Written by | Wei Shuihua
Header image | Auspicious ravioli
Wheat, which originated in the fertile crescent of West Asia, is the most important raw material in the history of human diet.
The hard, indigestible plant seeds are milled into powder, re-kneaded and shaped with water, and can be transformed into exquisite pasta with simple processing.
What's more, wheat dough has the physical properties of sealing, retaining water, sucking juice and storing heat, which allows almost all ingredients, including fish, meat, vegetables and fruits, to be carried on it to obtain taste and texture improvement.
Of all the grains on earth today, wheat is planted and total yields are at the top: people's tongues never deceive people.
The worldviews of the East and the West, in the long-standing inheritance of wheat, are added to their respective pasta dishes: a hot dog, a pizza, a piece of bread-based roast, rich ingredients, a variety of meat and vegetarian combinations and charming spices, highlighting the Westerners' open-spirited philosophy of life; and a bowl of wontons, a plate of dumplings, and a drawer of buns, with a reserved appearance and a long and peaceful taste, reflect the moderation, humility and inner beauty of the Orientals.
Eat to see people.
Roasted wheat is undoubtedly the most special one in the world's noodle recipe system: whether it is the material, technique and process, the form of roasted wheat is full of oriental colors, but the bold opening and the spillover of taste reveal the recessive genes that originate from the depths of Eurasia. It is the inheritor of the taste of China that is not leaky, the interpreter of the Chinese character who does not tire of learning, and the witness of Chinese history that is harmonious and different.
Image source | Egg yolk roasted from auspicious wontons is sold. Real materials, fresh taste
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="23">No.1 壹</h1>
Chinese's preference for roasted wheat is first reflected in the diversity of names throughout time and region.
Some people call it roasted wheat, describing the hot appearance of the breakfast shop; some people call it roasted, describing the fast pace of production to sales; some people call it piggybacking, describing the non-mainstream noodles sold by the bag shop; some people call it Xiaomi, describing the appearance of small and exquisite; some people call it slightly beautiful, describing the taste and shape of the double beauty; some people call it roasted plum, describing the opening at the top like a flower blooming...
But no matter how it changes, the pronunciation of the noun describing this food is similar: a bold and logically consistent conjecture is that the word "burnt wheat" is not a Chinese morpheme, it comes from a foreign transliteration.
Tracing the origin of roasted wheat, roughly in the vast grasslands of North and Central Asia: the abundant grasslands here are suitable for grazing cattle and sheep, selecting fat and evenly balanced belly, mixing a little pepper and salt, as the beef and mutton stuffed with roasted wheat are naturally fragrant and delicious;
The huge temperature difference and sufficient sunshine give the high gluten wheat a good growth environment, without fermentation, directly roll out the dough skin thin, you can get a solid taste, the color is uniform and light as paper roasted wheat husk.
To this day, in the Altaic language family popular in Central and North Asia, "roasted wheat" is still a common pronunciation. "shirme" in Turkic means skin bag, pocket; "suumai" in Mongolian means dim sum without cooling.
Obviously, the former summarizes the shape of roasted wheat, while the latter expresses the scarcity and preciousness of roasted wheat as a hot snack in the alpine, barren and fuel-starved natural environment of North Asia.
But neither the Turks nor the Mongols could make roasted wheat a well-known and popular food for the population. What really makes it on the stage of history is the refinement and tolerance of Chinese.
In 1272, the Mongol Khan Kublai Khan made a decision that puzzled many Mongol princes: abandon Hara and Lin, the lands of Genghis Khan's Longxing, and move the capital to Beijing, the former capital of Liaojin. He also added a Chinese character name to his empire, "Yuan", and he himself was crowned Emperor of China.
There is no doubt that this was a far-reaching turning point in history. Kublai Khan's evaluation of Beijing (Yuan Dadu) is "controlling Jianghuai in the south and Shuo Desert in the north", just eight words, reflecting his positioning of the basic disk of the empire. Subsequently, Mongolian culture and Han culture began to blend closely, and many dietary terms, including mushrooms (Mongolian moog) and flat food (Mongolian bansh), began to grow.
And roasted wheat was the leader of that era.
The earliest record of burning wheat in history is the Chinese textbook "Park Shi Tong" published by the 13th century in the Goryeo Kingdom. As a loyal vassal state of the Yuan Empire, the Korean Peninsula at that time attached great importance to the teaching of Chinese, and vividly described the folk customs of the Yuan Dynasty, laying a good foundation for the middle and upper classes to go to China and study for further study. In the "Park Shi Tong", it is recorded in detail that a food called "slightly wheat" on the streets of Yuan Dadu is complicated, "making thin slices of wheat noodles, filling with meat, steaming, and eating with soup".
It is not much different from today's roasted wheat.
