In the open space next to Yuetang, not far from my home, there are often several pairs of burdens selling snacks. Sell peanut candy. Large peeled peanut kernels, fried still snow-white, spread flat on an oiled white stone slab, simmered with rock sugar, poured evenly over the peanut rice, waiting for cold, scooping up. This peanut candy is shiny and transparent, without knife cutting, large pieces, placed in a glass box, to buy, take out a piece, now, negotiate the price. The rock sugar is extremely crisp and the peanuts are fragrant. Selling tofu brain, our tofu brain there is not like the Beijing gate mushroom mutton brine, only pour a little soy sauce, vinegar, add a drop of sesame oil - with a chopstick tied to a coin, dipped in the oil pot, dripped in the bowl, really only one drop. But add a lot of bits and pieces: shrimp, green onions, garlic paste, squeezed vegetables, chopped parsley – we don't have dry parsley there, only cress, that is, parsley, and I like the smell of parsley. I think this kind of tofu brain is refreshing and refreshing, better than the sticky mutton marinated in Beijing. Sell sugar pea porridge. The japonica evening rice and peas are simmered together in a copper pot, and when served, add a spoonful of foreign sugar (cotton sugar). Drink a bowl in the shade of a willow in the summer, and the flavor is not bad. I have been away from home for more than fifty years, and I still remember the aroma of pea porridge.
The food made from peas in Beijing is most famous for its "pea yellow". This thing is actually very simple to make, the peas are boiled, peeled, the fine sand is cleared, a small amount of sugar is added, spread out and flattened, cut into 5 inches × 3 inches of long cubes, and then add a knife to cut out the square small pieces, divide and not separate, and eat with a toothpick. It is said that this is a "court snack", which used to be sold in small rice shops and was very cheap, but now it is only available in large restaurants such as Fangshan, and it is sold very expensive.
pea
In the summer, even on rainy days, there are boiled peas for sale. The whole ingredients of peas are cooked, a little salt is added, two large cloves are set aside on the floating head, and they are sold in a bean green tea bowl. Hufang Bridge has a fool selling boiled peas and giving more. In the area of Hufang Bridge, there is a saying after the break: "The fool's pea - give more." There is no such post-break in other parts of Beijing, and the thought of boiling peas reminds people of the summer rain in Beijing.
In the early years, there were pea wood molds, peas boiled into mud, pressed in the mold carved into patterns, knocked out, it became a small gadget, kitten, puppy, rabbit, piglet. I bought children, played with them, and ate them.
The above is talking about dried peas. New peas are eaten as a dish. Braised peas are a fresh dish that is seasonal. Adding a little diced ham or chicken mushrooms is naturally very good, that is, vegetarian stew, but also very delicious. Braised peas should not be boiled for a long time, and if they are boiled for a long time, the soup is gray and not transparent.
The rise of the country to eat Dutch peas has also happened in recent years. The Hollandaise beans I have eaten are the best in Xiamen, which are wide and tender. Xiamen's tomic rice noodles should be added to a few pieces of Dutch beans, which can relieve the fishy taste of seafood. The Dutch beans eaten in Beijing were all shipped from the south. In the fields on the outskirts of Xiamen, I saw Dutch beans growing, large and small shelves, small water-red flowers, and tender green leaves, which were very cute.
The tender head of the pea, my hometown is called pea head, but the word "pea" is pronounced as "Ann". Yunnan is called pea tip, sichuan is called pea bump. My hometown is usually fried in oil and salt. Yunnan and Sichuan are added to the soup noodles and called "floating" or "green". Do not add pea seedlings, called "no drift"; "more green and heavy red" is to ask for more pea seedlings and peppers. Eating a hot pot with hairy belly, after shabu-shabu various meat ingredients, a large plate of peas is pushed into the soup, which is indescribably beautiful.
Peas can be included in the painting. I once saw Qian Shunju's album in Shandong, painted with peas, and I can't forget it. Qian Shunju's paintings are delicate and vulgar, and they are slightly thinner and dashing with a pen, which I like very much. I have seen a painting of a Japanese takeuchi phoenix, the pea flowers and leaves are particularly colorful than Qian Shunju, but I don't know why a long ochre snake is painted in front of the pea, which is very realistic. Do Japanese people think that snakes are also beautiful?
soybean
Bean leaves can be eaten as vegetables in ancient times. Presumably, the way to eat it is to make soup. Then no one ate. I have never heard of anyone eating cold mixed bean leaves, fried bean leaves, and bean leaf soup.
