Hunan is the land of fish and rice, but also the land of snails, three Xiang and four water rivers densely packed, large lakes and small ponds in the middle, that its unassuming silent breeding in the water, slowly crawling on the mud of the snail, thousands of years has been a delicacy on the tip of our tongue, the literati's "pearl on the plate" and "field abalone".
For this fossil-like ancient "mid-gastropod snail", the most fashionable way to eat it in recent decades is to fry it into a "snail", and the best food season is around the Qingming and Liqiu, which is what the ancients said: "The March field snail is a belly cub, and the Akita snail is the fattest".
Shonan's snails, ginger, garlic and chili peppers are plentiful and have a strong taste. Photo/Lu Qixing
From childhood to adulthood, I love to touch snails
When I was six years old, I went to my grandmother's house in Changsha Qiaokou for a while, I remember that it was the spring ploughing season, the peasant uncle had a dustpan lime in his left hand, and his right hand grabbed and sprinkled it into the paddy field, and before long, the loach and the field snails could not help but this calcium hydroxide, and they turned over their white bellies or floated up, and we little asses picked up a bucket to pick up a full, sunbatheed the dead loach, thought of selling a few dimes on Qiaokou Street, and smashed the shell of the snail to take the meat and fry it. I happily picked up some snails and went back to my grandmother to show my gratitude, but my grandmother said lightly that the snails were the eyes of the Buddha and bodhisattva, and I couldn't eat them. In the end, the snail meat was eaten or eaten, but this sentence has always been kept in mind.
In 1973, I was in Chenzhou Sanquan Primary School primary school, one afternoon I went to the same school to play and rub rice to eat, but saw a large bowl of snails on the table with cut butts, I had never seen, I could not smell the fragrance, but it was very hungry, so I went to the kitchen to wash the pot of bamboo brush to pull off a bamboo wire, first sucked the spicy juice on the snail shell, and then picked the snail shell to take meat and eat, wow, it is really fresh, spicy, refreshing, appetizing, addictive. Later, I went to The Pomegranate Bay of the Chenjiang River to swim secretly, and I also touched the snails by the way. But seeing that there is a section of gravel riverbed more than 100 meters long in the river bend, the water is clear to the bottom, and the large and small snails or lazy lying on the riverbed enjoy the sun, or creeping along, twisting the fine marks of a line of curved lines, catching them is "three fingers pinching the snails - firmly". I also like to touch the stones, because the snails foolishly like to lie on the mossy stones in the water, and I sweep and touch them twice to reap the rewards. I also dug into the bottom of the river and felt for a few larger snails to show off to the children about the water nature I had honed in the Changsha Lake area. This river snail is no longer than the field snail, the shape is longer, the tail is pointed, the shell is thicker, the color is darker, and the field snail is rounded and transparent, and the pattern is clear. I carried the snail home, raised it for a day or two, and then the tail of the clamps to remove the intestines, asked my mother to try to fry it once, but the taste was not right, my parents were from Changsha, not good at this. In fact, before the 1980s, changsha people rarely or even did not eat snails, and the people in this provincial city were a bit reserved, thinking that they were indecent or sloppy? However, the magic of the snail is so great that it has served the whole of Hunan step by step from south to north, and has even become a standard side dish on the supper stall. In Changsha, it is a perfect match with stinky tofu and crayfish, and in Chenzhou, it is paired with roast chicken, pig ears, and crayfish, contrary to the northward movement of snails, this crayfish is eaten from Changsha, which shows the rapid integration of food culture.
In the autumn of 1998, the author studied in Changsha.
Fresh enough, the snails are red all over the night supper day
After joining the work, I lived in the salt industry dormitory opposite the Sanquan Primary School in Chenzhou City, and when I went out, I turned right to Dongfeng Road, the largest supper street in Chenzhou. This Dongfeng Road supper street actually has two, a horizontal and a vertical foot of more than 400 meters long, there are hundreds of stalls, and diners unanimously recognize the specialty store, there is a Dongfeng intersection called "A Zhai", the store that is very popular "Bailu Tang Tian Snail", unique taste, delicious soup, every night to spit out two large barrels.
