Wok
Text/Feng Lianwei
When the Chinese on the tip of the tongue told that after 7 cold forging, 5 hot forging, 18 times of heat, 1,000 degrees of high temperature, and 36,000 beatings until the pot was like a mirror, I knew that we in China still have such a magical process for forging an iron pot, and it also evoked my memory of the iron pot.
For children born in the countryside, they will carve a deep imprint on the iron pot in the pot house for as long as they can remember. Because, that iron pot is so important to a child, so important that it is closely related to his life, his growth, and his joys, sorrows, and sorrows.
When the mother lights firewood and grass on time every morning, noon and evening, pulls the bellows, and makes the iron pot for the family to cook dry rice, porridge, and eat and drink, the children's stomachs will not be hungry, they will grow normally, they will not be yellow, their muscles will not be thin, they will not be hungry, their limbs will be weak, their faces will be swollen, and their legs will be swollen; When the mother couldn't put out a pot of paste beans from the iron pot to relieve the hunger of the old and the young, the days forced the old and the young to cry and cover the sky and the dark clouds.
In my hometown, the place where I cook is not called a "kitchen", we are all called a "pot house". Although "kitchen" and "pot house" are both places for cooking, my understanding refers to different emphases, and the "pot house" in the mouth of my parents and fellow villagers refers very clearly, to build a small house for the iron pot, which is so important in a family's life that it is necessary to build a house for it. Because of the iron pot, there is a "pot house", a normal life, three meals a day, joy when you are full, and the strength to work in the field.
When I was younger, the concept of a pot was very simple. That is, there is only one kind of pot in this world, and this is the iron pot. If there is a difference, that is, the iron pot is also big and small, from the mouth of the mother I know that there are five seal pots, six seal pots, and three seal pots, the largest is said to be twelve seal pots, I have not checked what kind of size the "seal" in the mouth of the mother should be, but my fellow villagers not only use "seal" to describe the size of the iron pot, but also use "seal" to describe the size of the pancake pancake, such as eight seals, six seals and so on.
The iron pots are placed on the stove, the layout of the pot houses in my hometown is similar, the difference between the pot houses of the poor and the rich families is that the stove is made of loess or bricks, and the pot houses are straw sheds or no less than the halls of poor houses, and the houses with complete doors and windows. Every house has a large iron pot and a small iron pot, and there is a bellows on one side of the stove. When we cook in an iron pot, we mainly use firewood and grass, so every house has a firewood and straw stack in front of the door or in the empty yard. Now some restaurants have played the signboard of "Ground Pot Chicken", which must indicate that the pot of fried chicken is an iron pot, and the raw material for burning the fire is firewood, in fact, when I was a child, there was no opportunity to fry chicken all year round, if there is now this economic condition, you can eat "Ground Pot Chicken" at any time.
My family started with a half-straw hut and a half-iron pot. My father lost his father when he was two years old and his mother when he was three years old, and he and my aunt and uncle were both raised by my grandmother pulling a handful of and urine. When my father was very young, he and my uncle set up their own houses, and the property they received was a half-grass house and half an iron pot on the easternmost side of the village, and behind the house was the east gate of the village wall and the main street. When my father started to cook by himself, he used this half of the iron pot to boil the rice paste beans to drink, to the time I remember, the villagers called my father when they didn't call his name, some called him "Uncle Erhuang", some called him "Brother Erhuang", I didn't understand at first, and then I finally figured it out, it was because my father didn't eat when he was a child, he was hungry and full, and everyone saw that he was yellow and thin every day, and my father was ranked second according to rural habits, so he gave my father a nickname "Erhuang", This call is decades, and when I have a son and return to the village, I also heard "Uncle Erhuang has grandchildren." ”
The iron pot in the pot house is generally a big one, which is eaten by the main one, making paste beans and steaming dry rice with cakes and steamed buns; There is also a small iron pot for stir-frying. At that time, most farmers had to feed a piglet, and often had to use an iron pot to cook pig food, and after cooking pig food, the iron pot had to be cleaned, which was more effort than brushing the pot after cooking. I remember when I was in elementary school, my mother went to my grandmother's house, I thought about showing myself at home, let my mother come back and praise me, shoveled over the bottom of the pot with an iron shovel, and let me shovel out a hole at the bottom of the pot, I scooped a scoop of water into the pot, and it leaked into the hearth at once, scared me "wow" and cried, my mother came back and knew, she was busy wiping my tears, and took me into her arms, comforting me and saying: "How many years have we used this pot, we made this pot when you were just born, It's time for a new one, and we'll buy a new pot tomorrow. ”
In fact, the new iron pot "boiling" is still very particular. Whether rich or poor, if you buy a new iron pot and are ready to "boil", you must prepare a piece of raw fat pork. When "boiling" the new iron pot, wash the new iron pot with running hot water and dry the water on the stove, and dry it over medium-low heat first; Then use raw fat pork like "soap" to wipe the inner wall of the pot from the inner ring to the outer ring, so that the spilled grease evenly spreads the entire iron pot; With the continuous wiping, the pot overflows more and more molten black lard, and the "soap" will also become black and small, at this time, the iron pot is removed from the stove, the black lard is poured, and the pot is dried with hot water again, and the process is repeated again, repeating back and forth three or four times, until the raw fat pork no longer turns black, rinse with hot water and wipe off the water and place it on the stove to dry, and the "boiling pot" is done.