There, in the summer, everyone has to eat fried edamame beans and green peppers several times. Mid-Autumn Festival boiled edamame for the moon, boiled with shells. My father would make a kind of edamame: the edamame beans were peeled out of the grains, cooked with small green peppers (uncut), added soy sauce and sugar, waited for the beans to be cooked and harvested in soup, spread in a sieve until semi-dry, the skin of the beans was wrinkled, and put into the small altar. It is very good to drink, and you can eat it for a few days.
In beijing's taverns, the salt-boiled edamame beans, some taverns are boiled whole, do not cut the pods, the drinkers picked them by hand and ate them, as if it was more fragrant than a plate to eat.
Toon beans are very good. The toon is slightly blanched in boiling water, drained, chopped and salted; edamame is cooked with salt, shaken with toon, cold, stored in a glass bottle, and eaten every other day.
Beijingers eat fried sauce noodles, pay attention to more than a dozen dishes, cucumber shreds, small radish, green garlic... You also have to have a pinch of edamame or green beans. Diced meat (without the grinded minced meat bought at the grocery store) deep-fried sauce is chewed with green beans to complement each other.
Beijingers stir-fry hemp tofu to put a few green bean mouths - green beans sprout a little.
Thirty years ago, Daoxiang Village in Beijing sold smoked green beans to accompany the tea. This bean may not be smoked, but just add a little fennel, boil it in light salt and let it dry. The skin is also slightly wrinkled, not soft or hard, and it is biting. Now there is no, I think it is because it is labor-intensive and thin, and smoked green beans are very cheap.
Jiangyin out of the powder salt beans. I don't know how to make the soybeans so big, half an inch long, salt fried, beans do not shrink, the skin color is white, extremely crispy, a chew is a fine powder, so the name powder salt beans. The taste is very impressive, far better than peanut rice. Eating powder salt beans and drinking white flower wine are very compatible. I didn't drink much at the time, just boiled water. On Sunday, sitting in the self-study room, drinking water, eating beans, reading Li Qingzhao and Xin Ren's words, it is not a taste. I studied at Nanjing Middle School in Jiangyin for two years, and most of the Sundays were spent like this. The year before, I went to Jiangyin to look for a dream, asked my old classmates about the powder salt beans, and said that there were no more now.
In the past, places such as Daoxiang Village, Guixiang Village, and All Vegetarian Zhai used to sell bamboo shoots and beans. Finely chop soybeans and bamboo shoots, add soy sauce and sugar and cook. It's not quite there now.
During the three years of natural disasters, there was a little care for the seventeenth-level cadres, and a few pounds of soybeans and one kilogram of white sugar were distributed every month, called "jelly bean cadres". I boiled it with boiled bamboo shoots and beans, no dried bamboo shoots, and put a little mushroom in the mouth. I dried myself on the Zhangjiakou Dam. The mushrooms I make are eaten at home and given away. He had sent it to Huang Yongyu. Yongyu's son Hei Man ate it, and wrote in his diary: "Soybeans are not delicious things, but Uncle Wang can make it very delicious, Uncle Wang is great!" ”
Stir-fried soybean sprouts should be cooked sweet and sour.
Soybean sprouts are very fresh. Vegetarian restaurants in the south and temples for vegetarian food are eaten with bean sprout soup. An old man who ate vegetarian food in a temple, suspected that there were shrimp buns in the soup, ran to the kitchen to check it out, and saw a large pot of soup boiled with soybean sprouts and shiitake mushroom stalks. Soybean sprout soup with sour sherry, making rice is very good. This taste of the northerners does not understand also.
The biggest contribution of soybeans to Chinese is that they can make tofu and various soy products. Without tofu, Chinese life would be missing a large piece, and monks, nuns, and chefs of vegetarian restaurants would all be "no play". In addition to shiitake mushrooms, mushrooms, golden needles, fungus, winter shoots, bamboo shoots, vegetarian vegetables, mainly rely on tofu, soy products. Vegetarian this, vegetarian that, is just a trick made up of soy products. Regarding tofu, a separate article should be written, which is not enough.
mung bean
Mung beans are the heaviest in grains. A sack of mung beans is two hundred and seventy pounds, and non-strong labor cannot afford to carry it.
Mung beans are cool, and drink mung bean soup, mung bean porridge, and mung bean water rice in summer, which can dispel the heat.
