▲In Beijing, please look for a dumpling shop to buy snacks
。 Gluttony is dim sum. Photography/DC zhang
-Fengwujun Language-
Eating snacks, Beijingers have a kind of seriousness in changing patterns
People who say that Beijing is a food desert must not have carefully eaten Beijing's dim sum.
In recent decades, compatriots in various places have two misunderstandings about Beijing dim sum: one is that there is no good dim sum in Beijing - this is what Zhou Zuoren wrote in that year, and many people really believe it; second, the cognition of Beijing dim sum by friends from other places is completely blinded by the "Daoxiang Village" and does not recognize other homes, which makes Beijing dim sum a little embarrassed.
▲ Hawthorn pot helmet in Daoxiang Village. When many people first arrive in Beijing, they buy snacks from Daoxiangcun. Photography / Lu Wen
The misunderstanding has been going on for a long time, and Beijing Dim Sum urgently needs to confess. Where is the best dim sum in Beijing? How should I eat dim sum in Beijing? What's so special? I'll make it clear to you today.
Beiping, no food but days
Guo Degang, a Tianjin native who speaks cross-talk, sang a Taiping song from old Beijing called "Rao Zhen":
Flower cake, bee cake, mille-feuille,
Invited the big eight pieces of food to use the sword soldiers.
Walnut crisp, to the mouth crisp kiss brothers and sisters,
Thin Muffins and Thick Muffins are two heroes.
Chicken fat cake, jujube flower cake sisters and children,
Peach shortbread and oil cake two brothers...
▲ The peach shortbread (top) of Aunt Long's house and the Long Fu cake of Niu Street. Photography / He Rong
A Taiping song lyrics, counting dozens of old Beijing dim sum, sweet and salty, meat and vegetarian, singing people full of mouths and ha lazi, after listening to it, you have to go straight to the rao shop.
The so-called dumplings of old Beijing, that is, pastries, are inseparable social artifacts of old Beijing. In the old days, Beijingers advocated etiquette, visiting relatives and friends, marriage and funeral, and relying on food and communication. Go to the fourth aunt's house to chat about gossip and put on a food box; go to the second uncle's house to borrow something and put two food boxes; distant relatives who have not been in contact for many years suddenly visit, take care of good things and bad things, before leaving, be sure to let you take away a few bags of snacks and liquor - and then mention the two dumpling boxes.
Go out without gluttony, and don't seem to understand things. Friends and relatives will talk behind their backs: no money, no cousin.
▲ The older generation pays attention to the box; the young people are relatively simple, and the packing box is OK. Photography / Lu Wen
Beijingers are pompous, talk about rules, and are especially good at eating. You can't buy it randomly, you have to eat it according to the season:
Eat crushed honey offerings in February; eat purple lotus cakes and rose cakes in March; rice dumplings and five poisonous cakes in April and May cannot be missed; mung bean cakes in June cannot be absent; buy white and red in July and August; Flower cakes in September and Hibiscus cakes in October; Sachima in November is very important; in the waxing moon, the hard sugar melons should be offered; in the first month, the Lantern Festival is not unlucky.
▲Coarse grains. Photography / He Rong
▲ Old Beijing famous spots from red and white. This is how many Beijing children's childhood memories (nightmares) recall (dreams). Photography/DC zhang
In the past, the "time series food list" of Beijing people was extremely strict, and at the foot of Tianzi, eating a piece of self-red also had a sense of form, and making a vine cake also had a saying. A lot of "poor and exquisite" is not interesting, only the vine cake is worth mentioning.
This kind of dim sum is rare nowadays, which is very unfortunate. It is the gentle agreement between the people of Beiping and summer.
Foodie Tang Lusun wrote in the article that in the summer, the lilac vine rose attracted wild bees to drunken butterflies to dance back, and a red note was posted on the door of the shop that read, "Newly added fresh vine rose cake on the market". Rattan cake and flower cake are somewhat similar, except that the rose is replaced by a vine rose, the smell is fresher, the taste is crisp and sweet, and you can clearly feel the petals falling into mud in the mouth. In a summer afternoon, a piece of bread, a sip of tea, after eating gracefully, exhaling like an orchid, an afternoon tea almost becomes a practice.
