Throughout the year, there is a beautiful scenery on the streets of Changsha: there are many beautiful women in front of stinky tofu stalls. Someone quipped: This is stinky beauty.
It is a graceful beauty to stand in front of a simple fried stinky tofu stall and patiently wait for stinky tofu. And when the beauties took the stinky tofu from the stall owner's hand, inserted a long bamboo skewer into the stinky tofu, raised it to the mouth, ate a mouthful of oil and spicy juice, immediately stretched out their necks and another piece, quickly three times five divided by two, the black, beautiful, hot and spicy, fragrant, one dollar and four pieces of stinky tofu instantly belly, eat full of sweat, and then take out a napkin from the satchel and rub it on the mouth, revealing rosy lips, and whisper twice: "Spicy is spicy, is to eat this taste." "Its exhilarating state is another kind of beauty.
This quiet movement, a strong contrast, reflects the two sides of Changsha hot girls, both elegant and clear, gentle and quiet, but also hot and cute, dare to do, bold and persistent.
Some people say that Changsha is a dyeing tank, and when outsiders arrive in Changsha, they want to eat it as soon as they smell stinky tofu.
Ever since 1978, when Bush Sr. wrote stinky tofu from the Fire Palace into his notebook, stinky tofu has become a delicacy in the legend of the East and West hemispheres. On the evening of March 3, 2016, the then U.S. Ambassador to China, Max Bocas, after his predecessor Ambassador Huntsman, visited the Fire Palace to taste the stinky tofu, and Ambassador Max Bocas gladly wrote: "The stinky tofu in the Fire Palace tastes great." Joey Yung participated in Hunan Satellite TV's "I am a singer" program, as soon as she arrived in Changsha, she came to the fire palace to eat stinky tofu, saw ling-liang full of snacks, and even said a few "I like" .
Mr. Wang Zengqi, a Meiwen family, wrote humorously in his article "Fruits and Vegetables Autumn Thick and Smelly": "We are in Changsha, we want to taste the stinky tofu that Mao Zedong ate in the Fire Palace, follow the smell, the smell is getting stronger, 'Soon, almost here, smell the stink!'" In front of you, it's a public toilet! It is said that Mao Zedong once went to the Fire Palace to eat stinky tofu and said: 'The stinky tofu in the Fire Palace is still delicious!' During the Cultural Revolution, this became a new directive, painted on the walls of the Fire Palace. ”
Yes, the stinky tofu of the Fire Palace is still so authentic and traditional: black as ink, fragrant as mellow, tender as crisp, soft as velvet. Tender on the outside and tender on the inside, spicy and refreshing. "It stinks and tastes good."
Wang Laowen mentions that "Mao Zedong deliberately went to the Fire Palace to eat stinky tofu once" on the evening of April 12, 1958. As soon as Chairman Mao returned to his hometown, he came to the Fire Palace with the memories and food complex left behind by his youth.
The birth of stinky tofu in the Fire Palace is a coincidence.
During the Reign of the Qing Dynasty, Xiangyin County in Changsha Province, a family surnamed Jiang, made tofu for generations. In addition to making dried tofu brain and white tofu, we also make dried tofu marinated in a sauce marinated in a jar. Once, the Jiang family found a pot of dried sauce pickled tofu that had been pickled for a long time and forgot to sell in time, and the couple tentatively opened the seal and found that the brine and the dried sauce had turned black and smelled bad. The shopkeeper could not bear its smell, lifted the jar and wanted to pour it out, the boss lady had never seen such a black tofu, and so smelly, very curious, so he clipped out a few pieces to taste the taste. She first steamed it with tempeh peppers, which were too foul to eat because of the heavy smell. So he fried two slices of tea oil in a different way, and the whole house was filled with a special fragrance. The couple was very surprised, rushed to taste, felt the taste fresh, full of refreshing, and decided to sell as a new variety. As soon as stinky tofu was introduced, it became popular.
