Food shock strikes: Sichuan Leshan Ye'er
Huang Zihong
During the spring, in Leshan, Sichuan, there is a kind of popular cuisine: Ye'ercang, with its popular taste, close to the people, and cute appearance, has become a special snack that people talk about.
Leaf rice is a kind of food that is wrapped with a natural green fragrance and fragrant leaves as the packaging shell, glutinous rice and rice as the basic raw materials to make a "skin", wrapped in sweet and salty filling and steamed in a pot.
Yes, friend, maybe you have seen the beginning, Ye Erzhu's craftsmanship has the same ingenious subtleties as Sichuan's tangyuan. Ye ErCang and Sichuan Tangyuan basically belong to the same ancestor, resulting in the difference between the two: the proportion of glutinous rice and rice before beating, the amount of water added to the noodles, and the exclusive "rice leaf" of Ye Ercang.
Friends, first of all, let's get acquainted with it, this exclusive "leaf" of Ye'er, like the "wormwood" commonly used in Jiangnan, has a high degree of recognition and reputation. It is an herbaceous plant that is a flat, slender emerald green leaf with uniform, fine longitudinal folds, non-toxic and with a natural fragrance. This kind of leaf is best to be wide, flat, uniform, and free of black and yellow spots and breaks. These leaves can be collected in the wild or cultivated for sale. After obtaining the leaves, wash the front and back sides of the leaf several times with flowing water, drain the surface water and set aside.
Glutinous rice and rice are soaked in water in a certain proportion and fully developed, then ground with stone grinding, or machine grinded into a fine powder, dried and set aside. Generally speaking, compared with Sichuan tangyuan, the ratio of rice to glutinous rice will be slightly higher in the rice noodles of Sichuan tangyuan and leafy rice, so that it is easy to knead and form and not deform and not collapse when steaming.
The next step is the production of the filling, generally speaking, the traditional leaf is divided into sweet and salty fillings. In the sweet filling heart, there are more bean paste, sesame seeds, peanuts, sugar and lard oil mixed, and in the salty filling heart, the minced meat of sprouts and winter shoots are mostly minced meat, and it is best to fry them with a taste of pepper and salt.
Make leaf dumplings, similar to the soup dumplings, wrap the filling into the rice skin, knead into a circle after closing the mouth, the size of the steamer according to the actual situation of the steamer, from the size of the ping-pong ball to the size of the fist, and then wrap it with the cut leaves, the leaves are on one side towards the bottom of the steamer, put into the bamboo or stainless steel steamer, steamed over water and fire.
After the leaves are out of the pot, they can be peeled off and eaten, or placed in a ventilated and dry place and frozen in the refrigerator.
You see the steaming leaf rice, mixed with the fragrance of the leaves, the mellow aroma of glutinous rice and rice, the delicious meat and the sweetness of the sugar filling, it is a double enjoyment of sight and taste.