Shanghainese people pay attention to eating tangyuan, eating spring rolls, and eating steamed cakes, which respectively means a family reunion, a mountain of gold bars, and a high festival in the coming year - the customs of the New Year, that is, the customs of the New Year, let everyone be happy.
Chinese cakes, if differentiated by raw materials, have two camps, one is made of wheat and the other is made of rice. The north is the main wheat producing area, hair cake, oil cake, cut cake, flower cake, fried cake, date cake... Rolling in the wheat flour with joy. South of the Yangtze River is the base camp of rice culture, and the pastries are mainly rice and mixed with beans, but wheat is not excluded.
Wheat flour is malleable, with it to make cakes can have a lot of room to play, I most admire the northern countryside big mother sister-in-law to do the northern flower cake, a few people giggle and roll up their sleeves, with play, in the blink of an eye it is piled up in a room. Flower cake is also called face molding, gift cake, kneading people, the cake body is piled with children ah animals ah flowers and grass, exaggerated shape, but also colored, the contrast is very strong, steamed is simply a sculptural to see and eat! In the Jiangnan area, even in the Ming and Qing dynasties, the wheat planting area was not large, and people generally used rice flour to challenge the northern pasta, such as rice noodles, rice noodles, rice cakes, rice cakes, rice steamed buns, and kway teows, forming another system. Yuan Ming, the first foodie of the Qing Dynasty, wrote about the rice cakes in the "Suiyuan Food List", including fat oil cake, snow cake, hundred fruit cake, chestnut cake, green cake, chicken bean cake, three-layer jade belt cake, Yunsi cake, sand cake and so on. Yunsi Cake is related to an official old master: "Lu Yayu is a lucky master, and he is old. In Yangzhou, the cakes are offered and greatly rewarded. Since then, it has been known as 'Yunsi Cake'. The color is as white as snow, dots are rouge, and red is like peach blossoms. Slightly sugar for filling, light and fragrant. Preferably in front of the Yunsi Yamen shop. He shops with a bad pink color. ”
Yunsi cake has disappeared today, but from Yuan Ming's description, you can imagine the basic form of this cake, rice noodles, sugar filling, not too sweet, the surface of the cake should be decorated with carmine food coloring, steamed after the cake body is white, very tempting. These elements continue to this day and constitute the aesthetic framework of Jiangnan rice cake.
To make rice cakes, glutinous rice and japonica rice are mixed in proportion, and later mixed with some bean offal and dried fruits. In the Qing Dynasty Zhu Yizun's "Food Constitution Hong secret", a variety of ingredients can be used in cakes, such as chestnut powder, diamond horn powder, pine cedar powder, yam powder, chicken bean powder and so on. Chicken bean flour is chickpeas, originated in Turkey, and later spread from India to China, and took root in Xinjiang and Gansu provinces. More than ten years ago in Shanghai, I can't see it, housewives have never heard of it, I learned from TV that American basketball star Kobe Bryant loves to eat chickpea salad, and my son is Kobe Bryant's iron fan, dreaming of eating this thing. One day, my wife and I were playing in the Zhao Jia Lou, and when I saw it sold in a grocery store, I was so excited that I quickly bought some.
The experience of mixing beans into cakes is also used by pastry chefs. Shanghai Kaisling's chestnut cake is very famous, which is a wonderful alienation of Western-style cake, which Cheng Naishan has vividly described, and she also tried to make it at home when the material supply was difficult. Europeans don't make chestnut cakes. This product is soft and delicious, but it is not easy to preserve freshness, and it cannot be mailed to a distant place. To eat, you can only come to Shanghai, sit on the Huangpu River or Suzhou River, chestnut cake with cat coffee, two people face to face, what else can not talk about?
Li Yu said in "The Book of Idle Lovers": "Southern people rice rice, northern people rice noodles, Chang Ye." It is also said that "cakes are expensive and loose, and cakes are thinner", and the latter sentence has almost become the standard of the cake industry.
In The magic capital, the bread is mostly noodle cakes, the thinner the better, such as shallot oil cake, leek cake, egg pancake, the cake is based on rice cake, the more loose and more spirited, such as yellow muffin cake, Dingsheng cake, rose printing cake, mint cake, Takahashi muffin cake. There is a kind of cloud cake that is cut and sold in Jiangnan Ancient Town, which is a thin and loose double crown, and it is also served in food stores in the city all year round. Zhang Ailing is very fond of eating cloud cake, when she was a child, she often dreamed of eating cloud cake, eating and eating, the thin cake became a thin paper, in addition to astringency, but also felt an embarrassing pity. In fact, the cloud cake is not astringent, unless there is walnut meat in it, and the clothes of walnut meat are not peeled clean.
