For a long time, "pancake rolls with green onions" seemed to be the standard of Shandong people's diet.
No matter how beautiful the green onions are, they also need pancakes to accompany. Shandong's green onions and pancakes, in the cultural exchanges between the north and the south, alternately influence and achieve each other. In the era of slow cars and horses, Shandong people broke into the Kanto or went to Tianjin and Beijing, and there were many people with rolled pancakes in their bags. After the fireworks dissipate, how many Qilu culture codes do the pancakes contain?
"Pre-fire food and" i.e. pancakes
In fact, pancakes are not unique to Shandong, there are various types of pancakes in many places in the north; in Shandong, only people in some areas often eat pancakes.
In areas where pancakes are the staple food, there are many legends about its origins. For example, pancakes originated from the worship of the sun by ancient ancestors, and the pancakes carried by Meng Jiang when she cried on the Great Wall may have been invented by Zhuge Liang when he marched, or it may be related to the Huangchao Uprising, or it may have been brought by Shanxi immigrants in the early Ming Dynasty...
Tracing the origin of pancakes, there is a long evolutionary road. As a historical pasta, pancakes are difficult to preserve, and can only be found in archaeological artifacts, murals or handed down texts.
Although pancakes in ancient times did not have physical objects, the tool used to make pancakes, the tweezers, may have survived and become historical evidence. With the help of archaeological data, people have a relatively clear understanding of the origin of pancakes.
In the spring of 1981, archaeologists found many disc-shaped pottery during the excavation of the Yangshao Cultural Site in Qingtai, Xingyang, Henan, and it was rare that one of them was intact. The pottery is disc-shaped, with three tile-shaped feet, a smooth surface, a rough inner wall and a thick layer of smoke. It should be used by turning the handicap down, landing on three legs, making a fire under the plate, and making food on the plate. Experts believe that it has been followed for thousands of years, and the tool used to make food today, the tweezers, because of its texture is pottery, called pottery.
In fact, the form of the Qingtai site pottery is relatively mature, from the perspective of the development law of material culture, it is obvious that after a long period of evolution, there should be a long process of origin and development before.
Previously, in the view of many researchers, the ancestors took a "grain food" road in their diet, that is, the grain was directly boiled and eaten after shelling, and the grain was pounded into flour and then used to make food, which was more popular in the Qin and Han Dynasties. In this regard, Wang Renxiang, a researcher at the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, believes that the discovery and confirmation of tao jung undoubtedly shows that the tradition of "pasta" is very long, "We have determined from the study of pancakes that there was a pancake pottery in the Neolithic era, and the view that there was no pasta tradition in ancient China is self-defeating." ”
The food on the pottery should have some genetic overlap with the current pancake in terms of ingredients and thickness.
1500 years ago, pancakes gradually spread in Shandong. Emperor Gaozu of Northern Qi used the "Gonglu Ge Answer" as a riddle to make people guess the puzzle. "卒律葛答" is a Turkic word, translated into Chinese as "former fire food and", "front fire" and "food and" exactly form the word "pancake". Northern Qi had territories in present-day Shandong, Shanxi, Hebei, Henan and other places, and the monarchs and courtiers all played with pancakes, which showed that Shandong had eaten pancakes.
In ancient times, Shandong was frequently subjected to wars. When people encounter accidents, they often bury some objects in the ground. The tweezers unearthed in the cellar are generally larger and are practical utensils with use value, and some cellars have even found multiple pieces of tweezers. "In Miaojiazhuang Village, Yaodianzi Town, Yishui County, Linyi City, a cellar from the Liaojin period was found, which had iron chains that were roughly the same as the current shape. This shows that the shape of Shandong pancakes was initially finalized at that time. Linyi literary historian Miao Yannian analyzed.
"Round as the moon, as big as a copper hammer, as thin as the paper of the creek, and as color as the wings of a yellow crane." Li Zuju, an expert in Zichuan literature and history, introduced that the Qing Dynasty literary scholar Pu Songling wrote about the various flavors of pancakes in "Pancake Fu", "Mr. Pu Lao also said that if you change to buckwheat batter, the color of the pancakes will shine like white silk; if you mix sorghum noodles, it will be like the sunset on the Western Mountains, the afterglow is reflected, and the sunset rises." ”
Maximize survival wisdom and skills
In Shandong, such as Linyi, Rizhao, Tai'an, Zaozhuang and other places, pancakes are the daily staple food of many people; Jinan, Weifang, and Zibo are occasionally eaten because they border the core eating areas; other prefecture-level cities have fewer eaters.
Why have pancakes been carried forward in Shandong and become the "carry handle" in the food circle? In addition to being closely related to the geography, climate and economy of Shandong, it also runs through the unique humanistic atmosphere of Qilu.