Rural people attach great importance to the iron pot, and there is still a custom of "warm pot" in the hometown. "Warm pot" is after the completion of the new house, housewarming or brothers move into the new house, to invite relatives and friends to come to know the new home, relatives, friends, neighbors to bring gifts to congratulate, the host to set up a banquet to entertain the guests. My hometown "warm pot" gift must be a one or twenty pounds of Banquan pot cake, generally good things come in pairs to pay attention to auspiciousness, to bring two pot cakes, other pork, flour, vermicelli, wine, firecrackers, etc., the housewarming of the new home of the owner is also like the New Year, firecrackers, lively extraordinary.
Iron pots will also penetrate into people's daily lives in rural areas. When the parents are ready to let their son pass alone, the first thing is to prepare two iron pots for their son, a plate of stone grinding and an iron pan, which are all necessary supplies for a family to live normally for decades.
In fact, the iron pot occupies an extremely important position in the history of the survival of the Chinese.
I once read the story of a female Red Army carrying a large iron pot on her back. The owner of the story is called Jia Defu, who is the leader of the cooking squad in the women's engineer battalion of the Red Fourth Front Army, because she loves the young soldiers very much, after a long time, everyone unconsciously lifted her seniority, and called her "Granny Jia", in fact, she was only twenty-seven or eight years old at the time. "Granny Jia" is carrying dozens of pounds of food and a big iron pot on her back to embark on a long journey, crossing the Jialing River, walking on the ancient road of Jiange, the path carved out from the cliff, the cliff that cannot be seen, the bottom is the deep valley, and the rain is continuous, the road under the feet is slippery, and if you accidentally fall down, you will fall to pieces, and the enemy planes above your head continue to bomb and strafe, at this time Jia Defu is really a little overwhelmed with a big iron pot on her back, and she always falls at the end of the team along the way. For this reason, everyone wanted to grab the back of her pot, but she jokingly said: "There are many benefits of carrying this pot!" It's like carrying a turtle shell, and it can't rain or chicken (plane) eggs! "Two over the snowy mountains, three over the meadows, the last one is always Jia Defu. However, after a tragic battle, under the big iron pot of Jia Defu, blood flowed profusely, and her life was tragically fixed under this iron pot.
My mother has always had a soft spot for iron pots. Since the eighties of the last century, with the implementation of the production responsibility system in the countryside, the problem of food and clothing has not only been solved, but also the life of the farmers has become more and more prosperous, the housing conditions are constantly improving, the pot house is no longer the original thatched shed, we also prepared a gas stove for my mother, bought a pressure cooker non-stick pan, but my mother still let us put an iron pot on the stove for her in the pot house, under her influence, my eldest sister and two sisters and two brothers living in the countryside still retain the traditional iron pot stove at home, and the main cooking utensils are still using iron pots, Every time I go to my sister's house for dinner, my sisters always proudly say, "The mutton soup cooked in a wood-fired iron pot is delicious, isn't it?" "The chicken fried in peanut oil in an iron pot is fragrant, right?" ……
Iron pot cooking, happy every day. Now it is difficult to eat food cooked in an iron pot in the city life, but the memory of my mother cooking in an iron pot is still very clear.
Oh, the iron pot.
【Author's profile】Feng Lianwei (male), from Linyi, Shandong. He is a member of the Chinese Writers Association, a member of the Chinese Prose Literature Association, a member of the China Natural Resources Writers Association, a member of the Shandong Writers Association, the former vice president of the Shandong Prose Literature Association, the vice chairman of the Shandong Natural Resources Writers Association, and a signed writer of Qi Lu Qingwei, and has won the Wu Boxi Prose Award, Liu Xian's Prose Award, Yimeng Spiritual Literature Award and other national prose awards. He is the author of essay collections such as "Still Water Flows Deeply", "True Water Without Fragrance", "Like Water Flowing Year", and "Leaving Fragrance in Water".