Liang Shiqiu: Chinese eat

The people take food as heaven, this sentence is found in the "History of Li Shi Qi", "The king takes the people as heaven!" And the people eat for heaven." The so-called heaven means its noble and important meaning. Hong Fan Eight Politics, One Food. Wen Zi said, "Lao Tzu said, "Lao Tzu knows, the origin of the eaters and the people, and the foundation of the people's kingdom", which is also the meaning. Why talk about this matter, which has been recognized as the most important thing in life since ancient times?

Zhengyang Lou's roasted shabu

As soon as the Mid-Autumn Festival shabu is on the market, but it is not enough to wait until it is cool and it is delicious. Donglaishun business in Dong'an Market is booming, more civilian, and a better place is the Zhengyang Building in Qianmen Meat Market.

It was a winding alley, and the elegant seat of the Zhengyang Building was on the east side of the road, and there were two courtyards, about a dozen seats. In the front yard are four grilled meat sticks and a few benches around them. Eating roast meat pays attention to one leg on the stool, making the golden chicken independent, and then probing the waist to roast itself and eat itself. Zhengyang Lou is famous for its crabs, which are particularly large and cannot be eaten elsewhere. After buying crabs, they have to be raised in large vats for several days, and they are poured with egg whites every day, so they grow fat. Guests can see a large vat of "no intestines" at the second door. Usually, it is enough for one person to eat a sharp ball, and it is most suitable to accompany sorghum. The guy who eats crab is also very unique, a small log plate, a small wooden mallet, one serving per guest. If you think this set of guys is good, and you are a regular customer, it doesn't matter if you take a few pairs away, of course, the small account should be given a little more.

After the crabs have been eaten, the roast can begin. The meat is mutton, and the master of cutting the lamb in Zhengyang Lou is a hand, he wraps a piece of rag on a piece of lamb (not frozen meat in the refrigerator), cut it slowly with a fast knife, and cut it thinly. Cucumber strips, three-pronged children, big fat slices, upper brains, let you listen to the choice. There are not a few pieces on a plate, enough for two chopsticks. If you like to eat shabu, order the guy to raise the pot to boil the soup early, and the cook can also ask for a pot bottom, that is, the leftover soup brushed by others, which is particularly thick. If you want to eat roasted, go to the yard to bake it yourself, or teach the guys to do the work. Zhengyang Lou's baked cake is also special, thin two layers of skin, no Zhen'er, hot hands. Tearing open three-quarters of it, breaking open a gush of hot air, stuffing the flesh inside, fragrant and soft and hot and tender.

After eating the crab roast lamb, it feels very difficult to drink something, because there is no way to continue after the delicious food, and there is no taste of any soup to drink. There are high people point out that the only thing that can be held down after the crab roast is the big nail, the big armor is the crab claw, peeled out of the large piece of claw meat in the broth, add the coriander minced, add pepper noodles, sprinkle back to the pot and fry the twist flowers. Only such a bowl of soup, fragrant but not greasy. Start with crabs, end with crabs, and eat obediently.

It speaks of simmering, simmering or writing "burst". It is placed on the stove with a bell with a flat bottom, and the bell is heated by a low heat, using coking coal, charcoal, and firewood. The meat is dipped in soy sauce sesame oil, mixed with green onion and ginger, and rolled around on the bell to cook, which is called bell stew lamb, the taste is light, and it has a unique flavor. Small bells for flapjacks at home can also be dealt with.

Dongxing Building and Zhimei Building

DongxingLou is one of the largest restaurants, making Shandong cuisine. Shandong cuisine is roughly divided into two gangs, one is the Yantai gang and the other is the Jinan gang, and the number of dishes is different. Fengzeyuan Minghu Chun and other relatives are more late, belonging to the Jinan Gang. Dongxing Building belongs to yantai gang.

Don't look at the Dongxing Building is a big restaurant, they keep the old style, the kitchen is facing the street, with a wooden fence as a window, in order to facilitate the general "mouth cook" standing outside to learn two hands. People with craftsmen are not afraid to learn, because it is difficult to learn home. As soon as the guests lifted the curtain, a row of people in front of the counter, the big treasurer, the second treasurer, Mr. Deacon, all nodded their heads in unison, "Second Master, you are here!" "Third Master, here you are!" Shandong people just don't call people to be uncles, probably because Wu Dalang is the uncle. A "look at the seat", the guys inside immediately responded. There is a shadow wall at the second gate, and there are ten eight live fish in the large wooden trough in front. Peiping is not a place to eat seafood, and the restaurants are always stocked with live fish.

