Literary Newspaper · Read at night at the moment
In today's article, writer Hu Zhufeng takes us into the middle of winter. On a winter morning, as long as there is a little snow, a garden of greens freezes, and tofu is simmered with a little pickle. Tofu is simmered in a charcoal hot pot, delicate, fragrant, and incomparable. The snow outside the window is white, the rice is white, the porcelain bowl is white, the tofu in the hot pot is white, the window paper is also white, and the red charcoal fire exudes warmth.
Salty beauty
Text/Hu Zhufeng published in "Literary Daily" on February 1, 2024
There is a large area of wasteland outside the building, which has been empty for many years, and some people are idle, so some vegetable fields have been opened. My mother couldn't be idle, and she worked hard with a hoe and pickaxe for half a month, turning over the soil and sowing seeds, planting cabbage, radish, spinach, lettuce, beans, etc., and had to get up early and be greedy to run the three-point vegetable garden, and enjoy it.
In previous years, for poor families, pickles were the best dish to eat. I remember that my grandfather liked to eat pickles in addition to dry tobacco, soju, and chili.
Chinese pickles are very particular and vary from place to place. Shaoxing people like pickled amaranth stalks, when its stems grow wildly and the muscles are full, go to the leaves and take the stems, cut inches and lengthen, pickle the Tibetan tile jar with salt, ferment and become, both raw and cooked can be eaten. People in the Jiangnan area use small radishes with tassels to make pickles, and the tassels are still green after pickling. In Lu Xun's novel, the woman brings out black steamed dried vegetables and pine yellow rice, steaming and smoking. This is also a common scene in my hometown, but the steamed dried vegetables on top of the rice are pickles. I've eaten dried plum vegetables, steamed to black, hot and misty. One year in the countryside of Shaoxing wandering, lunch, find a waterside house, the farmer from the shore of the net pocket out of the fresh white silk fish, with plum vegetables as the base, slightly salty, very fragrant, unforgettable for many years.
It is better to make umeboshi vegetables with frosted snow mushrooms. After the fresh vegetables are washed, they are piled up and dried and pickled for half a month, and they are used to fry meat, bamboo shoots, fried tofu, and make soup at this time, all of which have a unique deliciousness. The snow pickled in the brine is yellow like gold flakes and green like jade.
The pickles are drained and dried in the sun, and stored in the jar, the older the more fragrant they become, and they can be used to bury bacon. The pickles are dark in color, smell a pungent aroma of wax oil, the entrance is tender and glutinous, use it to cook fish, stew meat or add water to steam and eat, old and young love it. Some people use pickles to stew meat, the vegetables are fragrant and the meat is glutinous, salty and sweet, the meat is less greasy, and the pickles are also shabby, which is a good match.
Salted goods are divided into meat and vegetarian, and the most popular ones are bacon, cured chicken, salted fish, pickled goose, salted duck and the like. Last year, I bought half a pig from the countryside and marinated it into bacon during the Spring Festival, and I ate it almost in autumn. Stir-fry home-cooked vegetables and put a few slices of bacon, which tastes very fragrant. The bacon is not stubborn, the green vegetables are bent on going their own way, and there is a dim aftertaste and a slightly green yearning when eaten.
New Media Editor: He Jing
Pictured: Photo.com
i: iwenxuebao
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