Analyzing the method of roasting wheat at that time, it can be clearly seen that the Cooking Characteristics of Han Pasta steaming, vegetarian skin, heavy filling, and original flavor; but its meat filling is exposed and the aroma is overflowing, which is in line with the aesthetics of the horseback people. The small roasted wheat shows the table cultivation of such a multi-ethnic empire as Yuan, and reflects the special charm of food iteration under the collision of cultures.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="23">No.2 贰</h1>
Zhu Di, the King of Yan, made beijing the capital, and legally inherited most of the territory and rights and interests of the Yuan Empire, and of course, also followed a large number of rules and regulations and folk customs of the Yuan Dynasty.
The "slight wheat" that spread in the Yuan capital began to spread to the hinterland of the Ming Empire. In the "Golden Plum Words and Sayings" written in the middle of the Ming Dynasty, there has been a kind of market snack called "picking flowers and roasting wheat".
How the so-called "flower picking" process is realized is no longer known. But what is certain is that it takes advantage of the characteristics of the burnt wheat opening to make a beautiful flower shape. Can be compared with today's Hunan Changsha Fire Palace, YulouDong and other old shops sold chrysanthemum roasted wheat, this kind of transparent foreskin, salty pepper fragrant dim sum, the biggest feature is the top opening with egg yolk embellished into elegant chrysanthemum petals, in the city snacks, is a very rare combination of shape and taste of both works.
In Linqing, Shandong, where the story of "Golden Bottle Plum Words" takes place, it is still popular for lamb roasted wheat with thin skin and fragrant filling and oily and delicious oil, which is dipped in sesame oil and double vinegar by locals, which is a common delicacy on the street. Combined with the image of these two snacks, you can basically see the original appearance of "picking flowers and roasting wheat".
This is the tip-of-the-tongue legacy of the nomadic regime and an example of the Han culture's elevation of food aesthetics.
In Zhangzhou, Fujian Province, locals refer to roasted wheat as "Xiaomi". In southern Fujian, no matter how big or small the wedding banquet, it is used as a snack with the finishing touch, and there is a tradition of "no Xiaomi, no seat". This is a proof that after the Ming and Qing dynasties, burning wheat increasingly conquered the stomach of Han scholars. But interestingly, there is also a derogatory name in the local folk: ghost puff head.
Similar content also appeared in the Ming Dynasty dialect book "Qingping Shan Tang Dialect Book: Fast Mouth Li Cuilian", Li Cuilian said: "How difficult it is to burn and sell and eat plaque food, I will also cut three soups and two cuts." ”
He not only recognized that roasted wheat looked good and delicious, but also disdained the Huyi diet from the north. This complex mentality from the relics of the Southern Dynasty is undoubtedly expressed in the words of the "ghost pengtou" and Li Cuilian in southern Fujian.
But this little self-esteem, with the arrival of another foreign dynasty: the Manchu Qing, was completely abandoned. At the same time, roasted wheat, a dim sum from an exotic place, has also been thoroughly integrated into the torrent of Chinese food.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="23">No.3 叁</h1>
There is a simple vein of Chinese dietary flux: most foods show a path of transmission from north to south and from west to east. In the process of dissemination, there is also a trend of more and more refinement. Roasted wheat is no exception.
By the Qing Dynasty, the wealthy Jiangnan increasingly became an imperial cow that bore the burden of state taxes and created social wealth. A variety of exquisite foods appear endlessly on the upper floor of The Grand Master's table. Before the Ming Dynasty, roasted wheat, which was used as a city well diet, gradually entered the recipes of the higher classes.
During this period, the term "burning wheat" appeared more and more in the histories and notes describing the life of the literati in the Jiangnan region, such as the Yangzhou Painting Record and the Tongqiao Chair Record. The most noteworthy is the tenth time in the "History of Ru Lin": "There were two plates of dim sum on the table, a plate of pork hearts for sale, and a plate of steamed dumplings with goose oil and sugar." ”
As a novel that reflects the living conditions of the low-level intellectuals, the appearance of roasted wheat in the "History of Rulinwai" represents that as late as the middle of the Qing Dynasty, this kind of food has entered the class of scholars. The most intriguing thing is that the fixed phrase "pork heart" appears in front of the roasted wheat.
Coincidentally, in the contemporaneous recipe "Tuning Ding Collection", there are categories such as "meat stuffing roast sale", "bean paste roast sale", "oil sugar roast sale" and so on.
Compared with the single roasted wheat stuffing mainly beef and mutton on the grassland, in the Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions, the roasted wheat has been blessed with rich regional dividends, and various variants have emerged.