The Jiang family's craft is passed on from man to man to woman, and it is passed down from generation to generation. At the age of 12, he went to Changsha with his father's second father to learn art, an iron pot, a burden, a stove, a fan, and moved the stinky tofu to the fiery fire palace of the temple fair at that time to sell, and this sale sold its reputation. At the beginning of 1938, the "Observation Daily" reported with the title of "Fire Palace, Eating, Drinking, and Having Fun Gate, Fried Tofu is the Most Famous": "Among the food of the Fire Palace, fried tofu is the most famous... Needless to say eat, as long as you smell the smell from a distance, it should make you salivate, and the people who go there are not a piece of hands. "This sale, sold a century-old brand. Even the old Bush of the United States wrote down the stinky tofu of the Fire Palace.
The reason why the stinky tofu of the Fire Palace has been left smelly for a hundred years and the fragrance is because of the persistence and diligence of Jiang Erda, which makes the stinky tofu process more and more mature. The stinky tofu fried out of the pan must be tender on the outside and tender on the inside, both the tenderness of white tofu and the aroma of fried tofu, which is delicious and delicious. According to He Guliang, a cooking technician at the Fire Palace and the third generation of Jiang Erda's heirs, Jiang's stinky tofu production is very exquisite: beans should be selected into new color, granular soybeans, made into old and tender suitable tofu blanks, and then fermented with more than a dozen raw materials such as winter mushrooms, fresh winter shoots, koji wine, Liuyang tempeh and soaked in brine, then fried in a small oil pan, and dripped into the seasoning sauce made with minced chili peppers, monosodium glutamate, soy sauce and sesame oil after the pot.
Interestingly, the stinky tofu brine of the Fire Palace is still the old brine left by Jiang Erda, which is hundreds of years old. Why is it kept so well? Be exquisite. This old brine must be controlled at a constant temperature of 25 ° C, well ventilated, the woman is unclean and cannot enter, and the woman who is pregnant is not allowed to touch.
Such a stereotype, such a process, such an old brine, can the stinky tofu fried by the brine be bad? How not to make people fall in love with each other and make people who are far away from home dream?
There is a poem as evidence: "Fried tofu stinks and is fragrant, there are guests reminiscing in Taiwan, the young Tian Han returns to Xiangri, and the sisters are served breakfast." This is the sentiment made by Tian Han's former friend Dongting in Taiwan when he returned to the Changsha Fire Palace and recalled the scene when Tian Han returned to the Changlai Fire Palace during the Anti-Japanese War to taste snacks.
Whether the stinky tofu of this fire palace stinks of incense in the field or not, I have felt it once. That year in Fuzhou to participate in the 14th Chinese Chef Festival, the festival I walked around the food street of Fuzhou, there was a food stall on the street to attract me: "Stinky tofu, stinky tofu, Changsha Fire Palace stinky tofu, smelly and fragrant, come and eat hot, eat hot." "I squeezed through the crowd and looked up at the sign: stinky tofu from the Changsha Fire Palace, made of more than 20 kinds of Chinese herbal medicines. It's really crying and laughing, which disciple of Jiang Er's father, Sun, changed the recipe? But what makes people think is that this brand really works, and there are still many people crowded in front of the stalls that emit a smell of stocks.
Some people say that stinky tofu does not stink and women are not delicate, which are the two extremes of imperfection in life.
The stink of the stinky tofu in the fire palace and the petite of the Changsha women should be the blessings of the people of Changsha. Whether it is a cold winter moon or a scorching sun, the air on the streets of Changsha is always filled with the smell of stinky tofu, and it is indispensable for the young girls to hold the handsome man's hand delicately, like a star chaser, to chase after the old stove from the fire palace. From the stalls at the south gate to the cart with "My Grandfather's Brand" on Tongpu Street, rushing to the queue, and then eagerly eating. This is also one of the highest states of diet: hot stinky tofu.
Food is inherently fragrant, but the people of this city and this city have a different perspective.
Life is as it should be, "love is not ugly." ”
Good things have only flowed for a hundred lifetimes, and I really hope that this "stinky tofu" can leave "stinky" for ten thousand years.