"A bite of hemp duck meat, raced through the living gods."
The Sichuan region produces hemp ducks with light brown feathers and tender flesh.
The mention of ma duck reminds me of the long Chinese painting hanging on the white wall of my aunt's house when I was a child. There is a clump of pale yellow reeds with white flowers, and a cannabis duck playing happily in the water below. The picture is light and elegant, with few strokes, elegant and interesting.
The spacious room is decorated with old nan wood furniture, and the air is filled with a quaint cultural atmosphere. According to my aunt, this painting was painted by my uncle's grandfather, Tan Shimen. Tan Shimen was a famous painter in Chengdu during the Qing Dynasty, and he has a large collection of cultural relics and paintings, leaving many ink treasures for his descendants. The Tan family has been passed on for several generations, and to the generation of the uncle, the number of various cultural relics and paintings is considerable.
In difficult times, in order to fill the family, his uncle sold some of the calligraphy and paintings in exchange for survival funds, which made the children sigh. This reed playing duck is one of the remaining ancestral ink marks, which shows that the mallard has existed in Sichuan since ancient times. The mallard is beautiful and picturesque, full of treasures. Duck feathers can be used as duck down suits, duck meat, duck offal can be eaten.
01
Drinking some wine, making tea houses, chatting with friends, connecting feelings, and buying a bunch of brine duck products are the favorite hearts of Chengdu citizens. Chengdu people like to eat duck hearts, the small round duck hearts are boiled with sesame oil, old brine, cut into small pieces, the taste is mellow and chewy, which is a good accompaniment to wine.
Photo / Visual China
In the 1990s, I had just returned to Chengdu from university and always liked to visit The Commercial Center Chunxi Road. One evening, when the summer sun was receding, canvas tents were set up in the middle of Chunxi Road, and night markets were set up one by one. In addition to selling clothes, there are also many special food stalls, one of which specializes in brine rabbit head, brine rabbit belly, brine duck wings, and brine duck feet.
What attracted me the most was the brine duck heart. I hadn't eaten it before, so I was very curious, spent some money to buy half a pound, and went home to share it with my family. The small duck heart is boiled thoroughly in brine, not only Q bullet chewy, but also full of brine, and finally mixed with sesame oil, fragrant to the extreme. In the past 30 years, Chunxi Road has been renovated several times, the old appearance has been replaced, and many commodities have been changed, but the food of the heart of the brine duck has been tenaciously placed on the windows of many pickled brine shops, as if it is a dish.
Duck head, duck paw, duck wing, duck neck, and duck tongue are also marinated, and the price is doubled, which is even more expensive than the duck meat itself. In recent years, Chengdu is popular to eat dry pots, raw duck heads after being brine, put into the oil pot with peppers, peppers and stir-fry, the taste is spicy and fragrant, and it is welcomed by delicious mouths.
In Chengdu, the common brine is divided into two kinds. As the name suggests, the red brine is added with chili peppers, and the finished brine is bright red in color and slightly spicy in taste. Next to the Qingshiqiao Seafood Market in Yanshikou, there is a Wenzhou brine restaurant that sells brine dishes as white brine. The brine duck feet here are particularly fragrant, and the small shop is still thriving after 20 years of operation here. Chengdu century-old brine restaurant Panyi City, there is a famous thing - brine duck tongue, now the price of more than 100 yuan per kilogram, staggering.
Duck intestines, duck county dried, and duck blood are essential dishes for Sichuan-style hot pot and are loved by Sichuan people.
02
Wang Fat Duck, Rong Duck and Camphor Tea Duck are the three famous ducks of modern Chengdu. With the passage of time, the streets change, and the replacement of personnel, Wang Fat Duck and Rong Duck gradually disappeared, and only Zhangcha Duck was inherited and famous. In this era of abundant food and clothing, the only Chengdu meat that can make my tongue angry is the camphor tea duck.
Five years ago, my parents and I drove to the Three Sacred Townships of Chengdu Flower Base, and my mother, who loved motion sickness, was extremely uncomfortable before she arrived at her destination. So we got off the bus a bit early and walked there. In order to alleviate my mother's physical discomfort, I took out the camphor tea duck that I had bought in advance and asked my mother to nibble on the duck pieces as she walked. Five or six pieces of camphor tea ducks under the belly, the mother's feeling of motion sickness gradually disappeared, and her pale cheeks gradually became rosy, revealing a happy smile.
