If you want to use an ingredient to represent the food culture of Chaoshan Province, "Kueh" is a special category.
In Chaoshan Province, "kueh" is a food made of rice flour as the main ingredient, flour, potato flour and other auxiliary materials, such as rat shell kun, red peach kun, etc., which can be used as important offerings to worship gods and ancestors during the New Year's Festival. However, in addition to exquisite kueh, Chaoshan also has some traditional delicacies and snacks, such as kway teows, kway teow juice, cake kway teow, water kway teow, etc. Although the name also has "kway teow", it cannot be regarded as a kway teow, let alone used for sacrifice, they are just all over the streets and alleys, constituting the city's strong smell of fireworks. What is rare is that even the same ingredients can always do one thing and one taste, each with its own advantages, there is no best taste, only more delicious.
It is said that eating men and women is the great desire of man, so since we are born as human beings, we are not exempt from customs. However, pay attention to eating, there is art, there is science, genius, but also experience, to do a lifetime of effort may not be able to exhaust its mysteries.
Liang Shiqiu | "Yashe Talks About Eating"
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# Kon strips #
Taste the different flavors
Kway teow is probably the most common food in Shantou stalls, steamed and cooled with a thin layer of rice flour paste and cut into thin strips, the entrance is a faint rice fragrance, flexible and smooth, and can perfectly match all the ingredients and sauces, made into a variety of various types of cantonese, can be meat can be vegetarian soup can be fried, all have flavor.
Added pork offal and seafood, the rice noodles absorb the sweetness of the soup and sprinkle a little pepper to warm the stomach and not greasy. If you like heavy taste, you must try the "soul" sand tea sauce of the dry kun, the unstoppable aroma straight into the nose of the person, the light of the kway teow and the saltiness of the sand tea blend just right. The most test of kung fu is the fried kway teow, the oil is enough, and the kway teow is fragrant and delicious, and the wok is full of wok. Kway teow is still a must-have classic in beef hot pot restaurants, is a beef meal to the end of the finishing touch, after more than a dozen plates of fresh beef washing, the soup pot is full of beef essence, into a rich soup, at this time and then the next handful of cantonese fished up, a taste in the heart, can really satisfy the taste buds of the gourmets.
# Kway teow juice #
The most fragrant and seductive "kun"
If you tell your friends out of town to eat the grits juice, you will probably misunderstand that it is to drink "juice". Kueh juice is a traditional folk food in Chaoshan Province, each kway teow shop, there is a "rice tank" in the heating, open the cotton cover, boiling rice milk is tumbling, from which to fish out the thick kueh juice skin, turn around, and then from the marinade pot to fish up a large piece of brine meat, fat pig intestines, smooth brine eggs, emitting a seductive halogen aroma. In addition to brine, there are also dishes such as sausages, fried fritters, dried tofu, bitter melon and so on. The chef skillfully slices the steaming cooked food, spreads the bowl of noodles, and drizzles with boiled marinade and verdant green onions. But in a minute, you can see the heavens and the earth in the grits.
The main raw material of the rice sauce, the skin of the rice sauce, is also steamed with rice flour milk and dried or baked dry, cut into triangles or rectangles, and then put into thin rice milk to cook, the taste is more elastic than the rice strips, more smooth. After tasting Chaoshan Kway Chung juice for the first time, gourmand Cai Lan never forgot: "Miss this snack, return to Singapore, even if you know it is not authentic, come to a bowl of kueh sauce." The smooth skin of the grits flicked the marinade, sucking in one mouthful after another, and the last drop of juice would not be spared.
# Cake kway teow #
Spicy and delicious golden gladiator
The cake is steamed with rice flour pulp to make white rice cake, which is quite similar to the preparation method of the rice noodles, but the rice noodles are only drizzled with a layer of pulp and then peeled up and used to cool, while the cakes need to be steamed layer by layer until the cake is transparent like white jade, and it will be smooth. After that, it is cut into the shape of a diamond-shaped piece, which is not only easy to fry, but also easier to taste.
The traditional old-fashioned stir-fried cake is fried until golden brown and slightly crispy on both sides, then wrapped in eggs and green onion and stir-fried, adding chili sauce, fish sauce and other flavors. Eat the cake and rice with white sugar powder, take a bite of the outer charred and tender, spicy in the aroma, sweet and salty, and the aftertaste is endless.
In the memory, the cart of fried cake and koeh slowly shuttled through the alley, a loud "fried kway ~", evoked the upstairs adults and children's hungry worms, lying on the window sill to see, sure enough, it was the familiar figure, clutching five yuan and ten yuan out of the doorway, afraid of missing, the next time I met it I don't know when. More than ten years later, now there are fixed stores, there is no excessive publicity, hang up the old fried cake and rice signboard, naturally will attract travelers looking for ancient and early taste.
# Water kway #
It's salty or sweet
The special shape of the water is like a cute little tea bowl, as small as its name, white and tender, moist and crystalline. If you want to make a beautiful water kway, one is to use good rice refining to control the proportion of rice and water; the other is to master the heat, that is, cook it and cut off the fire. Pour the ground rice milk into the mold of the teacup, steam it over high heat, let it cool and pour it into the mold, and the extracted konkin skin will be bowl-shaped and tough to bite. After the water kway is made, fill the middle pit with fragrant preserved vegetables, pour maltose, and eat twenty or thirty in a row.
Chaoshan cuisine is colorful, and the rice made of rice alone has countless wonderful highlights, which fully reflects the creativity of the working people of Chaoshan Province. Staying in their own small side of the world, using the most common ingredients, the simplest cooking, which is full of memories and emotions, better than countless mountain treasures and seafood, is the taste that the hipsters will never get tired of eating, and it is also the cuisine that can be passed down for the longest time.