#我来唠家常#
▲ Milk and egg mash. Figure/Network
-The Legend of the Gentleman of Things-
How hot the summer is, how sweet the northwest is
If the four seasons have a taste, then the summer in the northwest must be sweet.
Half of this sweetness comes from melons and fruits, and half from sugar water. The sweetness of melons and fruits is given by the temperature difference between day and night and the unique geography, while the sweetness of sugar water is created by the Northwest people themselves. The land is barren and the product is single, which makes the sugar water in the northwest "congenitally slightly insufficient" - there are not many varieties and the appearance is not high, which is not the same as the two regions rich in sugar water.
▲ Tianshui apricot tea, do you want to know how to make it? Drawing / May
But that's what makes Northwest sugar water so fascinating. When you drink a bowl with the attitude of giving it a try, you can't put it down, and that simple bowl of sugar water is filled with the rough style of the Northwest.
Northwest sugar water, who is the most "Internet celebrity"?
Which sugar water in the northwest is the most "Internet celebrity" and the most delicious?
Throw this question to both a Northwest and a person who has been to the Northwest, and the answer is the same: sweet pastry and apricot peel tea.
Sweet paste, from the taste of Tang poems
Drink the first bowl of sweet pastry, and summer is here.
▲ Sweet pastry. Figure/Network
This is the consensus of people in Lanzhou, Linxia, Tianshui in Gansu and Xining in Qinghai. In order to welcome the summer, as soon as the Qingming Festival passes, Lanzhou people begin to make sweet paste.
Select wheat or barley as raw materials, peel and then use a dustpan to remove the bran, wash it with water, cook it over high heat until the skin of the wheat or barley cracks, then take it out and let it cool, add koji and stir evenly, put it in the jar and ferment it for three to five days, mix it with water when drinking, and the sweet pastry is done. It seems simple, but it is not easy to really do, once the temperature of fermentation is not well mastered, the raw materials of this jar can only be poured out. In the past, there was no technology to maintain a constant temperature, and the people of the Northwest relied on experience to place the jar on the kang or on the stove to cover it tightly to ensure that the temperature was suitable.
▲ Fermented sweet paste. Figure/Network
Although they are all called sweet pastries, the taste is still slightly different from place to place: the sweet pastries in Lanzhou and Xining have more soup and less wheat, in order to avoid the taste of blandness, they will basically add one or two spoons of sugar, which tastes moderately sweet and refreshing. To the south of Lanzhou, the Linxia area also calls sweet grains sweet wheat, with less soup and more wheat, and a slight taste of sake lees and sweet and sour.
Mash, which is actually an unfiltered liquor. The "fermentation" in the famous sentence of the Tang Dynasty poet Bai Juyi, "Green Ant New Brew Wine, Red Clay Small Stove", is what it says. In this ancient sugar water, the taste of time is deeply hidden, and when you drink it in the hot summer, the hearts of the people of the Northwest will be steady.
Apricot peel tea, the taste of the far northwest
Apricot peel tea is to the Northwest people, and sour plum soup is to the old Beijing.
Apricot peel tea is also called apricot peel water, anyone who has tasted it in the northwest will get "lovesickness" when they go home, even if they can't buy apricot peel tea, they must do everything possible to buy Li Guangxing's dried apricot peel and boil it themselves. In recent years, with the blossoming of restaurants in the Northwest and the packaging and sales of merchants, apricot peel tea, which was originally "unknown to people in the Northwest", has gradually entered the list of summer drinks for people everywhere.
▲ Li Guangxing. Photo by Qiao Zhaofu
Li Guangxing is a Dunhuang specialty. This apricot tree first grew in the Hotan region of Xinjiang, and after being introduced to Dunhuang, after a long period of natural domestication and artificial cultivation, the apricots produced are larger than plums, the skin is thin and golden butter is shiny, and the flesh is thick and juicy.
People in the Dunhuang area, in the hot summer, dried Li Guangxing into dried apricot peel, cut into small pieces and poured into water, boiled into soup in a pot, after natural cooling, filtered out the apricot peel residue, added an appropriate amount of rock sugar, sweet and sour apricot peel tea was made. If you refrigerate it in the refrigerator again, it will be like elixir and jade dew, and you can drink it in the hot weather in the northwest.
▲ Apricot peel tea. Photography / Wang Qiang of Jumi Shengshi Culture, Picture / Picture Worm Creativity
Who is the sugar water province in the northwest?
The provinces and autonomous regions in the northwest have their own "three-piece sets for summer": Shaanxi people have cold skin, ice peaks, and meat sandwich buns; Ningxia people have sheep's trotters, barbecue, and Xixia beer; and Qinghai people have cold noodles, stuffed skins, and yogurt. They stubbornly immersed themselves in their own food world, and sugar water was ignored most of the time in these three provinces, so Gansu and Xinjiang stepped forward and took up the burden of "northwest sugar water".
Gansu or Xinjiang, which is sweeter?
Gansu, from east to west
In fact, in Lanzhou, Gansu Province, in addition to the sweet mash mentioned above, there are also gray beans and milk egg mash.
