The barrenness of my childhood made me have a fondness for fried foods, such as twist flowers, fritters, oil cakes and other foods, which can be bought in the streets and alleys, but I always feel that something is missing, which is far from the smell of oil in my memory.
When I was a child, there was not much oil and water all year round, whenever the guests came to the house, the mother would burn a pot of oil cakes to entertain everyone, we could also take the opportunity to have a mouth addiction, how happy we were, after eating the hands were reluctant to wash, from time to time to smell the residual aroma on the hands, not to mention the meat, I couldn't afford to eat at all.
Niang's oil cake is made of a large iron pot in the countryside, kneaded with boiling water, unlike puffing powder and other puffing agents added to the street now, the oil is pressed by the father in the oil mill opposite the ditch, the rapeseed is grown in the slope of his own home, the real green natural zero additive, slowly baked with firewood, turning the noodles in the turn, it does not take long to come out of the pot, the baked cake is golden yellow, soft, revealing a strong fragrance, pervading the whole yard.
Time has passed, my mother has left us for more than ten years, never eaten hot noodle oil cake again, and has been baked several times according to the steps in memory, but it has failed and ended, either not formed, a pile of slag, or burned, a discus. Then I didn't toss it, because I knew that I couldn't copy it anyway.
There is a taste that is born and smelled, and the stomach and intestines of the nose and mouth invade the depths of memory to form "taste rust", which cannot be diluted for a lifetime, that is, the "taste of mother".