▲Beijing's flower rose cake, the filling is replaced by vine rose flowers, which is the vine rose cake. Photography / He Rong
People from well-off families make vine cakes by themselves, which is the most fun. They often have a clean yard with climbing frames and a wisteria planted in the yard. In the evening of summer, sitting under the climbing frame to admire the moon and watch the flowers, watching the wisteria gradually budding day by day, the years are quiet. When it seems to be open, then pick the flowers, wash them, mix well with diced grease, sugar and pine nuts, wrap them in oil skin, and put them in a pot to steam. Dim sum is steamed, like a bun, but the taste is more romantic than the delicate, fragrant and fragrant baked.
Today's rattan loaf cake, Da Dong roast duck is well done and is only served in the summer. Da Dong is expensive, and ordinary people can choose Gui Xiangchun , a chain of dim sum stores that have been open for more than 20 years. The taste is also not bad, but it is not as delicate as Da Dong's.
▲Pastries from Daoxiang Village. In fact, many old Beijing in the hutongs now often go to Daoxiang Village to buy snacks. Figure/Figureworm Creative
In fact, Daoxiangcun is really a good brand, the biggest advantage is that it is convenient for the people, the dim sum is complete, and the dim sum mentioned in "Raojin" is sold in daoxiangcun. It also sells both staple and cooked food, garlic sausages, vegetarian and assorted supermarket brand goods eight streets.
Friends from other places recognize Daoxiang Village, but in fact, Beijingers also recognize it. Every New Year's Festival, locals send each other to Daoxiang Village, there is nothing wrong with it. It's just that the old Beijingers are not reconciled.
Didu, net red dim sum to taste
This year, almost every city has several kinds of Internet celebrity dim sum, Beijing's Net red dim sum, the first cheese. Because cheese has deep roots. For a long time, Beijing was a "unanguated" city.
The Qing Dynasty ruled China for 276 years, and the Manchus influenced the eating habits of the entire city of Beijing. Once Beijing, from the emperor to the peddlers and pawns, there was no milk and no joy. Cheese, on the other hand, is the king of popularity in dairy products.
▲Beijing cheese, the skin is like gelatin, delicate and soft. Photography / He Rong
Beijing cheese is completely different from Western cheese. In "Dream of the Red Chamber", the attacker loves to eat "sugar steamed puff pastry", which is exactly this thing.
Beijing cheese is as delicate as gelatin, soft as cold powder, like pudding, but than pudding "water spirit", is the daily cold drink of Manchurians. The raw material of cheese is milk that is not mixed with water, mixed with a small amount of wine and sugar, first roasted with fire, then chilled, after experiencing the double ice and fire, it condenses into a freeze, the taste is delicate and sweet, cold and refreshing. In the summer of old Beijing, there is no air conditioning fan, after lunch, if you can find a cool place to eat a bowl of cheese, it is heaven on earth.
Yan Jupeng, a famous actor in Peking Opera in the past, said that after drinking the cheese with pine nuts, it seemed to add a bit of immortality, and when he arrived on the stage, The Huqin was half a key high, and he could go up. In the past, when people bought cheese, they could find a burden or go to the milk tea shop. It is said that it is called "milk tea shop", in fact, it is all selling cheese, hot milk is also available, and dairy products are also sold, but milk tea is not sold.
▲ It is said that the craft of cheese Wei was learned in the court, and he is good at making traditional cheeses such as fried cheese and milk rolls, and cheese is sold all year round. Photography / He Rong
Nowadays, when buying cheese, "cheese Wei" is considered to be old and long, and the traffic is still the same. Probably because his family has many branches, Niu Street, Xidan, Zengguang Road, everywhere. Inexpensive and varied: plain cheese, taro cheese, blueberry cheese. It also sells dried cheese, Mandarin duck milk rolls, and cream fried cakes.
Mandarin duck milk roll is made of milk skin, rolling hawthorn cake on one side, rolling sesame filling on the other side, and placing it on a snow-white small plate, the color is particularly beautiful, and the taste is rich in layers. Dried cheese is the roasting of cheese into dry goods, chewing like toffee. It is convenient to store, not a few, very expensive, belongs to the high-end souvenirs of relatives and friends. Once upon a time, a milk tea shop could not sell two pounds of dried cheese all day.
▲ A bowl of Old Beijing fried sauce noodles, but also sells cream fried cakes. Figure/Figureworm Creative
In fact, in addition to cheese Wei, Beijing also has Tianji Cheese Shop and Wenyu Cheese, the content is similar, and the taste is not too much. Twelve years ago, Wenyu Cheese was once a bully in Nanluoguxiang, and there was a queue in front of the door every day, selling only 300 bowls a day. Twelve years later, wenyu cheese quality is still the same, but the popularity is not as good as before. Fortunately, there was no word "net red" at that time, otherwise a sentence of "past internet red" was really a weight that the boss's life could not bear.
