Folk delicacies are never just engravings on people's sense of taste. It is also an invisible phonograph that lingers in the years, collecting and telling the time, story, history of the unique party...
There seems to be some kind of conventional connection between Lingjiao and Shuixiang. Lingjiao flourished along with the culture of the Yangtze River Basin, and exuded the "Ling Soul" in the blue waves. Changzhou, a city of fish and rice, "Ling Soul", must start here.
After a friend's recommendation, we knew that Uncle Wei's family was picking diamond horns, so we decided to take a look.
At 7:30 a.m., I drove an hour with my friends to Chunjiang Town, 30 kilometers away, looking for a place called Jiaojia Village.
After leaving the elevated road to Jiaojia Village, you must pass through a field path. It's like just a bend in the eye, and in the blink of an eye, it falls into the same situation as it was decades ago. You'll see trees and farmland on both sides, and then you'll turn around to old houses with green tiles and white walls.
After some searching, I finally found Uncle Wei's Lingjiaotang. The leaves of the diamond horn cover the entire water surface densely, and the fresh diamond horns are hidden under the diamond leaves.
"Here you go!" Smelling the prestige, in the Lingjiao Pond, a man wearing a blue overalls and rain boots on his feet squatted in a small wooden basin. After confirming the look, he was Uncle Wei, a man who owned the entire Lingjiaotang.
"I'm probably older than you are in this pond!" After the 90s, I heard about Uncle Wei's Lingjiao Pond, when he was allocated to these 2 acres of land, he began to operate the pond, and began to plant Lingjiao around 2005, during which he also raised fish and lobsters.
I looked at it, but there are still a lot of small animals in the pond, such as small frogs.
Uncle Wei has his own job, and planting diamond horns is just his hobby. Their generation is always busy, and they are no less self-motivated about life than young people. In his words, there is as much work as there is in the land.
Every year from late summer to early autumn, as soon as the diamond horns mature, Uncle Wei and his wife begin to pick them. Uncle Wei planted a four-cornered diamond, and in his opinion, the four-corner diamond tasted better than the two-cornered diamond and won his favor.
"How long will it take for this pond to be harvested?"
"It takes 2 and a half months to finish harvesting, about 3,000 pounds, haven't you picked it?"
In the face of Uncle Wei's soul torture, I held down my own eager heart and chose to stand on the edge of the pond and watch them pick. After all, the head can be broken and the blood can flow, and the camera cannot be lost.
In addition to having a fruitful pond, it is also necessary to have a solid means of transportation. That is the wooden basin that I remember bathing in when I was a child, and it is the secret weapon of picking diamond horns!
I saw Uncle Wei squatting on one side of the barrel, the other side slightly cocked, using his hand as a pulp, swimming among the diamond leaves.
The diamond horn grows underwater, so Uncle Wei often mentions the diamond horn leaf and looks over.
Sometimes you can only pick one or two, and sometimes you can pick a bowl full of pots.
Picking the diamond horn seems to be a simple action, but it is difficult to grasp the balance in a small wooden basin, not to mention, it is even more tired to pick for a long time, and the wooden pot is also 100 pounds after picking.
The Southern Song Dynasty poet Fan Chengda once wrote that "Cai Ling is as hard as heavenly punishment, and the thorn hand Zhu Yin is ghostly and green." The thorn hook on the diamond leaf often scratches the arm when picking the diamond, and the fine wound is often "finished" before the hidden pain is felt. Uncle Wei's wife's arm was full of traces left by the horns.
After a while, Uncle Wei's small wooden basin was filled with Li Ling horns. Seeing that the diamond horns were almost packed, Uncle Wei collectively transferred the diamond horns in the basin to the basket and prepared to clean.
Following Uncle Wei's footsteps, we came to the pond and filtered some dirt on the diamond horns with clean water.
Only to see Uncle Wei slowly bend down, his hands quickly turning the basket, and a small whirlpool immediately appeared on the surface of the water.
After a simple cleaning in the river water, Uncle Wei moved the diamond horn to a large basin and rinsed it with well water to wash away the remaining silt.
Diamond horn is also known as "peanuts in the water", the skin is crisp and the meat is beautiful, I picked up a raw diamond horn washed by Uncle Wei and ate it, the taste is tender and crisp, just like water chestnut.
"You can still cook, but you need to peel the horn first." Uncle Wei's wife introduced to me that peeling the diamond horn is also a kung fu job, which requires a special tool, otherwise it will take time to peel by hand.
Look at the diamond angle that has been processed by the tool, is it much better to peel.
The peeled diamond horns are white and fat like small gold treasures, which are in stark contrast to the green shells that have just been peeled off next to them.
There are many ways to peel the meat, the common ones are sweet brown sugar horns, and the salty beans are fried with brown sugar. But I like to eat sweets, so I try to make brown sugar diamond horns. First, the diamond horn meat needs to be blanched in water.
Add the brown sugar powder and stir well to allow them to melt into one.
In 10 minutes, a bowl of brown sugar diamond horn is completed, at first glance, this looks very similar to brown sugar taro, but the taste is amazing, a bite is crispy taste, very watery.
In addition to the above methods, there is another practice that everyone is very familiar with, that is, boiling diamond horns in salt water. Cook salt in a pot for 15-20 minutes. Cooked diamond horns, the taste is soft and powdery, similar to cooked chestnuts.
But I remind everyone that although the raw diamond horn is green, it will turn red after boiling, so try not to cook the diamond horn in a new pot to avoid dyeing.
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After a morning of walking around Uncle Wei's house, I also excavated a lot of treasures from Uncle Wei. The busy Uncle Wei planted a circle of the pond with his favorite plants.
"I don't just plant the diamond horns, this is the eggplant I planted, this is the green pepper, and this is the pomegranate tree I planted!" Uncle Wei introduced us to his treasures like a tour guide.
There are also many small animals on the lawn by the pond, they are not as afraid of life as in the city, and people will keep a "safe distance" from you when they walk very closely. The environment at the door of Uncle Wei's house is simply "the life he yearns for".
For many people, picking diamond horns is a memory with a sense of age. In the childhood without the Internet and without television, in addition to playing crazy with friends outside, Cai lingjiao is another source of happiness. Follow the adults and drive into the pond. While playing with the water, he picked up the tender diamond horns floating on the surface of the water with a little emerald green.
The food that I used to be accustomed to when I was a child grew up, but I cherished it very much, and the memory of taste became blurred as I grew up, but at a certain moment when I smelled a familiar taste, I would still stop and pursue it, and I could recall my childhood memories in an instant. Perhaps it is this distinct seasonality, the short meeting, that will hold up those specific memories, and will be so memorable.
Diamond horn, eating is not the flesh, but the feelings. Those who love to eat diamond horns, and eat and cherish it.