Eating mooncakes in the Mid-Autumn Festival is a well-known traditional festival food custom. However, in Menghe Town, New North District, the fragrant "full pot cake" is the unique "Mid-Autumn Festival flavor" that belongs to the hearts of the locals.
"Zhang August" and "Full Pot Cake"
The full pot cake is small, the appearance is four-cornered diamond-shaped, the color is golden and attractive, although the filling is not as rich as the mooncake, but it tastes crisp and sweet, and has a unique flavor.
Every year from july and a half of the lunar calendar to the mid-autumn of August and a half, walking in the streets of Menghe, you can smell the sweet taste of full pot cakes from time to time. Generally, the fragrance wafts out of whose home, it means that the daughter and son-in-law of the family are coming to "Zhang August".
The "Zhang" of "Zhang August" has the meaning of Zhang Wang, Visit, and Visit. The so-called "Zhang August" is the meaning of the daughter and son-in-law who brought mooncakes, meat, fish, chicken and duck and other gifts before the eighth month of the lunar calendar to visit the mother-in-law of the father-in-law. The full pot cake is a "return gift" made by the mother-in-law to the son-in-law. One after another, it embodies the traditional Chinese virtues of filial piety to the elders, elders caring for the younger generations, and courtesy exchanges.
Praise "for the officials to be close to the people, for the rich and benevolent"
There is also a folk tale about the "full pot cake". According to Cheng Xierun, a special researcher of Changzhou Qiliang Culture and Menghe Medical School Culture, it is said that in the Tang Dynasty, there was a great drought in Jiangnan in the Tang Dynasty, and the Menghe River even dried up at the bottom of the river. Shi Mengjian, the governor of Changzhou at the time, learned of the disaster and urgently recruited workers to dredge the Menghe River.
Before the Mid-Autumn Festival, Meng Jian went to the construction site to inspect, saw that most of the workers were homesick, so he granted a day off in the Mid-Autumn Festival, and also ordered the local pastry workshop to rush to make mooncakes and treat laborers. But time is tight and the task is heavy, and the workshop owners are really too late.
At this time, Menghe Wansui had a benevolent and charitable Gu surnamed Yuanwai learned of the situation and also thought of emergency. Gu Yuanwai has 4 sons-in-law, who happen to participate in dredging in different directions of the Menghe River. Therefore, he had a clever move and decided to make a kind of quadrangular cake, the process is relatively simple, and it can also represent the "peace of the four sides". After the chefs rushed to work day and night, thousands of pieces of bread were made and then sent to the construction site. The workers were grateful for each one, and they also solved Meng Jian's urgent needs.
After the squires knew, they took the two surnames and called them "Meng Gu Cake". Since then, the good name of "Meng Gu Cake" has been widely circulated in the Menghe folk, praising "for the officials to be close to the people, for the rich and benevolent".
In the late Yuan Dynasty, when the folk made "Menggu Cake", the dried flour was mixed with sugar, soybean oil and a small amount of water, and after the dough was reconciled, the cake was spread on the iron pot and baked, and finally cut into a four-corner diamond shape, which was later renamed "full pot cake" and continues to this day. And this kind of local specialty dim sum has gradually become a "return gift" given to the son-in-law by the mother-in-law when the daughter and son-in-law "Zhang August".
One bite of nostalgia, three points of material and seven points of care
Making a full pot of cake is not complicated, but it is not easy to make well. In addition to the use of materials, the proportion of sugar, water, flour, kneading dough to what extent, and even the final cut size can not be sloppy, otherwise it will affect the taste, affect the taste. Chao Lanying, 61 years old, has been engaged in traditional handmade Chinese pastry making for more than 30 years, and the "full pot cake" she makes is sweet but not greasy, crisp but not dry, which is a must and is loved by locals.
Every year, a month before the Mid-Autumn Festival, Aunt Chao begins to make a full pot of cakes, and she has to choose each raw material herself, only the good quality. In her words, this is the old recipe and old craft learned from her mother, and it is also the result of three points of material and seven points of care.
For the full pot of cakes, Aunt Chao spent 30 years improving, so that this traditional dim sum has less oil and less sugar and a rich taste. Aunt Chao said: "Full pot cakes are generally sweet and solid, and later I tried to make sesame flavors and salty flavors on the basis of tradition, and the response was very good." Some Menghe people live in the city, and often ask relatives to buy from me, saying that the taste of their hometown is indispensable every year. They ate happily, and I felt that it made sense to stick to the old craft for so many years. ”
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