Xi Shi Tongue is the rarest and most mysterious delicacy I know. More than a decade ago, I compiled and distributed a correspondent's manuscript saying that a large area of Xishi tongue had been found in the Shenquan Port area of Huilai County. At that time, I only knew that Xishi tongue was a famous product and dish in Fujian, and later I saw a record of the place of origin in the "Xishi tongue" entry of an aquatic professional book: "The coastal areas of Changle, Fuqing, Jinjiang and other counties in Fujian Province, and the sea area from Hanjiang river to Rongjiangkou in Guangdong is the main production area." "I feel very strange, I live in Shantou at the mouth of the Han River and the Rong River, and even Huilai County has lived for ten years!" For me, who is addicted to food, how can I miss the world's delicious Western Tongue?!
Xi Shi tongue is known as the most delicious taste in the world began in the Song Dynasty, the Song dynasty Hu Zai mentioned in the "Yu Yin Cong Dialect of The Dragon Creek": "There are clams at the mouth of fuzhou Lingkou, and the number Xi Shi tongue is extremely sweet and crisp. Zhou Lianggong of the early Qing Dynasty also said in the "Min Xiao Ji": "Painters have divine products, Nengpin, and Yipin; Minzhonghai is wrong, and Xi Shi tongue is listed as a divine product." Li Yu's "Idle Love and Occasional Mail" said: "The sea is wrong and beautiful, and those who are envied by people and cannot eat are two kinds of tongues and Jiang Yaozhu in the west of Fujian." "Xi Shi tongue thus became a legendary Fujian dish.
Chaozhou belonged to Fujian in ancient times, and its property customs were similar to those of Fujian. In terms of Xi Shi tongue, Wu Ying's "Chaozhou Fu Zhi" of Qing Shunzhi already has a record of Xi Shi tongue: "Yuegu is shaped like a clam, slightly longer, and the flesh is white like a truncated gizzard, and its shape tongue is also, hence the name." "The Qing dynasty Qiu Jing also has the "Chaozhou Bamboo Branch Words" cloud:
Eighteen daughters call sisters,
Tide yarn cutting try light clothes.
Nong's heart favors Xi Shi tongue,
Wash your hands and cook your own soup.
Yuegu - the sea god PinXiShi tongue shaped like a mussel, often stretched out in the mud like a snow white like a beautiful tongue axe foot.
According to this, the Chaozhou people of the Qing Dynasty already liked to use Xishi tongue or Yuegu to make soup, and there should be no doubt that Chaozhou was also the origin of Xishi tongue.
The crux of the matter is that there are so many species of marine shellfish that can be called clams, which one is the real Xishi tongue?
The most easily confused species with the Xishi tongue is the Wen clam. Wen clam Chaozhou common name Che Bai, the ancients mostly called che bai. Wen clam is also a very famous clam, known as the world's first fresh reputation, according to legend, the Liang Yuan Emperor Xiao Xuan of the Southern and Northern Dynasties said that "the car claw taste is high", Ouyang Xiu of the Song Dynasty wrote "The First Food Car Claw", Wang Anshi also has the poem "Car Claw", which is extremely beautiful to the clam. However, Wu Ying's "Chronicle of Chaozhou Fu" has clearly pointed out that the Wen clam is not a Xishi tongue: "Che Bai, also like clams, and the nails are very thick, and the taste is inferior to that of Yuegu." ”
Che Bai - also known as Wen Clam or Che Bai. The secret to boiling car white is to collect the slurry when it is opened.
There is also another kind of Xishi tongue that Teochew people call "red eggs", which resembles a car white and the shell is slightly rounded and slightly thinner, the scientific name is Coelomactra antiquata, Chinese name is Xi shi ma ke clam, which has always been considered xi shi tongue in a very professional field, such as the "Atlas of Primary Colors of China's Economic Aquatic Products", which is classified and recorded in this way. I have been unable to recognize Xi Shi tongue for a long time, and a large part of the reason is that I have been misled by these professional books.
Red egg, Chinese called TheShimarco Clam, has always been considered a Western tongue in a very specialized field.
In fact, the scientific name of Xi Shi Tongue is Sanguinolaria diphos, and the Chinese name is Called Xi Shi Tongue. The biggest feature of the Xishi tongue is that "the shell length is about twice the width of the shell", which is very different from the wen clams whose shell is close to the triangle. Xi Shi's axe foot is like a human tongue, snow white and tender, which is by no means comparable to the Wen clams.
Xishi tongue - Xishi tongue is a bivalve genus, purple cloud clam family, Xishi tongue genus, the biggest feature is "shell length is about twice the width of the shell".
