After La Ba is the year. Maybe born in a rich place in Jiangnan, although the material poverty was poor in childhood, white rice and white noodles can still be eaten. The twenty-fourth lunar month, commonly known as the "twenty-four nights". This day is of great significance to our southern Jiangsu water town Wujiang, and every family has to make and eat dango, probably looking forward to the return of the wanderer and the meaning of reunion. Another significance is that in the past, rural people would use dango to offer stoves every "twenty-four nights" to worship the "god of the stove" and pray for smooth weather in the coming year.
Make dango and celebrate the New Year
"Twenty-four dumplings twenty-eight cakes." I remember when I was a child, before the twenty-tenth of the lunar month, my mother had to prepare for the twenty-four dumplings and twenty-eight cakes. The first step is to grind rice flour. My mother chose a sunny weather and washed the prepared glutinous rice and japonica rice in a rice basket, and I don't know what the proportion was, but I knew that glutinous rice was more than glutinous rice. Rinse and leave in a cool place to dry. Then it was the most depressing thing for our sisters. Because my mother wanted to drag us to the house of someone with a stone mill to grind the powder by hand. Under normal circumstances, people with stone mills are people with better conditions, at least those with more spacious housing. Because stone mill grinding powder requires a very spacious living room to be able to perform. Grinding is a job that requires at least two adults to cooperate, one to grind and one to push. And it takes a long time and is laborious. At that time, the five of our sisters, except for the eldest sister, were not a few years apart, and the younger sister could not reach the putting rod of the mill, and our three teenage sisters had to go together to help my mother grind the powder. My mother chose the days when the neighbor's mill was free, and after returning home from the production team in the afternoon, she dragged us to grind. The three of us sisters took turns and two of us helped my mother push the rod. One person rests on the side and then tops one of them, so that all three have had their turn to rest for more than two hours. The grinding work made me tired and hungry, and I silently hoped to finish grinding quickly, grinding quickly. At that time, I didn't realize that my mother was the hardest person, and I had to do housework when I came home after working in the fields, but I had to complain that my mother had to pull me to grind powder together. The idea is that it is best to eat the dango when you have your own portion, and when grinding the flour, you don't have it.
Artificial milling
The twenty-fourth of the lunar month has arrived. The production captain is also very humane, working in the morning and resting in the afternoon. So my mother started making dango at home.
Make dango
Making dango is my most exciting moment, because at this time there is no work for me, and I can eat my favorite steaming radish dumplings and fresh meat dumplings. At that time, we rarely ate meat dumplings all year round, and in order to satisfy us, my father went to the Tuncun food station early to buy a pound of fine lean meat.
Shredded turnip dumplings
Fresh meat dumplings
The work of making dango is taken care of by my mother and two older sisters. In the farmhouse stove house, the eldest sister and the mother stood by the stove, one with rice noodles and the other to make balls, and the second sister sat on the small bench in the stove and concentrated on the fire, which was an ink painting full of flavor of the year. Making dumplings is also a job that requires some skill, especially when mixing rice noodles, but also grasp the dry humidity of rice noodles, otherwise the dumplings made are either hard or soft. The firewood is also very particular, and the firewood is made of edamame stalks and straw, and the fire is either strong or warm. Otherwise, if the fire is too strong, the dango will be steamed. We call it "steamed dumplings" there, like collapsed cakes. It's unsightly and sticky. So every time my mother put a cage of dumplings down in the pot, she didn't allow us to talk more, saying that talking more would be steamed. Whether this is scaring us or really related, I don't know.
and rice noodles
Make dango
Steamed dumplings
Perhaps, whether the dango will be steamed, the most important thing is the quality of the flour ball. To make sticky dumplings, of course, you need a tough dough. The mother kneaded the rice flour vigorously with both hands in a large face plate, and then kneaded a few times, and the dough became a strip. She kneaded it over and over again until she felt the dough was almost soft and began to make the dough. When wrapping the dumplings, I saw her pinch a small piece of rice noodles in the basin, gently pinch back and forth with both hands alternately, form a cone, add the filling, and then pinch the mouth back and forth into an oval shape, making its appearance smooth and seamless, and one by one the white and shiny balls were magically formed in the mother's dexterous hands.
Knead the powder
More than half an hour later, the first cage of dumplings was taken out of the iron pot with a rising white steam. I saw neatly arranged, tall and bulging, round and shiny balls crystal clear, which made people salivate when they looked at it. However, you can't eat it at this time. The mother said that the first bowl should be placed on the stove mountain, and a candle and three sticks of incense should be lit, which is called "sending the stove" and is used to worship the god of the stove. No wonder I once saw the couplet "Good things from heaven, peace in the Nether" on the stove of a literate neighbor. Listening to my mother, it is said that the god of Vesta wanted to report the family's achievements for a year to the Jade Emperor in the sky on the twenty-fifth day of the lunar month, and make a "year-end summary". Therefore, the day before, the family wanted to burn incense to "send the stove", and the family knelt and kowtowed to him, begging him to "say good things from heaven and keep peace in the nether realm." In order to make Vesta not leak his mouth when he reported, he made glutinous rice dumplings and added sugar for him to seal his mouth.
Freshly made dumplings
The finished dumplings look the same white glutinous rice skin from the outside, but the filling inside is different. For those who are not well-off, the sweet filling is mostly cooked potato and red red beans harvested in summer. The salty filling is made with home-grown radish shaved into shreds and mixed with green onion oil. For those who have a good family, the sweet filling is bean paste and sesame filling, and the salty is fresh meat with camelin. In addition, from the red stamp mark on the dango, you can also recognize whether the dango belongs to a large family or an ordinary family. The red stamp on the dango of the big family is a circular or semicircular seal engraved with the character "Fu" or "Xi". The red stamp mark of ordinary people does not have any logo, and the simplest is to put two pairs of chopsticks together and click on the dango. One is to play a decorative role, and the other is to distinguish whether the dumplings are sweet or salty.
A variety of dango
Stamp the dango
When I was a child, most of the dumplings I ate were potato stuffed and shredded radish, which shows that people at that time were generally poor. However, in the twenty-fourth night, even the poorest people have to make dango to eat. The chimneys on the cottages in the countryside, wisps of green smoke rise from the afternoon until the evening. The fragrance of shredded green onions and radish has been wafting into the sugar plaque until the dumplings are gone, and the heat slowly disappears.
Twenty-four nights of dango
Now, gas stoves or induction cookers are used in the countryside, and without the stove, the beautiful scenery of the farmhouse in the twenty-four nights of the dumplings cannot be seen. Occasionally someone makes a few, and it is also symbolically steamed with a rice cooker, saving the trouble of fatigue, but the taste of the year is also much lighter.
Delicious dumplings
◆ Author: Zhao Xuedi
◆ Responsible editor: Shen Yao
◆ American editor: Wu Ying
◆ Review: Wang Laigang
◆ Images: Collection and Internet
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