Qingyuan Humanities 丨 Cooking out a season of parfait incense (Part 1)

　　Lidong is a major festival in the tenth month of the lunar calendar. Spring ploughing, summer planting, and autumn harvest are all seasons of labor, and only lidong is a festival in which farmers can rest well in the joy of harvest after a year of labor. It heralds the approaching of winter and the need for people to recuperate in anticipation of a better year's work in the coming year.

　　And the hometown is called "Winter Festival". I have always stubbornly believed that "winter festival" is the best exposition of the opposite winter. The winter festival not only has the meaning of the festival, but also indicates that after the winter festival, the winter solstice, the weather is getting colder, the condensation is frost, and the elderly and children at home should start to protect themselves from cold and frost.

　　"Cooking parfait" is an indispensable and important part of the winter festival in the hometown. The people in the hometown call it mille-feuille cake, in fact, the name of mille-feuille cake is more vivid, just because they have been continuing the name of their hometown and are unwilling to change it. Saying that it is "cooking" is actually steaming, which uses the heat of water vapor to steam the "parfaits" placed in the "cake grid" on a large iron pot. Just like the hometown calls steamed rice in the rice bowl "cooking rice", the steamed parfait is naturally called "cooking parfait". Winter festival "cooking parfait", ordinary people mainly to meet the family's strong labor after a year of labor to make up for the mouth, rest. In our family, my father died prematurely, my two brothers are not yet minors, and my mother is the only strong laborer in our family. During the winter festival "cooking parfait", the mother did not wait for the hostess to cook the parfait and serve it to the beautiful enjoyment like the laborers of other families, but she was busy alone, and only two brothers and sisters could occasionally help.

　　Mother always began to prepare a few days before the arrival of winter. Select new rice harvested this year, dried and dried. To select rice, we must choose the top part of the rice on the grain pile, and the new part of the rice is full of seeds, and there is no "blind grain". When you pick a rice mill to grind out new rice, the new rice milled out of good new rice is also crystal clear, as if it is as crystal clear as white jade. At that time, I always liked to follow my mother to the rice mill, watching the yellow-orange-orange new rice dumped into the bucket of the rice mill' import, and immediately I could see the new rice gushing out of the exit of the rice mill happily, like a small white waterfall. The new rice is crystal clear, and I always like to put my hand deep into the milo, grab a large handful of new rice, and then raise my hand high, so that the grain of rice keeps sliding out of my fingers and falling back to milo. I enjoyed the presence of grain being grabbed and slipped in my hand, and I was fascinated by the pleasure of the grain of rice slipping through my fingers. It would be nice to have a little sunlight in this afternoon, shining obliquely through the window of the rice mill, shining on the new rice that slipped from my fingertips, on the new rice full of a large basket, and the grains of rice shone like pearls.

　　My mother did not let me play with rice like this, she carefully picked up a few grains of rice that I accidentally slipped out of my fingertips from the dusty ground, blew the ash, put them back into the milo, and then stood up and trained me with her self-created "famous saying": engage in minon essence. As a young child, I never knew what my mother meant by this sentence, but I didn't dare to be naughty and obediently stand aside against my mother's rarely pulled face. When I grew up, I also specifically asked my mother for the specific meaning of this sentence. The mother explained in a serious way, roughly saying that children who play with rice are not pleasing to people. Then the mother would add with a little shyness that rice was the best grain, managed by the rice god, and the ancestors said that playing with rice would offend the rice god and greatly reduce the harvest of the family in the coming year. I now think back to that in that hungry era, grain was a god-like existence for my mother, who alone had to raise our six brothers and sisters and wasted grain, even if it was a few, she would never allow it.

　　Soaking rice is the first process of "blowing parfait" officially began. When the rice is soaked, the children of the family know that they can eat the sticky parfait the next day. The day before the winter, my mother mixed the new rice evenly according to the proportion of japonica rice and glutinous rice, used the mountain spring water brought by the family to go through it, and then soaked it in a wooden barrel overnight and waited for the next day to use it. The water to soak the rice can not be too much, the rice oil is floating on the surface after the rice is soaked overnight, and too much water is poured out, resulting in nutrient loss, which is never allowed by the mother. The water can not be too little, too little, the rice grains do not absorb enough water and have not yet bubbled, which will affect the quality of the rice milk in the back, and then affect the taste of the parfait. Therefore, the amount of water soaked in rice should be controlled just right, and it is best to buckle up just after the rice grain bubbles up the next day.

　　Our family has many brothers and sisters, and my mother usually soaks about five buckets of rice, about three pounds per bucket of rice. In other words, our family's cooking parfait should have about fifteen pounds of rice. The ratio of japonica rice and glutinous rice is always estimated by the mother herself, never using a rod scale, but the proportion of japonica rice and glutinous rice is always so appropriate, and the "parfait" cooked out is always not sticky or hard, and it is soft and slippery to eat. The water for soaking rice is no more and no less every time, just right. At that time, I often wondered why my mother could always estimate with her eyes to deduct the proportion appropriately, and what was the trick? Mother always laughed lightly, you see in our village, which family will use the rod scale to weigh out a 1510, not all with the eyes to estimate. Although my mother said so, I always felt that the parfait cooked by my mother was always much better than that cooked by the aunts and aunts in the neighborhood, which was particularly sweet and soft, and did not stick to the teeth.

