Minshang Daily reporter Jiali
Local specialties are the flowers of civilization that bloom all over the land of Shenzhou and inherit history and culture, and are colorful and timeless treasures of Chinese food culture, with the unique genes of one side of the water and soil and the other style contained in it, the more people taste the more they taste, the more they linger.
Located in central Fujian, Youxi is known as a thousand-year-old county, the birthplace of zhu Xi (1130-1200 AD), a famous theologian and educator of the Southern Song Dynasty, and the ancestral hometown of Guo Jujing, the author of the "Twenty-Four Filial Pieties" of the Yuan Dynasty. Bu rabbit Bu duck is a unique historical dish of Youxi, but also a famous snack in Fujian, which has been recorded in books such as "Youxi County Chronicle" and "Youxi Famous Production History".
The Youxi dialect calls the bamboo smoked food on the pot rack "Bu", bu rabbit bu duck, also known as rice smoked rabbit, rice smoked duck, by grilling the rice caramel into the meat, adding a rich style and charm to the rabbit meat and duck meat taste of the mountain wilderness. For thousands of years, the streets and alleys of Youxi have always been indispensable to small shops selling bu rabbits and ducks. However, it is not easy to make a good rabbit and duck, and it takes a lot of effort. Therefore, since ancient times, there are indeed very few who can achieve "C-channel outing" with this technique.
A few days ago, a reporter from Minshang Daily drove to Youxi County, met Guo Taiding, the inheritor of Youxi Bu Rabbit Bu Duck, a famous food culture, and had the privilege of tasting the mellow and rich Bu Rabbit Bu Duck cooked by himself, and then listened to Guo Taiding's legendary story of digging up food from the county chronicle, and could not help but be amazed by it.
Origin: The business economics turned over in the county chronicle
Guo Taiding, who is more than 50 years old this year, is a native of Xiayang Village, Xinyang Town, Youxi County, and has served as a village cadre for three terms in the village. A few years ago, he and a few friends founded a rabbit farm in Nanping, and in order to expand marketing, he and his wife sold live rabbits at the Nanmen Market in Youxi County. How to do a good job in the rabbit business is what he has been pondering.
Once, he visited the Zhuzi Cultural Research Association in Youxi County, listened to vice president Chen Lin and others talk about the design of the "Zhuzi Family Banquet", and mentioned that the "Youxi County Chronicle" recorded Bu Rabbit's practice, and he suddenly felt that a door had been opened. Isn't it! When she was young, her mother used this method to make rabbits, so delicious that children had to suck their greasy fingers several times.
"Now that the people in the city are getting busier and busier, and there are fewer and fewer people who can make rabbits according to the authentic method, this delicatessen market must not be small." Guo Taiding thought to himself. Therefore, he decided to make an authentic Youxi Bu rabbit according to the county chronicle, and pass on the food culture of Bu Rabbit Bu Duck, so that more people can eat the taste of childhood.
In July 2014, he began to rent a small shop of more than 20 square meters in the north gate section of Youxi City and opened the "Youxi County Zhuzi Hometown Bu Bu Bu Duck Shop". The shop is mainly busy with him and his wife, mainly making rabbits, and customers also make some ducks when they ask.
According to the "Youxi County Chronicle", "Bu rabbit is a traditional famous dish in this county. Slaughter and wash the rabbit, discard the internal organs and claws, add water to the pot and cook until seven ripe, remove and drain. Mix a little sauce with sake, soy sauce, sugar and MSG into a thick sauce, and spread evenly on the inside and surface of the rabbit's abdomen. Marinate for 30 minutes, then spread the bottom of the pot with 100 to 150 grams of rice, two or three bamboo slices cross the pot, put the cooked rabbit on the bamboo slices, buckle the lid and seal it tightly around. After scorching the rice for a few minutes, switch to a low heat and smoke for a few more minutes, until the aroma wafts out and then cook. The whole body is oily yellow, cut into pieces and plated, and dipped in garlic paste and vinegar, which tastes very good. ”
After that, there are books such as "Youxi Famous Production History" and "Youxi Folklore", which all mention the methods of Youxi Bu Rabbit and You Xi Bad Bu Rabbit, and the process is roughly the same. Although the county records the practice, in fact, in Youxi County, different townships and villages have some differences in specific operations and ingredients. For example, the county chronicle records that the pickling time of rabbits is 30 minutes, but there are still different opinions, and different people give Guo Taiding different suggestions. At the beginning, Guo Tailing tried to marinate for 48 hours, 72 hours, and also soaked in salt water, and the effect was not ideal. Again, mastering the heat is key. When smoked, it is not cooked, the taste is not good, and if it is too cooked, it will cause the meat to crack, it is not chewy, and it may also burn. At the beginning, Guo Taiding often had "conditions" and lost a lot. Slowly I became more proficient, and there were fewer and fewer mistakes.