Xi Shi tongue is still called Yuegu in Chaoshan as it was in the early Qing Dynasty. In fact, I had already seen and tasted it ten years ago, when I was in Chenghai, and the town of Wantou was at the mouth of the Han River, where the local production of Yuegu. Looking back now, I was so blessed!
The West Tongue in the Market
Although Xi Shi Tongue has long since withdrawn from people's daily tables due to its endangerment, as a famous dish, it is still one of the most popular legends in the history of gastronomy. The content of the legend is mainly about the source and cooking. In some legends, Xi Shi's tongue was given a very magical color, saying that after the Yue King's revenge, his wife, out of jealousy, sent someone to secretly sink Xi Shi in the river. After Xi Shi's death, he was still attached to his homeland, and his tongue turned into a sand clam, which was for Xi Shi's tongue and eventually became a delicacy. In Chaoshan Province, although these source legends are not attached, the unique method of making Xishi tongue has been passed down for cooking dishes such as Chebai (Wen clam), and some of the key technologies have even become the only way to make Chaozhou soup dishes.
The tongue of the Whiplash
The most classic way to eat Xi Shi tongue is chicken soup. Fuzhou's traditional famous dish "Chicken Soup Sea Mussels" does this: the sea mussels produced in Changle are cut into thin slices, served in a pot of boiling water until they are six years old, and then served in a bowl, with spices such as Shaoxing wine, and then drizzled with boiling chicken soup. In 1936, Yu Dafu wrote "Diet Men and Women in Fuzhou", which described this kind of eating method, saying that this kind of mussel meat is "white and red, crisp and fresh, properly cooked in chicken soup, and the long round mussel meat is really a god of good color and flavor."
White-burn the tongue with chicken broth
After the method of cooking Xishi tongue in chicken soup spread to Chaozhou, it was absorbed by Chaozhou. We used to say that Teochew cuisine has a bloodline of Min cuisine, which is mainly speculated from the perspective of immigrants (FuLao) and culture (Southern Fujian dialect, etc.), and has always lacked empirical evidence. The reason is that the difference between modern Fujian cuisine and Chao cuisine is still relatively large, especially the wide application of spices such as distiller's lees and sugar in Fujian cuisine, which makes the hipsters who advocate lightness feel incomprehensible. Only the Western Tongue, which spans ancient and modern and geographical restrictions, has made the relationship between Fujian cuisine and Chaochao cuisine clear.
Cucumber West tongue
Cooking mussels in chicken soup is not so much a cooking technique as a dietary concept. Chicken soup and sea mussels are extremely delicious foods, but chicken soup is simple and thick, such as Haoran Zhengqi; sea mussels are rare and wild, and they are marine treasures. Boiling the two together coincides with the principle of "winning with the right and winning with the odds".
The Teochew people also further developed this dietary concept and turned it into a more common broth to cook seafood, with common dishes such as soup snails, soup car white, meat (minced meat) temple fish (dragon head fish) soup, etc. The traditional chicken broth of Fujian cuisine has become a more homely meat bone broth, and sometimes even a few slices of pork belly can be cut into the pot to make a pot of soup water delicious; Xi Shi tongue has also become seafood including other shellfish fish and shrimp.
On the toshi tongue
Matsutake Western Tongue
Xishi tongue soup cooked with Puning bean sauce, have you tried it?
When cooking Chebai soup, the Teochew people will collect the slurry in the chebai shell, filter out the sediment and add it to the pot to cook together. These slurries are car white body fluids, rich in nutrients, its freshness is incomparable, if discarded, not only wasted pity, the taste of the "soup water" made is much worse. However, this practice is not the tradition of Min cuisine, which does not collect slurry when taking mussel meat, and even the boiling water of the mussel meat does not enter the soup. Later, I found out that there was another source for this practice.
There is a famous dish called "Yunlin Goose", which was created by the great painter Ni Zhan of the Yuan Dynasty. Ni Zhan, a native of Wuxi, has a "New Law Ha Jiao" in his food monograph "Collection of Dietary Systems in Yunlintang", which introduces the method of collecting slurry when the Su cuisine chef cooked the ha jingle at that time: "Raw and opened, left in the pulp vessel." Scrape off the mud and sand, batch break, wash with water, leave water for washing... Clarify to remove the feet, add shallots, peppers and wine to mix. Pour in the juice and serve, very good. This confirms that the reason why the soup dishes of Chao Cai can be famous in the world is that they can learn from Fujian and Su cuisines.