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The Year of the Ox is a guest in the countryside, and the delicious food on the table is full of Flavor. My family sat around the table, and I suddenly smelled a long-lost fragrance: the smell of red fish made me hungry.
In the rural areas of Gannan Province, Jiangxi Province, almost every household steams New Year wine: brewing liquor, brewing rice wine, brewing red wine, etc. Red yeast is used to make red wine, and whenever the autumn breeze rises, there are small merchants who go door to door to sell red yeast. In the year when the wind and rain are smooth, there are many winemakers, and the red yeast is dried on a dustpan, and it is red. Children are the most fond of helping adults to dry red yeast, not only to make a hand red, that slightly sweet and slightly sour taste, but also intoxicating, give people a sweet imagination. After the red yeast is made, it is started to make sake. The red yeast is the spirit, and after a day of mixing the drained sticky rice with it, the wine is out, and it begins to be slightly sweet, and then it is sweet. At this time, the adults always have to hold a bowl for the children to eat, and the sweet wine is not drunk. As this continued for a week, the wine began to turn fierce, and the adults drained the wine and stored it in a mud pot, and the remaining residue became the lees.
There are many ways to deal with lees. Some take bad sweet potatoes, bad radish, some add brown sugar, fried tofu cooked to eat, more for bad sweet potatoes and bad red fish. Pickled red rotten fish is very exquisite, suitable for making red rotten fish fish are carp and grass carp, less thorny meat thick, fish head and tail can be. When I was a child, rural life was more difficult, and which red rotten fish could eat for how long it was a symbol of wealth and poverty. There are five sons in the neighboring family in the village, and the father is worried about not being able to marry his daughter-in-law every day, so he does such a funny thing: every day when he goes out at noon, his mouth is red and red, and everyone smacks his mouth and says that the red fish is delicious. Some women really rushed to this point, married to their sons, and later learned that the red fish was only enough for their father to enjoy, during that time, eating one or two pieces a day, and deliberately leaving red on the lips to show wealth.
However, the red rotten fish is really delicious. The lees are slightly sweet, and after draining the wine, they are already thin and empty, but after fusing with the fish, they are soft and sticky. The fish also has no fishy taste, and then soaked and steamed by the lees juice, it is red, fragrant but not greasy, salty, sweet and spicy, and it makes people drool when they look at it. Red rotten fish not only has a good taste, according to relevant information, red rotten is rich in enzymes, amino acids and other more than a dozen nutrients, plus grass carp meat thick, this is a delicacy, mixed with red rotten fish, is a must, Gannan many farmers often use this to nourish confinement women and weak people.
Over the years, the standard of living has been booming, and there are more and more delicious things, the difference is that if you want to eat fresh, there are fresh; if you want to eat pickled, you buy pickled; if you want to dry and dry, there is dry and dried. However, as a Gannan person, at the dinner table in the first month of the New Year, I still want to eat a dish of red rotten fish, and this custom has not changed in many places. Tasting the taste of fish, you will think of your relatives and look forward to the auspicious year of red fire.
(Author: Zeng Jiusheng, retired member of Ganzhou Cigarette Factory of Jiangxi China Tobacco Co., Ltd.)
Source: Gannan Daily
Editor-in-charge: Zhong Xinhong, Zheng Xin, Zhu Yuheng