Slightly Yang vegetable tofu festival
Author | Ye Zhijun
Although Luoyang is a small county in the deep mountains of Qinling Mountains, from ancient times to the present, it has been painted with a thick historical aura by the Jialing Grand Canyon, the mighty Western Han River, the distant sword lights and sword shadows and drum horn controversies, and the mysterious color of the Qiang culture. The change of the names of the counties of Fengxian, Wuxing, Shunzheng, Xingzhou, and Qiuzhou in successive dynasties alone is enough to prove that Luoyang is a thick book of history. Of course, the colorful food culture of Luoyang is not inferior to the former, and its reputation has long crossed the Qinba Longshu, and the new brand of Luoyang has been written in the whole country.
This is not only related to the pot of tea, the edge and the churned fish and fish, the edge and the bun noodle pot collapse, the edge and the vegetable tofu festival, the edge and other kinds of food. Here, the vegetable tofu series diet that makes me love has already aroused my hunger in the taste buds on the tip of the tongue of memory, and it is quickly full of excitement and intoxication.
In fact, vegetable tofu noodles are a kind of home-cooked rice in our Liuyang Mountains, and it has become our choice for three meals a day, together with canned tea, churned fish and fish, bun grain noodle pot and walnut bun. Of course, this kind of vegetable tofu series pasta is inseparable from sauerkraut. As a child, I knew that sauerkraut is not only appetizing, but also an indispensable staple food addition. Every household had a large vat or wooden bucket, which was specially used to cook sauerkraut. In the face of the lack of food in the large collective, people often have a high labor intensity a day but are hungry, in the face of such a situation, the women in the village who are considerate of their families have come up with some ways to improve the three meals a day that lacked oil and water at that time, and this boiled sauerkraut was the first choice of these women at that time. In a word, let their men work hard and let their babies go to school with a full stomach. In this way, the large vat or bucket in each kitchen is full of syrup and water dishes for each meal to choose from.
There are many kinds of vegetable tofu pasta, and this unique mountain village flavor diet has long been synonymous with Luoyang. Many foreigners know that Luoyang people like to eat sauerkraut, and they like to eat vegetable tofu noodles, vegetable tofu festivals, vegetable tofu soba noodles, vegetable tofu slices, vegetable tofu mixed soup, vegetable tofu porridge and vegetable tofu paste. Over time, these foreigners who have come to live in Luoyang for a long time breathe the aura of the slightly yang, bathe in the rain and dew of the slightly yang, trek through the landscape of the slightly yang, and after a long time, they turn themselves into half of the slightly yang people, and the acid of the slightly yang gradually adapts to their taste, and the water and soil of the slightly yang gradually nourish their disposition. Following the customs of the countryside, the nostalgia of The Slightly Yang gradually assimilated these foreigners who were adjusted from the south to the north.
Cooking tofu is also simple, you need to soak soybeans in the first night, and the next day at noon or afternoon you can grind out soy milk on the hand mill. Most of the people in Luoyang placed their hand mills under the eaves of the porch, and whenever it came to grinding soy milk, my big wives or aunts began to push the grinders while scooping the blistered and swollen beans in the basin with a spoon to add to the grinding eyes. It is an eternal impression, whether it is my mother or other rural women, they are just right to grind the eyes of the soybeans, not hurriedly, the body is lying together, the movement is harmonious and beautiful, the back of a back with two long braids is dynamically presented to the noon or dusk of the countryside, and the hour of the countryside is edited into an artistic close-up, which is really eye-catching.
Roasting soy milk and brine tofu is an important part of the cooking tofu festival. First put a grinding rack on the pot, then put on the filter soy milk, or filter in the basket or squeeze it by hand in the pocket made of gauze until the final bean juice is left. During this time, you have to keep the fire, beware of soy milk overflowing the pot, see the soy milk like a spring overflowing, these women will be prepared in advance a spoonful of cold water slowly swirled into the overflowing soy milk. In order to make the tofu delicious, some women also put some pepper noodles in the soy milk, saying that the tofu produced by this is tender and has a good taste. The next step is the key moment to order marinated tofu. This requires pouring the slurry water you make into the fence and turning around to filter the slurry water with the hanging wire into the pot, and so on, until the soy milk is cleared, until the white cloud-like soy milk floats into a pot of vegetable tofu lumps, then the tofu is successful. And at this time, the unique fragrance emitted by the vegetable tofu has long drifted out of the house, floating all over the village, and the people in the village must know who is making vegetable tofu rice again.
Next, the women in the mountains began to roll the dough with the dough. They either roll out white noodles or roll out soba noodles or cut grain noodles wheat noodles and knotted together. In short, the gray noodles should be kneaded hard with water, and the dough should be kneaded until the dough has tendons and silk before it is rolled out with a rolling pin to form a thin paper circle. The handiwork of the women in the mountains is called a masterpiece, and the noodles are rolled up on the rolling staff for a while and pushed away for a while, and the noodles are rolled on the rolling sticks on the hands of these women, and the rolling on the board and rolling from time to time make a popping and unfolding sound. In the meantime, the slender fingers of these women kept pushing and pulling with the rolling of the rolling staff. When it came time to cut the noodles, it was a kind of talent show, they rolled out the dough like a full moon and folded it up, and then they raised their knives and fell, and the rhythm was as fast as rain. As thin as a leek leaf or a line of noodles, it is artistically presented on the board in a rhythmic sound. When they encounter someone talking, they also communicate with each other, and the cutting knife still cuts out their craftsmanship and skill.
When the rice is cooked, the unique aroma of vegetable tofu wafts throughout the house. At this time, the white yellowed vegetable tofu festival was put on the table, and the snow-white vegetable tofu lump spread on the bowl surface and the golden yellow knots were comparable to each other. The dishes were also put on the table, there were green pepper fried spring sprouts, there were cold mixed potato shreds, there were garlic paste mixed with cucumbers, there were stewed pot dog green sprouts, there were raw pickled dog heart roots, there were red peppers mixed with leeks, there were pickles, there were red oil spicy seeds. These small dishes alone are dazzling, appetite is open, and appetite is greatly boosted. We will definitely eat this meal with relish, sweating and endless aftertaste.
Being able to eat such a meal every three to five minutes is considered a superior life. At that time, life was tense, the next meal was a bag of grain noodle sauerkraut rice, coupled with the lack of oil and water, a single sauerkraut rice to eat people scraped the stomach, the work did not have a little strength. Occasionally eating a dish of tofu rice is equivalent to the New Year. I remember one year the production team was milling soybeans in the warehouse yard dam, and there were many beans embedded in the dam of the tuyuan that had not been done well, and when we saw it when we played, we felt sorry to take the tea pot from home, and then we squatted in the courtyard dam and used bamboo sticks to cut them out one by one, and ripped out a full tea pot. When we got home, we asked our mother to make us a delicious tofu festival. I have not forgotten this simple memory of my youth, and it has always comforted my healthy life.
Now the vegetable tofu festival has entered the city as a delicacy, entered the city, and strongly tempted the taste buds of the people in the north and south. Even the first choice for rural people to eat after entering the city is the vegetable and tofu festival.
(Image material from the Internet)
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[Columnist] Ye Zhijun, who has published a variety of poems, essays and novels in print newspapers and the Internet, now lives in Luoyang County, Shaanxi Province.
Excerpt from: Reading Village, copyright belongs to the author.