Around the Spring Festival, the peak sales of the Ningbo Soup Dumpling Shop in Yuyuan Garden, in order to eat a bowl of soup dumplings, the team can often stretch for hundreds of meters outside the store.
The production method of Ningbo soup dumplings is different, take the classic lard black foreign puff pastry filling: the skin must be ground with glutinous rice flour, the black foreign crisp must be sesame mixed with peeled pork plate oil, heated will be turned into a filling flow out, the soup ball is not down to the water, even if it is added to the water, the water must also be added to the wine brew micro-hook ...
"Delicious is a spirit of the old brand, a bottom line, and the reason why customers are willing to come to the door and buy repeatedly." Xu Zhengliu, the manager of Yuyuan Ningbo Tangtuan Store, is a native of Jiangsu, but in Shanghai, he has made Ningbo Tangtuan a career.
A bowl of soup that puzzled Chaplin
In 1998, Xu Zhengliu was 18 years old, graduated from secondary school, came to Shanghai from Siyang, Jiangsu Province, to join his hometown, to find a casual job, first for Yuyuan's long-established Songyun Building to send sugar lotus, and then stayed in the back kitchen of the Osmanthus Hall of Songyun Building, playing miscellaneous, side dishes, washing dishes, serving wontons, making roasted wheat, steaming small cages.
In 2003, it was converted into a Ningbo Tangtuan store. Since then, I learned to make Ningbo soup dumplings with Master Pan Yuying, who was in his 40s at the time and has been making Ningbo soup dumplings for almost 30 years. ”
Xu Zhengliu listened to the master and said that the earliest Ningbo soup dumplings did not have a fixed store, it was a pair of stalls, placed in the City God Temple, until 1945, a small façade was landed.
At that time, comedy master Chaplin, accompanied by Shanghai comic star Han Langen, visited Yu Garden and tasted a bowl of Ningbo soup dumplings, which was surprised and delighted. What puzzled Chaplin was how the delicious filling was hidden in the soup ball.
Anhui pork plate oil, Jiangnan salty osmanthus flowers, Fujian kumquat, Zhanjiang sugar, Shandong black sesame, this is the most important filling recipe of lard black foreign crisp, according to a fixed special proportion, kneaded evenly by hand, and then machine stirred. Every ingredient is very famous.
For example, the kind of pig to grow up slowly; the salty osmanthus flower will go through a water process, only a little salty; the particles of black sesame seeds are full; the purchased white sugar must be processed and crushed into a powder, which cannot have a grainy feeling; with the addition of kumquat or tangerine peel, people cannot eat the greasy feeling of lard.
The one who cares is the rarest
17 years ago, Xu Zheng studied abroad to make Ningbo soup dumplings, starting from the first process - tearing pork plate oil.
"A selection of black haired pigs, torn from the pig skin, the plate oil under the skin is an inch thick. Plate oil is different from ordinary lard in that it is two specific pieces of fat next to the ribs of pigs. It has a film on its surface that must be torn off by hand. A teacher tore 10 kilograms of plate oil for at least two hours. But only the plate oil that is torn out in this way can eat the fragrance. ”
I learned to stuff, followed by flour.
"Now we use three kinds of glutinous rice, from Suzhou, Changshu and Thailand, China, soaked in water overnight, scooped into fine powder in stone mortar, ground into rice paste with stone, and then put into a muslin bag, dried into wet powder. Add the filling and rub it by hand. A soup ball, 11 to 12 grams of powder, 6 to 7 grams of filling, with a finger to a quasi, usually practiced for at least a year. ”
Xu Zhengliu said that "pulling" is the kung fu in his hand, and when he practiced for half a year, he could reach the point where he was almost exactly the same. In an hour, his speed was to "pull" 600 soup balls. A plate of 100 tangyuan, down to the boiling water, the soup balls in the boiling water churning, he has to keep the cold water, keep the soup clean, five or six minutes to catch it.
Xu Zhengliu said that an important reason why Ningbo Tangtuan Shop is doing well is that it still insists on manual operation. "Compared with some large-scale machine production enterprises, we usually only have 50,000 or 60,000 pieces a day. In the Spring Festival and Lantern Festival, you have to do 200,000 a day, work 13 hours a day, and in the 135 square meters of the store, it is the limit. ”
The production of each soup ball goes through more than a dozen processes, from traditional water milling, beating, filling, mixing, blanking, kneading, cooking, and then with skilled and unique handmade. It does not add any preservatives, nor does it freeze at a low temperature of minus 5 degrees Celsius, the sweet sesame filling is imported, round and sweet, full of folk happiness connotations, and its taste is naturally comparable to that of non-quick-frozen soup balls.
"The one who is attentive is the rarest." Only with the heart, that bowl of soup dumplings will have soul and feelings. ”
There is tradition and innovation in the story of the soup dumplings
In 2010, Xu Zhengliu became the manager of the Ningbo Tangtuan Store in Yuyuan Garden. At that time, most of the clerks were teachers over the age of forty or fifty, and their craftsmanship was no worse than Xu Zhengliu.com. After taking office, Xu Zhengliu adjusted the main food in the store, eliminated snacks such as cold noodles and wontons, and carried out a series of transformations and innovations with glutinous rice food as the core. "Glutinous rice food, Chinese like, and often exist in all four seasons, meaning auspicious."
His adjustments and innovations are: from November to February, he makes soup dumplings and eight treasure rice; from March to May, he makes green dumplings and launches new products such as salted egg yolk and durian green dumplings; from June to July, he makes new products such as meat dumplings and pushes curry beef dumplings; from July to October, he makes fresh shrimp mooncakes and pushes different colors of shaved ice wine brewing gardens. In terms of sales methods, live broadcasting, micro-stores, and Internet +are used.
"Ningbo Tangtuan shop has been given new elements, but the old tradition will not be lost - two words, delicious, that is a spirit, is a bottom line, is the reason why customers are willing to come to the door and buy repeatedly." Innovation is not about liking the new and hating the old, and the tradition must continue to be maintained. For example, the proportion of our soup dumplings and black puff pastry varieties is still more than 50%. ”
After coming to Shanghai for more than 20 years, Xu Zhengliu likes life in Shanghai, especially the delicacy in the bones of Shanghainese. "The size and size of the Ningbo soup dumplings, a few bowls, are all products of historical precipitation: taking into account the eating habits, lifestyles and appetites of Shanghainese people, after careful deliberation, they have been passed down to this day."
Column Editor-in-Chief: Tang Ye Text Editor: Tang Ye Title Image Source: Figure Worm Image Editor: Cao Liyuan
Source: Author: Ye Shifu