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In 2002, I was transferred from Macheng, Hubei Province to Nanchang, Jiangxi Province. The first time the whole family went to the restaurant, they went to a "fly restaurant" in the second village of the railway. The wooden board was crookedly written with red paint "two rooms and one hall", which is a shop signboard, and several tables in the house are crowded.
The walls are dark, the ground is oily, I ordered the lotus blood duck, three cups of chicken and other famous dishes in the Gan cuisine, I did not expect that the dishes are also black and oily.
If it comes, eat it, turn your heart sideways, and eat it!
Obedient! The spicy of Gancai is really spicy, it is dry and spicy, it is salty and spicy, and the 4-year-old daughter ate a few bites, and she was so spicy that she wiped away tears.
Not long after coming to Nanchang, this "two-bedroom and one hall" became the "base area" for me and my Nanchang brothers and sisters, and we also radiated to the surrounding areas with this as the center, eating the "two-bedroom and one hall" of more than 10 streets in all directions.
In response to the saying "food in the folk", nanchang's most "Chaga" cuisine is often distributed in alleys and old residential areas. Most of the storefronts are unremarkable and rustic, with insufficient light, dark and narrow, and the hygiene is not very exquisite.
But since the store dares to open a store, there must be a special dish of the housekeeper, so that you can not care about the dining environment, after eating and shouting "absolutely" (Nanchang dialect, very powerful meaning, similar to the Fuzhou dialect "Yahao"), which is exactly the sentence of "delicious is the last word".
After working and living in Nanchang for 10 years, my friends took me to stores that specialize in eating Ganjiang boiled fish, field chicken, dog meat, Xiangtang native chicken and so on. The name of this type of shop is quite distinctive, and the style is very unified: two bedrooms and one living room, good brothers, good to come, and so on.
The address also tends to be around the corner and is not easy to find. But foodies will form their own "secret map of foodies" over time, and when they want to take a bite, they rely on memory to find it.
Nanchang has not been a commercial capital since ancient times, but it has maintained a highly developed agricultural culture for a long time, and where agriculture is developed, it will produce food; where food is gathered, it will produce food.
Nanchang people are standard foodies: first of all, good (four sounds) to eat. I once saw a very ordinary man's house on the outskirts of Nanchang and saw the man's sumptuous lunch: pig's trotters, braised fish, eels and hollow cabbage, three meats and one vegetarian food and a bottle of wine.
The greasy middle-aged man, eating quite boldly, holding a fat hoof in his right hand, the skin of the hoof is red in color, and he trembles slightly in his hand, with a breathtaking beauty. A large bite down, a large amount of chewing, the green tendons on the man's forehead burst out.
He lifted his glass and drank it all, the wine as brisk as a whistle as it entered. Even eating and drinking, full of red face, glowing with happiness, oily mouth, jumped out of such a sentence: "Don't look at the people in the old area poor, delicious and drink face red!" ”
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The climate of Nanchang has two extremes, the winter is so cold that you doubt life, and the summer is so hot that people just want to lie flat. Like Wuhan, Changsha, Chengdu, Chongqing and other places, Nanchang is wet and cold in winter, and it is necessary to eat spicy to drive away the cold. In the summer, it is extremely hot, simply stir-fry the braised braised, eat a sweat, and fall into a painful state.
If you take people as a metaphor, the character of Nanchang cuisine is not distinct. If you must summarize the characteristics, then the essence of Nanchang cuisine lies in the heavy taste. There is one criterion for measuring whether Nanchang cuisine is good or not: it cannot enter the taste and cannot be eaten.
Nanchang cuisine, which is black and oily, is not too cold to the so-called "color" in the color and fragrance: what is the use of "color"? It is not the woman of her own family who wants to be promised to be matched. Flash away from me, "good and just" (Nanchang dialect, delicious meaning) is the last word.
Nanchang cuisine has a strong taste, heavy oil and prominent main ingredients; it focuses on salty, fragrant and spicy in taste; it pays attention to crispness and crispness in texture; and it is known for burning, stewing, steaming, stewing and stir-frying in cooking.
In order to be good, it is necessary to strive for taste, in order to taste, it is necessary to heavy oil and heavy materials, soy sauce and chili peppers are essential, both equivalent to the soul of Nanchang cuisine.
Taking hairy crabs as an example, Nanchang people are too lazy to steam, but have made localization improvements: open the fire, the oil burns to the wolf smoke, the hairy crabs "bang bang" chopped into several pieces, thrown into the pot red boiled, red peppers, white fat garlic cloves and ginger, green onions and other violent sprinkles, soy sauce poured. fry! Stir-fry!
After the pot is put in a large bowl, it is placed on the table with a "bang", and the crowd will eat it with seven hands and eight feet. The taste of Nanchanglai is warm, direct, and even a little aggressive, and it is easy to make the tongue happy and comfortable.
Nanchang people are delicious, can eat, and will eat. But it is not famous for eating, it belongs to the kind of people who eat behind closed doors, and they are lazy to take what they think is delicious and take it outside to spread.
Nanchang people have a good stomach, but also have the ability to wait for the stomach to be comfortable, almost every household has a superb cooking skills of "good cook" or "good cook"!
Nanchang people's ability to eat is reflected in the fact that they have the ability and means to make all kinds of ordinary ingredients that outsiders disdain into delicious dishes, so that thousands of diners are convinced.
