"Grandpa, how long have you been selling this egg baked cake?"
"It didn't sell for a long time, it just started selling a few days ago."
"Isn't this more difficult?"
"I don't have any technical content!"
Such a conversation on Douyin made 77-year-old Uncle Hu Kaiyuan a hit. As more and more diners flocked to the house, the most frequently responded comment was: "The egg baking cake made by Uncle is really not delicious, but it is really real." "If what we see in grandpa egg baking cakes who are nearly seventy years old is that this era is more precious and honest than good taste, then the evaluation of egg baked cake grandmothers on Jianshe Road is also similar."
It seems that from these two elderly egg baking cake operators, young people are more willing to spend a few dollars to buy a few sober proverbs, as for the taste of egg baked cakes, they do not care very much. Despite this, the little young man who had a good thing ran to the two to make an evaluation of each other's craftsmanship - they were sure that there were rivers and lakes in any industry, and the field of egg baking cake was no exception.
The newly made egg baked cake is soft and fluffy, and the egg smell is fragrant.
If you live in Chengdu and take to the streets every night when the lights are first illuminated, you will find that the egg baked cake carts that are lurking around are already waiting for the opportunity. In a few hours, three steps and one post, five steps and one sentry on Chunxi Road, there are always a few liquefied stoves in front of the egg smell.
Above the stove, two small round copper plates are used to bake eggs, the plates are not deep or large, there are edges on both sides, the bosses scoop out a spoonful from an aluminum basin filled with egg paste and pour it into the plate, away from the fire, the wrist flexibly turned twice and put it back on the stove to burn.
Seeing that the egg syrup in the center was evenly vesiculated, he did not hesitate to scoop up a few spoonfuls of filling, gently folded it with tweezers, wrapped in oil paper and handed it to the guest's hand. Some men took the egg cake and handed it to the girl next to them, which is the same southwest gentleman as Maupassant's "French who eats oysters".
Lu Ji's egg baking grandfather is scooping the egg paste into a small copper plate.
In today's catering industry, if the category is too single, it is not a business. The raw materials of the egg baking cake itself are simple: flour, brown sugar, old noodles, baking soda, eggs, there is really nothing that can be increased or decreased, and in the end you can only work the filling - salted egg yolk, meat floss, chocolate, cream. Spicy beef, hot loin flowers... You can think of any influencer element that can be filled in the center of the egg baked cake, in other words, it is a more free combination than waffles.
If the people of Tianjin say they have a breakfast called "big cake roll everything", the Chengdu people redefine what is called "everything" with egg baking cake.
The selection of fillings for the Egg Cake is as rich as 29.
Egg baking cake is known to outsiders in the past few years, but if you think that this snack is a cottage waffle, fake egg pao, then Chengdu people can say this theory - when did egg baking cake originate?
Regarding the history of egg baking cakes, almost all articles say that they originated from a fortuitous discovery made by a certain family during the Daoguang years of the Qing Dynasty when they held an "aunt feast" (a family home). The word "accidental" seems to be Chinese the mysterious belief in the origin of traditional snacks is not true on egg baked cakes.
In the 1909 edition of the local chronicle Chengdu General Survey, it is recorded that the snacks sold by the vendors are only "egg rolls" and "Qishi baked cakes", and the term "egg baked cakes" is not mentioned. By the 1960 "Chinese Famous Recipe", there was still no introduction to egg baking cake.
Egg baking cake, leaf rice cake and bose oil cake are all well-known sweet snacks in Sichuan. © "Chinese Famous Dishes Collection, Sichuan Roll"
However, in 1980, the "Collection of Chinese Famous Dishes and Sichuan Rolls" included the name of the egg baked cake, and it is interesting that the book writes that this snack has existed for decades, and later underwent a skin and filling improvement.
There are only two reasons why this snack has rarely been mentioned in recipes or local chronicles for so long: one is that the name "egg baked cake" was called another name before; the other is that this food did not have a broad mass base at that time, and in the eyes of the locals, it was just a short-lived "net red snack".
When making egg baking cakes, after observing the small foaming of the egg paste, the filling can be added according to the taste.
Mr. Che Spoke's "Sichuan Cuisine Miscellaneous Talk" mentions that egg baking cake was one of the characteristics of Chengdu Huaxiba in that year:
There is an egg baking cake made on a small burden in the nearby neighboring street, which is also a Chengdu family selling snacks invented, with creativity - mixed with egg flour, with sesame seeds, peanuts, sugar as hearts, this snack makes all people who have been to Huaxiba can not forget, Wu Xianyou was the principal of a middle school in Huaxiba at that time, in Huaxiba he asked Ba Jin to do the friendship of the landlord...
The history of Wu Xianyou's tenure as principal written by Che Spoke was already after the founding of New China, and the "friendship of landlords" occurred in the four months from October 1960 to February 1961, when Ba Jin returned to his hometown to write.
It can be seen that the real makeover of egg baked cakes with names was around the 1950s.
