Red Network Moment News Reporter Chen Jie Zhang Xingsha reported from Changsha
The smoke rising from the countryside, the lively scene in the village banquet, and the busy figures of the village chefs can always evoke the nostalgia and nostalgia of people who come out of the fields.
In rural areas, whenever there are major events such as weddings and funerals, the host family likes to call relatives and friends to eat together. In this kind of "family-style" dinner in groups or townships, "village cooks" who hold feasts for everyone are born.
Country cooks, naturally, are inseparable from the "township", they are next to the harvest of crops, fiddling with pots and pans, inheriting and continuing the local folk culture for thousands of years, in the clarion call of rural revitalization, building stoves to retain familiar taste.
Nostalgia is a taste memory.
In the new era of rapid development of science and technology and increasingly sound information, will the profession of "rural cook" become history, and will the food at the flowing water banquet disappear? On the occasion of World Chef Day, the reporter recorded the hot scene of two groups of rural cooks going to the village, frying and steaming, and their exquisite knife skills, exquisite plating, and exquisite matching contributed many "highlight" moments to the reporter's lens.
Wangcheng rural chef Zhang Shuisheng's "Zhang Luo Legend"
Zhang Shuisheng is a native of Lei Feng Town, Wangcheng. Engaged in rural cooking for more than 30 years, starting from miscellaneous work, now established the "Zhang Luo Legend" team, famous far and wide.
On October 2, Zhang Shuisheng suddenly received a call to invite him to host a banquet, he immediately parked his car on the side of the road, carefully recorded the time and category of the banquet, and carefully recorded the requirements of the guests, so as to tailor the dishes: "The banquet is scheduled for October 10, and the main family holds a banquet..."
On October 10, the banquet was a family portrait, or a wedding banquet, Zhang Shuisheng called the banquet "family portrait", and Bai Xi event was a "hodgepodge". After he opens the menu, the host prepares it himself, and he is only responsible for the preparation of the dishes.
Early in the morning, Zhang Shuisheng arrived at the scene early, checked the materials required for the menu, and washed them in advance.
Zhang Shuisheng's wife Luo Xinhui is also busy on the side, they will try to consider from the perspective of the main family as much as possible, spending less money to do things with face, which is one of the reasons why the business of "Zhang Luo Legend" is booming.
On the other hand, the women who help the cook are all neighbors of the main family, and Zhang Shuisheng constantly intersperses them, teaching them how to proceed from time to time. A cook, like a general, must be well-trained and well-directed.
After making the raw materials, he will put them indoors in time to prevent the ingredients from deteriorating.
Looking at Zhang Shuisheng busy before and after, he didn't be idle for a moment. In the blink of an eye, 6 kinds of dishes were made. The stove is made in the way that has been passed down from the elders, and a few bricks are a wood-burning stove. He is responsible for five pots alone, and in Zhang Shuisheng's words: "When the raw materials enter the pot, the rest will be handed over to time." ”
Zhang Shuisheng was in the middle of making the dish, he went to look at the plum vegetable button meat in the steamer, and he proudly displayed the dish: "The plum vegetable button meat I made is a must-order dish for every owner's household, and some neighbors have eaten it for decades, just this bite!" ”
At 5 p.m., the host informed Zhang Shuisheng that he could start preparing the banquet. Zhang Shuisheng went around the banquet venue and estimated the number of tables that needed to be prepared based on experience.
Before Zhang Shuisheng started making it, he checked the banquet menu hanging on the tent again to determine the number of dishes made and the order in which they were served. Rural banquets usually have some elaborate and taboos, for example, "family portraits" are generally double-numbered dishes, "hodgepodge" is generally singular, and the sixth dish cannot be served with fish...
Skillfully stir-frying in a large pot with a vegetable spoon in both hands, and the muscles in his arms are constantly beating, which is the best symbol and witness of Zhang Shuisheng's career as a "country chef".
As the banquet approached, Zhang Shuisheng was busy.
