Gift of good oil steamed buns (prose) (original)

Gift of good oil buns (prose)

Author Xue Zhentang

When I was a child, when I was not at the end of the year, I could always see a kind of food - oil buns, which was a very good gift in the countryside. At that time, this kind of food could only appear in the gift box of the new son-in-law's first Spring Festival to go to the father-in-law's house, which seemed solemn and elegant.

The gift box for the new son-in-law's first Spring Festival trip to the father-in-law's house is very rich, and it is prepared from before the Spring Festival. The food in the gift box includes a pair of wontons, fried hemp flowers, small twist flowers, fried fruits, fried steamed buns, as well as walnuts, peanuts, dates, persimmon cakes, various sugar cubes, etc. The newly married man's family, every time the 25th and sixth days of the Waxing Moon before the Spring Festival, they began to invite the village's skillful hands to come to the house to pinch the flower wontons, put on the oil pot to fry twist flowers, fruits and steamed buns, and the oil was fragrant all over the house, full of joy.

Born in the countryside and raised in the countryside, I have eaten oil steamed buns, but I don't know how to write the word "bun". Until yesterday, walking in the South Afternoon Parsley Market, a sudden smell of oil came to the nose, and it turned out that there were fried and sold oil buns at the intersection. So I asked my master how to write the word "馓". Without hesitation, he told the allusion to the writing of "bun" and the steamed bun. I went home and checked "Ci Hai", and sure enough, this bun really has a story.

Steamed buns are an ancient food. Western Han Dynasty Shiyou "Urgent Article" Volume II: "Jujube apricot melon dish food." Yan Shigu's ancient note: "The words of the food are scattered, and the boiled rice makes the divergence also." It is called Zhang Huang, and it is also seen that it is open and big. "The latter kind of fried pasta, specifically refers to steamed bread, which shows the intention of the ancients to say steamed bread. As a gift of food, steamed bread is not only a metaphor for "opening" and giving people a "big hair", but also because it can be stored for ten days and a half months, so it is quite popular among the people. For example, "Qingping Shan Tang Dialect Ben • Neck Mandarin Duck Society" "Pingdan bought two boxes of cakes and steamed bread, and hired a top car to send his mother back".

In ancient times, the steamed bun was also called a cold tool, and what it was meant was first seen in the Zhou Li And Li Ren. Cold utensils are cold food made from wheat, rice, millet and other raw materials, which are fried by noodles, and generally refer to foods that can be cooled after cooking. Originally, the ancients did not cook food every year in the Qingming Cold Festival, and stored green dough, steamed buns, twist flowers and other cold utensils that could be stored for many days. For example, Su Dongpo praised women for making cold utensils in poetry: "The thin hands are rubbed into jade numbers, and the green oil is fried to make a tender yellow deep." Night spring sleep is not heavy, squash the beauty wrapped around the gold. ”

This investigation made me have a lot of knowledge, no wonder rural people regard steamed bread as a very ordinary food as a very valuable gift, it turns out that it has a historical source, it is also the traditional Chinese etiquette culture.

The oil bun has a wide audience in Jinnan, Shanxi, and is a favorite food for the Chinese family, and is a must-have for gift boxes. The dough is pulled into thin strips and wrapped around the fingers, and it is golden into the oil pot, and the delicious taste is real and beautiful.