Text/Yoo Sung-yin (Taixing)
Talk about the Classic of Mountains and Seas with several authors in Taizhou, and the theme is naturally delicious food. In fact, knife fish, puffer fish, and anchovy are not the most precious ingredients in their hometown, and hometown people have used these fresh fish to relieve their hunger.
In the sixties and seventies, knife fish were small trash fish, dead when they left the water, piled in the cabin for three or four hours would rot, after the fishman collected the net and went home, he picked out the big one, changed some money, and poured the rest into the pig food pot, simmered and fed the pig. Eating live knife fish is a difficult thing, even the Qianlong Emperor has only tasted the crab yellow soup buns of Jingjiang when he goes down to Jiangnan, and he has no chance to taste live knife fish. However, I have tasted it many times.
My uncle fishes for a living, and he is also an expert in eating fish, and dead fish are definitely not eaten. A kerosene stove was set up on the fishing boat, and a pot of water was boiled in advance, no oil was put in the water, only a few slices of ginger, a little salt. When collecting the wire net, select a few live knife fish of three or four, throw them directly into the pot of boiling water without removing the gills and internal organs, and then fish up and eat them when the knifefish is cooked. It was really live boiled live fish, the taste was unusually fresh, unusually fat, and even the half-pot clear soup was delicious.
Yangtze River saury
Pufferfish, called "pufferfish" by the old family, there were many in that era, and it is not an exaggeration to describe it as much as cow hair, and ordinary people can not taste it at home. Wild puffer fish are highly toxic, "desperate to eat pufferfish" is not sensational, every year there are several eaters who died of puffer fish poisoning. It is said that there is a master who burns puffer fish well on the riverside, and burns Jiang fresh in his old house, doing Shanghainese's business. The people of Shanghai have a lot of money, and they only eat fish skin when they come here to eat pufferfish. After the skin of the puffer fish is cooked, it is thick in the mouth, strong in gum, and chewed until it is glutinous and soft in the mouth. It takes forty or fifty puffer fish to eat a table of puffer fish skins, which can be described as a foul meal, and it is conceivable that the restaurant owner has indeed made a lot of money from Shanghainese. More delicious is the puffer fish egg, also known as puffer fish white, about the size of a rooster's kidney, and only male fish have it, especially the chrysanthemum pufferfish. It is as tender as tofu brain and is said to be a big supplement. Puffer fish eggs are a seasonal delicacy, only in spring, you say, how many puffer fish do you need to get a pot of eggs? And the chrysanthemum puffer fish is hundreds of yuan, which shows the value of a plate of puffer fish eggs.
Delicious puffer fish skin
As for anchovy, it is a very ordinary fish, with a high yield of 1.575 million kilograms in 1974, which shows that the abundant anchovy resources in the Yangtze River are naturally not precious aquatic products. According to ancient books, anchovies are "like bream and large scales, fat and beautiful", and when they were children, they often thought of them as bream. After the peach blossom season, fishermen do not eat anchovies, only eat in the spring to taste the fattest taste, after the spring to eat then the taste will be slightly unsatisfactory. It is said that in the early years of Jingjiang, there was a rich man who ate anchovy and only ate a piece of meat on the fish, that is, a piece of meat on the belly of the fish and connected to the abdominal fin, the fish meat was almost transparent, warm as jade, and the mouth was fat, tender, fresh and alive. Thinking about how many anchovies it takes to get a plate of fin meat shows how big this brother's family is.
