Yubang Village is a village in XiaMao, Sha County, Shancheng, famous for snacks, and many people here go north and south to deal in snacks. Walking through the village, see a snack bar connected to it. Mountains in the distance surround the fields, clear streams pass through the front of the village, lotus flowers bloom in the near distance, melons in the melon shed hang on the trellises, various vegetables grow, the wind of the fields and the smell wafting out of the shop. This flavor has a different flavor.
Sitting on the side of the street, tasting the steaming tofu brain, the beans grown in the field will have such a fragrance. Tracing back to the roots, a variety of snacks are the products of the agricultural era and an effective way to preserve food in that era. Snacks are usually steamed, fried, burned, fried, grilled, roasted, fried, fried, lavendered, pickled, etc., not only to preserve food, but also to meet people's taste on the tip of the tongue. Some people think that Shaxian snacks originated in a certain dynasty, but I think that snacks are produced along with people's preservation of food, and that the people are produced to enrich their lives. Snacks were born in the folk, this is not a commodity, but in the polder day, people will take their own snacks to the market, eat more people, with customers, snack makers in the polder stall business or open a shop operation, snacks become a commodity.
The demand on the tip of the tongue makes snacks constantly innovative and varied. The valley of health is a treasure, but if three meals a day are always rice, it is inevitably monotonous. Especially in the winter, when it is idle time, after the harvest, there are abundant ingredients, and people will innovate and taste the ingredients. The first is the deep processing of ingredients. For example, grind the rice into a pulp, cook a pot of delicious soup, pour the rice milk on the edge of the pot, cook the rice milk, shovel it into the pot, and repeat it several times, it becomes the pot side paste. Another example is the seven-layer cake, indica rice is washed and soaked in the pulp, and steamed repeatedly until the seventh layer. For example, the rice is fried into a flower, and then stirred with maltose to make a pastry, which is eaten in the mouth and is crisp and sweet. The second is to combine ingredients. For example, taro cake, is the fresh taro and rice milk in proportion to stir, and add salt, the steamer basket is covered with bamboo leaves or lotus leaves, the pulp is poured into steaming, becomes a taro cake, rice, taro, lotus or bamboo leaf, melted together under the action of fireworks. There are also taro dumplings, steamed taro, added sweet potato powder mashed into taro puree as a skin, shredded meat, sauerkraut, bamboo shoots and other fillings, it becomes taro dumplings. According to the "Shaxian Snacks" compiled by Zhang Qingxiong and Huang Changming, Shaxian snacks can be divided into noodles, rice, miscellaneous grains, stews, and other categories. The third is to work the benefit of health maintenance. Shaxian is located in the mountains of northern Fujian, relatively humid, the people engaged in physical labor, in order to drive away the cold and humidity, increase physical strength, in many stews to add Chinese herbal medicine, such as stone olive duck mother cup, with the effect of clearing heat and nourishing yin, moisturizing intestines, cough relief; tea tree mushroom rib cup, tea tree mushroom has the effect of nourishing qi appetizer, tonifying kidneys and nourishing yang, and using it to stew ribs can improve people's immunity. The richness of specialties is directly proportional to the richness of snacks, and the rich products of Shaxian have improved the matching and innovation of Shaxian snacks, providing a wealth of items for the innovation of Shaxian snacks. On the one hand, some villages have been in a state of self-sufficiency for a long time, and in a relatively closed natural environment, many traditional flavor snacks have been preserved, such as plate duck in Zhenghu Lake, dried loach powder in Nanxia, rice jelly skin north of Shaxi, sweet roasted sale in Xia Mao, and pickled bitter bamboo shoots in rich mouths.
Adapting to the season is a feature of snacks. The snacks are locally sourced and closely related to the seasons, as some plants only grow in one season and need to be made with fresh products. For example, in the summer, we can taste the honey of the fairy grass, which is harvested from the mountain stream. In the middle of summer in July, go up the mountain to cut firewood, pick a handful of fairy grass in the mountain stream, come back and put it in the stone mortar to mash into grass mud, put it in the net to filter, remove the grass residue, and then filter the grass and wood ash as alkali into the basin, stir evenly, cover the lid, wait for the soup to condense into freezing, pour in some honey, it is really a good product for summer. There is also Qingming Kueh, before and after the Qingming Dynasty, picking the sage grass with small yellow flowers blooming in the field, pounding it into grass puree, mixing it with rice milk to make a skin, and filling it with radish shreds or bean paste. Every year in the spring and summer, the hibiscus flowers bloom, and the villagers pick the hibiscus flowers and sauté the aroma in the pot with oil, green onions, and dried shrimp. Then wash the hibiscus flowers and cook them together with the rice soup, which is a delicious dish. Different seasons will grow different plants, blossom different flowers, bear different fruits, and also create snacks in different seasons.
There are customs in snacks, and there are emotions. Spring Festival is coming, every household steamed rice cake, red rice cake, white rice cake, rice cake on the surface of the red dates, this "cake" and "high" harmonic sound, I hope that the next year is good, the festival is high. During the Qingming Dynasty, The Qingming Rice Dumplings are made to offer to the ancestors to express their remembrance; during the Dragon Boat Festival, the family packs rice dumplings; during the Mid-Autumn Festival, eating moon cakes, sending flowers to the full moon, and the ingredients for making mooncakes are even more varied... Not only moon cakes, but also gift cakes; during the winter solstice, the family wraps tangyuan under the lamp on the cold night, while chanting folk songs, the warmth overflows into the heart; eating the Lantern On the fifteenth day of the first month, it means reunion; someone in the family has a birthday, steaming a cage of shou peaches, which can set off the festive atmosphere... In short, snacks not only satisfy people's desire to eat, people also put their emotions in snacks, which is why people have a special memory of snacks, remember a snack, often remember a season, a day, a story.
Snacks are not only beautiful in taste, but also enjoy the process of making. My respect for snacks is not only about its taste, but also about the strong family affection in the production process. Chinese New Year's Eve years ago, every household steamed rice cakes. My mother began to beckon us to soak the rice and grind the pulp, and the red stove fire reflected the mother's face that was still deeply burned in my heart, and the fragrance of the whole house still lingered.
The snack is also a souvenir for visiting relatives and friends, and the pastry wrapped in straw paper is pasted with a red paper printed with the word Fu.
Snacks are a food, but I always think that it is not simply food, not just satisfied with the tip of the tongue. Every snack is steeped in culture. Snacks are born in the folk, closest to people's homes, and have the most pyrotechnic taste. Meals are not often eaten, snacks are often there, in my memory, the meal did not remember a few, but the taste of snacks is always in the aftertaste.