Snacks are always the most special of many cuisines. Sitting in the streets and alleys, sitting on the spot, the image of etiquette is left behind, and it will not be full, just to understand a mouthful. In this way, the snacks that have been selected by generations of diners must be representative of the city's tastes.
In Changsha, which is famous for its cuisine, this is a tried-and-true rule.
01 Fried stinky tofu
The Fire Palace is one of the most lively places in Changsha. The ancestors of Jingchu have had a tradition of worshipping the fire god since ancient times, and this fire temple built in the Ming Dynasty has been full of incense for hundreds of years, and pilgrims have flocked endlessly.
From the end of the Qing Dynasty, the Fire Palace gradually gathered many vendors, who set up stalls, raped and sang operas, and gradually developed the place into a large market integrating sacrifices, theater watching, listening to books and snacks.
According to the statistics of newspapers published during the Republic of China period, there were dozens of snacks that Changsha people could already taste in the Fire Palace.
Stinky tofu, dumpling bait, hoof flowers, sesame oil pig blood, white grain pills, various brine flavors, alkali noodles, rice noodles, triangle tofu, snails, beef steamed buns, sugar and oil dumplings, etc.
Today's Fire Palace can still see the grandeur of the year. A walk here, two steps, a gust of wind is a different kind of snack.
Among the hundreds of snacks in the Fire Palace, if you want to choose the most prestigious, stinky tofu deserves it. This kind of tofu that "smells smells and tastes fragrant" has spread its prestige all over the country for decades, so that folk legend has not eaten stinky tofu, and it is not counted as Changsha.
The story of Changsha stinky tofu has to start decades ago. Jiang Ertao, a Xiangyin man, set up a stall at the entrance of the Fire Palace to sell fried tofu, and the business was booming.
It is rumored that because the brine of this tofu has a smelly smell, a group of naughty young people added the word "stink" in front of the tofu of the Jiang Ertai snack water brand, and the Changsha people with a casual personality felt that the image, this name was passed down from one generation to ten or ten hundred, and it was retained.
Brine is the key to determining the taste of stinky tofu. The basic ingredients for shiitake mushrooms, fresh winter shoots, koji, tempeh, and brine fermentation are simple, but the specific recipe is the biggest secret of the industry.
The white and tender tofu blanks are soaked in brine for fermentation, a process that takes at least four hours even in the hot summer. The tofu after leaving the tank is stained with a layer of black, emitting a smell of brine, which is also the source of the stinky word for stinky tofu.
The marinated stinky tofu can be brought to the kitchen to prepare for frying. In the boiling oil pot, the tofu gradually expands, the skin color becomes darker, and the aroma is compelling.
Changsha proverb describes freshly fried stinky tofu as "the outer layer is crispy and the inside is like a brain, and it is best to taste it while the pot is hot." "When an insider eats stinky tofu, he must first pick up a piece of stinky tofu that is not dipped in any spices to taste the original fresh flavor of the tofu to be a good stinky tofu." Of course, the average diner still prefers the taste of chili sauce mixed with tofu.
MONOS glutamate, soy sauce, garlic, dried chili noodles, sesame oil mixed into the boiled broth, fried tofu poured with mixed dried chili juice, sprinkled with green onions and coriander, poked through the outer skin, chili juice fully penetrated into the gap of the inner tofu, took a bite of tofu, the juice splashed out, full of fresh and spicy, the spirit is invigorated, this is the true meaning of what changsha people call "good and right".
02 Sisters
The Fire Palace inherits the traditional snacks of Changsha and has also become a gathering place for folk culture. Here, many snacks have moving historical stories and folklore behind them.
In a drawer, there are two kinds of dumplings with different shapes, a round belly and a sharp horn, which are called "sister dumplings".
Legend has it that at the end of the Qing Dynasty, the two daughters of the coppersmith of Changsha Tongpu Street were intelligent and beautiful, and the two sisters set up a small shop to make dumplings, one sweet and one salty, which was deeply loved by diners. The sisters' bun dumplings have also become a scenery at the intersection of the street, and have been frozen in the name of sister dumplings.
The younger sister is round, the older sister is pointed, and the younger sister is cute. Bao Sister Dumplings test the chef's skills the most. Osmanthus sugar, orange cake, and sesame seeds are the raw materials for sweetener dumplings. Oranges and osmanthus flowers are common plants in the streets, alleys, fields and countryside of Hunan, and this stuffing is sweet with the aroma of oranges and osmanthus flowers, which is the most familiar and intimate taste of locals.
The meat filling is made of shiitake mushrooms and meat as raw materials, steamed out of the basket, the color is porcelain white, crystal clear, small and exquisite, taste a sweet and then bite a salty, taste carefully, each has its own flavor.
03 Sugar oil
It is probably one of the most frequently used words in the snack food category in the Hunan dialect. A variety of ingredients can be made into rice dumplings.
Changsha people love cane, and especially love the round, yellow sugar oil like the moon. Add slices of sugar to the boiling oil pot, knead the glutinous rice into a lump under the pot, slowly boil it with caramel, and the golden sugar oil dumplings will slowly take shape.
Hot sugar and oil are cooked out of the pot, and often people can't wait to eat it at the entrance of the shop with a small bowl. Sugar, oil and rice are key to making sugar oil, which requires constant sugar to be added to the pan when frying. The sugar is not good, and the fried sugar oil is not fragrant and easy to turn black.
After the rice dumplings are fried, scoop up a spoonful, set aside to cool, and pour a layer of sugar to allow the sugar juice to fully cover the entire rice dumplings. One bite down, there is no sweetness, but a wisp of osmanthus fragrance between the teeth, continue to chew, the sweetness of the outer skin and the soft glutinous rice heart mixed together, the taste is sweet to the heart.
