Hunan people like to eat spicy is famous in the country, and our table is almost "no spicy and no joy".
There is a kind of Hunan special jar dish that accompanies us growing up and makes us have a big appetite, that is, the "chopped pepper" prepared by every household in the city and rural areas.
I remember my mother plowing the soil deep on a sunny day and fertilizing her. When it rains a little in the spring, go and plant pepper seedlings, which are riveted in the fertile land, and the peppers in the vegetable garden are really growing.
Peppers grow best every year when the summer and autumn change seasons. I grew up in the countryside, and if my mother was very busy at this time, she would always tell me to pick the peppers in the pepper field and make them into minced peppers.
So I carried a large bamboo basket to the pepper field to pick peppers. My mother would always tell me to be gentle when picking peppers, and not to tear off the branches of peppers during the process of picking peppers. If my mother went to the vegetable field the next day and saw some withered branches in the chili field that I had picked the day before, she would have been scolded. Although the weather is still very hot at this time, you must be patient and gently picked, after hurting the pepper, you will not be able to bear so much.
Now that I think about it, my mother, who had worked all her life in the countryside, had a feeling for plants that we could not reach.
At that time, I was too weak, and when I picked a basket full of peppers, I stood in the vegetable garden and shouted at the hall house at home: "Mom, the peppers have been picked!" The mother came over and carried the basket of peppers to her shoulders, and then she put it firmly on her shoulder and walked in front. As for me, I slowly went home after my mother and dangled the small wooden stick I had picked up.
When we got home, my mother and I washed them all and put them on a large dustpan to dry.
In the afternoon, my mother began chopping peppers. My mother put the cutting board in a large wooden foot basin, chopped the peppers first and then chopped them on the cutting board so that the peppers were very finely chopped. The chopped peppers are mixed with some salt and some tempeh, mixed well, placed in a large, very tall jar, and chopped the peppers in a week.
A bowl of brightly colored and spicy chopped peppers brought to the table of childhood will always make our sisters have a big appetite. Sometimes, the mother would put some eggs in the chopped peppers and make them into scrambled peppers; sometimes when she caught fish from the ditch, she would make a fish head chili hot pot. What I remember most clearly is a sentence that my father used to say when eating chili fish head hot pot: "A pond of fresh fish loses a barn of grain." "Those appetizing peppers, how many good memories we have left in our childhood memories.
Today, chopped peppers are still very popular at the table in our hometown in Hunan, and they also go out of the house and go to all parts of the country with family affection. When the Hunan people in a distant hometown eat the chopped peppers sent by their hometowns at the table in a foreign country, their hearts will always think of the vegetable garden full of red peppers in their memories.
You are the carrier of my childhood memories, so that I can truly touch the family affection on my taste buds in the footsteps of struggle in other places.
The chopped peppers that are integrated into our lives have become a brand in Hunan, which is not only famous in China, but also exported overseas. The song "Hot Girls" is also sung in the north and south of the river.
Chopping peppers, the hometown jar dish that has been active in our lives, let us thank life again and again, grateful for having you.
【Event Introduction】
Focus on Huxiang cuisine and convey the happiness and warmth behind it. "2021 Taste of Hunan: Let's Sunbathe the Taste of Hunan in Your Heart" activity opened, with the theme of Huxiang cuisine, let's explore the soul of Hunan taste.