There is also a Yongxing "Martin Beef Miscellaneous Shop", stewed steak with field snails, stewed with Martin's special soybean oil, bite a bite of steak meat when eating, bite a few snails, and then drink a large mouthful of Chenzhou Dongjianghu fresh beer, that fresh, spicy, refreshing, that pleasure, can only be described as "wonderful".
Chenzhou's night market, in addition to Dongfeng Road, there are Zhenxing Bridge, Beihu West Gate, Yuhou Street "Yikouxiang" and other places. In addition to the above two kinds of snails, there are also field snail chicken, field snail duck, bacon boiled field snail, tea oil steamed field snail and so on. The popular practice of Chenzhou field snail is as follows: after two or three days of stocking with clean water, the snail tail is removed, boiled in cold water for six minutes, fished out and fried with salt for two minutes, and then the pot is raised. Wait for the local tea oil to burn red into the snail and ginger, peppercorns, cooking wine, star anise, cinnamon, five-claw red pepper stir-fry, until the aroma overflows, add water to flood the snail, cook on high heat for about ten minutes, in the middle to open the pot lid several times to make the seasoning taste immersed in the snail meat, and finally sprinkle with oyster sauce, soy sauce, chives, if you put in the local soybean oil and camellia oil, the taste is even more dragged.
Chenzhou snail can be described as a unique flavor, and Changsha's hometown and Guangzhou in the south are also latecomers. My superior unit, the Provincial Light Salt Group, is on the right side of the Bayi Bridge in front of the group, until the first line of Leek Garden Old Street, which is the gathering place of the late-night snack stalls and the old area of my "hoo" snail friends. The "Three Piers" shop on Yingpan Road, the "Three Friends Instigating Luo Wang" shop in Gaoqiao, and the old Changsha Antique Street in Hisense Plaza are also the "Luoluo" Red Fire Night Market. Changsha's snails are mainly spicy and refreshing, and steamed snails are always my favorite. The production method of this steamed field snail is similar to that of Chenzhou, first pour more than 30% of the water into the bowl full of snails, add ginger shreds, cooking wine, green onions and a little soy sauce (Chenzhou is put soybean oil and a few drops of raw tea oil), and then put it into the pot, steam it for about five minutes on high heat, after coming out of the pot, its taste is fragrant, sweet, tender, smooth in the mouth, and it seems to have entered the wonderful state of "big taste is light".
Eliku's friends are brothers who do not distinguish between each other
More than twenty years ago, I and several editors of the media in the Lotus Mountain Villa under the Suxian Ridge to collect the wind, several editors at the instigation of the boss, to the lotus pond to touch a few pounds of snails, wrapped up with lotus leaves to the kitchen to fry snails, when eating, everyone discussed giving the supplement a good name, want to come and go, and finally take chopsticks to point to the snails and say, just called "Snail Snail", isn't this a wild charm?
In the early years, I invited Huang Bin of the Provincial Writers Association to go to the town of Yuwan on the west bank of the Xiang River, found a small shop with "one snail and three eats" to eat supper, fried snail meat, field snail stew jumping frog, I also ordered a large bowl of cool steamed field snails, snorting just hi, Huang Bin got up and pretended to go to pull urine, but secretly bought the single, so that I still hate him, saying that he is "Mr. Tian Luo" who will do good deeds. He grinned widely and said that they were all brothers who didn't distinguish between each other, and the next time you went to Chenzhou, you would do the east.
For decades, I can't remember how many times I've been with friends and family from all over the country at the night markets in Chenzhou and Changsha, and the hustle and bustle of the night markets and fireworks have made the ordinary life of the city romantic and vivid, with beautiful women and handsome men playing guitars and singing table by table. Once, a monk who claimed to be from Nanyue gave me a salute and explained to me that "the snail is the eye of the Buddha and the Bodhisattva", so I bought a golden kaiguang Buddha statue for my grandmother. Before leaving, the monk read a few words to a pile of snail shells and sent me: raw is a bowl, cooked is a bowl, eat a bowl, or a bowl. If I have any understanding, I thank you again and again.
Now, the limelight of crayfish seems to have overshadowed the snail, but I still insist that only the field snail is the most old "small fresh meat", and I would like to invite two or three close friends to unwind under the autumn moon, drink wine and talk freely, and eat happily and beautifully...
Text, Courtesy photo/Xu Yang