Yesterday we talked a lot about Shanxi noodles (please see this article "Where is the strength of Shanxi to become a "noodle kingdom"?). Where is the best noodles in Shanxi? Today, we take my hometown of Pingyao, Shanxi, as an example, to continue this topic.
In Pingyao, "eating noodles" is understood in a narrow sense, which means eating a bowl of noodles with vegetables, noodles, and perhaps soup. However, if you look at it from a broader perspective, "eating noodles" is by no means limited to this, bowl bald, oil tea (you can refer to this article "Old Beijing Noodle Tea, Tea Soup and Oil Tea," can you tell the difference?). (With beef bone marrow oil tea recipe)), noodles, blocks (also known as bitter tiredness, puppets, rotten seeds, you can refer to this article "Have you ever eaten eggplant blocks?"). If you don't have to look over ~ take you to unlock the new way to eat eggplant"), paste, etc., are the characteristic ways of Pingyao people to eat noodles.
Bowl bald
Camellia oleifera
Block barrier
People who have been to Pingyao should be no stranger to the famous snack bowl bald. Bowl bald, also known as bowl holder, bowl off, some places in Shanxi are also called enemas. Pingyao's bowl bald is made of white or soba noodles steamed, and usually has two ways to eat it, namely cold mix and hot stir-fry. The baldness of the bowl is fine in texture and smooth in taste, and empress dowager Cixi and the Guangxu Emperor traveled west through Pingyao and praised it after eating the "soft as silk soba bowl". Last spring, I went back to Pingyao with my parents, and we specially ordered a fried bowl bald that we couldn't buy in Beijing at the restaurant, and when I took a look at it, I found that there were also oil twist flowers broken into small sections and small sections inside. My mother said that it has been a long time since the oil twist flower and the bowl of bald seeds were fried together, but it was incredible that I, as a Pingyao person, had eaten it for the first time. Of course, the taste is very good, but the bowl of bald and twist flowers are staple foods, and they are quickly full, and there is no stomach for other dishes. In Pingyao, a stir-fried bowl of bald seeds can indeed be used as a meal. I remember when I was a child, at the intersection of Chenghuangmiao Street and Rice Grain Market Street, there was a small stall of fried bowl bald people, and the business was very hot, one or two dollars a large plate, and diners were endless. Now it seems that the sanitary conditions of the stalls are really worrying: the wooden tables and benches for guests use have a sticky touch due to the smoke of the oil for many years, and the pots and pans containing various sauces also have visible dirt on the pots and pans. However, diners seem to be very calm and tolerant of this. The owner of the stall is a middle-aged uncle, sitting on the bench behind the stove all year round, calm and relaxed, in his hands, skillfully throwing the cut bowl bald, potato shredded, etc. into the hot oil pot, and then whizzing from the pots and pans on the side of the pot and pan into the pot, and then stir-frying on the fierce fire. In just a few moments, a sauce-colored, garlic-scented stir-fried bowl bald came out of the pot. The bowl bald people fried in such a small stall full of rivers and lakes can be imagined to be very rough, but the taste is a hundred times better than the master chef of the big hotel, which is really evil! Pedestrians who come and go smell the scent of fried bowl bald, and they can't help but sit down and eat a plate of pain and pleasure, so that even if a meal is solved, what should they do with their butts, and meet again next time.
Twist stir-fry bowl bald
Coarse grain fine cropping is a major feature of Shanxi noodles, typical of which is the famous noodles. In Beijing, many people go to Xibei Noodle Village to eat Chestnut Noodles, but it is regrettable that the cheap noodles in Pingyao are sold very expensive in Xibei, and the portions are pitifully small. When eating noodles, dipping sauce is very important, and common in Pingyao include tomato sauce and dipping water mixed with yellow cabbage (a kind of sauerkraut specialty of Pingyao). At my new year, my mother usually made some noodle chestnuts, but she couldn't make the honeycomb shape of a restaurant, and it was also a little thick, so I didn't like to eat it. I prefer to steam the noodles and stir-fry them with tomato sauce or yellow cabbage. The noodles are also threaded by the skillful Pingyao people, which look very similar to screw pasta, mixed with tomato sauce and stir-fried, the taste is better than the pasta.
The noodles are chestnut
Rub noodles
Rub the fish
There is also a kind of pasta that many outsiders have not heard of, called paste, usually dipped in water to eat, so it is also called dipping paste. My mother's method was to mix a small amount of sorghum noodles in a pot of cold water, boil the water, then add an appropriate amount of sorghum noodles, cook while stirring, until the batter is shiny, you can use chopsticks to pick up; then shovel the paste into the plate, and smooth along the edge of the plate, after cooling for a while, use a knife to cut into diamond-shaped pieces on top of the paste, and you can eat it with dipping water piece by piece. Listening to my father, some people in the countryside of Pingyao also smeared paste on the inner wall of the clay urn, because the urn had an excellent cooling effect, and the paste could be smeared very thinly to make the taste better. This way of eating paste also has a name, called "grilled urn paste". My mother likes to eat paste, but I don't like the rough taste of the paste, when I was a child, I only looked forward to the pot left at the bottom of the pot after making the paste, pinching a piece of the pot and chewing and playing. When I went to Xi'an on a business trip before, out of curiosity, I ordered a betel bean hot cold powder in Yongxingfang, ate a few bites and felt inexplicably familiar, and then suddenly realized that the original and hometown paste is very similar. After consulting the practice of betel bean hot cold powder, I am more convinced that the two foods are "of the same origin".
Paste
Having said all that, it's time to wrap it up. Due to space limitations, much of the content in the text is only briefly not described in more detail. There are also some specialty pasta recipes and stories behind them, which I know very little, and it is necessary to consult experts and record them in detail. "I don't feel like living in my hometown, but I have enlightenment in a foreign land", I left Pingyao, but I felt that I was closer to her and knew her better than ever.
Netizens of the headlines, have you eaten these special noodles in Pingyao? What is your favorite? What are the specialty pasta dishes in your hometown? Feel free to leave a message in the comments section.