The green mountains and beautiful waters and pastoral fields raise good ingredients, why are they the "ten bowls" in spring

The freshly baked spring "Suzhou Top Ten Bowls" on the 9th ignited the enthusiasm of citizens and consumers around the world to vote. One side of the water and soil raises one side of the people, maran head, toon, spring bamboo shoots, pine mushrooms, mandarin fish, snails, clams...... In the spring of Suzhou, the land of fish and rice, the ordinary but full of Suzhou characteristics of the ingredients, in the hands of Suzhou people who "still taste and understand life", after thousands of years of inheritance and innovation, to make a "super delicious". Netizens left messages "Eat the spring of Suzhou in one bite" and "Local food is also a manifestation of local culture......

At the same time, Suzhou food culture, food lovers and people in the Suzhou cuisine industry have commented on the "Top Ten Bowls of Suzhou" in spring, and together they have found and deciphered the "favorite password" in the "Top Ten Bowls of Suzhou".

One of the passwords: in line with Suzhou food customs, closely related to "not eating from time to time"

"The 'Suzhou Top Ten Bowls' in spring are in line with folk food customs, and they are closely related to not eating from time to time. Jiang Hong, chairman of the Food Culture Research Committee of Suzhou Cuisine Association, has studied Suzhou food culture for more than 30 years, and his comment on the "Top Ten Bowls of Suzhou" in spring is "in place as a whole".

Suzhou's folk spring ingredients have made great strides into the "Suzhou Top Ten Bowls" in spring, highlighting the seasonal characteristics of Qingshan (mushrooms, bamboo shoots), Xiushui (seasonal aquatic products), and pastoral (Malantou, toon, lettuce, pork, etc.), the hometown of fish and rice in Suzhou. According to Jiang Hong, Suzhou people have summed up the rules of eating according to the time from life, such as the folk spring pays attention to eating wolfberry head, malan head, alfalfa head, toon head, camellia head, garlic head, pea head, chrysanthemum brain "seven heads and one brain". Rape flowers bloom, the water temperature warms up, in the water surface of the local lake in Suzhou, the carnivorous fish such as pond snakehead, mandarin fish, soft-shelled turtle eat a large amount, the meat is fatty and tender, the folk have the saying of eating cauliflower pond snakehead, cauliflower soft-shelled turtle and cauliflower mandarin fish;

In spring, the "Suzhou Top Ten Bowls" left an unforgettable story among many ordinary people in Suzhou, as well as the spring taste of their childhood hometown.

A story of Wujiang clam soup, Jiang Hong told it with relish. According to him, among the 137 lakes with an area of more than 0.5 square kilometers that have been included in the list of lakes protected in Jiangsu Province, there are two with the name of "clam"; one is the white clam lake with a water surface of more than 7.6 square kilometers shared by Wujiang Tongli and Kunshan Zhouzhuang; Suzhou people also have a saying "mud clams that can't be broken", which is a metaphor for the people of Mune. Jiang Hong "Tao" went to Taiwan to publish the old book "Hometown Taste", in which Zhu Minghuai's "Jiangsu Wujiang clam broth" was written by a large family, which was full of real nostalgia.

Jiang Hong once recalled in the article that when he was a child, fishing boats were often parked in the river port, a large pot was set up on the stove, clams were boiled in the pot, and the wooden basin next to the pot was covered with a bamboo sieve. Clam meat is sold in a bowl, usually fried clam meat with leeks, first fried half-baked leeks spread on the bottom of the plate, and then fried clam meat hung on the top of the glass thickener, green and white taste fresh and fragrant, there are clam tofu soup, clam stewed egg, clam omelette...... In my impression, my father likes to drink clam soup, buy back the live clams in clear water, let them spit out the mud, if it is urgent, you can drop one or two drops of sesame oil on the water surface, before cooking, hold a handful of clams in the palm of your hand, such as shaking the dice to listen, make a crisp sound is no mud clams, or to distinguish and remove mud clams with gloss, wash and put some salt and lard after boiling in a pot of clear water, sprinkle with green onions or garlic leaves, white pepper is an indispensable seasoning, so that a pot of extremely fresh clear soup can be served, do not stir when eating, so as not to flood the sediment.

"When I was a kid, I used to play clam games. According to Jiang Hong, it is the joy of children's childhood to sprinkle a handful of clam shells on the cement floor and pick them up one by one with mussel shells, which is more than who has more clam shells in their hands.

Password 2: Follow the original flavor of Suzhou and reflect the "fireworks in the world"

In spring, the "Suzhou Top Ten Bowls" follow the original taste of Suzhou, and in the thick of Suzhou fireworks, it shows the delicious taste of "blessed Suzhou", which is called "fresh eyebrows" in a sentence of Suzhou people. Suzhou food writer Lao Fan's comment on the "Top Ten Bowls of Suzhou" in spring is: spring is seasonal, Suzhou is regional, Suzhou is full of taste, and it is closely related to the daily life of Suzhou people.

Lu Wenfu's popular novel "The Gourmet" vividly depicts the life of a Suzhou gourmet. For Suzhou people, not only the "three meals a day" fireworks life is delicious, but the cultivation of Suzhou food can also rise to "everyone". Lao Fan is because of his hobby, and completes the whole process from tasting, cooking to writing.