Dongxinglou's cuisine is famous for its delicacy. Fried gizzards must go inside, and bursting bellies must go to grass buds. There are three ways to burst belly kernels, oil bursting, salt bursting, soup bursting, each has its own wonderful points, the most pleasant part of this dish is in the sense of touch, chewing it is not soft and hard, not tough and crisp, snow white belly lined with green coriander stalks, in addition to the color and aroma also add touch, is it not good? I once ordered three pieces of oil and salt in one breath. Hibiscus chicken slices are also good at hand, thin and large, lined with three or five pea seedlings, and the plate is not covered with oil. Braised mullet money with cut chicks is also famous. Mullet money is also known as mullet egg, the egg word is taboo, so it is changed to money, which is actually the ovary of the fish. Cut chick is Shandong dialect, synonymous with chicken blood, I have asked many Shandong friends, do not know how to write these two words, but read like cut chicks. The pot roast chicken is also a must, fried whole chicken, tang qi took it to the porch to tear it up, and then poured a small bowl of braised chicken offal. It is an ordinary minced meat sandwich baked cake, Dongxing Lou's is also different, the minced meat is particularly fine and fine, the minced meat is cut, not chopped, not machine rolled. Mixed duck palms are everywhere, Dongxing Building does not have half a bone, and the black fungus at the bottom can be stopped. Bad duck slices are no second one, good bad, bad bad. In the summer of the fifteenth year of the Republic of China, a group of friends returned from a foreign study tour, Shi Zhaoying wanted to be a big guest, designated Dongxing Lou, wanted me to do the adjustment, at that time twelve yuan a seat can be, I booked a table of thirty yuan, the content is rich and beautiful, needless to say, what is particularly wonderful is that Dongxing Lou automatically carved out the aged flowers buried in the ground for more than ten years, put on new wine, fragrant, this meal is eaten cup and plate, everyone is happy. It's just that the wind and clouds are scattered, and many of the old people have become ghosts, and it is difficult to feast again.

Zhimei Lou is in Coal Market Street, which also belongs to the Yantai series, and the dishes are slightly thicker than Dongxing Lou, and the price is slightly cheaper. My favorite way to eat is to ask for two oil cakes (i.e. noodles are panned in a pan and fried in the pan) and then a small bowl of braised two shredded chicken or braised shrimp, and pour them on the cake. I gave it a name, Bridge Cake. The fried ravioli that is not found elsewhere in Zhimeizhai is fried and then steamed on the drawer, which is very chic. The sand pot shark fin stew is very bad, not a big pot is enough for three or five people to eat, although the use of wing root, can not be compared with the yellow fish tail, but a few people gathered, this is also the best dish to eat. There is also tahini sauce mixed with sea cucumber shreds, added garlic paste, cold and cold, in the summer than any cold meat, at least much smarter than the tenderloin silk peeler.

Henan cuisine and Yangzhou pavilion

Hou DeFu Restaurant was originally a smokehouse, with some wonton snacks and the like for smokers to spend the night, and later changed to a restaurant.

