From ancient times to the present, fish have pinned a lot of emotions on Chinese
People are always willing to stand in one season and miss another.
For example, Jiangnan people, there may be a few in ten in the house without heating to remember the grass long warbler flying on earth April day. The river is turbulent, the recovery of all things is still secondary, and the freshness in the river mainly begins to emerge at this time, such as anchovies.
Jiangnan people eat The season of Jiangxian, the picture is the word "scrambling for freshness". The wide-bodied round anchovy is wrapped in large and delicate fish scales, and the fat oil under the scales is precious, and there is no need to scale, and the fish meat is tender and delicate after steaming.
Can be steamed red, the red and shiny soup reflects the flash on the anchovy scales, the scales are crisp and greasy, accompanied by juice and fat in the mouth to explode, the head is confused, the aroma of flower carvings and sake brewing wraps around the fish, but it is only shallow, but it can not cover the deliciousness of the fish itself.
Red steamed anchovies
This fish, which refracts the sparkling silver light, seems to satisfy all people's imagination of a perfect fish.
From ancient times to the present, people's obsession with anchovies seems to have not changed.
Together with puffer fish and knife fish, the anchovy that forms the "Three Fresh Fish of the Yangtze River" ranks first among the three fresh fish for its deliciousness. The use of steaming to force out the freshness of anchovies is the wisdom of the ancients thousands of years ago. During the Ming Dynasty, this fish became a tribute.
The "Records of Wu's Zhongfeng" wrote about the method of steaming anchovies in the Song Dynasty: "The anchovies remove the intestines without scaling, wipe off the blood and water with a cloth, put them in the soup gong, crush them with peppercorns, sand kernels, and sauce, mix well with water, wine, and green onions, and their taste is harmonious and steamed." Descale and serve. ”
In order to kill the anchovies that come out of the water one by one, the Qing Dynasty government and the public did not hesitate to set up "anchovy factories" and "ice cellars", and thousands of miles of Jiangling returned every day, just to preserve that share of life.
It is impossible to be far away from the rivers and lakes, and it is also necessary to go day and night at the height of the temple. At this time, the anchovy has to spend thousands of dollars to eat.
Anchovy delicious fish scales butter
However, in addition to the deliciousness, there is another reason for the high cost of anchovies.
In the land of Jiangnan, outside Jinling City, scholars and doctors gather, and literati rioters who are ambitious or frustrated always like to attach themselves to things and entrust things and words. In addition to bamboo, chrysanthemum, and pine cypress, food sent to the mouth is also the best sustenance.
Fish has always been the sustenance of Chinese beautiful meaning
Imagine when a poet looked at the rolling Yangtze River and sighed, suddenly saw the valley rain season to follow the river to spawn the anchovy, swim against the current, swim quickly, and have a strong personality, hit the rock barrier on the way to the migration, it will shed scales and die, can't help but think of the fate of the individual and the process of history, as if there is a cross-species dialogue with the anchovies, and the acquaintance between the high mountains and the flowing water is just that.
The anchovies are always swimming
Slowly, the anchovy became a symbol of reluctance to live, elegant and high, and the "Tune Ding Collection" gave it a unique character: "Its sexual scales, one and the net value, do not move, protect its scales."
Like the sea bass in the mind of the sea bass, once the anchovy is nominated for a hundred times, the habit of eating anchovies is so slowly circulating, even Zhang Ailing is also the number one fan of anchovies, otherwise how can you use sentences such as "hate anchovies are more thorny" to describe the three regrets of life?
With the passage of time, the south is still the world of "fishing tree cultivation", but the anchovies are quietly changing.
One early summer, as usual, fishermen pulled open their nets and stayed in the center of the river, waiting for the anchovies that had swung here to fall into the nets. An hour, three hours, half a day passed, and nothing was found, "What a ghost!" The fisherman, who at first thought it was a coincidence, may not have thought that this was the last time he would wait for anchovies in the Yangtze River.
Anchovies have long been impossible to catch in the Yangtze River
Fifty years have passed since that day.
The fate of anchovies is accompanied by overfishing and damming, which has triggered a completely different fanaticism from ancient times, from a thousand gold to a thousand gold, even so, the anchovies mentioned in countless literary works, that is, the Chinese anchovy, have finally slowly faded out of people's vision.
Never see the Chinese anchovy again
The red steamed anchovy on the table today is another story.
It was also from then on that people's enthusiasm for anchovies was no longer limited to meaning, but more like a kind of "cherishing things". The Chinese anchovy is gone, and the gap in the mind must be filled by something else.
