Meet the World Heritage | Mother's Taiping Swallow

Source: "Mindu Culture" Selected Edition of "Wind and Objects Volume"

Author: Shen Zhou

Because of her health, her mother retired from illness early, but she could not go home, and she was busy with housework all day long, becoming a housewife without compromise. Every New Year's Festival, she always quietly busied herself a few days in advance, mixing meat and vegetables, making a table of dishes to honor the ancestors and offering to the land lord, and at the same time, recruiting her children to return home for reunion in the name of eating. In this table full of home-cooked dishes, there will never be a lack of such a bowl of "Taiping Yan".

　　On the morning of the New Year's Day, she would take out the white paper bag she had bought before, cut the red cotton thread, take out the dried swallow skin as thin as paper, cut it into a kitchen knife, 3-inch square pieces, and cover it with a wet towel to make it moist. Then go and prepare the filling, and chop the shrimp, scallops and three layers of meat into a puree. There are also peeled horseshoes, flattened with a kitchen knife and then chopped, so that it is crisp and refreshing. Add the chopped shallots, add soy sauce and chicken essence, and adjust the flavor slightly heavier, because part of the flavor will melt into the soup when cooking. If you are careful, your mother will add egg whites and mix well to increase the tenderness and elasticity of the filling. After doing this, it is the turn to take out the softened swallow skin in the wet towel, spread the palm flat, pick up the filling on the bamboo basket, push it into the tiger's mouth, and the thumb and index finger pick up the swallow skin and then pinch it in the same direction, and it becomes the shape of a flying swallow with a round head and a loose tail. After wrapping, the flat meat swallow is placed on the grate and steamed in water until it is eight minutes cooked. Our family cooks "Taiping Yan", according to the traditional flavor snack method, in the broth added flat meat swallow and duck eggs, boiling will be put into the soup bowl, sprinkled with green onions, adjusted to shrimp oil, sesame oil, fresh and fragrant.

　　Sometimes, because the season is not yet available and the horseshoe has not yet been marketed, the mother will talk for a long time, as if it is missing, and she will be ashamed of her ancestors and the land and our children.

　　This soup dish is deeply imprinted in the memory of the teenager, remembering that every time a relative's neighborhood wedding and funeral banquet, more than half of the food and drink, firecrackers burst out, and the large dishes were served on the table, and the banquet entered a climax. At this time, the whole table will put down the cup in their hands and wait for the host to toast and thank you. After that, you don't eat what you don't drink the soup, and the elders won't say much, but the white boiled peeled duck egg, you are a hundred reluctant, in the repeated urging, you have to eat it.

　　Today, the big duck egg has become a pocket quail egg with the times, and as a father, I have taken over the "mantle" of my mother and begun to complain bitterly to my daughter: Quail is safe! It will bring good fortune and peace.

　　In the big family of Fujian cuisine, the "Taiping Feast" is an outlier, and the people of Fuzhou are solemnly respectful of it from the heart. For more than 100 years, this food was introduced to Mindu from the mountains of northern Fujian, and sat firmly in the position of grassroots snack, and then ranked among the eight major cuisines of Fujian cuisine in China, and local folk culture generated a powerful force in between.

　　The flat meat swallow of the Fuzhou people is basically the same as the wonton in the northern dialect. This kind of food is called differently from place to place, Sichuan is called scribe, Guangdong is called Wonton, Wuhan is called Bun Noodles, Jiangxi is called Clear Soup, Hakka is called Flat Food... Although each has its own provenance and origin, only the quality of the flat meat swallow is unique, its thin skin is pounded meat puree and sweet potato flour repeatedly kneaded, by the Fuzhou people as a "meat wrapped meat" cuisine.

　　I don't know when it started, in the bowl of soup dish of flat meat swallow, the chef added ingredients such as rotten bamboo, shiitake mushrooms, vermicelli, duck gizzard, crab meat, etc., and the last thing that changed the nature was the shelled white duck egg. Grassroots food flat meat swallow transformed into a big dish for Fuzhou people during the New Year's Festival, wedding and funeral celebrations, and relatives and friends gathering, which has been integrated into too many connotations by time. In the Fuzhou dialect, "egg" is "egg", and duck egg is harmonized to suppress the waves and suppress the chaos. There are many mountains and few fields in Mindi, and there are many people who have fished for a living since ancient times and crossed the sea to seek a living in the South China Sea, and when they sail on the sea to suppress the "waves", and then remove all kinds of chaos in their lives, it is obvious that everything will be too peaceful. In this way, it is also called "Taiping Yan", and "Yan" and "Feast" sound the same, and when served on the table, it becomes a peaceful, auspicious and festive "Taiping Feast". Good wishes are pinned on food culture, And in Fuzhou dialect, there are such sayings as "no swallow, no feast", "no swallow, no year", "eat Taiping swallow, enjoy family portraits".

　　Today, the handmade skills of Fuzhou Flat Meat Swallow have been selected into the provincial intangible cultural heritage list. It has gained a lot of reputation: Chinese famous dishes, Chinese famous points, Chinese famous banquets, Chinese famous snacks...

　　Nanhou Street of Mindu Ancient City is the central axis street of Sanfang Qixiang in Fuzhou Historical and Cultural District, and it is also a commercial street, and Sanfang Qixiang has always been a settlement of officials and gentlemen, merchants and literati. Their love and demand for exquisite and luxurious life has become a fertile ground for the inheritance and development of traditional handicrafts.

　　"Tongli" flat meat swallow was born in Macao Road on the edge of Sanfang Qixiang, it has always served the large households in Sanfang Qixiang, and is also the supplier of flat meat swallow skin for official chefs and private chefs in Mindu.