The biggest use of mung beans is to be a fan. Fans seem to be a Specialty of China. The foreign name is glass noodles. Common vermicelli eating is in the soup. Overseas Chinese love to eat fans, probably this will cause them to think about their homeland. Every year, a large number of fans are shipped and sold to all parts of Southeast Asia, all of which are called "Longkou fine powder", and overseas Chinese are called "Shandong powder". I have a relative, a Returned Malaysian from Fujian, and I eat at her house, and she always puts two things in any soup: vermicelli and squeezed vegetables. Southern Jiangsu people love to eat "oil tofu noodle powder", which is a snack, which is soaked in mushroom flat tip soup with vermicelli and tofu. Lunch has been digested, dinner is not yet time, eat a bowl of oil tofu noodles, pretty good. In Beijing's Zhenjiang restaurant Zi Senlong used to have a dish, silver beef: vermicelli warm fried crisp, poured wide sauce small stir-fried shredded beef, whistling sound. I don't know if this is Zhenjiang cuisine. The vermicelli made of silver beef must be pure mung bean, otherwise it is easy to burn. I once did it in my own home, and the fans probably mixed it with something else and blew it up into a cloud of black charcoal. "Ant on the tree" was originally a Sichuan dish, fried with minced meat and vermicelli. There was a troupe whose food was not done well, and the actors had a lot of opinions. In order to care about the lives of the masses, the head of the troupe went deep into the canteen to personally investigate, saw the name of the dish written on the menu board with the name of "Ants on the Tree", and said: "Ah, there is a problem with the food, how can ants eat it?" "How can such a person be the head of the regiment?"
Mung bean rolled noodles are called "miscellaneous noodles". In "Dream of the Red Chamber", You Sanjie said: "Let's clean the water under the miscellaneous noodles, you eat me." "Or to say that the noodles should be put into the mutton soup, and the underwater noodles are said to be no head." Exactly what this sentence means, I don't quite understand. However, the miscellaneous noodles are to be a bit of meat soup, and I have not eaten vegetarian soup noodles. So, do people who eat long fasts eat miscellaneous noodles?
The skin of the cold powder was originally all mung bean, and now there are very few pure mung beans, most of which are miscellaneous beans. The large pieces of cold powder are white potato flour.
The cool powder is the best in northern Sichuan, which is pea flour and the color is yellow. Chuanbei cold powder put a lot of oil peppers, when eating the mouth to boo out of the air.
Cantonese people love to eat mung bean paste. At the south end of Kunming Zhengyi Road near Jinbi Road, there is a Cantonese dessert shop selling mung bean paste, sesame paste and sweet potato syrup. Mung bean paste and sesame paste are delicious, while sweet potato syrup is not much fun.
Mung bean cake is the best in Kunming's auspicious and Suzhou Caizhi Zhai, heavy in oil, and with roses. Beijing's mung bean cake does not add oil, it is dry, and it chokes people to eat. I had a bout of cholecystitis, it was not advisable to eat oil, bought a box back, my granddaughter loved to eat, ate a few pieces in one go, I felt incomprehensible.
lentil
The lentils in our area turned out to be the only one that Beijingers call "wide lentils." Zheng Banqiao once wrote a couplet: "A garden of spring rain scoops, full of autumn wind lentil flowers", referring to this kind of lentils. This pair is about the situation of the Han shi family, who is still well fed, and the rich and wide family will not grow vegetables and lentils in the courtyard. Lentils have two kinds of purple flowers and white flowers, more purple flowers and fewer white flowers. The lentil flowers in Zheng Banqiao's eyes are probably purple. The carob skin of the purple flower lentil knot is also slightly purple, and the white flower lentil is light green. It tastes pretty much the same. Only for medicinal purposes, it must be "white lentils", and the medicinal properties of the two lentils may be different. Lentils bloom in early autumn, quickly bear horns, and can be picked and eaten at any time. Itabashi said that "full of autumn wind" gives people the feeling that it is late autumn. Painters who paint lentil flowers like to paint a textile lady, which is a seasonal thing. In the summer, the sun is cool, the moon is like water, and listening to the textile lady rustling on the lentil rack, it is very emotional. There are red lentils in Beijing, the flowers are big red, and the beans are dark purple red. This red lentil seems to be uneaten, only for viewing. I think this kind of lentils is not normally red, not as graceful as purple and white flowers.
What Beijing usually calls lentils, Shanghainese call them four seasons beans. My hometown didn't have one before, and now I have one. There are several kinds of lentils in Beijing, generally called lentils, and those on the shelves are called "shelf beans". One is called "stick lentils", and the beans are like small round sticks. "Stick lentils" literally contradicts itself, like a stick, and should not be called flat. There is a kind of bean carob that is wider and very tender, called "stuffy bean", which I think is a misreading of "eyebrow bean". Beijingers eat lentils in nothing more than blanched cold sauces, stir-fried, or stuffy. "Stuffy lentil noodles" is pretty good. Lentils are stuffy, add water, noodles under the top, noodles are cooked, turn the lentils over, and then slightly stuffy, that is. Lentils, no matter how you do it, always add garlic.