Hou Defu is too small, at the bottom of a dark alley in Dashilar, a small signboard, looks inconspicuous, and some people can't even find it. There are only four small rooms upstairs and downstairs, plus a few scattered seats. However, the fame is not small, and there is no one who does not know Hou Defu. Hou Defu's specialty dishes, as we all know, include tile fish, so it is done well mainly because the fish is fresh and fat, only take the middle of it, at the expense of work, how can the results be bad? Hook juice has also been studied, and it is necessary to be thick and sweet and salty. Eating the remaining juice baked noodles, that is deceptive, not noodles at all, is shaved sweet potato shreds, otherwise how can it be so crispy when fried? Another famous dish is the iron pot egg, to put it bluntly, it is the so-called rising egg of the Nanjing people, but the iron pot of Hou Defu is more insulated, and it is still loud for a long time when served on the table. Fried squid rolls are also their masters, but they are good at being thoroughly haired, finely sliced, and fried in oil. Walnut loin is also a similar dish, and the difference with the general fried loin flower is that his knife technique is good, the heat is right, and it tastes like a biting walnut. Later, some people followed suit and really added walnut kernels to the waist flowers and fried them together, which was really not right. The most noteworthy is the raw stir-fried eel shreds. The eel is delicious, but the Shandong restaurant does not sell this dish, and the soft or stewed tiger tail made in the Huaiyang restaurant is also very delicious, but the flavor is not as good as the raw fried eel shreds, because the raw stir-fry looks crisp and tender. Hou Defu also has a dry chicken, and when you enter the door in the winter, you can see a row of chickens hanging under the eaves to remove the internal organs, keep feathers, fill with spices and salt, hang for a long time, and eat in the spring. Wind chicken under the wine is the best, different from smoked chicken brine chicken roast chicken white cut oil chicken.

Yuhuatai is the Yangzhou Pavilion, which is considered a latecomer in Beiping. Yuhuatai is the best at soup buns, taken out of the cage, you need to pinch the folds of the bun with your hands, extract it suddenly, if you hesitate, you are afraid that the skin will break the soup flow unthinkable. In fact, this thing is a fresh meal. I usually eat at Yuhuatai, and I most admire its crystal shrimp cake, a thick flat round plate, white and flawless, almost transparent, soft and crispy in the mouth. The trick to making this dish is to use good white shrimp, scoop in the right amount of chopped fat, if it is completely shrimp can not be crisp nor transparent, into the warm oil slowly fried, do not burn, scorched is not good. Not to mention wearing, no one knows that there is fat meat in it, and people who are afraid of eating fat meat are better off less.

Yuhuatai also has a walnut cheese is also well done, of course, it is not a cheese at all, it is ground rice into minced, lemon juice filtered (if not filtered, the residue is coarse), and then added red date paste (peeled) to make it slightly purple-red, and then add dried walnut ground powder, take its fragrance. This sweet soup is much stronger than a soup filled with white fungus seed soup or canned fruit. It can also be made at home, brewing white rice and mashing it to get the juice, just like making almond tea. I found the walnut cheese I made myself more delicate and delicious than the ones produced in the restaurant.

Chinese home cooking

When I was a child, a classmate came to Beiping from Gansu and saw us eating white rice and white noodles, and he was amazed, because his hometown daily food was "paste" - porridge made of mixed grains.

I told him that we in the countryside of Hebei were eating millet noodle cakes, and the poor people in the city were eating miscellaneous noodle nests. Shandong people eat the pot helmet, that hard, really have good teeth to do, this is the staple food, side food, can not talk about, there is a green onion or large pickled radish "coffin board" is good. In Shandong, there are many people who eat sweet potatoes. It's all carbohydrates, calories are enough, there are many, and protein has to be given to beans. This kind of eating maintains the survival of ordinary northerners. "Delicious but dumplings" is the words of the countryside in North China, and the aunt and grandmother go back to their mother's home or the New Year to make dumplings. The children of the countryside know that eggs are not for food, they are for sale. Egg burritos are only seen when entertaining VIPs.

I used to know some flag people friends in Beiping, and they really can eat. I'll give you two examples: how to fry the bowl of sauce noodles is very exquisite. Whether it is diced meat or minced meat, the sauce is not delicious, the sauce is too salty, and I learned a magic method in a certain home. The sauce is filled with fried diced eggplant, and one bowl of sauce becomes two bowls, and the taste is particularly good. The sauce should be dry fried. Another time in a friend's house to eat pancakes, in Bao Huachun called a box, home with a few stir-fried vegetables, that plate of stall eggs have elaborate, after the stall cut into five or six centimeters wide strips, so that sandwiched in the cake is logical, although it is a small section, with a heart. Later, when I saw "Wasai wearing a hat", I thought it was too simple, how did the thin "hat" tear and distribute evenly? Although the number of dishes in the restaurant is more refined, it is generally too oily, and there is too much monosodium glutamate, which is not as good as the green vegetables and tofu at home.