Beijing in winter belongs to mutton. In the small restaurant in the hutong, through the glass window of the water mist, watching the rain falling flowers outside the window. Charcoal warms the copper pot, and red meat stretches out in the churning clear soup. Wrapped in a hint of sesame sauce, the lamb after the soup and white water exudes the most authentic umami flavor. This is the story of winter and mutton in Beijing.
There are also 366 days a year, and the cycle of life is not a static waiting, life is like this, so is mutton. Beijing eats more lambs from Inner Mongolia and Zhangbei, but thousands of miles away, the south of the clouds that countless people yearn for has such a general method of eating sheep. When the snow of the Cangshan Mountains, the moon of the Erhai Sea, meet the winter of Xiaosuo in Beijing, what will it be like.
Be the lamb of the grassland, and choose the black goat of the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau. Wash the dust, the blade cuts the texture of the lamb, turning into zero changes, not only for the soup to soak the taste of a thousand meat neat, but also for the fire warm and hot soft but not rotten, sticky but not cotton. Cooking, like the cultivation of the mind, each step is not an optional redundant fabrication, the accumulation of one breath and one inhalation, is a brilliant leap waiting for the moment of flowering.
Heat the oil, add the meat to simmer, and apply vinegar to remove the sauce. Compared to cooking wine, vinegar makes the meat more compact. The wine is sweet and greasy, and the vinegar is fragrant and unpretentious. Meat until golden brown, start cooking hob. Let the star anise, grass fruit, fragrant leaves, cinnamon, cloves, peppercorns, and Qiubei peppers blend in the oil temperature to sublimate. Simmer until fragrant, then with green onion and ginger.
South of Caiyun, it is inseparable from Zhaotong sauce. At the beginning of the Western Han Dynasty, Zhaotong was already making sauce. Zhaotong sauce is reddish brown in color, spicy and salty with a little playful sweetness. Added to meat dishes, it can dissolve the grease, and for vegetarian food, it can get meat flavor. Then add the soup pond old sauce, add water to cook, wait for the aroma to be strong, fish the residue into the bag, take the Yunnan mash, and apply it to sweetness. The fire is light, the fire is carved, waiting for the breeze to touch the river surface, and a round of frost toad into the wine aroma. Time is like a clear day, and it will eventually become desolate and deserted.
Fishing out the vegetables and placing them in a stone pot in Dali, while keeping warm, it also pulls the taste into the vision of the Shangguan wind, the Xiaguan flowers, the Cangshan snow, and the Erhai Moon. The hand of the son of fire and time, the rich and mellow aroma of the sauce mixed, the sweetness of the spices, and the sweetness of the lamb, on every inch of the texture of the lamb, let the taste buds become flowers.
Stew is the magic of time, it cuts through the tightness of the flesh, and the balance of softness and rot is stuck in the right benefit. The meat is smooth and tender, the skin is soft and sticky, and in the withered winter of Beijing, the tip of my tongue blooms a Yunnan flower. There is no copper pot shabu-shabu like the green ant new wine, the northern flavor of the red clay small stove, but there is a little more red stew sauce into three points, the taste of the wind and snow moon slow spring.
Life is not the same cold and miserable, a different look, the desolate branches in Beijing in winter, perhaps there are also the southern spring of the clouds.