Just one pasta dish has a very different approach across China. Recently, Youku's exclusive food documentary "Noodles with Friends" visited all parts of China to excavate highly representative pasta dishes, and tell the memories and emotions between those who make noodles, eat noodles and the noodles themselves through the excellent production skills and brand stories of noodles in various places. Yu Garden has three bowls of good noodles, full of ingenuity, included in them, and then let's follow the footage of the documentary and explore their development and inheritance over the years.
A bowl of the most "made" noodles
"White soup, heavy green, heavy noodles a bowl, red soup, light noodles a bowl, toppings across the bridge..." Probably only this noodle restaurant still retains the tradition of using jargon code words to make noodles.
In the Songhelou Su-style noodle restaurant, if you want white soup, you want to clear soup noodles, red soup is added to the sauce of stewed meat on the basis of white soup, heavy noodles are a little more noodles, light noodles are a little less noodles, heavy green is a little more garlic leaves, toppings across the bridge is toppings do not put on the noodles, put on the plate alone...
There is so much exquisite hiding behind a bowl of noodles, it can be seen that the status of Songhelou Su-style noodle restaurant in the jianghu should not be underestimated, from the recorded beginning, the history of Songhe Tower has been more than 260 years, and the Songhe Tower, which started with the noodle shop business, has accumulated more than 260 years of noodle making skills.
Unlike the custom of mainly using pasta as the main food in the north, the noodles in the south are often props to improve the mood of life, and Li Yu of the Qing Dynasty recorded in the "Idle Love" that he made "eight precious noodles" made of dried fish, dried shrimp, fresh bamboo shoots, sesame seeds, and peppercorns; Yuan Ming also talked with great interest about his use of chicken soup, eel, shrimp juice and mushroom juice to make some small noodles, and the noodles in the south were exquisite.
Songhe Tower is even more so, starting from the three major parts of noodles, noodle soup and toppings, firmly believing that each process has an important impact on the final taste, and cooking carefully, aiming to present a bowl of impeccable noodles to every customer who loves noodles.
First of all, the noodles should be smooth. The noodles of Songhe Tower are thinner than the general noodles, while maintaining toughness, such noodles can ensure the Q elastic, smooth taste, and meet the pleasure of "instigating" a bite into it. In addition, fishing noodles are also exquisite, in the process of fishing noodles, fishing spoons should be coordinated with chopsticks to continuously shake, to prevent the water vapor at the bottom of the boiled noodle pot from entering the noodle soup, and finally in the fishing spoon to throw out a two-headed, middle stacked "crucian carp back" shape, each noodle is combed clean.
Watch the drama and listen to the cavity, eat noodles and eat soup. Songhelou's white soup is not really a simple clear soup, seemingly fresh soup base, but with old chicken, duck, guinea bones, eel bones, crucian carp and other 32 kinds of ingredients slow simmering and slow, small fire can make the umami fully emitted while ensuring the clarity of the soup base, in addition, but also in the soup to add a little wine sauce, so that the soup with a little sweetness, fresh and rich, clear and not muddy.
Marinated duck noodles
The toppings of Songhe Tower are themselves a big dish. Although it was a noodle restaurant that started, it was also because of the excellence in toppings and Su Bang dishes, Songhe Tower gradually developed a catering business. For example, the famous brine duck noodles, this topping brine duck alone, can be used as the signboard of songhe tower.
The bright red color of the marinated duck all comes from the pure natural red yeast rice, the use of rock sugar is just right to make the duck bright and sweet, the meat in the mouth is soft and tender, first sweet and then salty, with soup noodles, it is a famous dish that can not be missed in Songhelou.
In 2018, Songhe Tower joined the Yuyuan brand family, under the empowerment of Yuyuan shares, the following year, Songhelou took "Suzhou a bowl of noodles" as the starting point, listed the noodle business separately, and opened the first "Songhelou • Su-style soup noodles" in Yuyuan Mall, officially opening the noodle shop business. Since 2020, Songhe Lou Noodle Restaurant has accelerated its chain expansion, expanding new stores in many core business districts in Shanghai, Hangzhou, Beijing and Nanjing, which has reached 21 so far, and in 2021, it is planned to open more than 50 new stores, bringing this bowl of jiangnan memories to thousands of households.
The "umami" flavor code of the plain noodles
Chunfeng Songyue Lou (hereinafter referred to as "Songyue Lou") is one of the oldest existing vegetarian restaurants in Shanghai, 111 years ago, Xu Huijia ended his apprenticeship from Su Liu Lu Xuan Vegetarian Restaurant, raised funds to lease the store of Ninghui Pavilion west of Yu garden, and started the business of vegetarian restaurants, the store name is "Chunfeng Songyue Lou", meaning "Spring Wind and Xu Energy, Songyue Quiet and Dusty", revealing poetry and purity.
