Unforgettable hometown delicacy: Sichuan Leshan rice candy
Huang Zihong
Rice candy can be found in the entire southern region and the provinces and cities rich in glutinous rice without exception, especially in Sichuan and Chongqing, which is a snack and snack that people enjoy talking about. For example, in Leshan City, which is located in the southern part of the Sichuan Basin, there is the popular Su Ji sesame oil rice candy.
In my childhood, there was no large-scale factory production like now, but as early as the spring breeze and spring rain of reform and opening up, many individuals with funds, brains, ideas, and access began to use their families and small workshops to sort out and innovate those "petty bourgeois" crafts that had been hidden and hidden for many years, and became the first self-employed households after the reform and opening up, and began to be full of mantles, earning the first bucket of gold of epoch-making significance and groundbreaking for themselves and their families -- of course, Family production and private workshops of rice candy also came into being.
Rice candy is made of glutinous rice as raw material, by foaming with water, steaming and drying, decomposed into pellets, put into a hot pork plate oil pot, stir-fried until the rice grains are fluffy and crispy, add an appropriate amount of white sugar to fry the sugar color, stir-fry and stir evenly, pour it into a mold similar to making tofu, square wooden board while hot, press flat and compacted with a wooden stick similar to a rolling pin, sprinkle with fried peanuts and black sesame seeds, cut into pieces with slender and flat props, and packaged in paper or plastic bags.
The original traditional rice candy has been awarded in many exhibitions at home and abroad. It is only because the lard and sugar are relatively heavy, the entrance is sweet and crispy, but the taste is slightly heavy and greasy, which belongs to the "junk food" in science and medicine.
Contemporary improved rice candy, taste and nutrition gradually towards health, coarse grains, weight loss, nuts, etc., the taste is close to rice crisp; in practice, it is mixed or expanded from pure glutinous rice to millet, corn, purple potato, buckwheat, etc.; in the ingredients, a single traditional pork plate oil is gradually replaced by vegetable oil, olive oil, corn oil, sesame oil, etc., and the proportion of sugar is correspondingly reduced; the matching nuts, in addition to the previous fried black sesame, white sesame, peanuts, also added such as melon seeds, pine nuts, chestnuts, raisins, raisins, etc. Fresh and stylish combinations such as dried blueberries. Anyway, all in all, it has become more elegant and popular.
However, many "post-70s" and "post-80s", including some "post-90s", still miss the sweetness and essence of traditional rice candy, and occasionally buy some to taste and reminisce, the familiar taste of childhood in the memory.