This is the 34th article of "Talent Out"
Text | Huang Shuting
Spread out the territory of China's insect-eating regions, even the Cantonese who are recognized as daring to eat do not dare to call it the most. The insect feasts in Yunnan and Shandong are eerie and charming; in Dandong, Liaoning Province, fresh silkworm pupae that are still writhing their butts will not know that they will never wait for the day when the pupa will come out.
The roasted silkworm chrysalis that appears in "A String of Life"
Native of Dandong Fengcheng Old Jiang, the jianghu people called "silkworm pupa terminator". When I met him, what awaited the silkworm baby was nothing more than boiling, frying, stir-frying, and sautéing.
<h1> One </h1>
Dandong people like to eat silkworm pupae, which has a long history. It is said that Dandong has been stocking tulip silkworms and developing the tulip silk industry for nearly three hundred years. After the founding of New China, Dandong's tulip industry formed the most complete system in the country, and the products were once exported to Japan, the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and other places, which was the world's attention at that time.
The leaves raise silkworms, and the silkworms are tied to make cocoons, and the cocoons can be reeled and silk can be made of silk. At this point, do you think that a piece of obsessive silkworm baby can return to the free body and feather into the "fluttering moth" that is entangled and flying?
otherwise. Silkworm pupae have also been targeted by humans.
"When I was a child, the adults in the family worked in the silk reeling factory, and every time they went to play, they grabbed a handful of silkworm pupae from the workstation and secretly stuffed it for our children to eat. Everyone quickly hid in their clothes or school bags, lest the workshop director see it and curse people. Old Ginger recalled that for himself who was growing a body, the silkworm pupae had a high protein content, was hungry and hygienic, "Special fragrance! ”
Fellow journalists bravely taste "dark" cuisine
In the northeast, there are many people who eat this bite, but the old ginger after 80 is obsessed to the extreme. In December 2017, he joined the small Taobao shop "Liaodong Specialty Store" to help operate together, and the store only sells one specialty, live silkworm pupae.
A chrysalis that has just been peeled out of its cocoon
"At first, I planned to sell it to northeasterners who were away from home, but I couldn't eat this taste of hometown." Unable to ask for it, Old Ginger had suffered greatly. After graduating from college, he spent ten years in the South. "Look everywhere, not many places to sell. In some barbecue shops, there are three or four vertical strings on a wooden skewer, and one string costs twenty or thirty pieces. "For northeasterners who cook a lot of food, this can only be regarded as a small tooth sacrifice, it is better to do it yourself."
"We northeasterners eat silkworm pupae, pay attention to buying live, eat fresh. Buy it home, boil it in water, put some salt, original, delicious and nutritious. It can also be fried and sautéed, so that the taste is good and delicious. "He has a lot to say about eating.
This point is exquisite, and it is also the most challenging place in trading. As the saying goes, "spring silkworm autumn cocoon", in mid-September, after the cocoon is plucked from the tree, it is extremely difficult to "serve". "Too cold and too hot can easily lead to necrosis of the cocoon, and if placed at room temperature, the cocoon may hatch." Therefore, the constant temperature preservation of low temperature is particularly important, "the general retail household is stored in the refrigerator or freezer, the conditions are relatively simple, the loss rate is high, so now the street can rarely see the sale of silkworm pupae." ”
The amount of cocoons purchased by Lao Jiang and his party was large, approaching 100 tons last autumn alone. How to overcome the difficulty of storage? He had long planned that one of his partners would run a silk factory at his home. So, they "rubbed" into a ready-made thermostatic cold storage. The silkworm pupae in low temperature storage are like sleeping beauties lying in an ice coffin, and when the guests place an order, the ginger cuts the cocoon and wakes them up.
Workers are cutting cocoons
If you only win by quantity, the Taobao store of Lao Jiang and his friends cannot be the first in the same category. There are two types of silkworm pupae, the large and plump yellow pupa and the small thin-skinned black pupae. Although the nutritional value is almost the same, people tend to buy the "Yellow General" who looks good, and at the same time, because the hatching success rate of the yellow chrysalis is low, the price is naturally much higher than that of the black pupa.
