Suqian Network News (reporter Yang Qin intern Chen Jin) "Mid-Autumn Moon. The month to the Mid-Autumn Festival is more clean. Partial and pure, know how much he is, yin and sunny. ”
The ethereal sky, the bright moon is brighter, reminiscent of the hometown in the heart. Every now and then, standing in the moonlight and taking a bite of a mooncake as round as a moon, the emotion hidden in your heart seems to overflow.
Near the Mid-Autumn Festival, the reporter came to the handmade mooncake production base of Mai Workshop in Suyu District to feel at close range how Suqian people "loaded" love into the mooncake and gave you a home miss.
Handmade mooncakes for various flavors
Before you see its "shape", smell its fragrance first. Before stepping into the store, I was attracted by a burst of fragrance, and I was greeted by Li Zhou, the founder of this handmade mooncake base. Li Zhou, 43 years old, has a warm smile on his face. "I'm glad I've done what I love all my life." Li Zhou said that starting from scratch, now, with four chain stores and one factory, he feels very content and happy. It was 25 years since he "baked" a mooncake to make a good life.
25 years ago, Li Zhou was forced to drop out of school. "At that time, my grandparents were seriously ill almost at the same time, and my parents spent all their savings. In the end, the trees in front of the house and behind the house were sold out, all of which were used to treat the grandparents, and the family suddenly became very difficult. Li Zhou said that he offered to work to earn money and subsidize the family.
At first, he didn't have any skills, and he could only earn money by doing small jobs. He has moved bricks on construction sites and yarn in textile factories. "At that time, I was not very tall and thin, and it was very difficult to do these manual tasks, and after a while, people became thinner and darker." Six months later, Li Zhou said, with the help of a distant relative, he traveled to Shandong and learned to make pastries with an old craftsman. He was 16 years old.
Li Zhou brought out the freshly baked mooncake
"During my days as an apprentice, I can't remember how many broken knives I used and how many boards I cut!" Li Zhou recalled that at that time, every morning, I got up early, began to sharpen my knife, and prepared various tools to be used that day. He said that the most cut at that time was the fried pasta "golden fruit". Every day, he had to use five or six sharp knives, and for a long time, the board was cut into a hollow.
Day after day, bit by bit. Three years later, Li Zhou became familiar with many traditional pastry methods and gradually gained his own experience. One day, Master said to him, "Your craft is well practiced, and you can go it alone!" ”
Empty hands, full of "talent" back. After returning to Su Yu's hometown, Li Zhou used only 50 yuan to buy a second-hand tricycle and buy ingredients, and began his own entrepreneurial life. For a long time to come, making pastries became almost the whole of his life. And the second-hand tricycle, I don't know how much wind and rain accompanied him, how many muddy country lanes.
Soon after, he opened his first store in a market town in Suyu District. "I've made countless pounds of flour, I've made countless pounds of pastries, but there's one pastry that weighs the most in my heart." Li Zhou said that this pastry is a moon cake. When I think of mooncakes, I think of sitting in the courtyard with my family, waiting for the moon to be the fullest, and taking a bite of the mooncake held in the palm of my hand.
Now, starting from June of the lunar calendar every year, Li Zhou began to make mooncakes, which lasted until August of the lunar calendar, which is the busiest time of the year. Under the leadership of Li Zhou, we came to the mooncake production workshop, more than a dozen staff wearing blue hats and masks, with a clear division of labor and interlocking links. Make fillings, make dough crusts, wrap mooncakes, shape, stamp, put in the oven... The whole handmade mooncake studio is filled with a strong fragrance. Looking at the electric stove in front of him, Li Zhou remembered the days when the earth stove baked mooncakes.
"The fire of the earth stove is several meters long, when the moon cake is put in, the heat is not OK, when to add coal, it is very exquisite, and you must rely on yourself to understand." Li Zhou said that in addition to the earth stove is a bit special, even the coal is very exquisite, most of which is made of white charcoal, wood chips and other mixtures.
In front of me, on the board, the filling emitted a rich fragrance, and a touch of "red and green silk" aroused the reporter's questions. "Many people love to eat Wuren mooncakes when they are young, and they are also very mysterious about the 'red and green silk' in the filling, what is this 'red and green silk' made of?"
"Actually, it's kohlrabi, and the People of Suqian like to call it 'Lagos'!" Li Zhou said that the kohlrabi freshly dug out of the field, cut into strips, and then blanched with hot water to taste, sprinkled with white sugar to marinate, and finally dyed with edible carmine, tea green pigment, it became the familiar "red and green silk". "However, the whole process takes three or four months, and the process is not simple!" Li Zhou said that in fact, many ingredients in the mooncake need to be prepared in advance, like the syrup used in Cantonese mooncakes, which should be boiled for several months in advance with white sugar and citric acid. It can be seen how many workers and masters are carefully prepared in a small moon cake.
This year's new mooncake packaging box is full of strong traditional cultural flavor
Five kernels, pretzels... In the warehouse not far away, shelves are neatly lined with various types of mooncakes. At present, this kind of handmade mooncake made by Li Zhoujia sells about 1,000 catties per day. Times are changing, and he found that if he still follows the rules, he will soon be eliminated by the market. To this end, he will buy the mooncakes of his peers everywhere he goes, smell, see and taste, so as to continuously improve his products.
When you look up at the stars, the big bright moon seems to be "filled" with all the thoughts about home. And this small mooncake in your hand is the 'bright moon' in your heart. Li Zhou said that when he was a child, a piece of mooncake was shared by several people, and he was reluctant to eat it in one bite, and he kept it in his pocket until the end, when it dried hard, and then he was dipped in a bowl of hot water and slowly ate it, that kind of beautiful feeling, no matter what kind of mountain treasures and seafood he ate in the world, it was difficult to find. In the future, he will continue to move forward with this warm feeling, so that this little mooncake that carries love evokes the most beautiful taste in the hearts of countless people.
Mooncake is a symbol of the Mid-Autumn Festival and an imprint of a generation's struggle. With the development of the times, the types of mooncakes are also ever-changing. However, what has changed is the packaging, the taste, and the same is that no matter how far you go, there is always a taste of home lingering in your heart. Because ", the moon" is still the hometown of Ming.