Original intention: the more the soil, the more fragrant and fashionable
Nowadays, Guo Taiding has his own set of production methods, and will put some angelica and garlic on the lower layer of the steaming cabinet to make the meat taste more fragrant. And because Youxi is the hometown of Chinese oil tea, red wine lees is a by-product of farmhouse winemaking, but also the most convenient homemade condiments of the people, he is particularly the use of red wine lees smearing, tea seed oil smoking, cold mixing these processes, trying to make the ingredients full of local taste. The rabbits come from farms that Guo Taiding participated in, and 200,000 heads are produced a year. All the rabbits of the local breed of Youxi are raised, and no matter how they are raised, the maximum weight of each one is only three or four kilograms. Ducks, on the other hand, must choose locally raised live ducks, never frozen ducks in cold storage.
"From the slaughter, the whole process of making bu rabbit and bu duck takes about 7 hours." Guo Said the process is all handmade. Fresh rabbits and ducks as the main ingredients, supplemented by centella asiatica, eggs, rice flour, camellia oil, steaming for 40 to 60 minutes, the steamed rabbits and ducks are marinated for 3 hours, then put into the pot on the shelf, smoked with camellia oil, rice laid on the bottom, heated until the rice smokes out of the incense and then changed to a slight fire to smoulder, a few minutes after the pot is blown cold, 2 hours later smeared with tea seed oil to dry, it is done. The whole production process, the material is natural and organic, without adding any chemical additives. The finished product is on the table, it looks golden in skin, attractive in color, fragrant and fragrant to eat, chewy and unchained, and it is addictive.
Guo Taiding said that because they are fresh goods, the shelf life is not long, and they must be booked and processed. Packed in a vacuum, the general shelf life is 7-15 days in winter and 3 days in summer.
After the opening of the Xiangpu Railway, the distance between the mountains and the sea was shortened, but in two hours, the raw seafood along the Fujian coast could be transported to Youxi Chengguan, which greatly enriched the dining table connotation of the urban and rural people in the mountainous areas, and quietly changed the eating habits of many Youxi people.
However, Mao Zuming, who works at the Youxi Chamber of Commerce, is still optimistic about local specialties, because its raw materials are native, convenient, cheap, and the production method has a long history, which has been passed down from generation to generation and is becoming more and more perfect, and has many advantages that cannot be replaced by foreign ingredients. "Although the process of Bu Rabbit and Bu Duck is more complicated, in the past, they were the best tricks for youxi urban and rural housewives to improve their daily lives." In his early years, Mao Zuming was admitted as a special chef in the Red Case, worked as a professional teacher of cooking in a technical school, compiled recipes, and still has a special love for youxi local farmhouse dishes.
He said that these unique local cuisines, whose cooking methods are rich in mountain flavors, although originating from mountain farmers, can still be elegant, so that diners can return to the sense of authenticity.
Nowadays, foreign tourists come to Youxi, you can use the most rural (fragrant) bu rabbit duck in Guo Taiding's brand-name snack bar to accompany the meal, coupled with the same unique flavor of local snacks Youxi black rice, Youxi rice noodle soup, Youxi nine-layer cake, drink a few mouthfuls of mellow Youxi red wine, you will definitely feel the taste of life is particularly delicious.
When this early winter season, if you eat too much chicken, duck and fish meat, you can also eat a few golden youxi kumquats that are listed in season, which are sweet and refreshing, consume and dissolve, and make your trip to "Zhuzi's hometown" more lingering.
Wish: Let Bu Rabbit Bu Duck enter thousands of households
Guo Taiding successfully developed Bu Rabbit Bu Duck, has participated in Youxi, Sanming and even Fujian Province local snack, cooking food competition, and won many provincial and municipal medals, with its unique process, flavor, further enriched the connotation of Youxi "Zhuzi Family Banquet" cultural heritage.
Zhu Xi is the most outstanding master of Confucianism since Confucius and Mencius, so he is praised as "Zhu Zi", and Youxi is the birthplace of Zhu Xi. At the age of 8, Zhu Xi, whose name was "Shen Lang", bid farewell to his childhood life in Youxi because his father Zhu Song, who was a county lieutenant, was transferred to other parties. However, since then, Zhu Xi has visited Youxi Province many times to give lectures, and there are 9 well-documented ones. Legend has it that when Zhu Xi was born, two mountains facing each other across the river from Youxi City simultaneously ignited wildfires, and the fire followed the mountain trend, burning the words "Wen" and "Gong" respectively. The crowd said, "This is a fire of joy!" Legend has it that this is the origin of Zhu Xi's (喜 + fire bottom) name.
