Plump barley.
Stone grinding to make Maisoer.
Mellow Maisore is out of the pot.
□ Leaf Sail
The summer in the plateau is too hurried, and it seems that it is not yet time to experience the heat of the summer, and in the blink of an eye, it has ushered in a depressed and busy autumn.
An autumn rain and a cold rain, several autumn rains in succession, the temperature dropped a lot. Getting up early and walking on the way to work, I suddenly met a woman selling braised barley on the street corner, looking at the green barley, I couldn't help but stop and buy a pound, a question, it was actually our hometown.
My hometown is close to The Sun Moon Mountain, a watershed between the eastern agricultural area and the western pastoral area, with an average altitude of about 4,000 meters, located in the high cold, and the crops are mainly hardy barley and rapeseed. Barley is a cereal crop of the barley genus of the family Barley, also known as naked barley, yuan wheat, rice barley, has a long history of cultivation on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, dating back to 3500 years. Barley has rich nutritional value, in terms of medicinal effects, it has the effect of tonifying the spleen, nourishing the stomach, improving qi, stopping diarrhea, and strengthening tendons. The climate of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is cold, but there are many long-lived elderly people, who have been raising plateau people for generations.
My hometown is a place where half agriculture and half pastoralism are raised and animal husbandry is raised by agriculture. Seeing the braised barley at this time reminds me of the Maiso er I ate when I was a child.
I remember that every autumn, my mother would take us to the field to pick barley, and my mother told us to pick up the green barley that had just matured, full of grains and had not dried yellow. Many people have great strength, because they have to eat the long-awaited Maiso'er, and the brothers and sisters are very hardworking, and in less than half a day we will return with a full load.
Back at home, the mother and children sat around the steps, smoothed the picked barley ears one by one, tied into small bundles, and the mother skillfully beat the wheat on the barley ears directly with her hands, and then used a sickle to cut off the too long and excess straw, and then put the barley ears head down into the cauldron. After the mother added water, she buckled a steamer basket upside down on the iron pot, then pressed the lid of the pot, and in order to prevent air leakage, she covered it with a cloth.
It's time to burn! We cheerfully pulled the wind box, and from time to time shoveled sheep dung into the hearth, half-farm and half-grazing hometown, the daily fuel is cattle and sheep dung, the stove uses cow dung, and the stove uses sheep dung, sheep dung is resistant to burning and more powerful.
We call this method of "boiling" with very little water "boiled". To bake something, add less than one-third of the water to the pot, half steamed and half cooked, and the thing is simmered. I usually cook potatoes this way. In a thick aluminum pot for steaming, bake the potatoes, and when the water is dry, burn them for a while, waiting for a thick layer of golden yellow "scorched scars" on the potatoes, and the potatoes are boiled to crack and blossom before they are boiled. Good varieties of potatoes that are ripe will split and blossom after they are ripe. Such potatoes are soft and delicious, bite a yellow scar, the skin is crisp and tender, the taste, there is no need to say. You can also use this method to make steamed buns, which is different from steamed buns.
When the barley was ripe, my mother found a new large back bucket (back basket), a kind of agricultural tool that people in the agricultural area of eastern Qinghai commonly used to weave with a straw pole to carry various things, which was woven more tightly than the back basket in the interior. Because such back buckets are often used, each household has three or four of different sizes. The mother put the "back bucket" on the side of a piece of cloth, and put a handful of barley spikes taken from the pot on the back bucket and rubbed them, as if rubbing clothes on the washboard, although she was wearing gloves, she was still hot while blowing her hands, while rubbing, the green barley grains rolled from the back bucket to the cloth, and in a short while, more than a dozen barley spikes were rubbed, and the mother took the dustpan and rubbed it up a little bit to separate the barley grains from the grain. This was a technical job, I couldn't do anything at that time, my mother was the first person to take the first job in the production team, these farm tools she was good at, watching those emerald green barley grains flying up and down in her dustpan and very obediently separated from the grain skin, our saliva swallowed and swallowed.
We began to grab and eat the braised barley, and my mother said don't worry, first go to the garden outside the gate to pinch the coriander and green onions. Then she moved in the small stone mill, this small stone mill was made by her father, he is an ancestral water mill craftsman, the craftsmanship is very good, my family's stone grinding is both beautiful and practical. Almost every family in the village has this thing, not designed for eating Maiso'er, this thing can not eat two or three times a year, located in a semi-pastoral area, often eat fried noodles, which is used to grind fried noodles, whether it is pressed bean hemp (a small amount of barley fried noodles with ghee, qula mixed into the paste) or mixed rice dumplings, fried noodles should be fried at any time to be delicious, so most people have small stone grinding.
The mother neatly cleaned up the stone grinder, while turning the circle to pull the stone mill, while slowly putting the barley into the entrance of the stone mill, and from time to time added some fried noodles into it, saying that it was better to form this way.
The long, strip-thick Mysore flowed out of the stone mill, emitting a seductive fragrance that hooked the worms in our stomachs. A few of us also helped my mother push the stone mill, and made two large basins. My mother cut the coriander and put it on top of Maisoer, sprinkled with salt, boiled hot rapeseed oil, mixed well, and distributed one pot to relatives and friends next door (the village has the habit of sending rare food to each other), and the other pot was left for us to eat. The green and brilliant Maisoer is accompanied by coriander and green onions, which are soft and delicious, and the original food with lips and teeth is fragrant. The second brother and younger brother devoured each other, which made Grandpa shout slowly and not choke. And the mother also smiled and said, don't worry, there are still more in the basin! Don't learn "dirty face Gabao'er, eat dead and not full; dirty face Gabao'er, full of mountains to catch birds." The whole family giggled and enjoyed the authentic pure green food.
Now, in order to save trouble, Maisoer uses a dough press to press out to eat, but the shape and taste of Maisoel pressed by the dough press are far from catching up with the stone grinding.
Walking on the road, the scene of the family rejoicing and eating Maiso'er appeared in front of my eyes again. At that time, Grandpa was old, but the body was still very tough and very spirited, the parents were strong and strong, the brothers and sisters were harmonious and happy, everyone tasted the delicious taste of the new barley, enjoyed the joy of the harvest brought by autumn, in those plain and long days, there was barley with us, in the form of fried noodles, steamed buns, noodles, alcoholic wine and this delicious Mysore accompanied us, nourished us, rooted our deep attachment to it into our bone marrow, supported our simple and warm days.
Maisore production is time-consuming and laborious, so few people do it now. Today's material life is rich and colorful, young people are more obsessed with hot pot, barbecue and other kinds of emerging cuisine, but there are also people specially made Maisoer to sell, distant guests come, you can eat barley fried noodles, noodles and fish and other kinds of barley noodles, barley wine is everywhere, but if you want to eat Huangyuan Mai Soel, but you have to find a time, location, people and opportunities.
It's been nearly thirty years since I left my hometown, and whenever the barley is ripe in the autumn, my nose is always haunted by the aroma of My mother's boiled lips and teeth...