"This distinction between yellow and black has nothing to do with variety or pedigree, only with ambient temperature." The higher the temperature of the pupa, the closer it is to the yellow of the wheat straw, and the lower it is, the closer it is to the black color. "Ginger, who used to smoke and chat with the old workers in the silk reeling factory, once inadvertently learned about the warming cocoon method to increase the rate of yellow pupae." After collecting the cocoon, do not rush into the cold storage, put it in the heating library between 20 degrees and 30 degrees for four or five days, and then peel off a few cocoons to see that they have become yellow pupae, and then move to the cold storage. ”
<h1> Two </h1>
In the front page of the store with the words "Arrival to keep alive, I will pay for death" in large white characters on a red background, it reveals the same straight and honest taste as this northeast grandfather. The comments section was also bustling, with buyers lining up or stacking the pupae, poking and writhing their butts one by one, and posting photos and videos that made people's scalps tingle. Sometimes, there are new customers who come to report that there are silkworm pupae that do not move. Customer service Chen Leilei sits in front of the computer every day, carefully staring at the photos of customer feedback on the computer screen, teaching them how to distinguish between the dead and alive of silkworm pupae.
There have also been many jokes. "Recently, a buyer reported that he bought two pounds of silkworm pupae and went on a business trip without eating it after returning home, and forgot to put it in the refrigerator at low temperature. As a result, when the weather was hot, I came back and found a box of silkworm pupae all turned into moths..."
Chen Leilei cried and laughed, "This belongs to the guests themselves and is not properly preserved, and we have no way to do it." I had to comfort him, 'You have earned it, in our case, silkworm moths can also be eaten, counting the pupae loss rate that cannot smoothly melt moths, coupled with hatching and seasonal restrictions, the price of a pound of silkworm moths is almost twice that of silkworm pupae...'"
Fresh silkworm pupae turn into moths
Indeed, in the northeast, even if the silkworm baby transforms into a moth, it is still "impossible to escape the fate of being eaten by inserting its wings". In the eyes of an old foodie like Ginger, silkworm moths, especially small male silkworm moths, are upgraded delicacies, "only those who are knowledgeable can appreciate." ”
The roasted silkworm moth that appears in "A String of Life"
Compared with the magnificent life of the northeast silkworm baby, Lao Jiang's life is not smooth. After graduating from college in Changsha, he worked as a real estate marketer, an intermediary, and also did takeaway near the university town, and lost money. Jumping to the project agency company, relying on desperate motivation, after a few years, he became a project manager and saved a lot of savings. "At that time, I had already planned to buy a house in Changsha and settle down."
I thought that life was finally on the right track and could settle down, but the accident came before tomorrow. A traffic accident on the way to work left him lying in the hospital for three years, performing seventeen major and minor surgeries, and his legs were still not fully healed. His physical condition was not enough to support him to return to his original post, but life had to go on.
Old Ginger brain work, lying on the hospital bed again began to "toss", research on selling fruit on Taobao, before calling him back to Fengcheng to do northeast agricultural specialties, he was helping his old friend sell mangoes in Hainan.
Go back to the northeast. In countless moments before that, this thought had constantly bubbled up in his mind, and sending small invitations was nothing more than a push along the water. Once the taste instinct buried deep in the heart takes root and sprouts, no matter how far it goes, the familiar taste will remind the wanderer of the direction. From the memory of the tip of the tongue in childhood, to the "blindly difficult to find" when wandering and working outside, to today's livelihood plan, he believes that "the taste is right, it is like returning home." ”
Today, this seemingly raw dish has also gained more and more recognition. Among the customers who place orders, there are also more and more non-Northeastern customers. "Some customers who have never eaten silkworm pupae want to buy it and try it out. There are also guests who want to supplement protein fitness and muscle gain, as the saying goes, 'three silkworm pupae top an egg'. Old Jiang said, "There was still a period of time, suddenly there were a lot of new customers to consult, want to eat but dare not try." When I asked, I learned that it turned out to be a group of patients from a hospital, and the doctor suggested that they eat some silkworm pupae to help raise white blood cells during surgery and chemotherapy. ”
Chat history with guests
Business is good, ginger and friends slowly put on the shelves more of their fun specialties from snacks to big ones. For example, a kind of insect on the hawthorn tree called "foreign spicy pot" is delicate and sweet in the mouth; there is also a wild vegetable called "sour pulp" that grows in the mountain field, the rhizome is edible, and the taste is as sweet and sour as a fruit. When the business is on the right track, they also plan to set up a rural cooperative in Fengcheng, so that more farmers can rest assured that the year-round hard work can be exchanged for a stable and good price.