Xi'an and Beijing are two cities about 1080.4 kilometers apart, from the Tang Dynasty to the end of the Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China is 1300 years old, seemingly unrelated cities, 2 unrelated eras, in their prosperity but there is a delicious summer product - sour plum soup.
There are 2 kinds of sour plum soup, the color is dark, the color is like amber, the taste is mellow, the color is light, the color is slightly yellow, and the fragrance is light and elegant. A cup in the summer, to cool off the heat and relieve irritability.
<h1>Xi'an Huifang sour plum soup The second largest drink for Xi'an people</h1>
Sour plum soup has a long history, has an ancient history, and is far from being comparable to the cold drinks in the current market. The Ume used to make sour plum soup is to learn the idiom "hope plum quench thirst" in chinese class when I was a child, and later in geography class I learned the plum rainy season, only to know that plums taste sour and sweet, can quench thirst, and only when I grow up do I really see plums.
Sour plum soup, originated in the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, recorded in ancient books as Tugong plum frying, the Southern Song Dynasty "Wulin Old Things" also has a "brine plum water" saying. The more famous sour plum soups that can be drunk so far are Xi'an Muslim Street sour plum soup and old Beijing sour plum soup. Around the 1960s, the traditional plum soup method was improved and upgraded, the traditional boiling method was standardized, combined with modern packaging and canning technology, and the sour plum soup with a sweet and sour taste and a mellow taste was made.
A few years ago, I went to Xi'an to drink a few sour plum soups on the Muslim street, and there was direct use of sour plum powder to open, add ice cubes, and the price of 5 yuan a cup was very cheap. There are also ume, rock sugar, dried apricots, hawthorn, licorice, osmanthus flower, etc., after several hours of boiling, can promote saliva secretion and gastric juice secretion, raw and thirsty. There is also a kind of sour plum powder, plus dried apricots, hawthorn, licorice, osmanthus and other ingredients, brewed into sour plum soup, the price is more expensive than directly brewed with sour plum powder, compared to boiling is much cheaper.
Sour plum soup is the second largest drink of Xi'an people, but it is more valuable to the human body than Bingfeng soda, promoting the balance of acid and alkali in the human body and reducing liver fire and throat. Coincidentally, in the old Beijing city, 1080.4 kilometers away from the ancient city of Xi'an, people also like to boil sour plum soup to drink. The old Beijing sour plum soup is most famous for the sour plum soup of Liulichang Xinyuan Zhai and the jiulong Zhai sour plum soup of Qianmen Dashilar, the former is a representative of the strong taste of sour plum soup, the color is close to black, and the latter is a light taste of sour plum soup, the color is amber. Sour plum soup has a faint aroma of Chinese medicine, the fusion aroma of wumei, licorice, osmanthus flower, and the sweetness of rock sugar dissolves the smell of Chinese medicine and improves the taste.
<h1>Old Beijing sour plum soup is a memory and a taste</h1>
In the Qing Dynasty Jin Yunzhen's "Trivial Memories of The Nails", a book about Beijing snacks, sour plum soup is mentioned. In the "Yandu Small Food Miscellaneous", there are also Yong sour plum soup: plum soup ice cold taste sour and sweet, cool heart spleen June cold. Sweating is rare to this, and a smell of copper cups is hot and wide. A few simple records, the ordinary life of the people of the old Beijing city.
The vendors selling sour plum soup in the old Beijing Hutong, tapping the "ice cup" in their hands, knocking on the melodious sound of the ice cup, spread along the hutong to every household, not like the old Beijing walking the streets and alleys to sell things. Ice cup is 2 direct 5 cm or so small copper bowls, shallow bottom, thick side, 2 small bowls stacked up and down, selling sour plum soup vendors with their hands to fiddle, colliding with each other, knocking out a sound, crisp and loud, can spread far.
According to legend, the recipe for the sour plum soup of Shin yuan zhai came from the court. Xinyuan Zhai sour plum soup is placed in a large pot and surrounded by ice cubes to play the role of chilling sour plum soup. When selling sour plum soup, the shopkeeper uses a pickaxe to beat up the sour plum soup, put it in a bowl, and drink a mouthful of "cold into the teeth, sweet and moist tongue tip".
<h1>Sour plum soup preparation</h1>
The production process of sour plum soup is not complicated, prepare the ingredients ume, licorice, dried mulberry, tangerine peel, hawthorn, mint leaves, rose eggplant, according to their own taste, clean, put into the pot with water, soak for about 1 hour, put on the fire to boil, about half an hour, add sugar or rock sugar, boil for half an hour on it. The cooked sour plum soup can be seasoned with some osmanthus flowers or osmanthus sugar, and when it is cooled or put in the refrigerator to chill, the taste is better.
Pay attention to the materials of people or merchants who make sour plum soup. Wumei is from Guangdong; osmanthus is produced in Hangzhou; rock sugar is made of yellow ice sugar; licorice is produced in Gansu; rose tomato comes to Yunnan; tangerine peel is produced in Xinhui; mulberry is produced in Xinjiang; hawthorn is produced in Shandong. When making, the ingredients will also be different, which is all based on experience and temperament. When it is cold, put more sugar, for sweet; when it is hot, put more plum, for acid.
In the summer, we can also make our own drinks. Just go to the Chinese medicine store to buy some ume, soak it in boiling water, you can also boil it with water, then put rock sugar, osmanthus flowers, and then let it cool, fish out the slag inside, and then wrap ice cubes around the soup bowl or small jar, after it is cold, you can drink. The method is simple, but the taste is naturally not as good as the sour plum soup of famous restaurants such as Shintosai.