　　According to the requirements of traditional craftsmanship, the production of flat meat swallow must be selected fresh meat, pork is warm and active, must not be soaked in water, or into the freezer to keep fresh, otherwise, when pounding, the meat will seep water and splash around on the anvil. The pork hind leg meat purchased from the slaughterhouse early in the morning, after being rinsed with a high-pressure faucet, must be removed along the diaphragm of each muscle like a dingding, avoid cutting off the fibers of the meat, and then remove the fascia. Once the anvil is shelved, it must be beaten down with a drum, especially in the summer, when the temperature is high, and the meat will slowly stiffen over time, and it is difficult to roll into a thin skin.

　　If you have not eaten flat meat swallows, let's take a look at the beaten swallows first. It is said that the flat meat swallow is "beaten", of course, it is a partial generalization, but it also shows that the pounding meat rolling technology has the highest gold content. It's not that you have the tools and you can fight if you want to. Flat meat swallow is not slippery in the mouth, crisp and not crispy to bite, chewing is not fragrant, and this link is closely related. Therefore, restaurants and people buy back dried swallow skin from professional swallow shops and wrap them themselves into dishes.

　　The swallow is very performative, the rhythm can be fast like a march, and the slow is like a serenade. Exquisite swallowing tools, the anvil and mallet are made of lychee wood, and their hard and delicate wood is moistened by oil for many years, revealing a deep dark red. The anvil with a diameter of more than 50 centimeters faces each person, and the outstretched index and middle fingers are rested on the table, flipping and pulling the scattered meat paste at any time, and adding an appropriate amount of glutinous rice flour as appropriate to increase viscosity. With each other's beating rhythm, the other hand pounds down and bounces up with force, rising and falling lightly. "Bar click, bar click", the sound of the mallet pounding the red meat, bright and pure and crisp but not scattered, let people trance to feel the crispness and fresh flavor of the flat meat swallow.

　　In front of the "Tongli" shop, many tourists are hanging up their appetite after witnessing the "Playing Swallow" performance, entering the store to bring this Fuzhou flavor into their hearts and bring it to the world.

　　About 2 pounds of pork hind leg meat, hammer after hammer, 5000 times of pounding, the meat paste finally becomes gelatinous, viscous and elastic. Place the minced meat on the workbench, sprinkle evenly with the finely milled sweet potato flour, knead it into strips while patting, then whisk off the remaining sweet potato flour and roll it into a cake. By sprinkling the flour over and over again, the meatloaf gradually expands and becomes larger. For 40 minutes, the hands must not stop, lest the meat pulp lose its activity. Finally, the minced meat and sweet potato flour merge into one, forming a large thin slice that is 10 meters long, more than 2 meters wide, 0.2 mm thick and weighs 10 kilograms. It looks smooth and oily, and smells of flesh. If it rains, sweet potato flour must be dried in the oven before it can be reused. As long as there is a little bit of meat tendons and grease that is not removed, the flat flesh swallow skin will be perforated and broken, and the previous achievements will be abandoned.

　　The beaten flat meat swallow skin is then coated with a thin layer of sweet potato flour, naturally dried, cut into 3 inch square strips, folded up, it becomes dry swallow skin, packaging and storage for half a year is not bad.

　　There is a saying in the anecdote: Fuzhou flat meat swallow, a hundred eating is not tired. In addition to the smooth, tender and chewy flat meat swallow, the bright color of the soup clear meat, its variety of tricks to eat, but also contributed to. In addition to the flat meat swallow with flavored snacks and the Taiping feast with added ingredients and duck eggs, there are several other ways to eat swallow skin. Cut into shreds, the broth is cooked called swallow soup; the meat puree balls are dipped in swallow, rolled into a round ball, steamed, and rushed into the broth called swallow ball soup; red wine lees boiled swallow soup, and then beaten into the duck egg, called wine meat poached egg. Nowadays, people also have innovations, frying eight ripe flat meat swallows, dipping in chili sauce and tomato sauce, eating Chinese food in the West, ancient dishes and eating now, this taste, deeply favored by the "post-00s".

　　"There is a nest of birds on the table, and the lady cooks it skillfully." The sound on the beam has faded, and the small spring outside the window is long. "Legend has it that the person who wrote this poem was a hard-working student in Sanfang and Seven Alleys, who saw his favorite food, sentimental seasonal changes, and the flat-fleshed swallow in the bowl has changed from the image of a swallow to a periwinkle. In addition to the story of the derivation of another dish name of the flat meat swallow, "Xiao Changchun", the image of the swallow still lingers. And the swallows that inhabit the uncertain bring infinite sorrow to the wandering and wandering wanderers. Verses such as "Déjà vu swallow returns" and "swallow returns to find the old fortress" are all homesickness complexes of returning to Yan. Due to the grassroots nature of flat meat swallow, it is widely popular in Mindu, its taste is deeply embedded in the memory of Fuzhou people, it is a homesickness reunion dish, and it has become a spiritual food for wandering wanderers to relieve their homesickness.

　　In recent years, Chen Junfan has often been invited to perform Chinese food abroad, and he told a story of meeting in the United States. An old Chinese medicine doctor who immigrated to San Francisco three generations ago, until he was old, watched his "playing swallow" performance, ate the flat meat swallow he cooked, held Chen Junfan's hand with both hands, and the old tears filled his eyes. He spoke Fuzhou dialect: My family lives in Sanfang and Seven Alleys, and grew up listening to the sound of swallows. It was the taste of Mom's cooking. I went back under the banyan tree again.

　　My mother is 86 years old and stopped wrapping flat swallows by herself a year ago. The taste of this New Year's Eve began to feel that something was missing, which made people feel inexplicably unsteady.