▲ Yellow wine, flowing in the blood of Shaoxing people. Photography / Wu Xuewen
-Fengwujun Language-
A pot of rice wine
How to pry the food of Shaoxing?
Some people say that after seeing Shaoxing, they know that the people there are destined to live with wine.
When the canopy boat swayed on the surface of the lake with blue waves, surrounded by lush hills and green walls of Dewa, surrounded by flowing water, the air was filled with fresh water, and the blood of a good wine seemed to exist.
▲ Shaoxing, once known as the "Venice of the East", carries an innate gentleness and calmness. The picture shows the Shaoxing Bazi Bridge. Photography / Cai Min
When the mountain peaks unveil the edges and corners of the soft water, the fine water network in the broken silk connection, crocheted out of the rigid and soft thousand-year-old city, just like the long river of history, leaving the Lanting Yaji of the literati and sages, the wind and bone and responsibility of "Wuyue is the land of revenge and shame, not the land of dirt and dirt", and also gave birth to the ancient Yue descendants who came out with wine and were good at using alcohol into food.
▲ The beautiful mountain style of Longhua Temple in Shaoxing HuijiShan. Photo/Visual China
Such a chivalrous and soft intestine, and the warm and lush yellow wine seem to be a match made in heaven. The Shaoxing people, who live in the "hometown of yellow wine", led a cup of wine pot out of the happy and unharmed frank flower road.
From the "full moon wine", "100-day wine", "first-year wine" in childhood... To the "daughter red" that is necessary for marriage, the "Yuanyuan red" when the gold list is titled, and the "flower carving wine" for birthday celebrations, Shaoxing people grow up soaking in wine jars, and they are also immersed in the warmth and hardness of yellow wine.
▲ The ester aroma and mellow aroma of Shaoxing rice wine can maximize the freshness of meat while removing the fishy taste, the picture shows plum button meat and braised meat. Graph/Network
Even a simple and simple home-cooked meal is full of yellow wine. Due to the variety of ways to eat meals, Shaoxing wine is usually divided into four gates -
Dried "Yuan Hong" with vegetables, fresh made a plate of cold dishes;
Semi-dried "rice" is blended with red meat, fish and crab to achieve rich flavor;
Semi-sweet "good brew" and chicken and duck drinking, refining a light and elegant fragrance;
The sweet "fragrant snow" and the pastry are combined to match the world.
▲ Fluttering aroma of rice wine milk tea. Photography / Wu Xuewen
In the Shaoxing dessert industry, the rice wine gene is still strong. Yellow wine sticks with bare sticks, sucked rice wine milk tea, silky yellow wine pudding, sticky rice wine nougat... Shaoxing wine, which shines in all walks of life, how many touching Qiankun delicacies are hidden?
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="40" > the freshest way to eat</h1>
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="41" > hidden in the most mellow Shaoxing wine! </h1>
Shaoxing people talk about their own drunken food, which is no less than the deyun society's practice of family skills - through the mouth to report the name of the dish.
From drunken shrimp, drunken crabs, drunken chickens, drunken dates, and drunken clams, to bad geese, bad ducks, bad meat, bad belly, and bad pig tongue, Shaoxing people really don't eat and panic. Sealed in the wine jar, the Sea, Land and Air families re-formed three squads: raw drunk, cooked drunk, and drunk drunk.
▲ A jar of bad fragrant food, soaked in the nostalgia of Shaoxing people. Photography/ms517, Photo/MarketMap
In the hearts of the locals, the river prawns with lofty status, Rao is restless, once immersed in the wine, covered with utensils, a few cloves of onions, ginger, garlic and small red peppers sprinkled, only a time slit, the mellow aroma of rice wine meets the vitality of fresh things, a fresh into the nose, and then there is no fishy smell of earth.
The river shrimp, which was overwhelmed by wine, lay lazily on the edge of the bowl in a short time, "the jade body was horizontal, the muscles were like gelatin", and the body was full of a soft drunkenness. Although it is a cold dish, however, wrapped in the warmth and richness of yellow wine, the original slender drunken shrimp seems to have more plump beauty, and the close view is crystal clear, and the entrance is fresh and tender.
▲ In the eyes of the Shaoxing people who live near the river, drunkenness is the greatest respect for the river shrimp that jumps around alive. Photography/Hu_Xiao, Photo/MarketMap
As another general in the drunken life, the drunken crab's life still hides a little bit of the spring breeze pride of Master Shaoxing. Legend has it that the master once used sauce jars to pickle crabs on both sides of the Huai River, and when they arrived in their hometown, the Shaoxing people, who loved yellow wine, naturally took the pickled crabs and soaked them in the wine jar.
Compared with the red cream crab, the locals prefer the hairy crab in the river, they have been baptized by old wine, the tender meat is mixed with a slight sweetness, and when eaten into the mouth, the aroma will pop out from the tip of the nose.
