Snack Dayi | a traditional Beijing snack kidney bean roll made of "imported products"

White kidney beans, native to the Americas, arrived in Beijing, this imported ingredient was on the menu of the royal meal, and was made into a snow-white, refreshing and delicious snack "kidney bean roll". Today, let's follow the story of a generation of snack master Feng Huaishen and look for memories of The traditional snack "kidney bean roll" in Beijing

The following is Teacher Feng Huaishen's self-report▼

01 This "kidney bean roll" I made was on the table of the APEC meeting.

When the Mexican leaders who came to the meeting ate this happy fragrance, they wondered if he could think that such exquisite and delicious raw materials actually came from his homeland.

Interestingly, the main raw material of our Beijing traditional snack kidney bean roll, white kidney bean, is an authentic imported product, and the hometown is in Mexico.

Mexicans have had three protagonists on the table since ancient times – corn, beans and peppers, and we Chinese the right descendants to eat these three ingredients. Another name for white kidney beans is called cauliflower beans.

02 How white kidney beans crossed the ocean to China, there is no specific record at present.

If you guess it, please also look at it, it is estimated that this soybean was in the early years of the Ming Dynasty together with corn from Mexico through India and Myanmar into Yunnan, and then took root in China.

However, corn has been clearly recorded from its introduction to China to the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, and it is a royal object and is very precious in the folk.

There are records of corn in the Ming "Liuqing Rizha" and the Qing "Shengjing Tongzhi". In the Ming Dynasty's "Golden Bottle plum words", it is also specifically mentioned that "cornmeal rose fruit stuffed steamed cake", which seems to be the proud work of Ximen Daguan when he feasted.

However, at present, in the books of the Ming and Qing dynasties, it is rare to see records of white kidney beans. The therapeutic effect of five beans is only mentioned in medical books such as the Compendium of Materia Medica.

03 Lala miscellaneous said so much, in fact, I want to say - in this way, the statement that "the old man of Cixi heard the people shouting and selling in the wall, so he ordered takeaway, and later kidney bean rolls became a member of the dessert in the imperial dining room", which is not very credible!

However, according to Yang Yuan, a postdoctoral fellow at the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences, he had seen the words kidney bean rolls in the meal menus of the Guangxu years of the Qing Palace and in the records of Cixi's western dining room.

This shows that kidney bean rolls have been a ripe, perfect dessert since at least since the end of the Qing Dynasty.

04 My kidney bean rolls were learned from the imitation chef, and the craftsmanship was intricate and exquisite.

This process is very time-consuming.

This process used to be called "Chengsha", and although there are now so many modern kitchen utensils, there is no replacement for labor.

Only by using artificial sand can we achieve the realm that has been required for a hundred years.

In the past, if you didn't make this dish well, you had to kill your head. Now, although there is no danger of killing the head if I don't do well, I still don't dare to have a slack, which is the craftsman spirit that I should abide by.

Kidney bean roll [raw material] white kidney bean, white sugar, osmanthus sesame seeds, alkali noodles [features] the skin is snow white, the cross-section is a cloud-like pattern pattern, the image is beautiful, the texture is delicate, the filling is sweet, refreshing and delicious.

Source: "Snack Art: Old Beijing Snacks in Memory" by Feng Huaishen