Beijing's second Internet celebrity dim sum, when pushing white rice cake. Bai Ji is a long-established brand in NiuJie, which used to be opened in a halal supermarket, and later had a frontage window, and it was put on the C position of the Beijing rice cake industry. Every weekend, especially before the New Year, Bai Ji's rice cake box can attract a double-layered long line, and the people in the queue, regardless of age, are all tightly wrapped, and one stop in place is half an hour.
▲ Bai Ji rice cake is a perennial queue. Photography/toby
Bai Ji's rice cake, the packaging is simple, a transparent plastic box, Jiang rice cake, yellow rice rice cake, purple rice cake, sesame roll cake, coconut roll cake, hawthorn cake... Seven or eight kinds are mixed together, the appearance is fierce, the colors are gorgeous, the material is solid, fresh and soft. Even if the elderly eat, they will not stick out the dentures.
☞ Swipe left or right to view ☜
▲ Baiji rice cake, from left to right, is: osmanthus sesame cake, donkey rolling, pot cake, river rice cake. Photography / He Rong
Buying rice cakes in Baiji also has a great advantage: you can visit NiuJie by the way. Niujie is an old Beijing Hui residential area, selling good beef and mutton and halal snacks. Bought rice cakes and couldn't go home – the traffic jam was too bad over there. So the big shops and small stalls went down, selling fresh beef and mutton, selling donkey rolling, sugar burning, selling sheep eyes and cow tongues... Appetite and courage swelled all the way, and eating red eyes. Occasionally, when a lamb waiting to be slaughtered is lying on the side of the road with its limbs tied, the bodhisattva's hearted meat eater can also kill at that moment.
Beijing, looking for a replica of the old taste
In the novel "Camel Xiangzi", Lao She wrote a passage "Beijing's gradually losing pomp": "Its pomp, craftsmanship, food, speech, patrol... It has slowly flowed outwards to find a place of man and wealth that has the same majesty as the Son of Heaven to help. ”
▲ Fuhua Zhai's jujube mud pine nut cake and plum vegetable cake. Photography/DC zhang
What Lao She is saying is that all Beijingers are unwilling: other places are becoming Beijing, and Beijing is becoming other places. When all cities can eat Beijing dim sum with a uniform taste, how can The natives of Beijing be proud of their hometown?
So the old Beijingers tried their best to find those dim sum shops with deeper historical traces that could carry the whole thing.
There is a family called Aunt Long's Rao Shop, in Chongwen Gate, grounded: small door face, can not dine in, Beijing aunt personally sold, the window emitted a strong "serve the people" smell.
▲ Dragon Aunt Rao Shop, small paving, grounded. Photography / He Rong
Aunt Long's dumplings, the main meat cake, beef cake, lamb cake, many places can not buy. The filling is large, crispy, richly layered, completely non-greasy, and has no obvious smell, making it especially suitable for winter. Snail lion turning, fried red fruit, sugar fire, these regular snacks are very complete, good quality and low price. There are more people who like sugar fire, less "will eat", this black sesame sauce knots can not eat fresh, have to be left for two days, put inside soft, only sweet.
▲ The beef and lamb roast cakes of the Dragon Aunt's Dumpling Shop (top), and the snail lion turner (bottom). Photography / He Rong
However, what the old Beijingers care about most is actually her family's calcium milk Lantern.
Northerners must eat the Lantern Festival, and the Lantern in the North is a symbol of vitality. Before the liberation, the craftsmen of the Rao Shop loved to do the Lantern Festival - show their faces! In the morning when the weather is fine, put a large basket with a diameter of more than one meter at the door of the shop, put in more than a dozen pounds of rice noodles and Lantern filling, and the craftsmen grasp the edge of the basket and shake the basket back and forth for 15 minutes, and the Lantern gradually takes shape. The author of Lao sweated heavily, the onlookers applauded, and the product was instantly out of stock, which can be described as a winter scene.
▲ The calcium milk lantern filling of Aunt Long's family. Photography / He Rong
Southerners love to eat tangyuan, and the taste is no more dense and elastic than that of the Lantern. After Aunt Long's calcium milk Lantern was fried, the outer skin was scorched yellow and reserved, and when she took a bite, her heart was full of enthusiasm, like a Beijing native. On a winter morning, dress warmly, go to the dumpling shop to buy a bowl of fried Lantern, and stand on the side of the road to eat. Looking at the traffic in front of you, the bustling splendid embroidery will suddenly give rise to emotions: why should life be desperate, there is a bowl of Lantern to live a warm winter.
