(Editor's note: Although both bread and steamed buns are pasta, there is a clear difference between the two in the jiaodong people's discourse.) Especially when you are chatting with the older generation, if you call the dumplings a steamed bun, they will definitely correct your statement - the dumplings are the dumplings, not the steamed buns. What is the difference between dumplings and steamed buns? What are the characteristics of Jiaodong Rao, let's listen to the narration of Qixia peasant writer Beifang. ）
(Jujube)
Here's the text —
Jiaodong Rao's value is very high, and the steamed bun complains unconvincingly: "The same is a noodle food, why is the difference so big?" Jujube inserted into the jujube has become a holiday gift for the New Year, and flowers have become the protagonists of various happy events such as marriage, beaming, 100 years old, birthday, housewarming, etc., and have also been included in the list of Shandong intangible cultural heritage, and I can only be a common thing for people in obscurity?! ”
Rao rao said: "Mantou, we are old sisters, all serving human beings, but the division of labor is different. Adjust the noodles softly, make them into soft and delicious steamed buns, adjust the hard points, make them into dumplings, insert dates, pinch flowers, pin on the meaning of affection, is a symbol of love, the expression of meaning, the condensation of etiquette, the sublimation of beauty, is the continuation of traditional customs. We should be proud of people's ingenuity.
(Steamed buns)
The steamed bun was suddenly opened, no longer complaining, sitting silently on the cupboard, watching the people who were busy making food for the Spring Festival, eager to turn themselves into beautiful dumplings.
Why is the value of steamed buns different from those of rao? Everything is said to be a work money, with yeast to easily adjust a piece of soft and hard moderate noodles, after the noodles are opened, because the noodles are soft, slightly even on the panel, you can make a variety of steamed buns at will, in a large pot, gas stove small pot can be steamed, and what black noodles, sweet potato noodles can be made into steamed buns. Not so, it's a hard job from start to finish, and it's meticulous. To use yeast, first-class flour, water first with chopsticks to stir well, called "fermentation", fermentation open and then adjust the noodles, when adjusting the noodles must not add more water, the noodles should be adjusted to hard, and then put on the hot kang with the cover of the noodles to open well. Only the dumplings made of hard noodles have shapes. There is a new daughter-in-law in the village who made the bread for the first time in the New Year, turned the noodles into steamed noodles, and the result was that she couldn't do it well, and asked her two aunts to help, they couldn't do it well, and when they made noodles, the dumplings collapsed, like a beach of corn flour cakes, and they grabbed the pot and steamed it out, and his aunt went out and said to others, Ah, my niece and daughter-in-law are clumsy, and the dumplings made in the New Year have become cakes, and the cow π, it has become a joke.
When the noodles are opened to make dumplings, a piece of dumpling noodles do not know how to be squeezed several times to be smooth, like the face of a little girl with fine skin and tender flesh, and the outside of the dumplings should be rubbed with a layer of dumpling powder, which must be steamed with a cage pot edited with reed grass, and the steamed dumplings are whited. These processes are also tiring to write out, not to mention to make it! Therefore, the quality of the steamed bun is naturally not as high as the appearance of the steamed bread, the taste is not the same, the steamed bun is the original taste of the wheat, the food is hard, and the aroma of the powder is ginseng. Whether it is steamed buns or dumplings, people eat a full blessing from wheat flour.
New Year's jujube, peach and flower dumplings are especially popular in Jiaodong and other places, which is an important part of the Spring Festival folklore and a symbol of people's feelings and etiquette. Chinese New Year's Eve night is used to worship gods and ancestors, pray for abundant grain and happiness, and to give gifts to relatives and friends, and to wish each other peace and good luck.
In the past, whoever made the food white and smooth, the relatives would praise it incessantly, and henceforth they would be solemnly respectful of the woman; if the family's food was black and rough, the relatives would talk behind their backs that the woman who made the food must be a procrastinating and disregarding the good and evil mother-in-law. For this reason, women are very solemn and cautious in their system. They have to choose the best white noodles, come up with first-class craftsmanship, and some specially invite good craftsmen to help them. In the process of adjusting the surface, it is a hard work, and the unevenly made dumplings will be rough and ugly. Knead the hard noodles into a round bun shape, roll the outside with gluttonous flour, and then use the coin to circle and press several prints, use two little fingers to lift the nose, and embed the red dates. Some of the five noses are called "Wuzi Dengke", and some pick nine noses, called "Nine Nine Concentric", all of which are embedded in red dates, not only look good, but also add sugar and oil, and eat fragrant and sweet.
