"The enjoyment of food that is close to primitive has always been quietly with me."
My childhood was spent in the Shandong Peninsula. When it comes to eating, people in other regions ask me, "Eat pancake rolls and green onions there!" The question is like saying to the Northeasterners, "You can all skate there!" In exchange for the answers are a bunch of explanations.
My hometown is Rushan on the south bank of the Jiaodong Peninsula, adjacent to the Yellow Sea, and in recent years it has been famous for its sea view rooms. There are no pancakes here, but some are green onions, garlic, steamed buns, and the popular food "Rushan Oysters". Like all seafood that is regarded as rare by inlanders, oysters are very common in our country, and their shells are often used as household utensils by children, so I will not repeat them here, given its popularity.
Figure / pixabay
Rushan's specialty food is the epitome of Jiaodong cuisine, and the popularity of seafood overshadows other foods. In fact, from staple foods to dishes, the methods are very regional. Mention of Jiaodong cuisine often people named scallion roasted sea cucumber, sea cucumber is actually not the focus, can be replaced by any kind of seafood. The key is the onion, which is never absent at Jiaodong's dinner table. Let's start with the onion with its own joy!
"Spicy or sweet" green onions
In the era when information was not widely disseminated, no one analyzed the health function of green onions, adults and children, click to eat. Green onions are not only the condiments for cooking, but also the side dishes for direct importation. The word onion sounds cute, but now it is often teased, as if the area where onions are eaten is very rustic and backward. But food is innocent!
In the 1980s, when I was growing up, the children came home from school, broke a bun and ran out with a green onion. If you want to change the taste, then pair it with cloves of raw garlic or small onions. If the steamed bun onion is considered to be the pre-dinner food of Jiaodong children's stomach pads, then this pre-dinner is really overbearing. At the edge of the field, in the square, we ran around with shallots and steamed buns. Thirty years ago, the sky was so enchanting, and there were so many stars that you wanted to poke the green onions in your hand.
Raw onions choke people cooked onions sweet, raw onions spicy cooked onions gentle. Once, during a small talk, a colleague studying in Japan said that she loves fried shallots, and I suddenly remembered a dish that used to be served at home: fried green onions, which I had not eaten for a long time. This dish is simple, that is, the chopped green onion is fried in peanut oil, removing the spicy taste of raw onions, adding soy sauce to fry soft and then out of the pot, sweet and silky, similar to the taste of soy sauce boiled in The Japanese Sukiy pot. If you have meat at home, you can also cut some slices of meat and fry, but in the end, the flavor must be sweet and soft onions.
After I was ten years old, I went to the northeast to live, and found that in this city thousands of miles away from my hometown, people also have green onions on their dinner tables, and dip pickles such as coriander cabbage and green peppers are eaten raw. Maybe this is a habit brought by people who broke into the past of Kanto. It's just that rice is the staple food in the northeast, and I have never eaten steamed buns or pasted bread and sprinkled green onions around like I did before I was ten years old. But the near-primitive enjoyment of food brought up by the green onions quietly accompanied me. Now, when I eat pizza or waffles in a Western restaurant, I pretend to restrain a bit, and then I unconsciously eat the steamed bun and the onion.
Documentary "China on the Tip of the Tongue"
A pot of ends thriving
"Our Cow Is 100 Years Old" is a very famous movie that shows the life of Jiaodong Peninsula. There is a scene in the film where the chrysanthemum played by Wang Fuli lifts the lid of the pot, takes out two plump and huge fusiform dark steamed buns from the steaming curtain, wraps them with handkerchiefs, and puts them in the hands of Niu Tiansheng, played by Qian Yongfu. Every time I saw this scene, I wanted to lift the pot to see what was steamed inside. The Jiaodong cuisine in memory can solve all the eating problems in one big pot. Everything from steamed bun rice to vegetables to shrimp paste can be steamed.
Movie "Our Cow Is 100 Years Old"
Jiaodong's home-cooked dishes are often steamed when making staple foods, and the common ones are steamed cabbage, radish strips, and potato strips. These dishes are cut and put into a small porcelain pot, dig a small pit in the middle, add a spoonful of peanut oil, a little coarse sea salt, cover the lid of a large pot and steam until it is steaming. After coming out of the pan, mix the middle seasoning with a mixture. Since most of the dishes at that time were grown at home, and the seasoning was very simple, such a simple approach made the taste of the dish very positive.
Another steamed "dish" is shrimp paste. Sprinkle peanut oil and green onion on shrimp paste, beat a raw egg and steam it in a large pot. Cooked shrimp paste with oily red sweet potatoes, corn stickers (locally known as rice dumplings), wonderful. If the barreled raw shrimp paste bought from the beach has a fishy smell, the steamed shrimp paste emits the aroma of sea and peanut oil.
