As a Beijinger, my earliest memory of roasted wheat is not "all in one place", but an old state-run family called "Minghua Roasted Wheat" in the west of East Fourth Avenue Road. This shop is no longer there, but when I was a child, whenever I passed by Dongsi, I would want to go in and eat a cage of fresh shrimp roasted wheat.
This obsession is not out of liking, on the contrary, I have always felt that roasted wheat is an embarrassing food, especially the iconic thin noodle pleats, tasteless, discarded pity, is simply a typical example of chicken ribs.
▲ Northern roasted wheat, mostly filled with lamb and scallions
But it can't be denied that there is a kind of stereotypical charm in the roasted wheat. According to China's harmonious aesthetics, everything can be rounded, and it can be hidden and never revealed. The diet follows the tradition, you see what kind of stuffing food is not honestly sealed in the dough, a look of atmosphere dare not come out. Buns, dumplings, pies, and rags are all burned without exception, and only roasted wheat dares to open the precedent of "dew filling". This kind of rebellious spirit is probably unique in China's "stuffing work" dictionary.
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It is common to walk the food of the north and south of the river, change the name and surname. For example, wontons, in the south, have wonton, clear soup, scribes, flat meat, bun noodles and other names. But there are few foods that are as highly "hanging" in the name as roasted wheat.
Burning and roasting wheat are the two most common names in the north and south, in addition, Inner Mongolia is called slightly beautiful, slightly wheat or slightly plum; Shanxi is called The Shoot Plum; Hubei is written as Roasted Plum. In short, whether it is pronunciation or writing, locals feel that their own name is the most pleasing to the eye, and how others look at it is like a typo.
In fact, roasted wheat has not been written uniformly since its inception. There is an earlier record of roasted wheat in the 14th-century Korean document "Park Shi Tong", saying that it is made of wheat noodles into thin slices, and then steamed with meat filling. "Slightly wheat" is also written as "slightly sold". This vague name derives from the transliteration of the Mongolian word "suumai", just as pizza, pizza and pizza are also written. The so-called standard answers, like people's tastes, are just the product of convention.
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The most important thing for Chinese people is the sense of superiority in food culture, and many people believe that "pizza is the pie that Europeans fail to cook". According to this logic, the roasted wheat is a failed bun - because the pleats are not kneaded well, the filling is exposed. Sounds logical.
However, as long as you have seen the Inner Mongolian people make lamb slightly wheat, you know that this statement is not necessarily so accurate - not to mention that the bun is a noodle, the roasted wheat is a dead noodle, and the step of "pounding the skin" alone can be beaten more than the bun.
▲ If you want to do a good job of hohhot wheat, pounding the skin is the most critical step
"Mashing the skin" is a professional saying that the Inner Mongolian people rolled the lotus leaf edge. Use special tools to roll out the edges of the dough into a thin, wavy shape of the skin before filling and closing. The measure is not good, the ruffle is either too shallow or easy to break, and it is not at all more worry-free than the bun.
But the taste of roasted wheat is not fundamentally different from buns, so although there are many places to eat roasted wheat in the country, most of them regard this "laborious and unflattering" pasta as a snack pastime, which is not taken seriously. Only in inner Mongolia's hometown, a little wheat is not exempt from grievances. One or two solid mutton slightly wheat, a pot of oil-scraped brick tea, sat firmly on the throne of Hoshi morning tea "carrying handle".
▲ One or two muttons are slightly wheated, so that people can eat until the support wall comes out. Only the solid lamb filling can impress the taste buds of inner Mongolian people
What the? You say one or two isn't enough to plug the gap between your teeth? The people of Hoshi ate a little wheat, which was a Kong Wu biao that the southerners could not imagine. "One or two" refers to the weight of the dough, one or two skins with six or six lamb fillings, be careful so that you "can't eat and walk around".
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Like many foods, roasted wheat also has a north-south sword. However, the focus of this debate is not on sweet and salty, but on filling.
The food in the north and south seems to have an iron heart to contradict each other. In the north, such as Inner Mongolia, Shanxi, Beijing and Tianjin, most of them prefer beef and lamb stuffed roasted wheat; while the south (especially Jiangsu and Zhejiang), which has always loved to stuff fresh meat into pasta, has changed the clichés of small cages, raw frying, wontons and mooncakes, and the content of the roast sale shows the richness of southern products.