　　To grind rice syrup, you use a millstone made by the village stonemason. The grinding disc made of bluestone, divided into two pieces of base and upper and lower pieces, said to be pieces, is actually two pieces of polished round stones, the upper and lower pieces of contact with the side have a small arc of the stone chiseled out of the small ditch, but the two pieces of chiseled small ditches, the direction is opposite. When the grinding disc is rotated in this way, an effective friction force can be formed, and the rice soaked in water can be ground into rice paste. The stone grinding plate also needs to be chiseled through a large and small round hole near the edge to add rice. A small square hole is chiseled on the side and equipped with a wooden handle, which is convenient for holding the grinding disc by hand and saves a lot of effort. After studying physics after junior high school, I found that a stone mill, which integrated and used a lot of mechanical principles, fang felt that the craftsmen in the countryside were actually scientists of life.

　　On the day of the winter, my mother got up at four or five o'clock in the morning, and about fifteen pounds of rice were soaked overnight, filling a large bucket. Mr. Mother put on the fire, and as soon as there was a fire in the stove, the whole stove house was immediately filled with warm breath. The millstone was pre-arranged by my mother on the first day. Put the millstone and pick the flattest place in the house. The grinding disc is placed well, and it is also necessary to feed it into the grinding disc with some water first, try to grind it first, turn the upper grinding disc, and the base of the grinding disc is not shaken, which is considered to be suitable.

　　Grinding rice syrup is a technical job. The mother sat down facing the grinding disc, with her feet separated on either side of the grinding disc, which was convenient to operate and prevented the grinding disc base from being unstable and not tipping to one side. The mother's right hand holds the wooden handle of the stone mill, and to make the stone mill turn vigorously, the left hand uses a spoon to scoop a spoonful of soaked rice from the wooden barrel and feed it into the pre-chiseled round mouth above the stone mill. The small mouth goes straight to the middle of the two grinding discs, and the rice falls from the small opening to the gap between the two grinding discs, and the gravity of the grinding disc and the friction when turning the grinding disc are used to crush the soaked rice into rice paste. At the beginning, the rice scooped in the small spoon should be as much water as possible, first let the grinding disc turn up quickly, fifteen pounds of rice, and the mother alone should grind from early morning to noon. Grinding rice milk, pay attention to the two hands to cooperate with absolute tacit understanding, the right hand to make the grinding disc turn skillfully, the left hand to add rice at the right time. The left and right hand movements must be synchronized and staggered at the right time, and the division of labor is both different and closely cooperative. The mother's hands began to work left and right, the stone mill flew around, and the white rice milk flowed down along the edge of the stone mill with the mother's neat movement, and then merged into a pure white river, flowing to the wooden barrel placed underneath. The thickness of rice milk depends on the ratio of rice grains to water, sometimes draining, sometimes thick. After getting older, I was fascinated by the "Legend of the Archery Hero", and the old naughty boy Zhou Botong's hands-on skills in the book were amazing, but now that I think about it, when my mother started work left and right, it was not the same as the hero.

　　The rice milk is ground and slowly stirred in one direction in the bucket with a large spoon to make the whole bucket of rice milk thick and even. The family had a hasty lunch and waited for their mother to start the last procedure, the "cooking".

　　For cooking parfaits, the fire in the stove must be burned vigorously, and a round "parfait grid" is placed in a large iron pot. Saying that it is a lattice, it is actually a round barrel, and I prefer to call it a cake bucket. The parfait grid is carefully hooped by carpenters, leaving a round hole about two inches in diameter in the middle, and inserting a bamboo tube of the same height as the cake bucket and polished with small bamboo for steaming. The wooden board on the base was sawn out of a dense strip of space, and the space was also used to better steam, and a clean white cotton cloth was laid on it. Cake buckets are not commonly used, so not every household in the village has them. My family's cake bucket was handed down from my grandmother's hand, and over the years, the color of the logs has changed to dark brown, and sometimes the bamboo hoops are loosened when the parfait is cooked, and the parfait is in danger of slipping to the ground. The family also built a new cake bucket while repairing the house, but the mother was willing to lend the new cake bucket to the neighbors' uncles and aunts, and used the old cake bucket left by her grandmother. And a few of our brothers and sisters sometimes wonder why my mother always lends new buckets to other people's homes and uses old cake buckets herself. Mother will say, you remember, borrowed things must be guaranteed to be easy to use, otherwise it is better not to borrow, others are not used to our old cake bucket, in case the parfait slips on the ground, it is not to help people to help the heel. The aroma of the parfait cooked by our mother will always remain in our memories, but her simple words are deeply burned in our hearts, and we have never forgotten them over the years.

Source: Qingyuan Network

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