I had a plate of fried stick lentils at a guest house on top of Mount Tai, which was very tender. The lentils eaten in my life are the first. It is especially rare to be able to eat on the top of Mount Tai.
Kidney beans
I ate kidney beans in Kunming for a few years. There are several dishes that are often eaten in the canteen of Southwest United University: fried pig's blood (yunnan called "Wangzi"), fried lotus white (that is, cabbage in Beijing, cabbage in Shanghai, knotty white in Zhangjiakou), gray konjac tofu... Almost every day there is boiled kidney beans. There are kidney beans sold in the Fu Yong Dao vegetable market, boiled in salt, and we sometimes buy them as snacks to eat because it is very cheap. Kidney beans are red and white, and what we eat in Kunming is red.
In the Beijing small rice shop, there used to be kidney bean porridge for sale, which was white kidney beans. Kidney bean porridge juice is very sticky, as if hooked.
Kidney bean rolls, like pea yellow, are also "court snacks", white kidney beans are boiled into sand, added to sugar, and made into small rolls. In the past, there was a sale in the Beihai Yilantang TeaHouse, but now I don't know if there is any.
Walking around the "bazaar" in Urumqi, I saw that the white kidney beans were huge, as big as the top of the thumb, and I wanted to buy a little, but I brought a bag of kidney beans back to Beijing thousands of miles away, a little "nervous", so I gave up.
Red adzuki beans
Red adzuki beans are called red beans in Shanghai. Red bean soup, red bean stick ice. Beijing is called Xiaodou: Xiaodou Porridge, Xiaodou Popsicle. My hometown is called red rice beans, because they can be steamed into rice.
The biggest use of red adzuki beans is to make bean paste. In the north, there are beans that are not peeled, but the beans are boiled. The filling of bean buns and fried cakes is such a coarse bean paste. The water is filtered and peeled, becoming fine sand, which is called "Chengsha" in the north and "washing sand" in the south. To make mooncakes, sweet buns, and tangyuan, they are inseparable from bean paste. Bean paste can absorb oil the most, so it is suitable for filling. Our family got up early in the morning to eat tangyuan at the beginning of the New Year, washed the sand with a lot of lard a few years ago, steamed once a day on the head of the rice pot, the sand was purple and black, and had sucked enough oil. Our rice balls are so big that I can only eat two or three because one bite and one mouthful of oil.
Sichuan cuisine has sand meat, but the fat and thin skin with skin shoulder meat boiled whole pieces to six or seven ripe, fished out, slightly cooled, cut into thick two or three large pieces, between the two pieces of meat skin is not cut through, the middle sandwich wash sand, basket steamed grilled. This dish is sugary and sweet. The fat meat has been degreased and is not greasy to eat. But I can't eat more, I can only come for two tablets. My son would make sandwich meat and was successful every time.
cowpea
I hated cowpea the most when I was a child, with only two layers of skin and a dull taste. I have never been in Beijing, and I am older, and I think cowpea is still delicious. People's taste can be changed, for example, I don't eat pig lung when I was a child, I feel that the vesicle sacs are very uncomfortable to chew. When I am old, I think that the lungs are very delicious, and the teeth of the elderly are very suitable.
Cut the tender cowpea into inches, blanch in a pot of boiling water, marinate slightly with light salt, decant the brine, with good soy sauce, Zhenjiang vinegar, ginger, minced garlic companions, drop sesame oil a few drops, you can "seep" the wine. Stir-fry is also good.
There are cowpeas in the pickles of Hebei Province, but there seems to be nowhere else. Beijing's Liubiju, Tianyuan, and southern Yangzhou pickles are not available. Baoding sauce cowpea is a whole sauce, very crisp and tender, and extremely salty. Hebei has a heavy population, and the pickles are all very salty.
Cowpea rice is old, the skin is smooth, light green in the light purple red halo, there is a "cowpea red" in porcelain is this color. I once saw a small bottle of cowpea red pomegranate, which was lustrous and lovely. Chinese are very good at naming the glaze color of porcelain, such as "old monk's clothes", "sesame sauce", "tea leaves", all very small.
broad bean
There are new broad beans for sale in Beijing.