While he was making the dishes, his wife tacitly prepared the dishes and chopsticks to prepare the banquet. The banquet officially began, Zhang Shuisheng directed the team to divide the dishes, and the team members began to serve each dish to the banquet table of the main family.
Zhang Shuisheng said proudly: "What I estimated is still correct, thirty tables must be about the same." "A lot of times, he can estimate the approximate amount at a glance.
After the banquet, the temporarily formed "Zhang Luo Legend" team also completed its mission.
The inheritance of rural chefs by Wang Pujin, the "chief teacher" of the Ningxiang Rural Chefs Association
Wang Pujin, the "chief teacher" of the Ningxiang Rural Chefs Association, was standing next to his apprentice Zuo Wen. In the words of the "head of the sect", don't look at Zuo Wen's young age, but he is already a person who drives luxury cars and lives in villas, and he can hold hundreds of such village banquets a year.
Because he has been an old friend of the main family for many years, it is difficult to be warm, although Wang Pujin is more than eighty years old, he still takes the lead in managing the banquet of the main family to receive his daughter-in-law. After agreeing, he began to think about the dishes.
Because the master died relatively early, he later entrusted Wang Moquan, the taidou of Hunan cuisine, to take care of Wang Pujin, so Wang Pujin also became his first apprentice. In the nineties of last century, Wang Pujin worked in a friend's store in Germany for several years as Hunan cuisine, and now he can still chat in English and German. But wherever you go, you are used to writing menus with brush characters.
After returning to China, he went around in circles and finally retired in Ningxiang. Although he retired, he was still rehired by various big-name companies. Now in his eighties, he also serves as the technical chief consultant of the Ningxiang Rural Chefs Association, which currently has more than 4,000 rural chefs and teaches cooking skills to these rural chefs every year.
Wang Pujin is a master who is not idle, and when he watches the women who help the cooks in the village laying out the plates, he will teach them how to arrange the dishes step by step.
Apprentice Zuo Wen is a diligent young man who created Zuo Wen mobile kitchen a few years ago, with a turnover of several million a year, and currently has dozens of employees. This time the chef summoned, he immediately came over and showed his original dishes with the master.
Whether the dish is good or not, first look at the color, and then look at the taste. Wang Pujin took the vegetable spoon to taste it, and his apprentice Zuo Wen did not dare to relax when he watched the master taste it, and quickly took out the vegetable spoon to taste it.
The taste is fine, but the green onion is a little less. Wang Pujin immediately ran to the main vegetable field, picked some green onions and rushed back to the kitchen.
Wang Pujin is an approachable old man, deeply liked by the apprentices, and between busy times, the female employees of the apprentice company talk and laugh with Wang Pujin.
The changes of the times also gave the chef a headache, looking at these crafts he shook his head, Ningxiang banquets like to be decorated with carvings, in the past he used to carve 200 dish decorations a day. Now these country cooks are lazy and buy all the crafts.
All kinds of preparations are done, and the main house is ready to open the table. Wang Pujin held the menu and reminded the apprentices to pay attention to the order of serving.
When the apprentices were serving, he was spinning around the banquet, first to see if the banquet dishes were served, and the other to see whether the dishes on the banquet were loved by the guests, and then he would record these and be more experienced next time.
Wang Pujin said that the reason for the good development of Ningxiang rural kitchen is inseparable from the support and supervision of the local government and the help of the association. During the banquet, He Xiang, a staff member of the Ningxiang Food Safety Office, came to the back kitchen to check the hygiene and sampling of the dishes made by the township kitchen. When the staff saw Wang Pujin, they greeted him familiarly: "It turns out that you are always in charge here, no wonder the kitchen is clean." ”
After the banquet, Zuo Wen happily showed the reporter the happy money given by the main family, although tired at the end of the day, but full of harvest.
"One dish, one world, one line and one river". Under the leadership of Wang Pujin, rural kitchens are becoming younger and younger, and dishes are becoming more and more innovative, which is a side display of rural revitalization. In the fast pace of rural revitalization, the rural kitchen that builds the stove makes the fragrance float farther and makes the homesickness stronger.