The oil used to make sugar oil should be rapeseed oil with strong penetration, glutinous rice should be white and plump glutinous rice, and sugar should be pure osmanthus sugar. When the weather is hot, it will be closed.
Hot sugar oil dumplings, stalls, freshly squeezed and eaten are sweet tastes that are becoming more and more difficult to taste. In the disappearing old city and streets of Changsha, it is the flowing memories of these craftsmen who have been passed down from generation to generation, leaving a sweet resting place for the busy life of urban people.
04 Scrape cool powder
If sugar oil is said to belong to winter, then scraping powder is changsha's summer darling.
A large piece of crystal clear cold powder blank is scraped into a thin filament with a shovel, the roots are soft and clear, and the silk is sandwiched into a small bowl with chili oil, dried radish and stirred evenly, which is an indispensable taste in the summer remembered by many Changsha people.
How is the jelly-like and elastic cool powder blank formed? The boiling boiling water is slowly poured into the fully dissolved pea flour, and at the same time, it is necessary to constantly stir in the bowl with a stick, and the powder water begins to gradually solidify.
After thorough stirring, the pea flour in the bowl blends evenly with the water to form a viscous jelly-like shape. After 12 hours of cooling, the cold powder can take shape.
Scrape the cool powder now buy and scrape, gently press the powder blank with a copper shovel, scrape out the thick and uniform vermicelli in one direction, and use chopsticks to clip it into the bowl. This step is extremely challenging to the basic skills, light can not be added, heavy will be the cold powder clipped off.
Ingredients are the key to the delicious taste of scraping powder, soy sauce, vinegar, curd milk, chili oil, garlic water, chili radish, peanut crumbles, sesame oil, each ingredient has been exquisite, of which curd milk juice is a major feature of Changsha scraping powder.
The exquisite tofu milk comes from Nanyue Hengshan Mountain, where the water quality is clear and the Hengshan Temple with strong incense in Hunan. Locals are good at making vegetarian tofu, Nanyue's curd taste is better, soft and salty, curd made of ingredients, added to the basin with a spoon to crush, remove the soup that comes with the curd, add their own secret ingredients, use boiling water and even, it has become a secret scraping powder ingredient
The snow-white cold powder is soaked in the soup under the stirring of chopsticks, the spice of garlic water, the aroma of chili oil, the saltiness of tofu milk, the crispness of green onions and coriander, linked by a series of white crystal noodles, which makes people have no appetite in the hot summer from the tip of the tongue to the stomach, which can make people get a layer of goosebumps and block the heat out of the body.
In the past, cool powder stalls were all over Changsha's old and new communities, streets and alleys. Ordering a bowl of scraped cold powder after school and before work is the highlight of the day engraved in the memory of every Changsha person. While the old city is disappearing, many of the old flavors continue to exist in a different way, growing up with the next generation.
05 Small bowl of liqueur
In the old days, many Changsha snacks were flattened and flowing food in the trolley, and the vendors were selling along the street, and every place was the most popular object, of which the shouting sound of "small bowl sweet wine" was the most nostalgic sound of every Changsha person.
The production of the small bowl liqueur takes three days. To make sweet wine, you need to soak the glutinous rice for three hours in advance, wait until the glutinous rice grains are full and crystal clear, and then wash and filter the water before it can be steamed.
The wooden koshiki is covered with fine gauze, a bamboo brush is inserted in the middle, the glutinous rice is filled in the form of a low-lying basin in the middle, and the bamboo brush is extracted, which can keep the structure of the glutinous rice in the barrel loose and breathable. Cover with a koshiki cloth and tie it tightly around, a bucket of 50 pounds of glutinous rice needs to be steamed for 40 minutes.
The cooked glutinous rice is poured directly in cold water to cool down quickly, preparing for the next mix. The glutinous rice that comes out of the pour is shiny and shiny, and when it is scattered and cooled, it can be mixed into the koji.
The homogeneously stirred glutinous rice is packed into large and small bowls, and the force of the pressed rice must be kept constant. Glutinous rice, under the action of koji, will go through two processes from saccharification to wineization, the pressure is too tight, glutinous rice fermentation is too slow, too loose, glutinous rice will soon enter the liquor from saccharification, losing the sweet taste of sweet wine.
The big bowl went straight down with his fist, the small bowl left a hole with his fingers, and the loaded bowl was put into the cellar. After three days, the wine-soaked dessert wine will gush out of the hole.
Compared with the rice wine in Sichuan and Hubei, Changsha's sweet wine has a stronger grain of rice. After forming, the sweet wine is white, the rice grains are clear, and there is a little chewiness.
In three days, the small bowl sweet wine has become the rice wine poured by countless people. The sweet wine grains that have just been taken out of the cellar are firm and full, soaked in the transparent rice wine water. On a hot summer day, just seeing such a bowl of rice wine on the table is a kind of enjoyment, and it is suddenly a little cool from the heart.
06 Dessert wine with eggs
Here, in addition to the small bowl of sweet wine, sweet wine and egg punching is also a traditional snack in Changsha that everyone often orders.
After the sweet wine is boiled in the pot, the eggs are beaten into the egg, and the eggs should be quickly opened with chopsticks after the pot is put down, so that the egg liquid and the sweet wine are fully mixed to form a silky taste, and then quickly served.
The elderly Changsha people also add a little pepper noodles to the sweet wine. The aroma of wine mixed with the smell of eggs was drunk in one sip, and a stream of heat went straight out of the top of the brain, and it was indescribably cheerful.
What is Changsha? What is Changsha? From these diverse snacks, it may be possible to piece together the most original and cute faces of a city, which are disappearing and being reborn.
The constant is always the meticulous craftsman and the pious and enthusiastic diners, and this timeless combination interprets one wonderful story after another.