More than 40 years after Zhu Xi's death, Emperor Ningzong of Song, in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the confucian indoctrination tradition, posthumously gave him the title of "Wen", and the world honored him as "Zhu Wengong". Zhu Xi has been intelligent since childhood, can speak eloquently, and has a strong desire for knowledge, leaving behind stories and legends such as Zhu Xi's "Child Question Heaven", "Sandbank Painting Gua", "Second Degree Peach Blossom", "Wisdom Victory Chess King", "Source Of Living Water" and so on in Youxi.
Out of emotional respect, the local people have turned some Zhuzi stories into food customs, and many related food culture legends have been circulated. Zhu Xi himself respected and re-taught, and his life has always been frugal, Zeng Shiyun: "Onion soup and wheat rice are suitable for both, and onions supplement Dantian wheat to cure hunger." It is not said that the taste is thin, and the former village still has the last cooking time. "
A few years ago, Youxi chef Lv Liangsheng led the team to collect the folk Zhu Xi stories and legends and related cuisines, and launched the "Zhuzi Family Banquet" series of snacks, which were widely praised. One of them, "Mother and Child Connecting Hearts", is rumored to have originated from the "Mother Dish" that Zhu Xi had eaten. Zhu Xi was young and lost, and it was all up to his mother to pull the adults. One day in the middle of summer, Zhu Xi was studying hard, Mrs. Zhu brought two bowls of lotus seed soup, the first bowl did not smoke the lotus heart before cooking, the taste was bitter, representing a piece of the mother's pity; the next bowl was to smoke the lotus heart, the taste was very sweet, expressing the mother's sweet wish to become a talent. The meaning of this allusion "first bitter and then sweet", who understands the taste? The traditional dish of "Mother and Child Connecting Hearts" has now been interpreted in different ways. Also a famous chef, Lu Liangsheng used fish glue and other ingredients to make a lotus canopy, inlaid with lotus seeds, steamed, and Mao Zuming stewed with lotus seeds and rock sugar for an hour.
"The so-called 'predecessors do the posterity', food customs must also have a scientific development process, constantly alternating between the old and the new." Mao Zuming believes that only by combining Zhuzi culture and innovating and developing a food custom culture that is consistent with modern social civilization can Youxi snacks be carried forward.
The Bu Rabbit Bu Duck developed by Guo Taiding is also a kind of inheritance and promotion of the traditional food culture that has been passed down for thousands of years in Youxi, when the Bu Rabbit Bu Duck may have been a home-cooked delicacy cooked by Zhu Xi's family as a furnace, and now in Guo Taiding's time-honored inheritance, it can still glow with the "mother's taste" of "Zhu Zi Family Banquet" at that time.
Guo Taiding said that the name of his shop is "Zhuzi Hometown Filial Piety Bu Rabbit Bu Duck", which is to make some contributions to the promotion of Zhu Xi culture. The rabbit and duck sold are basically sold according to the whole, according to the different taste requirements of the guests, smoked with rice, brown sugar, white sugar, etc., and there are also spicy flavors. Bu rabbit each price ranges from 200-300 yuan, Bu duck each about 120 yuan (the finished product is about 3 pounds), although the good goods are not cheap, but even Sanming and even hotels in Fuzhou also come to buy. Now the annual turnover can reach more than 300,000 yuan.
Today, Guo Taiding, who is more than half a hundred years old, has his descendants around his knees, and his eldest grandson is 11 years old. The son married a kazakh foreign daughter-in-law, gave birth to a second child, and wanted to take him and his wife abroad to enjoy the blessings. However, Guo Taiding still has a special love for his bu rabbit bu duck and clings to it. "For the sake of future generations, we have to prepare to go abroad, and our passports are ready." If you go abroad, my food, my rabbit and duck will not be able to continue to do, a bit of a pity. ”
"I hope that some young people can pass on the food of Bu Tu Bu Duck, expand their business, let bu tu bu duck branches open all over the country, and let bu tu bu duck food enter thousands of households."
Some friends suggested that he take the road of mechanization and factory production to expand the scale of operation, but Guo Taiding said that it is difficult to preserve the quality and flavor of traditional handicrafts in mechanized operation. Open more chain stores, pass on the flavor of Bu Rabbit Bu Duck forever, so that more people can taste Bu Tu Bu Duck, the unique food of "Zhu Zi's hometown", which is his wish.