▲ Glutinous rice in the south is sold in the same vein as the seasoning of meat dumplings
Jiangsu and Zhejiang sell more lard glutinous rice, three fresh bamboo shoots; Anhui has duck oil for sale; Yangzhou has jade roast for sale; Guangzhou's "dry steaming" is mainly based on fresh shrimp and pork, which is an indispensable standard on Cantonese morning tea.
▲ The jadeite roast sale in Yangzhou is a clear stream in the burning and selling industry
Although northerners who are accustomed to eating beef and mutton roasted wheat, there are nine times out of ten that they feel that glutinous rice roast is not interesting to sell. But it is undeniable that the roast sale that came to the south really adhered to the rebellious momentum and lived out its own personality.
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The most interesting thing about roasted wheat is not the variety of names or fillings, but the way to eat it. Conventionally, this big-bellied "open bun" can be dipped in vinegar, but since it has evolved into a food that has spread throughout the country, there will always be a few unexpected tricks.
▲ Wuhan's oil cake wrapped in roasted wheat, into a filling of heavy oil roasted wheat texture sticky, a different flavor
As a city backed by a wharf, Wuhan has an extraordinary love of carbon water. Heavy oil roasted wheat is based on glutinous rice - dough and glutinous rice are already a double carb combination, but the unsatisfied Wuhan Ling is the invention of the "oil cake package roasted wheat" this kind of carbon water bomb. The freshly fried pan is cut into a hole, and four swollen roasted wheat can be stuffed into it - transformed into stuffed roasted wheat, which is soft and sticky to eat, and complements the crispy oil cake. This set of belly, not hungry after noon.
Last year, in Xingyi, the capital of southwest Qianxi, I also encountered a kind of roasted wheat soaked in pepper water, which was named "brush handle head" because it resembled a bamboo washer brush handle. It looks like a skinny, dry brush handle, eating it empty and chewing wax, but as long as it is soaked in chili water, the taste of dry wood instantly becomes fresh and spicy, which is appetizing.
▲ The Xingyi brush handle of the pepper water is another heavy taste
It is said that Xingyi brushed his head in the Qing Dynasty with the migrating Jiangxi people, the specific history I have not examined, but jiangxi people are not fake, and there is also a tradition of putting peppers in pasta. A few years ago, when I went to Jingdezhen, I almost remembered the experience of crying with chili stuffed dumplings and pot stickers.
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In the "Lin'an Hotel" in Jianshui, Yunnan, there is a kind of roasted wheat that has been passed down from the Ming Dynasty to the present, which is called "burning bread" locally. In the late fourteenth century, the imperial court "moved the surname of Middle-earth to Yunnan". This kind of craftsmanship of making roasted wheat was brought to Jianshui from the Central Plains at that time. The town's reliance on tradition makes it easier for people to pass it on by hand rather than iterating on technology to preserve the food as it is. Today, the roasted bun has long ceased to exist in the Central Plains, but in jianshui town, this old shop is still lucky enough to get a glimpse of its original appearance.
▲ Jianshui's boiling buns are not big and not small
The first time I ate the roast bun, I was surprised by its soft and sticky texture, which made people think it was a skin made of glutinous rice. In fact, this soft glutinous stems from the pig skin in the filling, which just makes up for the shortcomings of the roasted wheat that is easy to produce dry wood when eaten. According to the old people in the city, when I was a child, the roasted buns were only stuffed with meat skin, which was even more sticky than this. Later, minced meat was added, which was an improvement in the eating habits of modern people.
If you want to eat roasted wheat, it is indeed indispensable to the moisture of oil. Therefore, the lamb in Inner Mongolia is indispensable to the lamb oil, the glutinous rice in Jiangsu and Zhejiang is sold to ask for lard blessings, and xingyi brushes his head willingly to accept the "torture" of filling pepper water. In contrast, the practice of using pig skin for boiling steamed bread in Jianshui also reveals an ancient wisdom.
The revival of lost traditions in small border towns is probably why people are willing to travel far away for food.
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Text | Western Xia
Figure | Xixia & Network