Today, Anhui and southern Jiangsu Nanjing, Wuhu and other places popular duck oil roasted wheat, the filling added to the roast duck by-product duck oil, lubrication and incense; Hangjia Lake area production of spring shoots, in addition to making the famous oil braised bamboo shoots, pickled fresh, the bamboo shoot meat cut into fine cubes added to the roast wheat, is crisp with soft bamboo shoots diced roasted wheat;
The pursuit of freshness and freshness in southern Jiangsu is also throughout the local roasted wheat, especially the three fresh roasted wheat made by Suzhou people with pork, shrimp and water hair sea cucumber, and the jade roasted wheat colored with green vegetable juice by Yangzhou people.
It is worth mentioning that as the core grain production area of the Qing Dynasty that "Suhu is ripe and the world is enough", the yield of rice in jiangnan is much larger than that of meat. At the same time as the popularity of roasted wheat was also being tried to make this delicious dim sum at a lower cost, and glutinous rice roasted wheat was born.
On the basis of the glutinous rice that absorbs the taste, add soy sauce, soy sauce, soy sauce, ham, sweet beans, pine nuts and other accessories, and then wrap it in a roasted wheat husk. It looks like a bun wrapped in rice dumplings, but it is either elastic, soft and long, or crispy and rich, or fresh and smooth, and the ever-changing taste has raised the taste level of roasted wheat to an unprecedented height.
Image source | @Magic Food Bureau
With the evil basis of carb water plus carb water, as long as it is equipped with a little taste, you can get a great taste multiplier.
This is the romance that belongs to Gangnam roasted wheat.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="23">No.4 肆</h1>
The sound of the opium war opened the door of the country and awakened the consciousness of Chinese to open their eyes to the world.
Guangzhou, which has been trading for hundreds of years, has thus stepped onto the stage of the times that has attracted everyone's attention. From the use of the world to the small one, people found that the unique customs of Lingnan and the tide of western food and the east gradually brewed a completely different culture between Guangzhou and the Central Plains.
Image source | @Peninsula Convenience Store
For example, roasted wheat, when most parts of the country regard it as a kind of small snack, perhaps because of the development of Lingnan commercial and trade culture, in Guangzhou, it has been transformed into "roasted sale", and completely integrated into the morning tea culture, becoming an indispensable part of the life of Guangzhou people.
Shrimp roast sale, crab meat roast sale, pork liver roast sale, tangerine peel beef roast sale, pork rib roast sale... Only unexpected, not can not do, in the mind of the morning tea shop owner in Guangzhou, but all the food that can be steamed to eat, can be made into Cantonese roast selling stuffing.
Dry steaming is the most special member of Cantonese steaming, and many Guangzhou people affectionately call it "dry steaming". The filling is actually not unusual, pork fat four skinny six, natural can be adjusted gently moisturized, add a little shrimp and grass mushroom grains, effectively enhance freshness. The most important thing is to dry steamed skin, add a lot of egg liquid and noodles, and then use corn flour to increase toughness. The dried steamed skin rolled out at the end is yellow, like an egg wrapped around the meat, and served in a small steamer basket one by one, which is the climactic part of a Cantonese morning tea, after the soy sauce chicken claws and ribs, before the boat porridge.
Guangzhou's reputation for "roasting and selling" is so loud that today in the international community, all mentions of roasted wheat are authentic in Cantonese style. In English, Siumai is a transliteration of the Cantonese word for "焼 sell"; in Japan, burnt wheat is called "焼", and the word "" is a variant of "sell" in Middle Chinese.
A food that did not originate in The Circle of Chinese Farming Culture, after nearly a thousand years of Chinese change, has finally become a representative work of Chinese cuisine.
| Hohhot Lamb Roast Wheat |
| Beijing Sanxian roasted wheat |
| Henan cut stuffed roasted wheat |
| Anhui duck oil roasted wheat |
| Hubei heavy oil roasted wheat |
| Sichuan Glass Roasted Wheat |
| Jiangsu Emerald Roasted Wheat |
| Shanghai Glutinous Rice Roasted Wheat |
| Zhejiang Bamboo Shoot Roasted Wheat |
| Fujian Crystal Roasted Wheat |
| Guangdong dry steamed roasted wheat |
The auspicious egg yolk roast sell combines the advantages of Jiangnan glutinous rice roasted wheat with abundant taste and Cantonese-style roasted and fine work. Whole egg yolks, fragrant pork, oily glutinous rice.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="23">-END-</h1>
In 2011, Kissinger published his book On China, which quoted the Eastern Han Scholar He Xiu as saying: "The king does not rule Yidi, and the recorder does not refuse." ”
These twelve words profoundly and concretely summarize the food of roasted wheat, which comes from "Yidi", which has become a tidal history of its own genealogy and foreign grand view after being transformed by Chinese civilization. This is a wonderful epitome of Chinese culture and a typical example of Chinese character.