My favorite delicacies are white water sheep's head and sheep's hooves.
Sometimes I am really embarrassed to tell people that this is a delicacy that they think is a delicacy, one is that the thing belongs to the haggis and other things that are difficult to climb the elegant hall; and the other is that when the family sees me buy this kind of thing, the mouth will make a "tut" sound, they do not eat, but there are many strange words, but I still have a "deep affection" for it, and I will think about it if I don't eat it at any time.
I just joined the work in the mid-1980s, my home is not far from my unit, but I don't want to go home after work, and I like to stay with a group of colleagues who live in prefectures and dormitories. At that time, four people played "double buckle", and the Urumqi people of that era knew about this kind of poker game. The losing party invited guests to dinner, so they went downstairs to buy sheep's heads and hooves, because there was often an old Uighur man pushing a cart and selling under the street lamp downstairs.
At that time, there were fixed stalls in the bazaar selling sheep's heads and hooves, and it was common to push carts to walk the streets and alleys. The rectangular tin basin on the cart is neatly arranged with boiled sheep's heads and stewed lamb's hooves, and on the side of the cart is a small round barrel stove with anthracite coal, which is used to heat the brine at the bottom of the iron basin and keep the sheep's head and hooves on it steaming at any time.
On the side of the road on a cold winter night, only the cart pushed by the old man is steaming, and the hot and fragrant smell of lamb wafts around, often attracting people who have just left work and are hungry to stop by the car.
You can eat on the spot, the Uyghur old man is skillful, shake off a few times, and then pull the meat off the bone, and then put it on the board to spread the pepper and salt, hand over a piece of meat for you to taste, and ask you, do you eat the brain? Peel teeth (onions)? Next to the fire, eating hot sheep's head meat, there is a special taste, of course, you can also bring the whole sheep's head back to enjoy slowly.
The losers took the bought sheep's head, hooves and onion rings in plastic bags and carried them upstairs, placed them on the newspaper spread out on the table, and began to pluck the sheep's head. Everyone sits in a circle, meat and vegetarian food to eat, a small bottle of "small poplar" brand of liquor is absolutely indispensable on this occasion.
The feeling of eating sheep's head meat on a cold day is the best, and to eat white boiled, slightly sprinkled with a little salt, eat onions, original, endless aftertaste, eat is the sweet taste of sheep's head meat itself. The lamb's hooves are very rottenly cooked, the tendons are brainy, melt in the mouth, rich in collagen, and are also one of the delicacies of winter cold protection.
In fact, when I was a child, I often ate sheep's head, and I remember that the eight-cent sheep water was wholesale from the cold storage meat factory, including a head, four hooves, sheep heart, sheep liver, sheep lung, etc. The sheep's belly is like a net pocket, putting everything in and bringing it back. Back home, watching the adults throw sheep's heads and hooves on the ground, burn the hair with the flames from the blowplights that heat the car, and scrape with a knife while burning, it is very troublesome, but the desire for food is also contained.
As I grew older, I paid more and more attention to health, knowing that this kind of thing could not be eaten every day, but every three to five years I still couldn't help but go to the wholesale market to buy a sheep's head or a few sheep's hooves to come back to relieve my hunger.
At that time, five dollars a sheep's head, two cents a sheep's hoof, felt too expensive; now a sheep's head sixty or seventy dollars, sheep's hooves ten dollars a piece, really can't understand, the bones are so much tendons and meat, why sell so expensive?
Now there are many ways to eat sheep's head and sheep's hooves, such as: stir-fried sheep's head meat, cold mixed sheep's head meat, peppery sheep's trotters, etc., but my favorite is still white water sheep's head and sheep's hooves, which are not tired of eating and never forget.