Spring blossoms
The earth shoots out
Suzhou people who "don't eat from time to time"
The tip of the tongue also began to move
Released in early spring
Grass head cake, malt cake, sake cake
Steeped in tradition and local feelings
It is the "good heart" that the old Suzhou people have been thinking about for a year
Take advantage of the spring light
Be sure to take a bite!
Spring blossoms, Tiger Hill Wetland Park is lush with greenery.
Once home to three villages in the Baiyang Bay area, the fields of the old days were overgrown with a flower-like weed that crawled on the ground in early spring, known locally as "grass head (lime grass)".
It is this inconspicuous grass that has made a traditional Suzhou delicacy - grass head cake.
Grass head
Grass head cake
February and March are when lime grass is at its most tender and juicy, and although lime grass is becoming more and more difficult to find these days, in order to taste this bite of "freshness", you have to run farther to find it.
【Production】
The collected grass head is cleaned with clean water, soaked for several hours, blanched in boiling water for a few minutes and taken out and kneaded, drained off the bitter taste, and then the grass head is finely chopped and small, put it in water and add a little edible alkali, simmer for one to two hours until the grass head is slightly paste, you can knead it into a cake with the dough, then fry until golden brown on both sides, and then put it into a pot and steam for 10 minutes, when you can smell a burst of fragrance, the fragrant and delicious grass head cake is baked!
With the development of the city, the once water village has become a vibrant new town, but the tradition of making straw head cakes has been carried on. Every spring, the old Suzhou people here will make grass cakes together, so that the spring fragrance of this field continues.
From early spring to Qingming, there is another traditional local cuisine that the old Suzhou people cannot avoid, that is, malt cakes, which are said to have a history of more than 2,000 years.
malt
As the name implies, one of the important raw materials of malt cake is spring fresh and tender malt, you need to select the best wheat since early spring, soak it in a warm place, water it morning and evening, induce the bud to keep warm for more than ten days, select its young shoots to dry, and then take half of glutinous rice and japonica rice, finely grind into powder for use.
Sagegrass
In March, when the peach and willows are green, the fields are full of grass in spring, and the long and long sage grass is dotted with fertile fields. Another raw material of malt cake is it, and the modern idyllic poet Feng Zhi once wrote the grass and wood poem "Rat Grass", which is a good material for making malt cake.
【Production】
Take the tender sage koji grass after exposure to the sun, blanch and drain, then boil it and mash it, and add water with malt flour and rice flour to make a firm ball, sweet will add some bean paste as a filling, dip the outside with sesame seeds, put it in a hot pan coated with vegetable oil and fry, fry until the thick burnt aroma is wrapped in a hint of grassy flavor, a fragrant malt cake can be out of the pan.
Malt cakes, which can only be eaten in early spring, gradually disappear after Qingming, and if you want to eat them, you can only wait for the next year.
It is often said that the spring breeze is intoxicating, but in Gusu in spring, there is also a delicacy that is intoxicating - wine cakes.
In early spring, the sake brew is on the market. Yuan wrote in the "Suiyuan Food List": "Use wine as yeast to make noodles You Song." "When you knead the wine into the crust, the more chewy the pie gets, and the aftertaste has a hint of wine. Every year at the beginning of spring, the sweet and sour aroma of wine brewed cakes pervades the streets and alleys, and the cakes are not intoxicating and people are drunk~
【Production】
The refined sake is stirred into flour, kneaded, and left to ferment for about four hours, so that the dough is soft and tough, and the taste is slightly acidic and fragrant. Add the sweet bean paste filling and diced sugar plate oil, carefully kneaded and pressed to form, and the prototype of the sake cake is good.
Drizzle a layer of rapeseed oil evenly in the oven, put the prepared sake cake into the oven and bake, and after a few minutes, turn it over in turn until golden brown on both sides, and a steaming pot of sake cake is baked.
Take a bite while it's hot, the dough is soft and slightly crunchy, with a faint wine aroma, the mellow sugar plate oil melts at high temperature and blends with the bean paste, which is the "highlight moment" of the wine cake appreciation. The aroma of powder, wine, filling, lard in the mouth, the more chewed the more fused, the more intriguing.
Spring in Jiangnan is fleeting, and this warm and sweet wine cake is the best limited food in early spring.
Gusu's Spring
Start by eating bread
Put the food
Together with spring
Let's get caught up in the tip of your tongue!