Text: Northern Jiangsu small leaves
Pictured: Wei Yanlong
Around the Mid-Autumn Festival, open the circle of friends and discover a variety of cuisines, change and make people feast. But the delicacy I am talking about today, I can guarantee, very few people dare to eat it.
Over the years, working in the field, my knowledge has gradually increased. I heard a colleague say many times that in their hometown, eating bee pupae is more common, because the nutritional value is relatively high, the taste is good, and it is loved by the locals.
The speaker has no intention, the listener intends. The words of my colleagues were remembered in my heart. Coincidentally, not far from where I lived, I saw three or four wild honeycombs.
Curious, I decided to give it a try. Taking advantage of the holiday, I did the corresponding protection and decided to poke the honeycomb. I tied a handful of dried thatch to the top of the long bamboo pole, lit it, and quickly erected it, and the honeycombs fled in all directions, so that the honeycombs came to me.
When I was a child, almost every household could see wild honeycombs, some under the eaves, some in straw stacks, some in pigsty, some in the branches of locust trees, and in childhood, sneaking around poking honeycombs, which was also a "compulsory course" for each of our children.
Seeing the honeycomb, I really admired the ingenuity of the bees, the hive spread outward from the inside to the outside, layer by layer, I counted, there are more than a dozen floors.
The white and tender pupae sleeping in the hive looked a little maddening.
One year I was on a business trip to Kunming, Yunnan Province, a local friend when inviting me to dinner, once ordered a fried bee pupa, but no matter how he persuaded, I felt unable to move, and later, it was difficult to be generous, I ate one with my eyes closed, I did not expect the crispy taste, completely beyond my imagination, from then on I knew that if you want to taste food, you often need guts.
I called the colleague and he said that if you use wild bee pupae to boil soup, the nutritional value will be better.
So I made it the way he told me, and half an hour later, a pot of fragrant and fresh bee pupa soup was finished.
How could I taste such a rare thing alone, and at lunchtime, my colleague brought another small friend to "hold the scene".
This is the first time in my life to drink bee pupa soup, the taste, according to my writing, can not be described, I only feel: the taste is soft and fragrant, a bite open, the protein in the pupae slowly flowed out, rich and delicious. Colleagues joked to me: People who have not tasted it, see disgusting, in your hometown of Xuzhou, have eaten this delicacy, maybe your first!