Yu eats, Chinese has too much to say, from the ancient saying "the people take food as the sky" to the current "China on the tip of the tongue". What we pin on the food is not only the enjoyment of the taste buds, but also the memory and emotion brought by the taste, and the food itself also carries the most simple and powerful healing effect.
Every time I return to Tengchong from a foreign country, the first thing I do is to eat a steaming bowl of bait and a buckwheat dumpling, as if this is the only way to really return to my hometown. After eating buckwheat for so many years, I always felt the need to write something.
About buck culture
As early as the fifth century BC, there is a record of bitter buckwheat in the Book of Shennong, which is called "the king of grains and grains". The "Compendium of Materia Medica" records: bitter buckwheat taste bitter, flat, cold, "solid stomach, strength, continuity of spirit, scratching the eyes, can practice the five visceral impurities, lower the air and wide intestines, grind stagnation, heat dissipation and swelling ventilation." "Tengchong is located in the southwest, and most of the alpine areas in the territory are planted, especially in the four towns of Monkey Bridge, Gudong, Diantan and Mingguang.
Choose a good time to sow a good seed
Buckwheat, as the name suggests, is a soba made of bitter buckwheat flour. In the countryside of Tengchong, after the Spring Festival every year, farmers begin to make preparations for planting buckwheat. Cow dung horse manure fern leaf straw is dried, burned to ashes, and accumulated as farm manure. The land that has been cultivated once in the late autumn of the previous year will be ploughed and raked again, and the trees and weeds on the edge of the ground will be repaired and waited for the seeds to be sown.
At the end of the first month and the beginning of February, it is a good time to plant buckwheat. Farmers soak the plump and firm buckwheat seeds in warm water and change the water daily. After three days, when the buckwheat seeds have swelled, the buckwheat seeds are moved into the basket and watered every day to keep the seeds moist. When the buckwheat seeds have sprouted small, sharp yellow buds, pour it out, mix it with the burned ash, and stir well with a hoe.
Growing buckwheat is a manual task. Since most of the land where buckwheat is grown is rugged and mountainous, modern machinery cannot exert its skills, and generally relies on manual sowing and cattle and horses to assist in sowing.
When sowing seeds by hand, one person digs a ditch with a hoe, one person takes a dung basket to carry the ash containing buckwheat seeds, and a small handful of land places the buckwheat ash in the ditch, and when the hoe man hoes the second ditch, while digging the ditch, he uses the excavated soil to cover the original ditch with the buckwheat seed and ash in the ditch. The man who hoeed the ditch had sore hands and back pain, so he exchanged it with the buckwheat ash. And so on until the sowing is complete.
Assisted farming with cattle and horse-drawn plows saves much time and effort. A cow (horse) pulls the plough in front, generally by the man to control the depth and direction of the plough, both to plow out the ditch, but also to cover the seeds of the previous ditch, the ditch can not be ploughed too deep, the soil layer can not be covered too thick, otherwise, it is not conducive to the germination of seeds, three or five women move sharply followed by the buckwheat ash.
During the sowing season, the weather is mostly dry and windy, and often when the day's work is over, it is covered with sweat and sediment, and the dust is covered. Next, under the moisture of the spring rain, in the cry of "Ding Guilang", the buckwheat seedlings broke through the soil, grew in the wind, and blossomed and bore fruit after a few months.
Soak up the sun and rain and grow as you please
Buckwheat blossoms are also high, among the turquoise buckwheat leaves, there are strings of tiny white flowers hidden, and within a few days, the flowers are thankful, and they are covered with buckwheat seeds. The unripe buckwheat seeds are tender green, bathed in the summer sun and rain, the color slowly becomes darker, and when it is ripe, the whole buckwheat seeds become dark brown. With teeth open, the dark brown skin has a green coat inside, and the innermost is the milky white fruit.
Harvest on sunny days
When the buckwheat seeds are all ripe, it's time to harvest. It was the rainy season, and it was rare to meet good weather, and if the weather was sunny, it would definitely be the happiest day for the buckwheat family. A small piece of buckwheat was flattened out, covered with a buckwheat cloth sewn from a snakeskin pocket, the brittle buckwheat was carefully cut into the buckwheat cloth, and then the buckwheat rod was shaken off by the buckwheat rod with Liansuke (a rope was tied between two wooden sticks, and one was held to shake the other), and the buckwheat grain was shocked off the brie.
If the recovered buckwheat is not dried in time, the buckwheat grains will mold or sprout, which will affect the appearance rate of buckwheat and the taste of buckwheat noodles. Therefore, the work of drying buckwheat can not be sloppy, even if it encounters rainy days, it is necessary to spread the collected buckwheat in time to dissipate heat and moisture to prevent buckwheat grains from deteriorating.
