In the worldview of diet, with the sour rot of the literati, I have always taken fine food as the only criterion. Therefore, for the fact that the southerners eat insects, they always have a contemptuous attitude. At the big and small food festivals, when you see passers-by holding a string of fried cicada pupae and fried scorpions to nibble on the right incense, the word "rough man" will be scorned from the nostrils in the dark.
But when it comes to grass worms, it is the only exception. Every time these two words appear in front of my eyes, I will think of those pots and cups that are either crisp or fragrant, and then fall into a kind of self-hypnosis of happiness.
His first love for Hedu was in Chun'an in the 1990s, when it was a poor county with no highways and poor materials. The now-famous Qiandao Lake has just had the famous "Taiwan Tourist Massacre" (what?). I don't know? Go by yourself), it has become a demonic land that no one dares to go to.
We start from Hangzhou, more than 100 kilometers, which is a half-day drive. When we arrived, everyone was tired and hungry, and the local friend who did the east said: "We don't have any decent restaurants, let's go to the most famous fish restaurant..." Half an hour later, a table of more than ten people was already looking at the huge fish heads on the table.
In fact, more than 20 years later, when you go to Qiandao Lake, you can still eat this organic fish head in the fish restaurant that has become a long-established brand, so there is no need to repeat how delicious it is. The reason why it is unforgettable is not because of the protagonist's fish head, but because of the charred yellow "grains of rice" floating on the fish soup.
It is a texture that has been fried, sprayed with crispy pine, and then soaked in fish soup, sucking in the sweetness of the soup. Sweet, delicious, beautiful, these simple words are no longer enough to describe. If I had to compare, it would be a taste somewhere between roasted oats and fried chicken and rice. What's more icing on the cake is that because of the seasoning of these browned "rice grains", the whole pot of fish soup also reveals a distinctive caramel aroma, which attracts people's fingers.
While he was looking down and eating, someone asked inappropriately, "What kind of rice is in this soup?" So fragrant. The master smiled and said, "This is a grass worm, a pest that grows in the field and eats rice." ”
Well, so the wind and clouds of a table became abruptly stopped, and a girl was more exaggerated and went directly to the toilet to vomit. Of course, I didn't eat much, but before I left, I secretly scooped a small spoonful of fish soup with grass worms and remembered the name.
The second time I ate the worm was in Shantou, Guangdong Province, which is a very stylish seaside city. Of course, the diet is also very distinctive, and the grass worm is one of them.
In addition to boiling soup, Shantou people's creativity for grass worms has probably been exerted to the extreme, steaming, frying, boiling, frying, stewing, stewing, everything. After staying in the area for two days, I ate at least ten or more grass worm vegetables. There are two impressive dishes, one is the grass worm stewed pork belly: a large number of grass worms fried to incense, and then together with six points fat and four points thin pork belly, fresh peanuts of the year, simmered slowly, until all the grass worms disappear invisible, dissolved in the broth, fragrant, it is said that eating also nourishes the kidneys, especially good for men. The other is the egg stall of the worm stall: first put down the worm iron pot to roast, the fat body quickly burst out of the pulp. Then pound the eggs, lay the chives, and pay attention to a few small oysters. The ordinary stall eggs have also become extremely delicious.
That night, after drinking and eating, I followed a few locals down to the canal to catch grass worms — and people who have never seen it can never imagine how spectacular it was to be overwhelmed by grass worms when the tide was rushing. I asked, "There are so many of them all at once, don't you just eat them when you want to?" "The locals told me that in fact, the days of catching grass insects every year are the first and fifteenth days of March, May and August. It is necessary to look at the season, when the tide rises and the river gushes into the rice field, a large number of grass worms float up from the field and flow with the water to the sea. Once you miss these few days, you will never have to eat again for a year. And the grass worms that are caught are easy to die, and they can't be eaten, only air-dried or pickled in sauce. "There are flowers that need to be folded", I suddenly thought of this poem.
Before the return trip, I bought another jar of worm paste and a few packets of dried worms. The sauce is mashed with sea salt after the bugs are mashed, and it is too salty and has lost its original flavor. The dried grass worms are very fragrant, but unfortunately, after re-boiling the soup, it is not as delicious as living. It is said that the knowledgeable old food will use fresh grass worms to cook with dried grass worms in the same pot, but unfortunately I did not taste it.
Later, because of the mechanized operation of rice fields and the use of pesticides, there were few opportunities to see grass insect delicacies. On a trip, I ate a dish of tangerine peel bowl worms - first poured oil and salt on fresh grass worms, the grass worms burst the pulp and died, and then added tangerine peel and egg white steaming. The taste is indeed beautiful, but unfortunately, the price of a whole Grandpa Mao is not beautiful. It can only be used as a consolation to the old heart.
Produced by | Food Taste Art Wenzhi (WeChat: SWyiwenzhi)
Author | Wei Shuihua (WeChat: qyqy118)