▲ Unlike the drunken crabs in Ningbo, Shaoxing people have a special love for local river crabs. Above/China Specialties Channel, below/Network
I think that at that time, Song Renzong was greedy for crabs, and finally fell ill with wind and cold. If he could join the crab with yellow wine like the Shaoxing people, he would not have this trouble.
If you change the mature drunk, you have to mention the drunken chicken that the locals talk about. The chicken is steamed until it is broken, soaked in a cool water tank, and the yellow and shiny chicken skin curls up on the tender white meat, becoming crisp and tender.
The pot on the other side is also not allowed to idle, the loose chicken neck, chicken rack and fragrant flower carving wine becomes watery and milky in the fire, and when it is poured into the chicken and then iced, the aroma of the wine is sealed between the flesh and bones, and the smooth and refreshing force burrows into the tip of the diners' hearts.
▲ Bad chicken and bad meat, the tip of shaoxing people's hearts. Above/"Supper Night", Below/Network
Shaoxing people have wine today and "drunk", but when it comes to eating bad food, they are extra patient. Unlike the wet and bad in Hangzhou, Nanjing and other places, the locals stew the pork with blanched blood and a little rice wine, and when draining the water, rub a thick layer of salt flowers with the remaining temperature and repeat it for two days to get the meat of the tight Q bullet.
In this way, sealed with the lees for more than seven days, the fragrant and non-greasy bad pork is so big that it can also fill the whole table: when it is a cold dish, it can also be cooked and steamed, and if it is made, it will produce a bowl of fragrant bad meat rice cakes, bad meat noodles, and so on.
▲ Dried drunken fish and bad edamame are essential cold foods for Shaoxing people in summer. Above: Photography/ Ephemeral Dreams, Figure/Figureworm Creativity; Bottom: Photography/Shadow Man Let the Dragon; Figure/Figureworm Creative
In the hot summer, the Shaoxing people washed the edamame pods, cut them at both ends, took a few fennels, threw them in brine and boiled them together with the beans, waited for the fire to boil, filtered out the soup, poured into the bad brine, and derived a turquoise picture from the crispy beans. People who sit under the eaves to cool off, with three or two bad tastes and a few pale gold wines, are pleasant and spontaneous.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="77" > a pot of flower carvings, how intoxicating is the food brewed! </h1>
The writer Liang Shiqiu left his hometown when he was young, recalling his mother's kindness, and always had to talk about the bowl of winter bamboo shoots and leeks that were poured over and over again by a large spoonful of flower carved wine.
The flower carving wine favored by the Shaoxing people evolved from the ancient "daughter wine", and it is actually no different from the "Zhuangyuan Hong" in the production of wine.
▲ Legend has it that flower carving wine has the meaning of "flower withering", and there is also a saying that the vessel holding the wine is carved with a flower type. Photo/Visual China
As early as the Song Dynasty, shaoxing people, who were already well versed in the way of winemaking, always had to choose several altars of wine when the girl was full moon, and asked the master to paint auspicious color pictures such as flowers, birds, landscapes, and humanistic objects. When the girlfriend leaves the cabinet, she takes out the aged wine stored in the mud seal cellar and adds oil paint "hundred plays" as a color head for a good full moon.
Today's flower carving wine, in terms of preparation method, is mostly a soft wine with a clear color. Shaoxing's "flower carved steamed anchovy" adopts a wine steaming method that does not scale.
Zhang Ailing once mentioned "anchovies with many thorns" as one of the three major hates in life. Today, although the name of "Four Fresh Yangtze River" has disappeared for many years, the whole body of silver, round and plump farmed anchovies are still active on the table, brewed in mellow rice wine, the aroma is coming, and the past hatred can only be stopped.
▲ "Flower carved steamed anchovy", even the fish scales are full of umami taste. Photography/Sunlight through the window, Photo/MarketMap
The slender and well-proportioned anchovy is half soaked in the red and bright soup, the square flat ham and shiitake mushroom slices, pressing a ball of wine in the belly of the fish, with chopsticks gently flicked, the shiny fish scales are provoked, a small sip, the sweetness of the carved wine and the fatty taste of the fish skin fish oil echo, the afterscent between the teeth remains for a long time.
After the steamed stone crab (horizontal crab) is cut, the meat paste is wrapped in the coldest crab paste, and it is also soaked in flower carving wine to brew a sake. On the fragrant stove, the orange-yellow crab paste sucks up the freshness of the meat and the beauty of the wine;
▲ Flower carved chicken and Shao-style "Buddha jumping off the wall" stewed with rice wine. Above: Photography/shiwusuo, Photo/MarketMap; Bottom: Figure/Network
The flower-carved chicken with the name of "immortal" is simmered in the heat, which not only retains the inherent crispness of the meat, but also pours out the fragrant wine between the boilers.