When I was a child eating fava beans, I thought about this question: Why is it called fava beans? At a very old age, I realized that this is because this is the bean eaten when raising silkworms. There are no silkworms near my house, so I can't relate to it. Sichuan is called Hu Dou, and I don't think it makes sense. China has crowned things from foreign countries with hu, fan, and yang, such as tomatoes and onions. But fava beans seem to have been available in China for a long time, so why add a "Hu" character? Sichuan people also have the writing of "gourd beans", which makes no sense. Gourd is garlic. What does this bean have to do with garlic? Maybe it's because this bean pod is also the time when the garlic is in the ball? This also seems to be reluctant. When I was a child, I read Lu Xun's article and mentioned Luohan bean, which made me guess for a while, and I couldn't imagine what kind of bean it was. Later, I learned that it was fava beans. Of course, Lu Xun knew that most parts of the country were called broad beans, and he wanted to write it in this way, thinking that it was because of the characteristics of Shaoxing that he was kind because of this writing.
Broad beans are a very delicious thing, which can be used as a dish or as a snack. All kinds of methods, all delicious.
In my hometown, tender fava beans are fried with inner skin. Or add a little chopped pickles, especially. A little older, peel off the inner skin and fry the watercress. Sometimes when stir-frying red amaranth, a few green silkworm watercresses are added, which has a bright color and can also enhance the taste. A female comrade once settled in the countryside of my hometown and said that the landlord put a little silkworm watercress in the egg soup when cooking for them, saying that it was very delicious. This is the practice in the countryside, not in the city. Broad beans are old, even the skin is cooked, add some salt, you can drink wine, you can also eat white mouth. Some people use large cooked broad beans to thread into a hanging Buddha bead, hang them on the neck of the child, and peel them one by one to eat, and the children are not unhappy.
Jiangnan people eat broad beans in general similarities with our countryside. People in the Shanghai area peel off the inner skin of the older fava beans, and fry them in sesame oil into fava bean puree, which is delicious. Used to serve porridge, especially.
Sichuan and Yunnan eat fava beans and are similar to people in southern Jiangsu and northern Jiangsu. The yunnan season seems to be slightly earlier than jiangnan. The year before, I went to Kunming with a writer's delegation and stayed at the Green Lake Hotel. Let everyone order food during the meal. I ordered a fried pea rice, a fried green broad bean, and the writer said after the basket: "Wang Lao really can order!" At that time, the north had not yet seen green broad beans, so it felt fresh.
Beijingers don't know much about eating fresh fava beans. Beijingers love to eat lentils and cowpeas, but they don't appreciate broad beans. Because Beijingers rarely grow broad beans, broad beans cannot be "seduced" by Lu Xun to Beijingers. The fava beans in Beijing are shipped from the south, and most of the people who sell fava beans are southerners. The south bean is transferred to the north, and it has lost its freshness, but after all, it is a broad bean.
Broad beans to "fall into the basket", after drying is the old fava beans. Old fava beans can still be cooked. Old broad beans soaked in aquatic sprouts, jiangnan people call it "sprouted beans", cooked with salt and spices, is a wine dish. My hometown is called "Rotten Broad Beans". Beijingers add a word called "rotten and broad beans." When I was working at the Folk Art Research Society, I worked in Yanle Hutong, and every day after work I saw an old man selling rotten and broad beans. The old man was at least seventy years old, and his hair and short beard on both cheeks were already snow-white. He carried a wooden basin with a round waist, slowly from one end to the other, and shouted in a dumb voice: rotten and broad beans... Later, the old man did not know what kind of illness he had, and his head could not be lifted, but he still folded his neck, buried his head, and sold rotten and broad beans, but he no longer barked. After a few more days, the old man was gone. I think it's dead. I don't know why, every time I eat rotten and broad beans, I always think of this old man. What am I thinking? Human life...
Old fava beans can be fried. One is sautéed after blistering, called "crispy broad beans". My hometown is called "Sand Broad Beans". One is to fry dried broad beans into the pot, extremely hard, Called "Iron Broad Beans" in Beijing. If you don't have excellent teeth, you can't eat iron broad beans. There is a saying in Beijing after the break: The old lady eats iron broad beans - stuffy. I don't think any old lady will eat iron broad beans, an iron broad bean is sullen and soft, how long! When my teacher, Mr. Shen Congwen, lived in Zhonglao Hutong, every day a bicycle selling iron broad beans passed by the window of his back wall and shouted "iron broad beans"... This man was a middle-aged man, a brilliant tenor, and his voice was not only high, bright, and far away, but also had a trembling tail note. At that time, Mr. Shen was nervous because of persecution, and I felt that the sound of selling iron broad beans would also give him a kind of pressure, so I could not forget the iron broad beans. Selected from Zeng Qi's "Home-Cooked Wine and Cuisine".