"At the age of 13, I was in charge of the spoon at home". Lao Fan has never been a chef, but when it comes to his family's "career as a chef", it has been more than half a century. According to him, Suzhou people pay attention to exquisite life, such as Ma Lantou, snails, etc., which can be seen everywhere in the farmers' market, seemingly ordinary spring ingredients, after the thousand-year-old culture of the Jiangnan water town, fireworks precipitation, can become "the most soothing mortal" delicacy. "In the 'Suzhou Top Ten Bowls' in spring, most of the ingredients and dishes come from the fireworks life of the people of Suzhou, reflecting the essence of the taste of Suzhou. Lao Fan introduced that one of the Suzhou sauce meats, which his wife cooks every spring, is her best "unique skill".

Lao Fan also talked about the fragrant mixed maran head and toon scrambled eggs in the spring "Suzhou Top Ten Bowls". Among them, the main raw materials of Zhangjiagang Xiangxiang Ma Lan Tou include dried phoenix fragrant and Ma Lan Tou, and sometimes seasonings such as green onions, ginger, and chili peppers are added. When making the dish, cut the fragrant dried herbs into small cubes, fry them until they are charred on the outside and tender on the inside, then add the malan head cold dressing, and finally add seasonings and mix well before serving. "I learned a new trick again. Lao Fan said that Suzhou people often make Ma Lan head, usually mix Ma Lan head with dried tofu, pay attention to the use of spring bamboo shoots to boil oil mix, Ma Lan head, spring bamboo shoots, fragrant dried fragrance fusion into a "full of spring taste". Zhangjiagang fragrant mixed with Ma Lantou, add a dried fragrant cut into small dices and fry until the outside is charred and the inside is tender, Lao Fan said "ready to try it". Another toon scrambled egg, Lao Fan "contributed" his home-style production secret: blanching the toon head and then pinching it with salt, beating the juice and the egg evenly, the fragrance of the toon head can be better integrated into the egg.

Every Suzhou person can become a "foodie". Lao Fan's "Suzhou taste" such as shredded scallion oil, shredded radish, crab roe tofu, and Baishi plate made at home also appeared in the third season of "A Bite of China". Lao Fan said that the "Top Ten Bowls of Suzhou" in spring was produced from the extensive spring food on the table of Suzhou people.

Code 3: Inherit innovative skills and demonstrate cooking "embroidery kung fu"

From the Suzhou-style sauce meat that Suzhou people "rolled immortals" on the 14th day of the fourth lunar month and formed an indissoluble bond with Lu Dongbin, the "squirrel fish" that Qianlong ate in Suzhou in the south of the Yangtze River, the green salted soft-shelled turtle recorded in Yuan Mei's "Suiyuan Food List", to the green hydrangea that inherits and innovates...... In the spring "Suzhou Top Ten Bowls", the classic taste of Suzhou, which is full of cultural heritage and ingenuity, and the innovative "new faces" of openness, inclusiveness, and rejection of the old and the new, gather together, adding the mark of the times to the Suzhou cuisine that is "the best taste in the southeast" in history.

Local materials, inheritance and innovation, "skillful and finely made", and the ingenuity of Subang cuisine's "embroidery kung fu" cooking skills are the "Suzhou roots" of the "Suzhou Top Ten Bowls" in spring. According to industry insiders, according to the records of the Palace Museum's "Palace History", Suzhou cuisine has entered the court since the Ming Dynasty, and Suzhou cuisine has a large number of records in the Qing Dynasty. Qianlong went to the south of the Yangtze River six times, leaving a large number of Suzhou food records and legends. In the 30th year of Qianlong, Suzhou's famous chefs appeared for the first time in the Qing Dynasty's "Imperial Bottom File", and at present, the cooking skills of Subang cuisine have been included in the intangible cultural heritage items of Jiangsu Province.

Take a piece of meat and a fish in the "Top Ten Bowls of Suzhou" in the spring, all of them have been tempered a lot.

"Suzhou people open a piece of meat" Suzhou-style sauce meat, the production has to go through the steps of "open white wok", old marinated "fairy wok" and so on, and the process flow reaches more than 3 hours. After the pork belly is washed, it is cut into about 4 centimeters of "rising basket block", and after marinating, it is first put into the pot and boiled for a while, which is called "open white wok"; The gravy in the "fairy wok" is boiled with rock sugar and other marinades, and then poured over the meat when it is sold.

Li Junsheng, the third-generation inheritor of the cooking skills of Jiangsu Province's intangible cultural heritage Subang cuisine, and Li Junsheng, who is known as the "Little Li Flying Knife" in Suzhou cooking rivers and lakes, introduced that the squirrel mandarin fish made by Liu Scholar, a senior in Suzhou cooking, is a must in the Suzhou catering industry, and more than 50 years ago, when Li Junsheng entered the Songhe Tower to learn the arts, making squirrel mandarin fish was the "basic skill". After many generations of chefs have inherited and innovated, the production of squirrel mandarin fish has formed a strict "eight standard process", and each mandarin fish has to produce 128 spines, and each spine is about 1.5 cm in size.

"From the 'Suzhou Top Ten Bowls' before the Spring Festival to the 'Suzhou Top Ten Bowls' this spring, I have been paying attention. Zhang Ziping, the third-generation master of the cooking skills of Jiangsu Province's intangible cultural heritage, said that the information of the "Top Ten Bowls of Suzhou" has been collected and preserved. Zhang Ziping, who entered the Suzhou Hotel at the age of 16 to learn to cook, was guided by Wu Yonggen and many other famous chefs of the Suzhou Gang Dynasty, and more than 50 years of careful study of the integration of China and the West. ”

Zhang Ziping also scored and commented on each dish in the "Top Ten Bowls of Suzhou" in spring from many aspects such as historical allusions, local ingredients, cooking skills, and production, and gave full marks to many of the dishes.