Of all the steamed foods, I love steamed dumplings. Jiaodong's dumplings are so big, as big as the palm of an adult's hand, wrapped in willow folds and spread on corn jackets. Seasonal vegetables can be stuffed, such as cabbage, eggplant, beans, zucchini, locust flowers and so on. I remember that there was a big locust tree in front of the door of the old doctor who gave me the injection. Passing by the locust tree in the warm spring, I deliberately stood for a while to smell the fragrance of the locust flowers, hoping that the adults could go back to make steamed dumplings with a few more handfuls.
To drink soup is to eat noodles
As for noodles, the name in Jiaodong is soup. Local people call eating noodles "drinking (hǎ) soup" and making noodles is called "rolling soup". We have hand-rolled long noodle soups marinated with minced leeks or clam meat; tender noodle soups, often with the same slippery taro slices; sweet potato soup made with sweet potato noodles and bean soup made with bean noodles.
The sweet potato soup is a bit special. The dark black sweet potato dough is made of cutting boards, placed in a pot of boiling water, and add some seasoning. The cooked sweet potato soup breaks off as soon as you bite it, with a hint of sweetness. The noodles of the bean soup are hand-rolled lasagna, which emits the smell of beans, and some people like this flavor, and the brine is often accompanied by spinach. Sweet potato soup and bean soup are actually alternate products for strips in the era when white noodles were missing. For these two noodles, people who love to drink always chant, and those who have eaten enough do not want to take a bite.
Photo / Visual China
When drinking soup, some people are accustomed to burying a few new garlic cloves under the noodles and eating a few bites of garlic, as if they have bitten into a treasure. As a child, I was not very interested in noodles. Until I saw the characters in the TV series "August Laurel Flowers" eating noodles with taste, I suddenly became hungry. Since then, I have been very active every time I drink soup, recalling the scene of eating noodles on TV while eating.
I don't know if there are any children like me, who always feel that the food in the film and television drama is more fragrant. If there are picky eaters, this kind of external stimulation may really work. Growing up, I tasted noodles from all over the country and even around the world. But when it was hot, I wanted to come to the bowl of leeks and clam meat from my hometown to be brine over the water, bury a few cloves of new garlic in it, and use chopsticks to pick it up. On a summer evening, when the adults went to the door to cool off, the neighbors asked each other, "What good food do you eat?" The answer is often: "Drink soup!" ”
"Happy and rich" dim sum
In the salty and wet sea breeze, the sweetest is the dim sum of Jiaodong Peninsula. White noodle fire, Rushan daughter-in-law cake (now known as Xi cake), Weihai old peach crisp are all hometown dim sum that is still popular today. These pastries are very affordable, especially the fire and daughter-in-law cakes, half to one is full. Jiaodong's fire is similar to a dough cake, crispy on the outside, fluffy on the inside, salty or sweet, retaining the maximum wheat aroma. This kind of fire similar to the head of the bar is simple and anti-hunger, and it is said that in the early years it was "dry food for the army". Now more famous is the Sheng family fire in the Rongcheng area.
Another dim sum milk mountain cake, on the other hand, is much softer, and is the sweetest thought of every wanderer who has left his hometown for the Jiaodong Peninsula. Looking at the report commemorating Junqing, it is said that whenever this writer received a happy cake mailed by his hometown before his death, he would call and sigh that it was delicious! What's so good about this pie? To borrow the words of his old man to describe autumn in "Autumn Color", that is, "joy and prosperity".
The sides of the cake are burned red, and the outer edge of the circle is yellowish, thick and fluffy, and broken in half. When I was young, I often hoped that other people's families would have happy events, because at such moments, I could not only pick up the colorful paper on the ground with my friends, but also get my daughter-in-law's cake. Children carry bright paper in their pockets, hold the cake in their hands, and shuttle back and forth, thinking that this life will always be as sweet as the cake...
Among the several dim sums, Weihai Old Peach Crisp is the most exquisite. It is smaller than the mouth of the bowl, printed with the words "peach crisp" or "crisp", crispy and wrapped in kraft paper. Grandpa who wakes up early often boils a pot of hot water, makes several bowls of tea, and brews peach crisps into tea for breakfast. Sometimes I also learn to soak peach puff pastry in white water or malt milk and watch the softening of peach puff pastry bubble up. As a result, after a few bites, it feels a bit top. Now looking at Li Juan's article, it is written that the Kazakhs break the bread piece by piece and brew it into black tea, and I think of the way my grandfather used to use strong tea to make peach crisp. If Grandpa is still here, I will definitely use the best tea and brew a bowl of Weihai old peach crisp for him...
Jiaodong home-cooked food seems to be basically very healthy today: not over-cooking, mainly steaming, less oil, try to maintain the original taste of food. The seafood can be boiled in a large pot, and at most add some onions, ginger and garlic. Now the living conditions are better, nothing more than more meat in the dish. Jiaodong's diet does not promote nourishment, but the practice of staple foods and dishes is also more in line with today's nutritional requirements. Of course, less salt is better!