"Pi Sprouts", the Xinjiang people's name for onions, transcends a word in the languages of the people of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang. Its role in the lives of Xinjiang people reflects the exchange and integration of living customs and eating habits. Pi Yazi is like a lone traveler galloping in the food rivers and lakes of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang, igniting the taste buds of all diners with its color and fragrance.
"Peel sprouts are great dishes." Mijiti, who is almost 70 years old, sat in the fast food restaurant named after him and said with a high look. His tall eagle hook nose moved with the warm tone of his voice. Ask him, why is the skin bud great? He raised his hand and continued: "We Uyghurs cook all the rice without the skin buds, this is its great place." ”
It's not just the Uyghurs who are indispensable to the skin buds. "Pi Sprouts", the Xinjiang people's name for onions, transcends a word in the languages of the people of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang. Its role in the lives of Xinjiang people reflects the exchange and integration of living customs and eating habits. Every child who grew up in Xinjiang has grown up with the spicy and fresh flavor of the skin buds.
Pi Yazi is like a lone traveler galloping in the food rivers and lakes of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang, igniting the taste buds of all diners with its color and fragrance. If you want to talk about the food culture of Xinjiang people, Pi Yazi is definitely an important chapter that cannot be bypassed.
Miscellaneous talk about skin buds
Zhang Dechun, institute of vegetables and flowers of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, once wrote an article entitled "Vegetable History: Onions", pointing out that the origin of onions has a long history, and it has been 5,000 years since the first dynasty of ancient Egypt, which has been eaten by the first dynasty of ancient Egypt, and has also been recorded in the ruins of ancient Egypt. Moreover, residues of onions have also been found on the bodies of some mummies unearthed in Egypt.
At present, there are different theories about the origin of the onion. But most people agree that onions originated in southwestern Asia, where wild types can still be found today. In fact, wild skin buds are not only found in these areas. Talihati, a 58-year-old who lives in Ili, told me that when the nomadic Kazakhs gallop across the grasslands, they often find vegetables such as wild skin buds, wild garlic, and wild leeks. "When we were young, we all ate it, and the taste of wild skin buds was more intense and pungent." He said.
Minced meat tossed with noodles
In the article "Peeling the Onion to See the World" written by Li Kaizhou published by the Yangcheng Evening News, the circulation process of onions in the world is briefly described. Onions were introduced to Egypt from Western Asia and brought back to the Balkan Peninsula in southeastern Europe by the Macedonian king who invaded Egypt in 332 BC. Subsequently, the cultivation and consumption of onions spread in Europe. In the mid-16th century, Portuguese colonists brought onions to China after obtaining residency in Macau. During the Kangxi Dynasty, Guangzhou official Wu Zhenfang brought back two onions for trial planting after meeting with the Portuguese. He wrote about it in his book "Miscellaneous Records of Lingnan": "Onions, shaped like garlic with no flesh, peeled like onions." Macau white ghost feeder, strands cut into silk, longlong full of pots, the taste is extremely sweet and spicy. Yu carried two seeds, occurred like a regular onion, and withered in winter. According to Lee's article, the large-scale cultivation of onions in China began in Shanghai in the early 20th century. During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Shanghai refugees moved westward, blending eastern and western diets, and onions were first promoted and grown in western China.
Today, China, India, the United States and Japan have become the four largest producers of onions in the world.
There are many interesting talk about onions around the world.
The ancient Roman scholar Cato wrote in his book The Book of Agriculture: "Onions, garlic and greens are the blood of our Roman men. "In the 11th century, during the European Crusades, it is said that some soldiers hung onion skewers around their necks to fight the enemy, believing that this would be able to resist the evil arts of infidels.
The Xinjiang poet Shen Wei, in his book "Xinjiang Dictionary", also set up a "entry" specifically for onions. He said the German writer Günter Glass wrote in his novel "Tin Drums" that sad and frustrated people often gathered at an underground onion hotel, and they came here not to eat and drink, but to cut open the onion, shed tears, and speak their hearts.
Onions, here have a layer of spiritual significance. As a poet, Shen Wei is indispensable to a unique romantic temperament. The onion is easy to make people cry, although it is because of some volatile spicy gas, but the poet prefers to believe that it has a strange ability to be sensitive to sadness, understands the fragility of human nature, and can accurately and effectively hit people's vital points and make them burst into tears. Then, fill your heart with new joy and get back on the road.
As Shen Wei said, walking on the streets of Xinjiang, you often encounter a large pot of shiny pilaf on the side of the street, smelling the seductive aroma emitted by onions, always making hungry people can't help but sit down, eat beautifully and then go.
In the words of the ancient Roman scholar Cato, onions can also be described as the blood of Xinjiang people.
Ride the Xinjiang food and beverage rivers and lakes
Since we began to talk about the onions of the Xinjiang people, it is more appropriate to use the title of "skin buds".
Regarding the earliest history of the cultivation or consumption of pi sprouts in Xinjiang, there is no way to verify it. What is certain is that today, the people of all ethnic groups living here are cut off from their daily diets.
Pickled radish, raw skin teeth, and three forts are the must-have combinations of Dongxiang hand-grabbed meat.
The Kazakh Naren Tarihati runs a Kazakh Naren restaurant named after him on Xinhua West Road in Yining City. The restaurant opened in 1996 and has been around for exactly 20 years. For 20 years, his shop was quite famous in Ili, and all ethnic groups liked to come to his shop to taste Kazakh-style food.