Pancakes come from a wide range of raw materials, including soybeans, millet, sorghum, corn, and even sweet potatoes, provided they are ground into a paste with stone grinding. Nowadays, fragrant rice pancakes, chestnut pancakes, persimmon pancakes, cabbage pancakes, etc., have emerged, with different colors and tastes.
Looking at the Pancake Eating Area in Shandong, there is one common denominator - the mountainous areas. Of course, not all places with mountains eat pancakes, but the areas where pancakes are the main food are basically mountainous, mainly in the current Luzhong Mountain and Yimeng Mountain areas.
In ancient times, the yield of food crops in mountainous areas was low, and the people had two meals a day, occasionally three meals. Just think, if the people at that time harvested more grain, between the soft white-noodle steamed buns and the coarse grain pancakes, they might be more inclined to the former.
In a relatively harsh environment, the ancestors relied on pancakes to maximize their survival wisdom and skills in the years of hard work. Pu Songling once wrote about the many hardships of people's livelihood, to the effect that the people in Shandong were helplessly unlucky, suffered major disasters and famines continuously, and the beans scattered in the South Mountain were as precious as pearls. People painstakingly came up with the ingenious way to make pancakes during the famine: plucking green leaves from pepper and elm trees, mixing them into a rich slurry, and waiting until they appeared on the tweezers with quinoa smoke, and their color was soft and green.
By the Song and Yuan dynasties, especially in the Ming and Qing dynasties, the staple food structure of "five grains" changed, and crops such as corn, sweet potatoes, potatoes, peanuts and other crops were planted in large quantities in the inland of Shandong, changing people's staple food structure, And Lu cuisine, Kongfu cuisine and Shandong flavor famous foods have risen. At this time, pancakes, as a clear stream in the food circles of Luzhong and Lunan, burst out a strong vitality under the impetus of culture.
In the pancake staple area, if a large pot of nests or steamed buns is steamed, it will be dry and hard for a few days, or moldy and deteriorated; before each time, it will be steamed and soft. In mountainous areas, firewood is an important factor in the economics of diet, and although it is widely used, it takes a lot of effort to collect it. At this time, the pancakes have the advantage, and they can be softened when dried with some water.
From a production point of view, pancakes use the least tools, the least process, and the least effort. There are three main techniques of pancake making - spreading, scraping and rolling.
The skill of spreading and scraping pancakes mainly lies in the difference in tools. The stall is a circle of tweezers with thong-shaped pancake wings; scraping, it is to scoop the paste on the hot tweezers and spread them out left and right with the tweezers. The representative phalanx of scraped pancakes is Tai'an, which after grinding the paste, it takes a period of fermentation, and the cake is thinner and slightly sour.
The practice of stalls is the most popular. Mr. Pu Songling once described this technique in detail, to the effect that the two sides need to be separated, the tweezers are in the shape of a three-legged stand, and a spoonful of slurry is scooped out of the tile basin and poured on the tweezers, and after being hot and ironed, it makes a sound like running water hitting something. Then, immediately, the holder rotates to the left, and the slurry crawls on the plate like an ant, the color turns yellow-white, and in a moment it is made into a pancake. Taking advantage of the hot tweezer at this time, the hand is turned over, and soon dozens or even hundreds of pancakes can be made.
Rolling pancakes is a special method of Yimeng Mountain, generally used for sweet potato pancakes with rough texture, not with paste, but with dough rolled on the hammer many times, rolled in a layer, and the cooked pancakes can be peeled off. Although the appearance is not very flat, it wins with the original taste.
The tweezers are durable and can even be used as heirlooms. In 1967, Dongyanglou Village, Zhuang Town, Tai'an City, found a "separation contract" during the Ming Dynasty, which included "a plate of tweezers and twenty-three catties of pancakes". Pancakes should be divided into separate families, but pancakes can be stored, and tweezers are also an important property.
Pancakes are the best form of coarse grains, with a delicate taste and suitable for all ages. Pancakes are easy to store and can be eaten fresh or eaten directly for several days. Some people jokingly commented that pancakes can roll up everything, and indeed, pancakes can be filled, soaked, and flexibly matched with various dishes.
"Eat pancakes, one by one, and the good grains are fragrant." Provincial kung fu, provincial firewood, the first pile of the way of the family. Rolled up the dregs of tofu and sipped the sauce, and ate them white and fat. "A Tai'an folk song that seems to sum up the various wonders of pancakes.
In Jinan, the top brand of pancakes is sugar shortbread, and sugar is innovatively added to pancake paste. The salt representative dish pancake is Tengzhou characteristics, in the stall pancakes add vegetables, add condiments to fry to become a luxurious filling, the general dishes are cabbage, leeks, white radish, carrots, tofu, vermicelli, shrimp skin, the dish is raw, is placed in the cake cooked, the filling is covered with a pancake alternate spread system.
Pancakes, simple and unpretentious, can contain all things, just like the hearts of Shandong people. The fine qualities of thrift, honesty and hard work have also been spread into layers of pancakes by Shandong people.