▲ Eat the Lantern on your birthday. What's so special about that? Photography / He Rong
Some old Beijing also eats the Lantern Festival on birthdays. The son of the scholar Wang Shixiang wrote a book saying that there were two old servants in Beijing at home, and life was extremely complicated. Every year on the maid's birthday, she will eat three Lantern Meals, and then invite the male servant to eat a meal of brine noodles. The male servant does not want to eat, but also to eat strongly, which is called "picking life", auspicious, do not eat and do not give face. After eating a bowl, I couldn't pick the chopsticks, and I had to reluctantly pick a little more, pour the juice widely, and say to the maid: "Your noodles are so good, I picked it again." "Every year is like this, every year the same line, so it is not embarrassing." Fortunately, today's Beijing people do not have this lens, the dim sum of old Beijing should be carried forward, and the stink of old Beijing will be scattered with the wind.
There is also the Fuhua Zhai Rao Shop in Ping'an, which is also a family.
▲Fuhuazhai store, the environment is elegant, everywhere exquisite. Photography/DC zhang
Fuhuazhai is not an old brand, but it is trying to reproduce the old taste, and it has been quite popular in recent years. The high-rise lobby, exquisite tableware, full of customers, just like the appearance of the dumpling shop in Lao She's "Four Generations Together": the house is full of gentle sugar and cake, and there is a slight, a little cream smell, making people smell comfortable and quiet.
▲In Fuhua zhai, time is quiet and time is static. Photography/DC zhang
The house is decorated with retro vases and clocks, as if dreaming back to the Qing Dynasty, and even the way to order food is like the book, you can't see the snacks, only the high counter, the busy guys, the attentive treasurer. Give you a menu, some dim sum recognize, some don't recognize, guess to buy, guess to eat.
Fu Hua Zhai reproduced the old dumpling shop, but also reproduced some uncommon Beijing dim sum - Seven Star Ideas, Sunni Efen White Cake, Chongyang Flower Cake...
▲ Seven Star Ideas of Fu Hua Zhai and Sunni Efen White Cake. Photography/DC zhang
This kind of dim sum carries the mystery of eternity. In the past, the idea was divided into sweet and salty, using crispy white noodles, white sugar, or pretzel and cream as raw materials, which could not be bought in the dumpling shop, and was only customized for private use, specially used for sacrifice. After the sacrifice was completed, the family divided the ideas and called it "Scattered Blessings Eat Gram Food".
In the palace, there were many days of death, and the ideas could not be eaten, so some people put away the ideas, made them into sauce, and sold them to the princes and nobles to eat--this is what Tang Lusun said in his book. Tang Lusun certainly did not deceive people, but what is this "idea sauce"? How does it taste and how is it made? Clueless, it's weird.
▲ Fu hua zhai's dim sum, I want to eat it when I look at it. Photography / Pottery
Fu Hua Zhai's seven-star ideas are still somewhat different from the ideas described by Tang Lusun, small white round cakes, sweet taste, strong milk flavor, seven dots on the round cake, some cute and cute. Take a bite, sweet and crispy, suitable for snacks, but also suitable for filling hunger. This dim sum has not been sold in Beijing.
Fuhua Zhai also has a must, which is said to be Cixi's favorite at that time - kidney bean rolls. Kidney bean rolls are also sweets, the method is to cook, mash, paste, filter, after setting into bean paste, black sesame seeds and other fillings, the skin is white, soft and delicate, the inside is sweet but not greasy. This kind of dim sum is very easy to spoil and dry, and many people don't like it.
▲ Fuhua Zhai's chestnut paste and kidney bean rolls, who can resist not swallowing? Photography/DC zhang
But Fu Hua Zhai's kidney bean rolls are really difficult to refuse. First of all, its appearance is extremely high, a small piece like a mahjong card, people can't let go; secondly, it will play the delicacy of the kidney bean skin to the extreme, the skin is slightly cool, the entrance is melted, dense and meticulous, unimaginable, the taste is like warm falling snow, sweet as the whisper of the lover, the most rare thing is with a sense of youthful freshness, not dry and soft, the humidity is just right. Unfortunately, the shelf life of this snack is very short, even if it is stored in the refrigerator, it will not be put away for long, and it is not suitable for remote carrying.