▲ Gray beans. Photography / NHACW, Photo/Huitu.com
Gray beans are real ash + beans. The ash is a fluffy ash made from fluffy grass, and there is this kind of thing in beef noodles, which is actually a kind of edible alkali, and many people have inadvertently learned it. Beans are peas, after soaking in water, control drying, fry out the bean fragrance, add fluffy ash when boiling until the water becomes brown, and when the peas are soft, put red dates and boil them into a paste over slow fire, add some white sugar when drinking, cotton, rustling, sweet, and have an indescribable fragrance.
The milk and egg mash kills sweet pastries and gray beans with its deliciousness and "appearance".
▲ Milk and egg mash. Photography / qq296244859, picture / Huitu.com
This delicacy was first invented by the Linxia people, but it was carried forward by the Lanzhou people. Put the mash in milk and boil, beat into the frangipani, sprinkle in raisins, wolfberries, peanuts, sugar, the finished product is yellow and white, the dried fruits are dotted, the milk fragrance is mixed with the rice fragrance, which makes people indulge in it and find it difficult to extricate themselves.
To the west of Lanzhou, there is also a summer drink in Wuwei that is visually more impactful than milk and egg mash - Sanbaotai.
In addition to the high-quality Chunjian tea, there are also various ingredients: raisins, from Xinjiang, wolfberry, dried apricots, walnut kernels, from Ningxia, Wuwei's neighbors have also donated generously, Linze County contributed jujubes, and Yongdeng County contributed roses. A bowl of three bubble tables encapsulates the essence of the northwest. But this is not enough, there must also be dried longan from the far south, plus a few pieces of rock sugar, boiling water to soak, colorful.
▲ Three bubble tables, the content is extremely rich. Photography / Sanji Zhuoma, Picture / Huitu.com
In the matter of drinking the three bubbles, Wuwei people have reversed the "roughness" of the northwest and become extremely particular - fragrant but not sweet is bitter tea, sweet but not alive is the best tea, only fresh, sweet, refreshing, and live are the best products in the three bubbles. Probably, it is the magic weapon of the Northwest man to fight against the rough life.
In the southeast of Lanzhou, Tianshui people's "standard breakfast" is not only steaming quack and yellow bun, but also a bowl of apricot tea.
Dunhuang people make apricot peel tea, using apricot peel, Tianshui people make apricot tea, using almonds, and bitter almonds. After boiling bitter almonds in boiling water, soak them in clean water, remove the outer skin, and grind them on the same day, otherwise they are easy to deteriorate and affect the taste. Cook the ground almond juice again, add some sugar when drinking, and sprinkle a layer of fennel powder, the taste is smooth and fragrant.
▲ Longnan Chengxian sweet syrup. Figure/Network
Further south, the people of Chengxian County in Longnan add rice to soybean milk to boil and make sweet pulp. A bowl of sweet syrup is brought to the table, the rice grains are sparsely scattered in the soybean milk, and a spoonful of sugar is added, which is smooth and sweet, and has a unique taste, which not only quenches thirst, but also fills.
Xinjiang, the flavor of the Western Regions in sugar water
In Xinjiang, which borders Gansu, the Uyghur people also have three treasures in summer: sirloin knife ke (shaved ice yogurt), Chaydora (medicinal tea), and sand date soup.
The preparation of sand date soup is extremely simple, after the sand date soup is cooked, the original juice is pressed out, and some fried hemp seed powder is sprinkled, and it can be drunk. In the early days, when the Uyghurs went to the bazaar (bazaar) in the summer, they soaked the naan they carried with them in the soup of sand dates and ate and drank it, which not only quenched their thirst but also filled them. Nowadays, beat the sand dates into powder, and wash them with boiling water when you drink them.
▲ Xinjiang sand dates. Photography/Hot Wind Photography, Picture/Huitu.com
Medicinal teas also vary slightly from place to place. What is really worth mentioning is Sirloin Knife (also known as Sharon Dohe).
Sharon Daoke is known as the "Häagen-Dazs of Xinjiang" by Xinjiang people. In the hot summer, it is as popular as Da Wusu among Xinjiang people. Ice chisel cut half a bowl of crushed ice, add a few spoonfuls of yogurt, put a little syrup, sand date nectar, stir well with a wooden spoon, like juggling, throw the shaved ice in the bowl high, so that it is fully integrated with the yogurt, a bowl of sirloin knife is made.
The method of Sirloin knife is simple, but the ingredients are not simple. Ice was poured with spring water the previous winter, and yogurt must be made from horse, cow and goat milk of the highest quality in the pasture, fermented on suspended and ventilated wooden boards.
▲ Sirloin Knife. Drawing / May
In the past, sirloin knife was popular in southern Xinjiang, without honey, only yogurt and ice, which was easy to cause gastrointestinal discomfort. Later, people added syrup to the shaved ice yogurt, which was delicious and delicious, so they jokingly called the people who ate shaved ice yogurt before a fool (pronounced Sirloin in Uygur), which means shaved ice eaten by a fool, which is the humor of Xinjiang people.
Perhaps, it is precisely because of the difficult environment in the northwest that the people in the northwest cherish this sweetness, and in the case of limited materials, they have invented all kinds of sugar water. The days are always bitter and bitter and sweet.
What Northwest sugar water do you still miss out?
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