Yellow muffin is the cheapest national snack, when I was a child, I only sold four cents a piece, a bite is fragrant and loose, and now Qiao Jiazhai still has yellow pine cake supply, but the taste is not as good as before, because the previous yellow pine cake was made of aged indica rice and Cuban sugar, and now the ingredients have improved, and the old taste has changed.
Another example is the Dingsheng cake, which appears side by side with the shou peach and exists as a ritual, which is their value. Old-school Shanghainese move to a new home, celebrate their birthday and invite it to appear as an image ambassador, taking the meaning of their happiness and longevity. Piled up on the table, tangible and stylish. Steamed soft to eat, a bite out of the bean paste filling, straight to the heart.
To make Dingsheng cake, red yeast powder is added to the cake powder, and the back of the shape is thin and the two ends are large, shaped like the tenon used by the master carpenter to splice the wooden board. Once I went to Hangzhou QingheFang with my wife to hang out, and saw the dim sum shops along the street steaming and selling Dingsheng cakes. The small wooden molds are steamed one piece each, sprinkled with rice flour, buried with bean paste filling, and covered with a layer of rice noodles, which is very fast and performative. When the master took off the mold, I saw that there was a perforated aluminum skin hidden underneath, which was used to guide the steam.
However, not all rice cakes are puffed, and some cakes are tightly packed, similar to amber jade, such as red bean cake, hundred fruit honey cake, osmanthus cake, strip cake and so on. Every year during the Spring Festival, the people on the outskirts of Shanghai will also steam cakes with excitement, the water vapor is filled, the fragrance is swirling, and there is a kind of warmth that reaches the hearts of the people!
At this time, the grand appearance of rice cake, or muffin cake, or steamed cake, is the first brand in Jiangnan rice cake, round, thick, about a foot in diameter, the height is also two or three inches, holding some weight in the hand, accidentally can smash the foot plate into a fracture. The surface is piled with red, red, green and green preserves, the festive color is quite strong, and it is also more subtle, hiding walnuts or dates in the cake, which is a painting style that steals pleasure.
Speaking of which, muffins have been in Shanghai Mixed Wharf for some years. The "Continuation of Jiading County" records: "Muffin cakes, ground flour with sticky rice, and soup with red sugar, slowly into Zhen, loose and greasy, are easy to cook without stagnation." Fruits such as pine nuts, walnuts, jujube meat, diced oranges, oranges, aromatics such as roses, wood trees, mint and dried vegetables, pork fat, can be added. The age is given to the relic, than the household, the new normal to enjoy the guest, the heavy nine is also the same, the cover is harmonious in the high, thinking that the prayer is praised..."
Qibao, Gaoqiao, Chongming all have a long history of self-produced and self-sold rice cakes, last year's Chongyang Festival, received a bucket of steamed cakes from Brother Wu Yulin express delivery from Minhang Zhaoqiao! It is said to be a piece, but in fact, it is composed of four colors, which are sandwiched with bean paste, black sesame seeds and white sugar lard. This cake is made by hand, and the cake maker is Song Aihua and Luo Renguan of the Anle Village Steaming Workshop, and the couple is the inheritor of the steamed cake making technique of The Zhaoqiao Barrel.
Just after New Year's Day this year, Xu Qiyong brother also sent me a heavy Chongming cake from Chongming, in addition to glutinous rice, japonica rice, with sugar to red and white two kinds, ingredients and walnuts, pine nuts, melon seeds, red and green silk, etc., the best thing is to add lard! Without lard, how can steamed cakes have a cannibalistic aroma?
Brother Xu Qiyong told me again that the steamed cake was not completed at one time, but first sprinkled a layer of cake powder filtered by a dense-eye sieve at the bottom of the bucket, cured and then sprinkled with walnuts and jujube meat, and then sprinkled with a layer of powder to continue steaming, so that the third can complete a piece of tangible and flavorful Chongming cake.
Chongming cake has two kinds of muffins and tight cakes, muffins can be eaten cold, and the tight cakes must be eaten after steaming. During the Spring Festival, the main thing I ate was tight cake, but I immediately divided it into eight pieces after I got it, sealed the plastic wrap and stored it in the refrigerator, and then took it out of the cage drawer to steam, or it could be fried in a pan until small oil bubbles appeared on the surface, fragrant and sticky. If you are lazy, put the whole piece of rice cake in the refrigerator and freeze it for three or five days, then you will borrow a large axe from Li Kui and don't want to split it.
Chongming cake also has a gentle way to eat, cut into small pieces, cooked with red bean soup or sake soup, the taste is superb! This way of eating seems to be also available in Suzhou, salty lard cake diced roasted pumpkin soup, salty and sweet, do not spare the flavor.
Rice cakes are sweet, sticky, fluffy, soft... Eating it in my mouth, my heart burst with a real joy.