After drinking Laba porridge, the countryside will gradually smell the taste of the Year. Twenty-three sacrificial stoves, twenty-four dust dust, the footsteps of the New Year are closer, steaming rice cakes, making dumplings, grinding tofu, fried dumplings, making fried rice candy, and every household is busy buying New Year goods.
Fried rice candy is a must for every family, and people with better conditions can also make peanut candy, sesame sugar, peanut crisp, and even extravagant pouring slices.
Soon after winter, select japonica rice or glutinous rice, cook a large pot of rice, first cool at home for a day or two, and then dry it with a bamboo plaque, and then finely crush it. Commonly known as sunning rice, it takes half a month to go in and out.
Halfway through the moon, the master who can make sugar gets busy. At that time, my father would do sugar craftsmanship, the Zhang family invited, the Li family invited, almost night and day, so I did not eat fragrant, occasionally I also followed him to mix food and drink. Today, my father has gone to the west of the crane, but the picture of following him to make fried rice candy will always be frozen in the memory.
The procedure for making fried rice candy is complicated. Put some fine sand in the iron pot and fry the rice, and sift it through a bamboo sieve, then pour the sugar into the pot to heat, add some sesame oil, and then pour the sugar into the pot, while heating, use a spatula to stir vigorously in the cauldron. From time to time, I also use a shovel to look at the color and tenderness of the syrup, and when the syrup is boiled to the point of being lifted into a line, the syrup is also boiled.
The next step is to make fried rice candy. The fried fried rice, quickly poured into the hot pot, stirred evenly with the sugar, and then shoveled the steaming raw materials into a square wooden mold, and used the "roller" to roll back and forth in the mold, the edges and corners should be compacted and flattened, and the template was quickly removed, and with a "pop" sound, a large square sugar block appeared on the board.
Then quickly cut the whole piece of sugar into strips with a knife. This is really a craft work, it seems to be a casual stroke, and the strips of sugar are neatly aligned, evenly and orderly. Then, cut the hands and feet into slices. Sometimes we also come to help cut fried rice candy, which really sees people eating tofu and thinking that it is fast teeth. Cutting and frying rice candy is not only a physical work, but also a technical job. The knife should be sharpened quickly and needless to say, it should be accurate to the heat and use even force. Cut early, the fried rice candy is easy to crush, bursting all over the ground; cut late, the fried rice candy is hard, it can not be cut.
At this time, the child standing on the side could not wait for a long time, grabbed two pieces of debris and stuffed them into his mouth, hot, fried rice candy a little sticky. When you eat it later, it is crunchy and crunchy when chewed.
When I was a child, I consumed fried rice candy, and at that time, it was only common. Nowadays, all kinds of sugars such as fried rice candy are becoming more and more exquisite, and there are more and more tricks, which can be seen everywhere on the street and in supermarkets. Now that the living conditions are better, all kinds of delicious foods are much better, but I can't find the taste of fried rice candy eaten in the New Year's Eve of my childhood.
Thick and sweet, sweet but the taste of fried rice candy; light and fragrant, fragrant but the taste of childhood.