The Kazakhs do not cook without the skin buds, and the meat must be fried with the skin buds to be fragrant.
Talihati told me about the most traditional and famous dish of the Kazakh people——— Naren practice. First of all, prepare the "Sohun" in the first winter. Sokhon, Kazakh, means "winter meat", which is the best horse meat, beef and lamb prepared during the winter slaughter. Kazakhs are hospitable, love to share, friends come to eat at home, is a special face-saving thing, so be sure to prepare quality meat, eat it at home or use it to entertain guests.
When the guests come, they are going to cook the meat. Half an hour before the meat is cooked, start making noodles, cutting the noodles into noodles or pulling them into belt noodles. When the meat is cooked, the meat is brought out and placed under the broth. If the boiling is smoked horse meat smoked horse intestines, the soup taste is more salty, when cooking noodles, to add some water to the soup, which should be based on personal taste to determine the amount of water added.
Cook the noodles and serve on a plate. Blanch the cut skin buds in broth, add some seasonings, pour on the noodles with a small amount of broth, and a plate of rich meat and sweet smell is ready. At this time, you can also cut a plate of raw skin sprouts on the table, eat the meat is easy to greasy, accompanied by spicy and refreshing raw skin buds, when you eat Na Ren, it is oily but not greasy.
This way of eating is similar to the Dongxiang ethnic hand-grabbed meat.
Dongxiang ethnic hand-grabbed meat Ma Yong is the head chef of Erli Dongxiang hand-grabbed meat in Erli Dongxiang, Jiefang Road, Yining City. He explained to me the correct way to eat the most characteristic food of the Dongxiang people, "Dongxiang Hand-grabbed Meat". Dongxiang people grab meat by hand, it must be slaughtered on the same day, cooked meat on the same day. Meat generally chooses lamb chops and sheep front blades. Once the meat is cooked, serve the meat on a large plate with pickled radish, freshly cut skin sprouts and broth. When the guests eat the hand-grabbed meat, they eat a large piece of meat, take a bite of the skin bud, and drink a cup of three cannons (tea brewed with rock sugar, red dates, guiyuan, and large leaf green tea). The meat aroma overflows between the teeth, the pickled radish is appetizing and crisp, and the skin buds are sweet in the mouth. A cup of tea is warm and not dry, refreshing the stomach. A meal of Dongxiang hand-grabbed meat is the perfect combination of boldness and delicacy. In addition to hand-grabbed meat, the daily small dishes of the Dongxiang people will also put skin buds. In fact, this is a common dietary feature of the natives of Xinjiang.
When making a dish of food that sweeps across the tables of people of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang——— soup rice, it is necessary to use skin buds to boil the pot. When making pulling strips that accompany Xinjiang children growing up, the noodles are also full of skin buds.
Uyghur strips Are the Uyghurs have the most say in pulling strips.
Mijiti, who is almost 70 years old, has opened a restaurant for a lifetime and cooked a lifetime of meals. Located in the sixth lane of Jiefang Road in Yining City, Mijiti Fast Food Restaurant welcomes diners of all ethnic groups every day at noon, and the small storefront is always full of people. The big guy came, sat down in his seat, and beckoned: "Come over the oil and meat noodles!" "A plate of noodles is mixed with the belly, and then another noodle is added."
Mahmuti making pilaf
Akmujiang, 24, is in charge of making noodle mixing dishes at the shop. He pointed to the menu that was pasted on the wall and said that all the dishes on it were to be filled with peeled sprouts. When stir-frying, put the meat in a pot and sauté until fragrant, then add the skin sprouts and stir-fry with the meat. The dish is not only bright in color, but also fragrant when mixed with noodles.
Two other signature dishes at Mijiti's fast food are pilaf and thin-skinned buns. The main ingredients for making pilaf are very simple: skin sprouts, beef or lamb, carrots, rice, four things are enough. Thin-skinned buns require less ingredients, but with beef or lamb and a little lamb tail oil, you'll be able to steam a cage of delicious buns.
Mijiti said that Uighurs put skin buds in all their meals. No sprouts without skin sprouts make him define peel buds as "great dishes". As for when did the ancestors start cooking with peeled sprouts? The happy Uyghur old man thought for a while and said, "This is a practice that has been handed down for a long time, when I was a child, my parents cooked like this, and their parents cooked like this, so it became a habit." "The food culture of a place is formed and developed in the process of being passed down from generation to generation. For the Kazakh people to eat peel buds, the explanation given by Talihati is that this is the wisdom of the ancestors based on their life experience.
The hot, thin-skinned bun came out of the basket
Eating meat can supplement calories in large quantities and enhance physical fitness, but it is also easy to cause symptoms of high blood lipids. Peel buds are not only delicious and fragrant, but also promote blood circulation and help people's health. Therefore, in Xinjiang, which likes meat, after a big meal, it is often accompanied by skin buds to clear the mouth, for example, a cold dish with skin buds, tomatoes, and green peppers as ingredients is often served on the table of Xinjiang people.
Although there is no way to verify how Pi Bud zi entered the lives of Xinjiang people, what is certain is that it has become an indispensable material in Xinjiang's diet. Xinjiang people like skin buds, probably because the people here have the same temperament, they are all equally warm, just as full and affectionate.
Source: Li Jian