Egg baked cake recipe. © "Sichuan Cuisine" Xiong Sizhi
Even though the "Collection of Chinese Famous Dishes and Sichuan Volumes" wrote that this food was already a household name in the early 1980s, in the Sichuan cuisine scholar Mr. Xiong Sizhi's 1986 "Sichuan Famous Snacks", he still did not mention the egg baking cake, until 1997, Mr. Xiong announced the production process of egg baking cake in the book "Sichuan Cuisine" - which shows that the people of Sichuan really spent a long time testing the rationality of the existence of this snack.
Since then, the jianghu of egg baking cake has completely changed from an undercurrent to a bright knife and a bright gun, not only the small carts on the street, but also the two old Rongcheng trumpets of the dragon copyist and Zhong Shui Dumpling have also joined the battle - the most traditional egg baked cake has two kinds of salty and sweet, known as double-flavored egg baking cake:
Fresh meat stuffing (left) and old dry mother stuffed egg baked cake.
The salty filling is generally made of minced meat mixed with kohlrabi or caper, 30% of the pickles, 70% of the minced meat, stir-fried separately and then mixed; sweet filling is what Mr. Che Spoke said about the peanut sesame sugar three kinds: one pound of white sugar, two or two black sesame seeds, two or two peanuts mixed. The preparation of the filling is similar from household to household, and it is simple and easy to do.
The real technical difficulties are reflected in the heat of the egg baking cake and the amount of scooping pulp. Scooping more than the top has not been fully baked, the bottom is already scorched and blackened; scooping less egg baked cake does not look full, eating without soul. A good egg baking cake should be golden yellow and slightly crispy, full and moist inside, bite open while hot, the first bite is a rich egg aroma, and then the aroma of the filling fills the mouth.
As for which of the egg baked cakes of the Dragon Scribe or Zhong Shui Dumplings is more delicious, the locals' answers can always bring the question to an abrupt end – "Both shops are very unpalatable." "So it's hard to imagine them as a duel between martial arts masters, but rather like two masters slapping each other's mouths in the People's Park, it doesn't make sense to be anyone with a swollen face."
The taste of Heji egg baked cake is closely related to the memories of many locals when they were students.
The two sides that are truly considered to be the "Decisive Battle of the Forbidden City" are He Ji from the entrance of Shishi Middle School and Lu Ji from the Workers' Village, which are collectively known as "Nanhe Hokuriku".
He Ji's boss used to be a contractor who could not receive the project money, not only could not afford to support the workers, but also could not afford to support themselves, and could only push the cart along the street to sell egg baked cakes, that year was 1990. At the beginning, the main object of sale was the workers at the entrance of the construction site, and after earning the first bucket of gold, Lao He and his wife plated a façade at the entrance of The Stone Room Middle School, launched more flavors, and sold for 5 cents a piece. They slowly became acquainted with countless pairs of small couples who secretly fell in love in this provincial key middle school, and watched them leave.
Lu Ji's boss holds a small copper plate that has been used for many years.
In contrast, Lu Ji's boss's life does not have so many waves. Lao Lu and Lao He set up stalls for about the same time, in 1991. The difference is that Lao He has now bid farewell to the cart, with more than a dozen branches all over Chengdu, while Lao Lu's cart is like a barge, which has been on that land for decades.
Lu Ji's shop only has two or three tables, and Lao Lu will always only serve the two or three tables in front of him, even if the queue is long, he will turn a blind eye. If you think that this is Lao Lu engaged in hunger marketing, it is the biggest misunderstanding of him - he does not think so much, just the brain is more "axis" - it is this twisting force that makes him rely on this dilapidated cart to become a Chengdu egg baking cake giant that rivals more than a dozen stores in Heji.
At five o'clock in the afternoon, the stalls of the egg baked cake grandparents were crowded with young people holding mobile phones to take videos; the He Ji main store was crowded with "blue school uniforms" who had just left class; Lao Lu closed the door early and went home to prepare the next day's filling; the dragon copyist left only the oldest pickle minced meat filling declaring the old-fashioned "treasure solemnity"; Zhong Shui Dumpling added jam and meat pine to the menu step by step; and the vendors who pushed carts were also ready to leave a name on the egg baking cake river and lake ten years later.
This egg-scented jianghu, there is no dancing knife and stick short soldier contact, the replacement of the filling symbolizes the rapid change of public taste, but before and after this cart, the cold and warm of the rivers and lakes that have remained unchanged for decades, and the sophistication of human feelings have always continued.
Resources:
"Sichuan Cuisine" Xiong Sizhi
"Sichuan Famous Snacks" Xiong Sizhi
"Collection of Chinese Famous Dishes, Sichuan Rolls", Friends of Japanese Housewives Publishing House
"Chinese Famous Recipes", Catering Service Bureau of the Ministry of Commerce
"Sichuan Cuisine Miscellaneous Talk" spokes
"The Third Gentleman" Wu Xianyou" Li Shude
"20 years, what can't be retained is the person who eats egg baked cakes together" Savannah