Even Xun Ge'er's salty and delicious plum vegetable roast meat is inseparable from the nourishment of Shaoxing wine. In a hot pot drizzled with rice wine, the fat and thin pork belly is slowly removed and transformed into a warm and oily "red skin meat", and the rich plum vegetables also give birth to the salty and sweet taste in the skewers of flames.
▲ Rice wine seeps into pork and dried plum vegetables, which not only adds to the aroma of the food, but also brings out the deepest umami taste of the meat. Photography / will 1874, photo / figure worm · creative
A lamp of yellow wine, hiding the Shaoxing River and Lake that is both rigid and soft
The temperament of shaoxing city has been inextricably linked to wine since ancient times. During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, there was "the shame of the Yue King, who wants to win the hearts and minds of the people... There is a river of wine and the people are the same."
The wine of the sacrifice was sunk in the river, which was quite decisive, and the morale was greatly increased, leaving behind the historical good story of "three thousand Yuejia can swallow Wu".
▲ Shaoxing Guyue Longshan Central Wine Warehouse, hiding about 11 million altars of original wine, weighing 260,000 tons. Photography / Cai Min
This kind of wine culture wrapped in roughness and pride sprouted, extended to the proud Wei and Jin dynasty in the future, the revolutionary volunteer "worried for the country to cut off the intestines, the sword South song followed by the autumn wind" with the pen as a sword, in the ups and downs of various things, all the accumulation is like a long-lasting aging, creating Mr. Mu Xin's mouth "bone Jiangnan".
And the tenderness that belongs to Jiangnan alone seems to be vaguely connected with the pattern of city sites that have rarely changed for thousands of years.
▲ Shaoxing West Garden, built in Wuyue Kingdom, with mountains and rivers and beautiful scenery. Photography / Nguyen Lin Feng
"Dewa powder wall, deep alleys twisting, pillow river people's homes, soft squealing, flat boats", the water network of Shaoxing is permeated with a clear water charm, giving birth to the Yin Yin blood that belongs to yellow wine, of which JianHu is the most.
The Jianhu water system, which brings together the thirty-six clear springs on Huiji Mountain, was formed during the Eastern Han Dynasty. The late Qing Dynasty literary scholar Zhang Dai once praised the elegance and modesty of Jianhu Lake with "famous door bridesmaids". This simple and elegant atmosphere seems to coincide with the warm and soft rice wine.
▲ Shaoxing Jian Lake, because of its clear water quality, is also known as "Mirror Lake". Photography / Bin Zhang
Shaoxing people seek a good wine, following the natural law of summer wine mother, autumn wheat koji, winter brewing "amber".
Miscellaneous bacteria are difficult to grow, and the water quality is particularly refreshing winter water, and white rice, wheat koji in the microbial stirring, slowly flowing out of a shallow goose yellow wine, when heated, there is a warm body, ice and there is a summer escape.
▲ The longer the old Shaoxing wine, the thicker the aroma, the warmer the stomach immediately hit. Above: Photo/"Zhejiang Shaoxing Drunken Nine"; Bottom: Photography/Wu Mengda, Picture/Huitu Network
The so-called "son should be born, and the old wine should be brewed in winter", it is precisely such a delicate and flexible mind that has left many brilliant poems for Shaoxing yellow wine. In the "one look and one chant", the book saint Wang Xizhi said "enough to tell the humor"; Qiu Jin, the heroine of Jianhu Lake, "did not hesitate to buy a treasure sword at a thousand dollars, and the mink Qiu exchanged wine for wine."
And the famous Shaoxing old food Xun Brother, his Kong Yiji, stunned that he was lame, also wanted to come to "Xianheng" to buy two bowls of warm wine, a plate of chewable fennel beans.
▲ Xun Ge'er's story takes place in the famous Xianheng Hotel in Shaoxing, and the Taidiao wine in the store is also quite famous in the local area. Above: Photography/Master James Wangcai, Figure/Figureworm Creative; Bottom: Photography/Kouzi, Photo/Marketmap.com
Sipping on the old wine and sandwiching a piece of bad goods, the Shaoxing people also have a soft and long afterglow like yellow wine in their bones, but the longer and stronger the afterglow. When they first met, they were pregnant with the gentleness and modesty of the Jiangnan people, and when they were alienated from the "broken shell", you could find the "hard qi" that belonged to the water and soil of one side in them.
The calmness, indifference and depth that read the prosperity and vicissitudes, like the sound that sends the canopy boat to the far side, although the action is not large, it is confident enough and long.
▲ The warm light of the evening climbs up the roof ridge facing the water, hits the babbling water, and is also reflected in people's cheeks and wine bowls. The so-called heaven, earth, people, and things all hide similar temperaments, probably like Shaoxing. Photo/Visual China
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Wen 丨 Wang Keke, Yue Ge
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