I was an apprentice at the Inaxiangcun Cake Dumpling Shop (Part 2)
Shen Songtang
Portal of the previous period: Matsue time-honored brand | Have you ever seen this Inaxiangcun cake shop in Matsue?
The signature of the Inaxiangcun Cake Dumpling Shop is fresh meat dumplings. The key to making a good tangyuan is to use the meat to make the tangyuan, to take the front of the pig and shake it into minced meat, and the proportion of fine fat is appropriate. Meat eating water, 10 pounds of meat to put 6 pounds of water, first add salt, monosodium glutamate, sugar, ginger, pepper, soy sauce and other seasoning, stir in one direction to stickiness, and then add water in parts, each time after adding water to stir, and finally stir until slightly able to pile up, placed in the refrigerator refrigerated for 1 hour before use. The dumplings wrapped in this way are a bag of soup, and the meat is very tender.
Fresh meat dumplings
The goose-headed neck and double-brewed dumplings at the Inaxiangcun Cake Dumpling Shop are also quite famous. Goose head neck is made of stir-fried bean paste, a very thin layer of glutinous rice flour dough on the outside, and double brewing dough is made of glutinous rice flour dough first wrapped in bean paste, and then flattened with sugar sesame filling. These two things sell out every morning.
Goose head neck and double brewed dough
I learned from Master Wang to make fritters and spring roll skins, master Tang to make flatbreads, and Master Zhang to make roasted skins. Through the care and guidance of the master and other teachers in the store, my basic skills of dim sum have made great progress and learned the production of more than 60 varieties of dim sum in the store. A year and a half later, the prefectural community organized an industry dim sum competition in Daoxiang Village. In addition to being responsible for preparing the raw materials for the competition, I also participated in the competition and got good results. In October 1972, while still in my apprenticeship, I was appointed deputy head of the store by the main store.
The business of the Cake Dumpling Shop in Daoxiangcun was quite good in those days, and customers had to queue up in the morning, and the sales and ticket offices often had to open two windows. There are forty rice balls on one plate, sometimes one after another, sometimes simply two plates of rice balls into the pot.
There are more than 40 employees in the store, and the original collective catering store was composed of small vendors who made dim sum (flatbread, fritters, sake brewing, soybean milk, rice balls, etc.). There are many couples and their children in this collective catering store, they all have a superb craft to support their families, and most of the employees are older. Therefore, at the end of the next year (1972), six young apprentices suddenly came to the Inaka Village Cake Shop. With apprentices, there is a legacy, and the work in the store can be carried out smoothly. At the same time, the mechanic team of the main store successfully made a self-made fermentation machine, that is, a noodle machine, which greatly reduced the labor intensity.
In the 1990s, Songjiang Zhongshan Road was renovated, and the Bank of China was built on the site of the Daoxiangcun Cake Shop, and the distinctive cake shop disappeared. Later, in a small alley on the west side of Xilin South Road, I saw the Tangyuan shop with the same name, also called "Daoxiang Village", but it had nothing to do with Daoxiang Village when I was an apprentice, and it closed soon after. Today, if anyone restores the old brand of Daoxiangcun Cake Dumpling Shop, the nostalgic Songjiang people will definitely rush to the scene to appreciate it, and among the diners will definitely be me, an apprentice who came out of the Daoxiangcun Cake Dumpling Shop...
Varieties available in the store for the year:
Fresh meat dumplings, bean paste dumplings, sesame dumplings and sugar wine stuffed dumplings, white sugar dumplings. White sugar cake, bean paste cake, candied bean paste cake, mint square cake, lard bean paste cake heart, candied cake heart, goose head neck, glutinous rice strip cake, pure red bean cake, glutinous rice sweet cake, flower cake, plaid cake, rice cake, glutinous rice ball, double brewed ball, bean paste ball, sesame ball. Cabbage fresh meat spring rolls, leek fresh meat spring rolls, bean paste spring rolls. Fresh meat is sold, bamboo shoots are sold, anchovies are sold, and glutinous rice is sold. Fresh meat dumplings, bean paste dumplings, red bean dumplings, bone dumplings, lard sandwich sand dumplings. Sweet flatbread, salty flatbread, puff pastry flatbread, tiger's claws. Fritters, sugar dumplings, hemp balls, bean paste eggs, oil fans. Sweet soy milk, salted soy milk, tofu flower, oil tofu vermicelli soup. Fresh meat buns, bean paste buns, lard sandwich sand buns, green onion oil flower rolls.
Small soup buns of one or two dozen plus a bowl of egg skin seaweed soup are usually served upstairs in the morning. Downstairs afternoon also serves fresh meat pot stickers, fresh meat raw frying, glutinous rice fresh meat oil pier, lard sandwich sand oil pier. During the Chinese New Year, lard sugar rice cakes, lard eight treasure rice, and Lantern (fried) are also served.
Qiaoguo is served at the beginning of july in the lunar calendar. In the summer, there is also a frozen mung bean soup, sour plum soup made with Ume sugar, a small bowl of frozen pure sake, plum sauce rice cake, mung bean cake, etc.
Content source: Matsue Micro History
Editor: Zhou Yuwei