I think of the old noodles in my hometown
Ma Shouxi
The vast countryside of Keshketeng Banner was once the production area of cherry, and there are many varieties of pasta made of noodles as raw materials, with different flavors. Speaking of the old noodles of the hometown, today's young people are not familiar with it, but people who have come from the 1940s and 1950s will certainly not be unfamiliar with those who came from the 60s and 70s.
Old noodles used to be the main noodles of the people in the countryside in the hometown towns in the past years, since I can remember, almost every day to eat a meal of noodles, noodles, is the flour ground from the wheat, its historical evolution, the practice of KeQizhi. There are two kinds of noodles: water noodles and dry bungee. Water tao noodles is a flour made of water to remove sand and debris, dry noodles that are not used to pan without water tao, dry fried grinding, water noodles are soft, have bones, eat special tendons, more used to make thin noodles, such as steamed caviar, steamed tiles, wrapped in large (steamed dumplings). Dry bungee noodles are suitable for coolies and kings.
Most of the people in the hometown have a bird's bed, which is prepared for the pressed bird noodles, the noodles are boiled with boiling water and the wooden bird bed is rolled into thin strips, steamed in a pot, and eaten with another dish. Many families do not use the dumpling bed, but use hand rubbing of the roe noodles, steamed caviar noodles with boiling water and better, put on the board, rub into thick and fragrant strips with their hands, skilled people can rub left and right hands at the same time, fast and symmetrical, steamed with a variety of brine, that delicious taste, always let you taste endlessly, roe also has a kind of boiled roe, rub into small flat fish by hand, boiled with good vegetable soup, eating and fragrant and slippery.
Hometown people eat noodles can be described as a variety of forms, of which tiles are also more common, with boiling water and good, with the hands on the kitchen knife or tiles to push into thin slices, some simply roll up the sleeves on the arm to push, roll into a cylinder on the grate steamed, mixed with meat brine is very delicious.
At that time, every day at breakfast, the family was almost always playing the noodles, after boiling the pot with an appropriate amount of water, the noodles were sprinkled in the pot, to be sprinkled very carefully, cooked for ten minutes and then stirred with chopsticks into a small noodle bomb, covered the pot and simmered for a while, every three or four minutes with a rice spatula to turn over, turned over three or four times and then cooked. In order to make the noodles coolie more flavorful, some add yam (potatoes), called yam coolie, some add green onion, put oil, called green onion fried coolie.
Hometown people also use noodles to make pot stickers, single cakes, and baked cakes. Stir-fried noodles are people's must-use grain, with the noodles cooked and then fried dry ground noodles, called stir-fried noodles. At that time, whether in towns or agricultural and pastoral areas, there were more cattle carts, often bringing dozens of pounds of fried noodles as a staple food on the road.
I remember in the fifties and sixties, when we were in elementary school, the work and rest time was basically 9:30 a.m., after school at two or three o'clock in the afternoon, there was no lunch break, half an hour lunch break to eat dry food cakes, everyone ate two meals a day, and in addition to classes in school, the basic spare time was to play, but they didn't feel hungry, because the old coolie was at the bottom.
In the early 1960s, it was the era of "melon and vegetable generation" in various places, because the sky did not go according to people's wishes, there was always drought and little rain, continuous drought, although the mobilization slogan of "the sky is drought, the people are dry" was shouted everywhere, but the large areas of farmland that longed for rain and dew to moisturize were only widely planted and thin, and the hometown people spent the hard years relying on this old noodle, did not hear that there was a phenomenon of starvation in their hometown, and even the Xisha Wozi, which had been dry for a long time without rain, harvested a good harvest of wheat every year. Eating the old noodles of the hometown, out of the many good cadres who are honest and honest in performing official duties, the people's children and soldiers, the talents of colleges and middle schools, the old noodles, are the life-saving food of the people in their hometown, and who will forget the nurturing grace of the old noodles?
Now, people eat rice white noodles to eat too much, big fish and big meat to eat tired, always chanting natural green food, some restaurants have begun to put the noodles roe, tiles invited to the dinner table, let people change the taste, eat the long-lost old noodles coolie, etc. I sighed, who ever thought, in the past difficult years with this stomach of the old noodles are now treated as rare to taste, hometown noodles with hometown water, there is a real taste of noodle rice, now to the restaurant can no longer eat the taste of the original hometown noodle rice, The old noodles accompanied me through my childhood, and the middle-aged and young age will always make me reminisce endlessly, thinking of the old noodles, and I will never forget the nurturing grace of the hard work of my relatives.
The author, Ma Shouxi, of Hui ethnicity, is a native of Keqi, Inner Mongolia, who has been engaged in education and journalism for many years. In 2002, he retired from Chifeng Daily Media Group and published a number of articles in the press.