Compatible with Baiwei and soothing
In his essay "Remembering Qingdao", Liang Shiqiu compared Shandong green onions to sugar cane: "... Then there are the green onions in nearby Weixian County, thick as sugar cane, tender and juicy. One day, a visitor came from afar and stopped at the cold house, but he asked for flapjacks and green onions, and he did not want them, but he ordered them to enter with green onions, cut them into sections, like sugar cane, and piled them into large plates. The exhaustion of guest food is the satisfaction of a lifetime. ”
Pancakes were also often used by the ancients in some special seasons, such as the day of people, the day of wearing the sky, and the day of begging. Pancakes of the Two Jin Dynasties were also given a specific meaning. Wang Jia of the Eastern Jin Dynasty said in the "Book of Collected Remains": "Jiangdong is commonly known as the twentieth day of the first month, and the red silk strands are placed on the roof with pancakes, which is called filling the heavens. According to legend, Nuwa made up for the heavens and the earth with the day. "This is the earliest account of the custom of making up the heavens with pancakes, and the small pancakes are associated with the myth of Nüwa making up the heavens, and the imagination of the ancients is really amazing."
On how to eat pancakes, Pu Songling, who has been poor all his life, has a unique insight: roll up the pork ribs with the skin in the pancakes, soak in the fat egg soup, eat a full meal in the morning, you can hold out until the evening without hunger, and your stomach is thunderous; if you put it on the night, the pancakes become cold and crispy, and you still need to cook, you can coat the fat of the goose, or lard, fold up three or five pancakes, bake them with fire, their taste is soft and crisp, the entrance is refreshing, and the aroma is overflowing; you can also roll up the pancakes layer by layer and cut them with a kitchen knife. Horizontal and vertical clutter, very similar to cold noodles, put salt and tempeh in the soup, cut the pepper into powder, and when the water in the pan boils, put the pancakes into the pan, it is like gold bars. Sometimes it's cold, and when you drink a small bite of pancake soup during the day, you'll sweat wet on your forehead, which is better than sheep soup.
Pu Songling also wrote a very interesting scene, to the effect that an unknown old man in the village holds a pancake roll in his left hand, picks up the fallen pancake crumbs with his right hand, and encourages his cheeks to chew the pancakes to eat. At this time, a richly dressed boy passed by and asked the old man enviously: I am willing to exchange the food I have cooked in my ding for the pancakes left in your hand, is it okay? When the old man Murano heard this, he quickly turned his head and did not want to exchange with him.
Pancakes are a business card of Shandong's food culture, and even foreigners who have settled down are obsessed with pancakes. In the 1930s, the patriotic general Feng Yuxiang twice lived in seclusion in Taishan, and his room had iron chains and could spread pancakes. One day, when he saw that the burnt marks of the pancake resembled a word, he had a clever move and sent someone to make a hammer, and asked the blacksmith to chisel the four characters he had written in the middle of the hammer- "Resist Japan and Save the Country". Every time Feng Yuxiang entertained guests, he put on this kind of pancake with characters to publicize the anti-Japanese salvation of the country. Later, he wrote the book "Pancakes - Anti-Japanese and Military Food", which detailed the methods and nutritional value of making Tarzan pancakes. After the Lugou Bridge Incident, Feng Yuxiang also gave the book to Chiang Kai-shek, hoping to solve the problem of grain supply for the army in the War of Resistance Against Japan.
"Li Qingzhao was born in Zhangqiu, and Shandong allium is the best produced by Zhangqiu. So the question is, does Li Qingzhao like to eat pancake rolls of green onions? Perhaps Li Qingzhao's poems were written by her while drinking wine and nibbling on pancake rolls and scallions. When I think about it, I want to come to a goddess set menu - pancake rolls with green onions. "Yang Qian, a girl in Chengdu, once traveled to Shandong and was full of pancakes.
While pancakes are satisfied, they also witness the changes of the times. In the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the War of Liberation, pancakes played an important role as military food and accompanied shandong soldiers in the southern conquest of the northern war. In the early 1970s, the raw materials for processing pancakes were gradually changed to electric grinding, and the stone grinding was abandoned in front of the house; by the 1990s, the tweezers gradually became "rotary hammers" with handrails and powered by electric motors; after 2000, someone developed a machine for processing pancakes, and the pancakes produced were also changed from round to square.
Pancakes are compatible with flavors and are quite soothing. Pancakes, as cultural symbols, are also gradually taking root in all corners of the world. Nowadays, before the wanderers in the pancake staple food area travel far away, there are often pancakes in the luggage and in the trunk; and the army of pancakes mainly based on the Pingyi people is also active in many parts of the country, and some people even spread the pancakes to foreign countries. (Reported by Lu Yu, client reporter of Dazhong Daily)