The most emblematic of the essence of Nanchang people will eat and Nanchang Lai is not chicken, duck, fish, sea cucumber abalone, etc., but vegetable pocket skin, garlic whiskers, grapefruit skin, watermelon peel and other corner scraps.
Many famous dishes in Nanchang, the ingredients are not expensive, the method is not complicated, you can try to eat at home.
In 2009, Nanchang organized more than 300,000 tourists at home and abroad to vote and elect the "Top Ten Gan cuisines", except for the relatively "high-grade" ingredients of Pohu Fat Fish Head and Lushan Stone Chicken, the rest are ordinary.
Even the "Four Stars looking at the moon", which is known as the "world's first dish", is nothing more than four dishes such as vegetarian fried snow beans, bamboo shoots stir-fried meat, cold mixed fish shreds and pickled vegetable button meat, plus a cage of steamed grass fish fillets.
There is a well-known saying in Jiangxi: "The grass of Poyang Lake, the treasure of the Nanchang people." The protagonists are artemisia quinoa and bacon, the accessories are nothing more than peppers and onions, ginger and garlic, hot oil, in turn, slightly stir-fried, almost everyone can fry very delicious.
The bacon is golden brown and fragrant, and the quinoa is green, crisp and tender. The salty and soft bacon accentuates the maverick aroma of quinoa.
Nanchang people entertain friends from other places, quinoa fried bacon is the first choice, in recent years, it has become one of the "top ten Gan cuisine". At the Beijing Olympics, fried bacon with quinoa was elected as the national dish, and firecrackers from many restaurants in Nanchang sounded like firecrackers.
Lotus blood duck or three cups of chicken, the cooking technique of Nanchang cuisine is a bit like Cheng Jin's three-plate axe, a simple move, but very practical.
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When it comes to goldbach conjecture, it is impossible to avoid Chen Jingrun; and when it comes to Nanchang on the tip of the tongue, crock pot simmering soup and mixed powder are indispensable.
"Simmering" is an extremely ancient way of cooking, as early as the "Lü's Spring and Autumn Ben Wei Chapter" recorded the true meaning of simmering soup: "The origin of all tastes, water is the beginning, five tastes and three materials, nine boiling and nine changes, then it becomes the ultimate taste."
In the Tang Dynasty's "Record of Simmering Soup", it is also recorded: "The crock pot is fragrant and boiling, and the four sides are flowing; a jar of simmered soup is strange and fresh in the world.".
Nanchang's crock pot soup brings this "simmering soup" method to the fullest.
There is a saying in Jiangxi called "The hero city of the world, Nanchang crock pot soup!" "There is no one who has lived in Nanchang who does not love crock pot soup.
The crock pot soup and mixed powder can be called the breakfast "golden partner" and "fairy companion" of the Nanchang people.
Nanchang people joked: "Three points on the map of Beijing may point to a bureau-level unit; on the map of Shanghai, three points may point to a Fortune 500 branch in Shanghai; on the map of Nanchang, three points may be poked in 10 flour shops and crock pot soup shops!" ”
After leaving Nanchang and working in Fuzhou for more than 10 years, I am still a "hardcore fan" of "old lady cross street mixing powder", and every time I go to Nanchang for business, no matter how busy I am, I always have to eat once.
Their tripe mix is my favorite, the tripe is soft and delicious, just thin and thick, just chew it and you can enjoy it. A bowl of tripe mixed flour, a jar of egg meatloaf soup, just 20 yuan, you can eat until you are satisfied with the wall.
Most of the large and small simmered soup shops on the streets of Nanchang are marked with the words "Rope Golden Pagoda Simmered Soup" or "Authentic Nanchang Rope Golden Pagoda Simmered Soup" to show the purity of the bloodline. Most of them stand at the door with one or several large tile cylinders, which seem to permeate the momentum of the town store. The large tile cylinder is basically customized, about 1.2 meters high, the diameter of the widest part of the waist is also about 1.1 meters, and the diameter of the cylinder mouth is 0.4 meters.
The interior of the large tile cylinder is a closed structure, separated by an iron frame into three layers, and the shopkeeper uses an iron hook to hook up the small clay pots of simmering soup, one by one neatly stacked on the iron frame, which is very spectacular.
360 lines, line out of the element. There are many mixed flour and crock pot soup shops in Nanchang like rice, and in the fierce competition, there are many masters. The simple mix of flour and crock pot soup, but the taste of each store is subtly different. This is also the secret that mixed flour and crock pot soup can be eaten for a long time.
Zheng Weidong is an authentic Nanchang native, grandma from the 50s of the last century to make crock pot soup, three generations of relay, has been doing about 70 years, Tan Yonglin, He Jiong, Deng Chao and other stars are also regular customers in the store.
Decades ago, Li Bo's grandfather came to Nanchang from Shandong and made a living by selling pig blood powder every day tow trucks near Cross Street and Three Eyes Well. Grandpa created a secret recipe that can make pig blood with a "bad taste". From Grandpa dragging and selling with a scooter to more than 10 chain stores throughout the city, business is running out every day.
Cai Lan's view of food is: food often starts with sacrificing a little health.
I agree with that.
Some outsiders, especially Fujian people who have a light diet and pay attention to health, complain that Nanchang cuisine is "oily and spicy and black", and it is easy to eat "three highs" and is not very healthy.
In this regard, the people of Nanchang do not care at all. Or that sentence: delicious is the last word!