When making dumplings, it is generally done by concubines or neighbors to help each other, today to help your family to do it, tomorrow you help my family to do it. Because if a person does it, because the noodles are hard, it may drag on for a long time when making the dumplings, affecting the dumplings of the dumplings, so it is best to have two or three people do the noodles, a round dumpling, pick the nose, and insert the dates, so that the dumplings can be done quickly, and a pot of dumplings is fed together. Good dumplings, enlarged a circle than the original, with a hand, the weight is very light, not good, as heavy as a stone egg, really strange, the same is a dumpling, good and no good feeling is not the same. Only when the food is ready, can it be steamed in a large pot of boiling water, generally for twenty minutes, slow for twenty minutes, you can get out of the pot. The dumplings that come out of the pot will be one circle larger than the original.
When I was a child, I watched my mother and little aunt make jujube dumplings together, and they were on both sides of the panel and kneeling on the kang noodles at the same time, because the noodles were too hard to sit on. They knelt on their heads, like chicken fights, and when they touched their heads, they laughed, adjusted their speed, tried to avoid the bumps, but kept touching their foreheads, and they covered their painful foreheads, sat down, and laughed so hard that they couldn't help but smile. While they were doing the food, they told the funny stories of their mother-in-law and my grandmother, and the little aunt brought action and performance, and I laughed and gasped from time to time when I was helping to make holy insects. I said, wait until I ask Grandma if there are really some stories. The little aunt said, you go and ask your grandmother to play it again for you... Three women in a play, giggling and laughing.
After making the big jujube and peach dumplings, make small things such as holy insects, pig heads, yuanbao, yaya gourds, fish, hedgehogs, etc., and leave them for the night of Chinese New Year's Eve to express their meanings, the holy insects are placed in the noodle jar, and the grain beaten in the coming year cannot be eaten, the pig's head is placed behind the pot table, the big pigs raised become cornucopias, the yaya gourd presses the window sill, collects the gas, keeps the peace, the fish is placed on the water tank, the hedgehogs and the holy insects are placed in the grain, and the yuanbao is placed on the table.
When steaming, there is also a mysterious custom, that is, the door plug is generally inserted to prevent random people from entering. Some people have low luck, specially "stepping on life", steaming the New Year's dumplings are a beautiful meaning of red fire, thriving, and early fortune, if those who are unlucky or wear filial piety come to visit the door, they will "step on the raw", she leaves, the dumplings out of the pot will retract, some of the dumplings have footprints on them, as heavy as iron eggs, how to steam, not cooked, sticky. Some mother-in-law who do not know the bad luck of the times, people at home to make bread, she came to borrow something to use, as soon as she left, the food can no longer be steamed, the remedy is to pour a cup of wine, smeared under the bread, and then put the wine in the middle of the bread, cover the cage basin and re-fire steaming, but it is difficult to steam well. Therefore, after a small year, if you don't go to help make dumplings, you generally don't casually visit other people's homes, for fear of encountering people making dumplings and fried noodle fish.
Nowadays, people don't pay so much attention to making dumplings, and when I make dumplings, people come from time to time, but everyone who comes knows the rules of adding firewood to the bottom of the pot. There are very few people in life like that "stepping on life", but the rules and customs have been continued.
New Year's bread is generally made into jujube and peach dumplings, jujube is the highlight of the New Year, the 30th day of the lunar month is used to offer, incense candles are swirling, on both sides of the case five large jujube dumplings, expressing people's remembrance of ancestors, but also praying to the gods to avoid evil and dispel disasters. When burning incense wrapped around the paper, put a jujube dumpling to burn together, called "fa jia paper", which means "purple" and "hair offspring", and the burned jujube dumplings should be left until the fifteenth day of the first month to be eaten by the whole family, indicating that the new year can be popular and prosperous.
(Flower Dumplings)
In the past, peach dumplings are also a kind of etiquette supplies, even if you go out to visit relatives and friends in the first month, even if you do not bring wine and snacks, you can not not bring food, if you go out without food, it will cause relatives to be quite unhappy, and some will even be estranged for several years and do not move, because this is a symbol of people's feelings and etiquette. However, in recent years, life has taken a leap forward, and most of the food people make is kept for the first month to entertain guests to eat, and relatives and friends are visiting to buy boxes of wine, milk and the like, which feel simple and convenient.
Jiaodong's rao is a kind of folk heritage, and every festival is reincarnated, people have to make the gluttony look good and delicious to the extreme. Mantou looked at Rao Rao dressed up handsomely, and his heart was full of pride, because she was a sister of the same mother! When the bread came out of the pot, the steamed bun clapped on the cupboard and sang the nursery rhymes of our childhood: After the small year and the big year, the steamer is fed to the ancestors, the steamed bread is white and white, and next year is a harvest year...