Camphor tea duck skin crisp meat tender, dark red oil bright color, delicious taste, with a special aroma of camphor tea, created by the Qing Dynasty Chengdu famous chef Huang Jinlin. Legend has it that when Ding Baozhen, a famous minister of the late Qing Dynasty, was serving in Chengdu, he recommended the famous chef Huang Jinlin to be the imperial chef of the Qing Palace, specially cooking food for Empress Dowager Cixi. According to local conditions, Huang Jinlin changed the smoked duck material in the court to sichuan camphor leaves and tea leaves, so that the smoked duck tasted extremely delicious and unique, and was deeply appreciated by Cixi. In his later years, Huang Jin returned to the field and brought the "camphor tea duck" back to his hometown in Sichuan.
Documentary "Sichuan Taste"
When it comes to camphor tea duck, I have to say "rat hole zhang duck". The camphor tea duck produced by the shop is the highest in the city. Legend has it that the founder Zhang Guoliang, as early as 1928, accompanied his father to sell roast duck and beef lung slices at the intersection of the original Summer Socks Street, because it was a tea house outside the ground, and inside was a hotel and a hotel, with deep alleys and small imports, so it was called "Rat Hole".
Zhang Guoliang insists on using large, fat and tender ducks, killing them now, paying attention to ingredients, processing and production intentions, and insisting on not selling old goods. Due to the good taste and freshness of the goods, the "Rat Hole Zhang Duck" soon became famous. Nowadays, the "Rat Cave Zhang Duck" main store has moved to Gulou South Street in Chengdu, and it is not closed on holidays. Camphor tea ducks here are expensive, and people still flock to buy them.
Today's "camphor tea duck" practice is much more complicated. Looking at the various methods, there are not only spices such as star anise, sannai, cinnamon, and cloves, but also spices such as mash juice, sugar, and msgs.
In fact, in the past, the practice of camphor tea duck was not so complicated, but the taste was strange. It uses the best rice wine in Shaoxing, Sichuan peppercorns and peppercorns, as well as salt, green onions, ginger, etc., and its taste is mainly derived from the aroma of Sichuan camphor leaves or camphor wood chips, flower tea and other smoked aromas.
Every holiday, Chengdu people often slaughter one or half camphor tea ducks, and the whole family happily goes to the park tea shop to drink tea, take a sip of duck meat and take a sip of tea, and race past the living gods.
03
Since home, Chengdu people pay attention to simplicity and convenience in eating duck: one is braised, such as soybean roast duck, konjac roast duck, radish roast duck, the ingredients are inseparable from Pixian watercress; the other is stew, such as kelp skin stew duck, sour radish stew duck.
I like to eat my mother's kelp skin stewed duck. In a pot of water, add raw duck to clean the internal organs and duck feathers, sprinkle a handful of peppercorns, add a piece of ginger, unscrew the air valve, and simmer in a casserole until the duck is cooked soft and deboned. What should be particularly emphasized here is that the kelp skin stewed duck must be used from the farmhouse native hemp duck, which is different from the feed duck.
Last spring, my cousin drove us to Qingshen County, a suburb of Chengdu. The green god has three treasures: bamboo weaving, hemp duck and rape flower. In qingshen wetland park, I met small animals that are extremely suitable for making kelp skin stew duck. There is a river with clear water, a hill and a wetland in the middle of the river, with yellow canola flowers and wild trees and weeds. About a thousand ducks float on the river.
We were playing along the embankment, and when we reached the other side of the hill, my cousin pointed to the other side of the river and shouted, "Look! "The spring sun sprinkles on the water, sparkling and casting the shadows of the trees on the hills onto the river. At this time, at two o'clock in the afternoon, the spring sun is warm, the sun is strong, a group of hemp ducks are playing in the river, or foraging under the water, or leisurely paddling forward, a breeze blows, issuing a happy cry of "Quack", one after another. "These happy, free-range ducks, the meat must be very fragrant!" I thought subconsciously.
In my memory, in addition to watching the duck on the river with my cousin, every winter, my mother also used to stew a casserole kelp skin duck soup with tuma duck. Before going out for work in the morning, she next put a handful of dragon's whisker noodles, scooped a bowl of duck soup with meat and kelp skin, added wool salt, picked in the cooked dragon's whisker noodles, sprinkled with green onions, and warmed her whole body with a bowl of fragrant duck noodle soup.
After eating the mellow duck meat and soup, I seemed to absorb the aura of the mountains and rivers and the essence of the Sun Moon River. After going out, I walked in the cold wind, and I relied on the delicious food made by my mother.