Multi-process grinding surfaces
After the sun-dried buckwheat grains are ground out of the flour by electric mill or water mill, they cannot be eaten directly, and there is a crucial process to be done - sieve noodles. Housewives wear masks and first use a no. 1 coarse sieve (a circular leaky sieve made of narrow bamboo pieces, with slightly larger holes) to sift out the buckwheat shell, which can be used as a pillow, cushion, cushion, etc., and can also be used to spread in the vegetable field as fertilizer.
Then use a slightly thinner bamboo sieve to sift a second time, and remove the slightly thicker part of the soba noodles, which are commonly known as "buckwheat bran", which can be used to mix with green vegetables and green grass to feed pigs and chickens. Finally, a fine sieve made of wire is sifted and then sifted, and the essence is really coarsed, leaving only the milky white fine buckwheat noodles.
Put your hand into the soba noodles and take them out, and your fingers will be covered with snow-white flour. The sieved flour needs to be exposed to the sun for another day or two, so that the soba noodles are dry and not easy to get wet and moldy when stored.
"Seven hands and eight feet" made buckwheat
On rainy days, farmers like to roast fires around the fire. Oak firewood spits out fiery red tongues of fire, and the temperature of oak charcoal after the firewood is burned out can last for a long time. Such moments always make people feel that "buckwheat and rainy days are more compatible.". So, add firewood to make the fire more vigorous, boil the water on the stove, burn more charcoal, and prepare for the burning of buckwheat. Several people divide labor and cooperate, some are full of soba noodles, some are roasted green peppers, tomatoes, some are mixed with sauce, pick up brine tofu, some take sugar, take honey, really can be described as "seven hands and eight feet"!
When the green peppers and tomatoes are cooked, chopped, and flavored, the water is boiled. One person is responsible for pouring water, and one person uses bamboo chopsticks to quickly stir the noodles in the basin. At this time, the amount of water consumption is also very exquisite, the water is more noodles and thin, the water is less noodles and dry, whether it is thin or dry, it seriously affects the taste and taste of buckwheat. Therefore, the work of controlling the amount of water is generally done by experienced people, only waiting for her to shout "enough", and the person who pours the water immediately stops the water.
The process of kneading the dough is also challenging. Rub the hot soba noodles with both hands, and you have to knead them while they are hot, but it is not okay if it is cold. While kneading, let the dough turn over continuously, so that the whole dough is heated and evenly forced, and kneaded until the dough makes a noise before it can stop. The kneaded dough is made as soon as possible before the temperature of the dough drops too low. Experienced old people say that when the dough is cold, the edges of the soba will crack, the appearance is not good, and the taste is not good. The buckwheat on this side was still changing the thickness of the shape in their hands, and the people on the other side had already taken the fire tongs to pick up the charcoal fire that burned very cheerfully in the red tong.
When one side of the soba is roasted, it is turned over to bake the other side, and as long as the surface is not ashed, it must be "stood up" and moved to the fire to continue baking. When the two sides of the soba are roasted until browned, and the hand is easily tapped, making a "hissing" sound, the buckwheat is cooked thoroughly. In order to eat more confidently, you can divide the buckwheat into two to see if there is a "white-eyed noodle" (the unripe noodles are white). The ripe soba is crispy on the outside and soft on the inside, and the buckwheat is overflowing with aroma, which makes people salivate when they smell it.
Taste buckwheat in a variety of ways
On the table, a variety of dipping sauces have long been prepared. Like to eat salty, the first choice is to make a dip made of green peppers, tomatoes, salt, flavor powder, tempeh, fishy vegetables, coriander, extremely fresh taste, etc., and can also be dipped in spicy sauce, pickled tofu soup, "old dry mother"... Like to eat sweet, can be dipped in sugar, dipped in honey. In addition, you can also make a variety of dips according to your preferences. A large family or relatives and friends are neighbors, surrounded by a humane fire pond, eating steaming buckwheat, talking about the growth of crops in the field, the parents are short, and everyone is like a spring breeze, warming up, such a good time is the most satisfying and comfortable for the croppers.
Wang Zengqi said: "The food in the world is just a bowl of human fireworks." The fireworks in this buckwheat are a delicacy that can never be stopped on the tip of the cropper's tongue! It is also the village memory of the wanderer in his hometown!
Tips
Recommended method: dipped in special sauce; dipped in spicy sauce; dipped in pickled tofu soup; dipped in "lao dry mother"; dipped in sugar; dipped in honey.
Recommended Locations:
1. Old Eight Restaurant Address: Gudong Town Ginkgo Road Zhangjiazhai intersection
2. Songzhuyuan Farm Address: Banqiao Village, Mazhan Township (next to Harmony Village)