaozong of Song fled to Lin'an, and the crown prince Zhao Wei and his beloved wife Concubine Chen passed through Jinxi. Despite the arrival of the prince, the people were not very happy. Out of courtesy, the clever Jinxi people borrowed the opportunity to "offer hospitality" to the prince, using flour, ghee and a variety of fillings to make a kind of dim sum shaped like the bottom of the socks, named "sock bottom crisp", dedicated to Zhao Wei. However, in the Wu language, "crisp" has the meaning of "useless", alluding to the weakness and incompetence of the imperial court, and when it encounters Jin Bing, it will have two feet of crispness and only want to escape.
The sock bottom is unique in flavor, with a thin, fragrant and crispy taste. The workmanship of the sock bottom crisp is very exquisite, and the ingredients are carefully selected. When using ghee and dough, knead the dough five or six times until it is completely even, so that the baked shortbread is thin and transparent, crunchy and crispy. The filling, the salt used in the pretzels should be simmered in the wok, rolled thinly with a rolling stick, and the shallots should be pounded into a powder, so that the filling can not be exposed and not perforated.
Today, the sock bottom puff pastry has been selected into the Kunshan Municipal Intangible Cultural Heritage List. The town's cuisine has also gone beyond Kunshan and become a popular dim sum in the Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Shanghai regions. In Jinxi, there are still many "craftsmen" who adhere to the original flavor of sock bottom crisp and pass on the craftsmanship from generation to generation. "Jinlong Cake Shop", "Small Wool Socks Bottom Crisp" and "Zhang Ji Cake Shop" are all famous sock bottom crispy old brands in the town. In their eyes, running a long-established brand is not only a business, but also a inheritance of the spirit of conscientiousness and craftsmanship.
The spring of Kunshan people is inseparable from a "Zhengyi Youth League"
Eating Qingtuan is a custom in the Jiangnan region during the Qingming Dynasty, and it is also a way to send thoughts to relatives. Many outsiders know about the Youth League because of the lively scene of the launch of the Internet Red Youth League by major long-established brands in Shanghai during the Qingming Festival. As soon as the youth group is listed, the shops will be lined up, and if they are not in time, they will be sold out. However, this 1,600-year-old seasonal dim sum actually originated in Kunshan. According to legend, the green dumplings that were originally used as sacrifices were not sold as a commodity because of their poor taste. At the end of the Qing Dynasty, a woman named Zhao Hui in Zhengyi Street, Kunshan Ba Town, found that "pulp wheat grass" is a good raw material for making green dough green juice, and the dumplings made of hand-ground flour are softer and more delicate, and do not stick to the teeth, and are stored for several days without cracking, hard, and discolored. Later, the town's dim sum shops followed suit, and since then, the youth group has been supplied to the market, becoming a kind of dim sum with both color and taste and local characteristics.
Unlike other places where wormwood is used to make green juice, the good quality of Zhengyi green dough depends on the unique pulp wheat grass juice. Ba Cheng's youth group selects the best pulp wheat grass, mashes and squeezes the green juice, and then uses lime water to light the pulp. Mix the green juice with the glutinous rice, knead until non-stick hands, then knead into small balls and add to the filling. In the heart of the filling, a small piece of crystalline lard is also inserted to make it more fragrant and soft. After the basket is out, the green dough is coated with a layer of cooked salad oil, so that the prepared green dough can be as green as jasper, sweet and not greasy, chewing plump and non-sticky teeth.
Nowadays, in order to save labor costs and time, most cake shops will directly use the "wheat green juice" produced by the factory to make the green balls. There are only a few merchants who still retain hand-squeezed green juice, and the long-established "Wenkui Zhai" in Zhengyi Town is one of them. Wen Kui Zhai has been established for nearly a hundred years, and the modern inheritor Mr. Wu Dingyuan still adheres to the concept of "pure hand", from harvesting pulp wheat grass to hand squeezing grass juice and then mixing, this traditional craft is performed in Wen Kui Zhai every year. In 2013, Zhengyi Wenkui Zhai Qing Tuanzi production technique was included in the sixth batch of Suzhou Municipal Intangible Cultural Heritage Representative List.
Kunshan Food Map Released To gather popularity and business opportunities with food
Kunshan is seizing the national strategic opportunity of the integration of the Yangtze River Delta, compiling the "Kunshan Global Tourism Development Plan", sorting out and determining the key areas and key contents of the global tourism construction, and taking the initiative to undertake the industrial spillover of the Yangtze River Delta Ecological Green Integrated Development Demonstration Zone.
On December 17, 2020, as a special food supporting activity for kunshan carnival shopping in the "Double 12 Suzhou Shopping Festival", the Kunshan Food Festival was officially launched for two months.
At the event, the organizer released the "Kunshan Food Map", nearly 20 kinds of special foods were printed in the corresponding area of the Kunshan map, and the name of the food, the introduction and some recommended foods of the specialty streets were marked in the blank space on one side. Citizens and tourists can eat all over Kunshan as long as they refer to this food map, whether it is a century-old brand or a local specialty shop. Meituan, Kunshan Good Goods, Aozaoguan, Kunshan Culinary Association, Bacheng Yangcheng Lake Crab Industry Association, Kuncheng Square and other enterprises and platforms respectively promote their own special products and promotional activities during the food festival, with rich and diverse consumption formats, wonderful consumption activities, "online + offline" consumption mode, and then set off a new year's wave of national carnival purchases, showing the open and civilized, beautiful and delicious Kunshan to all parties.
Source: Author: Liang Jing