The Mid-Autumn Festival is coming, eat a green bean lime| Zheng Peikai

A friend called early in the morning and asked if I was free at noon and wanted to come and see me. I was so busy that I asked him if there was anything urgent, would it be okay in two days? He said that he had just received a box of mung bean limes from Taiwan, the kind without preservatives, the shelf life was only a few days, it was best to eat within two or three days, so 100,000 urgent, to hurry up and hand it over to me. Friends know that I like to eat this kind of special hometown snack, and from time to time I will take advantage of the convenience of returning to Taiwan to bring me a box back. In the past two years, because of the epidemic, I have not dared to travel, and I have not been able to send a handwritten message that makes me happy. This time, he asked his family to mail it and came to me specifically, which made me feel infinitely warm.

Mung bean lime is a snack before and after the Mid-Autumn Festival, in fact, it is the traditional mooncake of the Fujian people, which has inherited the traditional production method in Taiwan, and the appearance is very similar to the puff pastry mooncake in Suzhou, but the filling inside is completely different, sweet and salty, with a special flavor. This "椪" character is very strange, generally can not be found in the dictionary, "Hanyu Da Dictionary" said that it is "lime", but I was a kind of citrus that I often ate in Taiwan when I was a child. I think it is because the shape of mung bean lime is round and convex, the shape is different from the general moon cake, more like a lime orange, so it is called "lime".

The inner filling of the traditional mung bean lime is a pork dried fried with mung bean paste wrapped in red onion, but in recent years, it has been renovated in a variety of ways, and a variety of mung bean limes have appeared, and I heard that it has also been made into cultural and creative products, which are favored by young people. I have eaten a kind of cultural and creative cuisine advertised as "Florence mung bean lime", with olive oil instead of lard, without red onion, replaced by Italian vanilla, mixed with Italian sausage meat, the taste is very strange, not donkeys and not horses, not Central Africa and West, it is really not delicious, but dare not discuss, for fear of damaging the face of young people.

Fuzhou used to have mung bean limes, and now it seems that it is not very publicized, but on the Internet you can also find recipes for making mung bean lime fillings: "A package of shelled mung beans, soaked in water for six hours to wash, steamed with an electric pot, softness is better to hand try to press the granules into a puree." Break them all into a whisk at a time to form bean paste. Chop three shallots, fry over low heat until golden brown, avoid sautéing, scoop up the shallots and set aside, stir-fry the mung bean paste into the pan of fried chives, add 1/2 tbsp salt, 50 g sugar (1/4 cup), 1/8 tbsp white pepper, and stir in the shallot crisp that was just scooped out. Once cooled, scoop out a spoon of ice cream into a ball to make 16 pieces. "It looks like a simple version of the vegetarian filling, the pork is gone, maybe modern people pay attention to healthy recipes."

Taiwan from the south to the north of some old bakers, do the traditional dried mung bean lime are good, the entrance has the fragrant sticky mung bean paste, followed by a strong dry meat aroma, sprayed in the mouth, as if fireworks bloom, can be regarded as the elegance of the hall of the general delicious. In recent years, the renovation of old stores, products have become a popular souvenir in Taiwan, with a vast market that is far away, it has become capitalist and has made many new tricks. There is an old shop in Tainan that flaunts tradition, does not engage in fusion of Chinese and Western, but changes the traditional production method, a kind of meat, a vegetarian, and a kind of salted egg yolk, which makes people feel colorful when purchasing, but it is a bit of business. Interestingly, the propaganda method emphasizes the inheritance of intangible culture, and calls for the name of the ancient poet, and the three flavors of mung bean lime are named "mung bean li (Li Bai taste) milk vegetarian", "mung bean lime (Su Dongpo taste) meat", "mung bean lime (egg yolk flavor) milk egg vegetarian". The introduction of the first title Li Bai is: "Pure mung bean sand original taste, so named after Li Bai (after cutting the inner filling is dense and snow white)"; the second title is Su Dongpo: "Mung bean paste is added to the secret hand-crafted stewed Lu meat, with the name of Mr. Dongpo as a memorial"; the third type does not have a title: "Using duck eggs farmed in Pingtung, Taiwan to make salted egg yolks, after cutting the color is like a round of bright moon".

Turning traditional flavor cuisine into cultural and creative products is a popular trend at present, and it is said that it can enhance the cultural taste of products and even improve the aesthetic realm. The mung bean lime is crowned with the names of Li Bai and Su Dongpo, which makes people feel poetic when they eat it, and is a means of cultural innovation, which is a policy for local governments to encourage economic development and win the promotion of cultural reputation. The idea of this old cake shop in Tainan is good, but the third kind of mung bean lime uses salted duck eggs, but I can't think of a suitable candidate, probably because of the limited knowledge of classical literature, which is regrettable. In fact, it is also appropriate to invite Mr. Furi, who loves to raise ducks, but there are not many modern young people who know tortoises.

The Mid-Autumn Festival is coming, so let's eat a mung bean lime.

Author: Zheng Peikai

Editors: Andy, Qian Yutong