First the herring from the Americas, followed by the long-tailed anchovy from Southeast Asia, these two species of wild anchovies have been successfully domesticated, and large-scale artificial breeding seems to be a kind of compensation for the past. The price of anchovies slowly fell from the sky-high price and returned to the table, and those who are rich or expensive can also taste the magic of steamed anchovies in ancient methods.
Herring from the Americas
The anchovy is still delicious, but the anchovy that once disappeared into the Yangtze River has never been seen again.
It is also a hot "flow fish", but the background color of the grouper is not so sad.
A fish tank with grouper commonly found in Cantonese restaurants in Hong Kong
Winter is coming, the New Year is approaching, and in the seafood markets of Hong Kong and Guangdong, grouper is always the best seller. A huge boulder spot, also known as the Dragon's Foot, with a distinct dark purple stripe, was always stacked in the most obvious place in the stall.
The stall owner waited for the buyer while shaking his feet, not worrying about the possibility of slow sales, and sure enough, it was not long before the dragon that was on the goods today had been sold short.
Freshly caught groupers are never sold
The ancient method of steaming dragon barn is an indispensable table dish on the New Year's day table. Fish raw meat, sliced into a spotted ball, leaving the head of the fish tail, put together into the shape of the whole fish, only with a little salt sugar and pepper seasoning, plus raw oil wok meat shredded and shiitake mushrooms, Chinese New Year's Eve rice to eat the middle, the First Day of the New Year to eat the head and tail, there are heads and tails, every year there are fish, more than a year.
Ancient steamed dragon bar
The grouper is like a representative, which means the dragon's head, and the red spots that are bright red and symbolize the red fire, all point to the meaning of the fish itself - good color head, eating and doing things, always want to have an auspicious word, become an element that can be seen everywhere in life.
There are many different types of red spots under the red spots, and the picture is just one of them
Unlike anchovies, the status of groupers in Hong Kong and Guangdong is not static. There are very few poems praised by the ancients for groupers, and the tradition of eating groupers is more like the custom of begging for color, which slowly penetrates into the bones of the locals.
Hong Kong and the coast of Guangdong were once full of fishing villages. Scattered everywhere, the indigenous people operate one of the two unstable occupations in the traditional society of "agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry and by-fishing": fishing.
In the old days, the Xu family in Guangdong had been fishermen for generations
Another factor of instability is business. During the Qing Dynasty, the "Guanggang merchants" mainly from Guangfu rose and spread all over the country, and this business culture brought not only wealth, but also a relatively strong fatalism.
Antique dealers in Guangdong in the old days
The greatest advantage of this kind of ritualistic behavior is that it can help people develop self-confidence in uncertain situations.
"The world is a very chaotic place, and most of it is not controlled by us. But we can coax ourselves," said anthropologist Dimitri Sigaratas. Fate is difficult to grasp, wealth is not easy to come by, and everything natural must be auspicious.
Blessings, wealth, and ascension, the so-called "sincerity of the heart is the spirit", are sometimes more like self-suggestion inspiration. As a result, the huge stone spot, given the word "dragon" by the locals, became a representative of strength, and the red spots with auspicious red spots symbolizing Chinese culture also became a popular dish in Chinese wedding banquets.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the captured groupers became another trend after the mountain treasures - snakes, lake fresh - hairy crabs, and were sent to major tea houses and liquor stores, and in the old Days of Hong Kong, you can also find dried dragon bark in high-end seafood dry goods shops.
The strange-looking groupers are like carp leaping through the dragon gate, from a sea fish that few people praise, to a well-respected member of the glass box of the fish market, food stalls and restaurants.
The hatred of the anchovy is the awakening of hindsight, the silence after the frenzy, and the regret of making up for the dead sheep.
The joy of the grouper is accompanied by risks and uneasiness, slowly rooted in customs, and becomes the sustenance of hope.
Once upon a time, people used to pin their vision of ascension after death in the flesh in the murals of fish that traveled to heaven, which was inextricably linked to the resurrection of the dead; now, whether it is anchovies or groupers, the fish we talk about has long lost the meaning of ancient times. The way to eat and the meaning of "fish" has changed too much in the flow of thousands of years.
Today, many people's living rooms may be hung with a picture of fish every year
One cannot step into the same river twice, nor will one ever eat the same catch.
I think of a sentence written by the young writer Shuang Xuetao in "The Aviator": "I like to eat fish, if my wife can burn a good hand of fish, maybe she can stick to it for the rest of her life." ”
Perhaps in the midst of constant change, this tiny invariance is enough to make people feel at ease.