Clear soup puffer fish
There is also a kind of fish in the Yangtze River, and people who grow up on the edge of the river are no strangers, that is called catfish. Catfish grows at the bottom of the Yangtze River, the whole body is smooth and scaleless, the meat is tender and fat, and it was a tribute in the Ming Dynasty, specially for the emperor to eat. The mouthfortune of the hometown people is no less than that of the ancient emperors, at least the emperors sitting in the palace can not taste the freshness of the water, and the catfish that have been beaten up are quickly whipped to Jinling or Beiping, and the umami of the fish is naturally greatly reduced. The most beautiful thing on the catfish is the fish bubble, called "cat belly", white as cotton, fat and strong. However, fish eaters only know the deliciousness of fish meat, but ignore the existence of fish bubbles, which has become a pleasure in the mouth of chefs. When the chef cooks the fish, he leaves the catfish belly, and a Jiangxian restaurant normally sells more than a dozen catfish a day, and after two days, he has saved up a plate of braised catfish belly. After tasting catfish belly, other dishes will be dull and tasteless. In the early years, the author ran a Jiangxian restaurant, and once used the saved catfish bubble to cook a crab yellow fish belly. Blanch the fresh catfish belly in alkaline water and simmer it in chicken broth, put the wok on the heat, add a little lard, stir-fry the minced ginger until fragrant, together with shredded bamboo shoots, shredded mushrooms, crab roe and crab meat at the same time stir-fry, pour in the stock, and then boil the fish belly, season with fine salt, thicken with wet starch, accompany with rice vinegar for freshness, and sprinkle with chopped green onions and pepper when starting the pot. Having eaten fish all your life, how many times in your life have you had the opportunity to taste fresh catfish belly? The author is also a person of good fortune.
Braised catfish belly
A literary friend of Xinghua opened his mouth, Xinghua is far away from the Yangtze River, and it is difficult for Xinghua people to taste river freshness, but the people of Xinghua in the water town eat delicious river fish just like Taixing people drink rice porridge, which is commonplace. Large blue fish grow in the large and small rivers of Xinghua, and blue fish balls are the most common farm dish. It is said that in the fifties, there was a large family in Xinghua who was quite rich, and the owner was very particular about eating, especially like to taste the smooth and refreshing blue fish balls. The chef is also very picky when picking blue fish in the market, and the small ones don't want to be twenty or thirty pounds; Do not have a light color on the fish, but a blue and gray shiny; Of course, dead fish are not wanted, they must jump alive. The blue fish is bought back, and it goes down with a knife, cutting only a piece of meat on the back of the fish, and discarding the other parts. Nowadays, people do not use fish skin to make fish balls, but home cooks puree the fish skin and fish back meat, and boil them into fish balls in delicious chicken soup. The blue fish skin is thick, and the fish balls mixed with the fish skin have a good taste and elastic mouth. A blue fish of twenty or thirty pounds can only produce twenty or thirty fish balls. It shows how extravagant this gourmet guy is.
Xinghua blue fish balls
Taixing people love to raise small roosters, which are a common delicacy on the farmer's table. Taixing people eat small roosters very particularly, when the chicken grows to one and a half pounds and has not yet croaked, the chicken is the most tender and fresh, often two small roosters can be burned to a plate. The Kongqiao people in the north of Taixing are more particular about eating small roosters, and they have to use more than ten small roosters to cook a dish. When the little rooster grows slightly larger than the sparrow, it slaughters the roasted vegetables, stir-fry them in the pot for two or three minutes and then comes out of the pot and puts them on the plate, which is really "a dish eats a nest of chickens", and a person has to eat three or five chickens at a meal. It is said that there is more luxury, eating only the meat on the neck of a small rooster. The meat in the most active parts of the animal is naturally the most alive and tender. A plate of chicken neck meat costs more than ten small roosters of about two pounds. Cut off the neck of the chicken, tear off the skin, remove the lymph, put it in the stock and simmer it whole, after cooling, the meat is removed little by little, and put it in the chicken broth with the silver buds that pinch off the head and tail to stew into a dish. I believe that Qianlongye, who loves food the most, has not tasted this exquisite dish.
Colloidal fish lip
When I was young, I had heard of the dish "Dragon Whisker and Phoenix Tail", which was said to be a delicate dish in the full Han banquet, not so much one dish, but actually two. Dragon whiskers, the whiskers of carp, are removed and made into a dish, which uses hundreds of fat carp bouncing alive. Phoenix tail, the tail of a small rooster weighing half a kilogram, cut the tip of the tail of a live chicken with sharp scissors, remove the hair and cook it into a dish, this dish also uses hundreds of small roosters. Dragon whiskers and phoenix tails, take the essence of the ingredients, maybe the pursuit is the deliciousness and tenderness of the dishes. It shows how crazy the big guy who loves food is digging out his mind, it is almost miserable.
Think about it, for a delicacy, there must be a group of little roosters with bloody tails in the backyard, and a group of untasteful carp in the pool, pity all living beings.