Yaozhu loves to lie in the plastic cans in the kitchen of Cantonese people, although it looks bland, once it is slightly used, it is fresh and square.
The natural taste from the sea is exactly in line with the guangdong people's tireless pursuit of freshness.
Born as a scallop, died into a yao pillar
The coastal area is the home of Yaozhu.
The colder the waters, the more meticulous the processing process, and the better the yaozhu produced. On the market, Yaozhu a pound of as little as tens of yuan, more than a thousand yuan, the most valuable is Hokkaido's GL-level Zonggu Yaozhu, large and sweet, the entrance without slag.
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The larger the grain, the more expensive the yaozhu
The form of the Yaozhu "before death" is scallops.
Take scallops in Zhanjiang, for example, fishermen invite shellfish into net pockets from August to October every year to fix the sea. At this time, the typhoon season is about to pass, and it is the time of peace.
The shells use their own closed shell muscles, that is, the shell meat, to control the opening and closing of the shell, filter out the nutrients they need from the seawater, and slowly grow up.
Every month when scallops grow, fishermen will also take advantage of the low tide to fish them out and clean the shell once.
Before the typhoon came in May and July of the following year, Zhanjiang scallops were the most hypertrophic and swollen, when fishermen dragged them out of the cages in the seawater, scraped their shells and abandoned their skirts, leaving only the shellfish meat that was diligently closed every day, which underwent boiling, sun and drying in light salt water, and turned into golden yaozhu.
Shellfish and Yaozhu
It reminds me of Grandpa's favorite chicken ass. Every time I was upset with it, Grandpa always said that the tail vertebrae of the chicken were always swaying, and the constantly moving "chicken ass" was naturally the most delicious part. The closed shell muscle of the scallop, in the same way, is difficult to think of whether it is delicious.
"Yaozhu has a protein content of 61.8%, which is three times that of chicken, beef and shrimp." The moisture is taken away by the sunlight, and the high protein and amino acids that remain also give Yaozhu a powerful umami power.
©️uncle_loong
What dish should Yaozhu serve?
Introverted Yaozhu, especially like to form a "low-key" team.
Only when encountering ingredients that are peaceful in taste, that is, ingredients that do not have a strong taste: radish, broccoli, knotweed, etc., can Yaozhu show his fists.
The homely Yaozhu steamed water eggs are the wonderful in the ordinary.
After Yaozhu soaks his hair with warm water, he tears it into filaments, and there is essence in the water in the foam, which is just used to dilute the egg liquid.
Half of the Yao pillar silk is stirred into the egg liquid, the water egg is steamed to solidify and sprinkled with the other half, steamed and then sprinkled with green onions, dripping sesame oil, the surface of the dangling water egg is exposed with elastic Teeth Yao pillar silk, smooth and tender, delicious, each bite is like sighing in a high-end tea house.
Before steaming the eggs, the Yaozhu is first treated as "soaked in water and steamed"
A "garlic yaozhu" is also quite classic: caramelized fried garlic and soaked yaozhu steamed juice, lying on the surface of the blanched bean sprouts or winter melon, hanging steamed sauce and oyster sauce hooked glass mustard.
Scoop up a mouthful with a spoon, the mouth is full of soft garlic aroma, the fresh sweetness of the sea, with the embellishment of Yaozhu, the simple taste of melon vegetables is also plumped.
©️bmandymandychan
Since the staple food met the Yao pillar
"The meat dumplings sold outside are willing to put Yaozhu, homemade, of course, how delicious how to come!" Every year during the Dragon Boat Festival, the old mother of the dumplings always read this sentence to me.
As the only seafood element in the meat dumplings, Yaozhu and the marinated pork belly and eyebrow beans, together with glutinous rice, wrapped in rice dumpling leaves, after 5 or 6 hours of steaming, the dense glutinous rice not only melted into the fat aroma of pork, but also brought the silk of Yaozhu delicious. After many years of going out, this rich taste of rice dumplings is unforgettable.
In addition to stuffing rice dumplings, Yaozhu protein fried rice is the enduring Guangdong staple food business card in the restaurant.
The sparkling silk yaozhu is divided into two parts, one is fried until golden brown and crispy, and the other is steamed, with light cooked egg whites, blanched tender vegetable hearts, and grained silk seedling rice, constantly stir-fried in the pot. Finally, the fried rice is cooked out of the pot in a fresh posture, and the two layers of Yaozhu taste are eaten in one bite.
Wrapping rice dumplings and fried rice may be troublesome, but Yaozhu porridge is something you can do at home, you don't have to buy a very large expensive Yaozhu, home-sized, enough to add color to the porridge.
I always have this kind of small Yaozhu boiled porridge at home
Yaozhu foam hair in advance, a little simple with skin eggs, corn, carrots, luxury can be under the sea cucumber, shrimp, sea crab, boiling porridge, add one or two slices of ginger to remove fishy, a little pepper Titian.
In the porridge presented, Yaozhu did not show people in the form of a whole, but silkened into rice porridge, telling it like a poem.
©️overcooked21
If you travel to Macau, bringing a few packs of Yaozhu noodles as a souvenir is more face-saving than a macaroon.
Macau's Yaozhu noodles are made of real materials, steamed with water, and the soup is kneaded with meat and dough to make noodles, and after the noodles are cooked, the essence is diluted into the noodle soup, and the soup becomes fresh and sweet in seconds.
Add a few small dried abalone is the noble "abalone Yao column"
©️by_mrkellychan
Yaozhu in the beautiful soup, nostalgia in the stomach
Cantonese people like to run, but also like fresh, can make the beautiful soup moist and fresh Yaozhu, to please the Guangdong people.
Whether it is the home-style winter melon pork rib soup, or the complex underwater coconut jade bamboo stewed old chicken, flower gum honey date stew lean meat, two Yao pillars into the cup, the realm of soup has another layer.
The Wandering Cantonese, not to mention the ingredients of this road, just drink a mouthful of soup, it is not easy. If you can drink the beautiful soup specially added to the Yaozhu, your thoughts will immediately drift back to Guangdong...
©️eat_like_fathang
Crowd fresh homecoming, XO sauce
In the 1990s, people who could put XO sauce on the table were considered wealthy.
Until now, a small jar of pure XO sauce can be sold to dozens of large, five-star Cantonese restaurants themselves fried XO sauce, and even sold to hundreds, like a petty bourgeois look.
XO sauce is expensive in the real freshness: the foaming big Yao pillar is rolled into a silky shape, fried in oil into a slightly moist golden brown, and then slowly fried together with ham, dried shrimp, shrimp seeds, dried shallots, peppers, etc., until the umami flavor is fragrant.
You can think of XO sauce as a disguised chili sauce, so that Cantonese people eat spicy, it is also very posture.
Referring to the idea of five-star restaurants using XO sauce to stir-fry lobster, ivory mussels and meat crabs, morning tea stalls dipping shrimp dumplings, radish cakes and roasted wheat with XO sauce, we can add some XO sauce to stir-fry chicken beef and steam a loofah ribs at home. No matter how flat the taste of the ingredients, when you encounter it, you will not be overshadowed by the original taste.
Spicy and fresh, expensive and valuable, the ritual sense of life probably comes from this.
Even ordinary days should be solemnly waited for, Yaozhu is like the glorious dream in ordinary life, do not grab the original taste of ingredients, only for fresh to add freshness, incense to add incense.
It is waiting in a glass jar, waiting for the day when you bring it to the table.