Until today, every morning before 8 o'clock, there are bustling diners who come to the store, hoping to eat a bowl of "head soup noodles", which shows Songyuelou's profound skills in vegetarian noodle cooking.
Although saying goodbye to "meat", it does not mean that Songyuelou will make concessions in taste, on the contrary, it is more ingenious to make a bowl of vegetarian noodles that are not inferior to any meat noodles, which is quite challenging. Traditional noodles often add eggs in the process of noodles, so that its taste is strong and elastic, Songyuelou as a vegetarian restaurant can not use eggs, then by increasing the number of times to press the noodles to ensure the toughness of the noodles, manual pressing noodles compared to the use of ingredients more solid improvement in the taste of each noodle.
In addition to noodles, soup is also the soul of umami. In the traditional cognition, good broth is often made of animal bones, chicken, duck and fish meat, and vegetarian noodles must completely eliminate these ingredients, so where should this "fresh" be taken?
The chefs of Songyuelou have been studying for many years, and finally developed a group of excellent vegetarian combinations: bovine mushroom liver, guiyuan, red dates, dang ginseng, Huai yam, etc., which are both healthy and fresh enough. The composition of vegetarian and meat meat is very different, so its umami taste is more patient, and the ingredients usually take at least 8 hours of low heat and slow simmering to concentrate the essence into the soup.
Gold medal shiitake mushroom noodles (left); vegetarian crab powder (right)
The toppings are also exquisite. Songyuelou has been pursuing the enrichment of vegetarian dishes, so that vegetarian food breaks through the restrictions of region and food habits, and becomes a variety that can be accepted and loved by the majority of diners. Today, Songyuelou's noodle toppings have been developed and improved with more new varieties than before, such as shiitake mushroom gluten, Honbang traditional hot sauce, Luohan Mountain Zhenshang Vegetarian, and Matsuzuki vegetarian crab powder. Songyuelou's vegetarian crab powder is added with crystal clear peach gum, so that the taste of "crab powder" has an extra point of "crab paste" gum texture, with a special "crab vinegar", the taste is delicious, comparable to real crab.
Chunfeng Songyue building Hisamitsu Department Store
In June 2020, Chunfeng SongyueLou opened its first branch in Jiuguang Department Store Pedestrian Street, which was its first "circle" since the opening of Yuyuan Business District for 111 years. Just last month, Chunfeng SongyueLou came to Qibao Vanke Plaza to open a new store, completing another expansion of the brand chain process. People are full of emotions about this bowl of vegetarian noodles, and as soon as the new store opens, new and old customers who come to see it line up.
Onions bloom, I only recognize this bowl
The Lakeside Food Building by the Jiuqu Bridge in Yuyuan Garden is full of hungry green onions all year round, and knowledgeable diners will definitely smell the old pine in the building, order a bowl of "onion opening", and the people on the side will listen to it and know that this is an old diner.
"Onion Kai" is the abbreviation of onion oil open foreign noodles, which is the most common bowl of noodles in Shanghai, but it is also the bowl of noodles that can best test whether it is authentic Shanghainese taste.
Old Songsheng from the beginning of the onion oil, it has boiled out of the old kung fu for many years, there is a joke praise: "lakeside onion noodles, fragrant nine-curved bridge", is thanks to the old Songsheng shallot oil. Onion oil can not only be boiled out of our daily onions, but also onions, dried shallots, shallots, shallots, etc., and can not be less. The heat is also very important, the fire will have a paste taste, the fire will not be able to boil out the fragrance, 100 pounds of green onions should be boiled for 5 to 6 hours to make the aroma just right.
The opening of the ocean on the surface is not an optional decoration, even if it is to deal with this small dried shrimp, Lao Songsheng also has its own set of processes. Kaiyang must be steamed first and then fried, in order to be soft and hard, fresh and crisp.
Boil the onion oil to mix the noodles
The face, on the other hand, is the most low-key protagonist. Lao Songsheng chooses egg noodles without alkali, to the greatest extent to ensure the tendons and cookability of the noodles, in the process of cooking noodles noodles are not easy to paste, the time of cooking noodles is also strictly controlled within 1 minute and 40 seconds, the boiled noodles are clearly rooted, in Shanghainese called "bone" noodles, such noodles are mixed up smoothly, eat up and bounce teeth.
In recent years, Yuyuan Co., Ltd. has been committed to fully excavating the cultural connotation and cultural accumulation Chinese of its catering brands, continuously innovating in products and operating models, integrating Jiangnan food culture into dishes to bring to thousands of households, and awakening the humanistic feelings behind the cuisine with the most sincere taste.
Edited / Gao Lei
Source/ Yuyuan Shares