Literati with Jinhua ham

Author: Li Qiaohong

Idle, driving to the mountains, passing at the foot of Jinhua North Mountain, several farmhouse families are taking advantage of the fine winter days to pickle ham themselves. I got out of the car with a moment's curiosity to see. Seeing that the owner was handling a tender pig's hind legs, he grabbed a large handful of salt and smeared it on the pig's hind legs. I smiled and said, "Your child has a blessing." The host was also happy: "The weather is good today, hurry up and pickle." After a while, he put the fresh legs smeared with salt into a large vat on which they were compacted with several large stones. The owner told me to take it out after a day or two, put the appropriate salt on the ham, marinate it for another month, and then take the pork leg out to dry, and when the pickled pork leg becomes shiny and shiny, the color is rosy, and it is edible. I saw the earlier pickled pork legs hanging under the eaves next to me, and the sunlight had soaked the smell of meat, and I could smell the fragrant aroma when I approached.

Eating on the mountain at noon, I couldn't help but order a plate of ham fried winter shoots, the flesh color after the ham sliced was rose red, red and white, oily but not greasy, with the crisp and tender winter shoots just dug out of the bamboo forest, very under the rice.

In fact, in the 1930s, there was also a young man from Jinhua North Mountain, who did not come for ham, but he compared the whole North Mountain to a "big ham". He said: "The name of Beishan has long been familiar to my mind, especially when I read the books of "Song Xueshicheng" and "Xue Case", and think of the scenery of Beishan from afar, I think it must be able to meet the taste of us who are not sophisticated bookworms. "So despite the rugged mountain road, the interest of young people is not diminished at all. After touring Beishan, the Beishan Management Committee hosted this young man to eat Jinhua ham, and the young man was extremely happy. He said humorously that for more than three hundred miles, the North Mountain of Jinhua on the northern outskirts of Xiongzhen is a heavenly "big ham" that can be enjoyed for several lifetimes. This young man was the famous novelist Yu Dafu. It is said that he later went into exile in Southeast Asia, and his favorite food was Jinhua ham from his hometown in Zhejiang.

When it comes to Jinhua, most people's first reaction is not that they are famous people in the past, nor are they scenic spots, and they are stubbornly stationed in their heads with a ham. On a business trip, people ask me where you are from, and I say Jinhua. They said they didn't know. I said again, it is the place where the ham came out, and they immediately realized that it was the place where the ham came out, then I know.

Ham is like a pipa-shaped rosy seal, deeply imprinted on the land of Jinhua, becoming a unique geographical symbol.

When I was young, I read Liang Shiqiu's "Yashe Talks About Eating", which has a chapter about Jinhua ham. Between the lines, the ham was written so beautifully that I read it again and again, and it was like going to the ham feast countless times. In particular, he wrote that "once I got a real Jinhua ham, thin and hard, probably collected for many years." Jingqing held to the familiar business, the boss played the knife, a sound of the stone, split into two sections" This paragraph is really sound and colorful. The article said that the boss exclaimed: "This is authentic Jinhua ham, and it has not smelled this for decades!" Sniffing and sniffing, he asked to give him the tip of the claw, and even the hoof claw was given to him. He said to go home and stew a pot of soup. "When I was twelve or thirteen years old, when I read this group of words, I almost drooled, hoping that I could also get such a ham tip with hooves and claws, boil a pot of soup, and then eat it all in one breath.

According to historical research, Jinhua ham began in the Tang Dynasty and has a history of more than 1,200 years. During the Reign of Tang Kaiyuan, Chen Zangqi said in the "Materia Medica Collection": "The fire beard (tu [~symbol ~], according to the Kangxi Dictionary, the hip and legs are common), and the production of Jinhua is good." The origin of Jinhua ham in folklore is related to Zong Ze, a famous anti-Jin general in the Song Dynasty. It is said that Zong Ze, a Yiwu man, returned to his hometown from the anti-gold front, and often bought some pork for the villagers to marinate and take it out to give to relatives, friends and his subordinates. This kind of marinated pork was eaten by the soldiers and praised. It is said that Zong Ze once selected a batch of particularly good ones to offer to the imperial court, and When Emperor Gaozong of Song saw that the flesh was bright red like fire, he named it "ham". The Ming Dynasty poet Zhang Dai once wrote a poem for Jinhua ham: "The taste is only pork, Jinhua has long been named." Corals are soft with flesh, amber and fatty. The flavor is taken in a light, and the incense is born from the smoke. The smell is fishy and full of snow buds. ”

Due to the different raw materials used, the processing season, and the pickling method, there are many different varieties of Jinhua ham. Pickled in the middle of winter, called the winter leg; the leg is repaired into a crescent shape, called the moon leg; processed with the front leg, rectangular, called the wind leg; hanging between the pot stove, often smoked by bamboo leaves, called smoked legs; and in order to increase the aroma, salted with the dog leg, called the leg. Now Jinhua uses the most used ham to make two black pig hind legs, this leg is moderately shaped, thin skin and small skeleton, and the leg heart is plump, which is the ideal raw material for making ham.

Li Yu, a dramatist in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, was an uncompromising gourmet, born in The Ham Town of Lanxi Xia Li Village. He advocated "nature, nature, and nature" in diet. He eats ham and does not like the ingredients of flowers, and favors cooking alone to taste the true taste of ham, and even use it to accompany tea to chew, which shows that Li Yu is a person who knows how to enjoy. In daily dishes, ham is most used by the chef to hang soup, although there are as many as two or three hundred dishes named after ham, but many times ham is only a supporting role. Only Li Yu's eating ham is the protagonist.

The real one who can eat ham is Mr. Lu Xun, who is said to be a master of making "stewed ham". In 1929, when he returned to Beiping from Shanghai to visit his relatives, he personally made "stewed ham" and regretted the practice of "always steaming" when his family ate ham. When he lived in Beiping, he often made "dried scallop stewed fire meat" to entertain friends.

In 1924, the Indian poet Tagore visited China, and the poet Lin Changmin invited him to dinner. There was a "ham chicken dumpling" on the banquet, which was deeply liked by Tagore. Tagore also specifically asked about the production of Jinhua ham, which became a good story of Sino-Indian friendship.

Nowadays, Jinhua has a ham museum, ham production is rising year by year, ham is also because of its delicious and mellow, unique flavor, has become the signature dish of major hotels; more and more pastries and flavor snacks are also made of ham stuffing or ingredients, such as "Jinhua ham mooncake", "Jinhua ham crisp", "ham winter melon dumplings", "ham chestnut dumplings" and so on. At the same time, the price of ham is becoming more and more affordable, and ordinary people can eat ham anytime and anywhere.

In ancient China, there were two strange books, one was "Dream of the Red Chamber" and the other was "Golden Plum Bottle". "Dream of the Red Chamber" writes about more than ten kinds of dishes about Jinhua ham. "Ham stewed elbow", "Luohan jumping off the wall", "ham fresh bamboo shoot soup", etc., the 58th time wrote that Bao Yu loved to drink ham fresh bamboo shoot soup, and drank too fast but was burned. In the 87th time, it is written that "fire meat cabbage soup" is used to freshen ham to boost Daiyu's appetite after illness. This shows that ham was an essential ingredient in the kitchens of large households in the Qing Dynasty. "Jin Ping Mei" mentions "Jinhua wine" more than a dozen times, which shows the status of Jinhua wine in the society at that time.

Just think, if Jinhua wine is paired with Jinhua ham, is it first-class delicious and elegant?

Guangming Daily (2021-01-29, 16th edition)

Source: Guangming Network - Guangming Daily