I am not a writer, nor am I a northern man. My entry point is to use the warmth of the loess slope on the bank of the Yellow River to snuggle with the mother,000 affectionately, which is more affectionate than the foreign language mother.
Turn over the Year of the Rat, no longer rat words, the Year of the Ox, the Cow People Cow Language. The new jubilee is coming, there will always be nostalgia and reminiscence of the past, will pull some topics related to the year, the mother is more kind, the heart is warm and melting, then start with Chinese New Year's Eve meal.
Usually, whenever I see a dish with buttoned meat on the banquet in a high-end hotel, I can't help but think of my old wife, and I always want to hold up the pen to "read the mother's grace" and write an article reminiscing about her old man's home. So there is an entry point for the topic, remembering the good dishes made by the old woman - "big daddy buckle meat".
That was before the 1980s, and every New Year's Day, in addition to cleaning the courtyard, in addition to cleaning the courtyard, pasting Nian Hong, Wei Chigong and Qin Qiong, the gatekeeper gods, posted the New Year painting "Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai" purchased from Xinhua Bookstore in the bedroom. In the hall, eight immortals are placed to welcome friends and family with kyo fruits, sugar cakes, melon seeds, and peanuts. In addition to the large castrated chicken, there is also the necessary Cantonese fried button meat, which is a culinary dish that my mother is good at, and it is also the favorite of our brothers and sisters.
Zhanjiang people new year
Mother's button meat, the taste is not greasy at all, really let the population leave a lingering fragrance, the aftertaste is endless, when we even licked the bowl corner juice with our tongues. Recalling the past, in the era of material scarcity, it is great to be able to eat more pork, if you can taste the button meat made by your mother in the New Year, it is indeed "fragrant and delicious to swallow and stay". When the button meat was still on the kitchen stove, I stole a piece of it when no one was looking at it, sneaked out of the door and ate it hungrily, showed it to my brother, caught up, and competed for the last bit of meat. Alas, how not to be unforgettable!
Speaking of button meat, the society is popular in the "buckle meat to count the plum pine is the best" beautiful talk, everyone in the city is well-known, and even famous. To tell you the truth, I am tired of hearing the mantra that my father hangs on the corner of his mouth, "Grandpa buckles the meat first-class".
Honestly, my mother's button meat is really superb. Her family chef does not have to pay homage to the fragrant tea and kneel to worship the master, mainly relying on the side to observe and understand, imperceptibly, over time to steal the teacher to learn the art of food, not to worry about the ancient custom of "passing on men to women". Until Grandpa Xian passed away in the west of the crane, this family style was passed on to my sister through my mother, and it has been passed on to the present, but none of our brothers have understood it, but it has become a joke that "passing on women cannot pass on men".
Pulling the past thing, buckling meat, this thing, also have to start from Grandpa's father. Since I was a child, I have heard my grandfather say that my predecessor was the king of the rice shop in the famous town of Dianbaishuidong. In the year of the Republic of China, Japanese devils landed in Shuidong Town. Grandpa left the native Dianbai County with his male and female families, migrated to Chikanbu, Guangzhou Bay, and settled in a place called Haiyankeng (next to the present-day Guangfu Road), and since then he has sold sugar cane in Front of Nanhua Square and the theater to start a small business and maintain the family's livelihood.
Later, with a little skill learned when he was in charge of the restaurant in Shuidong, grandpa entered the famous South China Hotel in Hong Kong and Macao to help cook, and over time he practiced a good skill, and was known as "Big Daddy" in the jianghu. "Big Daddy Fried Button Meat" has become a famous dish of The South China Hotel, which is famous in Zhanjiang. In this high-end hotel, he also learned the practice of high-end dishes such as abalone wings and stomachs, and his craftsmanship was superb.
Later, in the days of material poverty, Grandpa practiced the "fake to the real" technology, which can make ordinary people live a "high-end dish" addiction. His cooking skills are - using pork skin to dry and brew fake eel belly, or using manta fish to make shark fin soup, so that we can't tell the real from fake, and when we are older, we don't dare to expose the truth of fake shark fin soup in person, lest Grandpa work hard to brew it, be sneered and hit. This method of brewing technology only passed on to the mother, and then disappeared, it is not convenient to reveal the ancestral skills here.
Photos of the old South China Hotel
The scene of the New Year when I was a child came to mind. I personally witnessed my grandfather brewing fried pork in this dish, which is still vividly remembered and unforgettable. The fried pork must be prepared a day in advance of a large square pork, and the meat of the pig is purchased, cooked in a large antimony pot, dried with water, and then poked evenly with an iron brush to evenly spread the pork skin, and coated with good honey on it.
In the back of the scene, Grandpa used a large charcoal stove on the outside of the house, set up a wok, and poured it into it until 70% full of peanut oil. Suddenly, the neighborhood children arched in a sightseeing array, watching and watching how this thing was made. When the wood fire of the stove was baking and burning, the peanut oil in the wok was bubbling, and the adults and children shouted one by one: "Oh, Big Daddy has begun to play tricks!" ”
At the beginning, but seeing that Grandpa's face did not change color, his heart did not beat to roll up his sleeves, and his right hand held up the palm shape of the combined index finger and middle finger, like a businessman selling snake medicine and playing tricks on the street, and said to himself: "Watch the play and snort!" ", only to see his fingers fall, pointing directly to the hot oil wok, and then pulling out his fingers, but there was no trace of burning, so that the public was stunned, and they spat out their tongues and squirted envy. Over time, Grandpa also became a "strange person" of water and soil.
As the saying goes, "the father tiger has no dog", in other words, "the father tiger has no dog". To tell the truth, in the past, Chinese New Year's Eve rice, my mother personally cooked the button meat, inevitably added a new trick, bought back the taro cooked and then sliced, together with the buckle meat, a piece of button meat a piece of taro around the large plate, and then put into the steamed wok and then steamed.
Cantonese taro button meat
Once this dish is on stage, relatives preemptively taste the buckle meat, the mother does not care to eat first, personally for the brothers and sisters' rice bowl to pull a piece of buckle meat, it has become a traditional imprint, deeply branded in the mind. The kind mother's love will never be forgotten, it is not the joy of the sports champion showing off the gold medal, but the mother's love forged a brand of home cooking love that is more valuable than the gold medal.
In fact, at that time, the society already had the name of "Big Daddy Buckle Meat", if my generation can inherit and carry forward, it should be like the "Apo Tian Ai Ling" fame soared. Unfortunately, due to the lack of successors, this craft was lost. My mother's button meat has become one of my most cherished memories, "the mother's hand is threaded, the needle is always concerned", eating it in the mouth makes people warm and warm, into the lungs.
Every festive season, I think about my relatives, and now, whenever I pick up the rice bowl Chinese New Year's Eve in my hand, I can't help but think of the fragrant button meat made by my mother's mother. Looking back, I still have tears in my eyes, gushing springs, and a thousand words of heartfelt feelings.
(Author: Zhanjiang writer Liang Zhenghai)