Tang has "a red dust concubine laughing, no one knows that it is a lychee coming", and there is "riding in the wind and dust in the daytime, and protecting the river on a hot day". Everyone understands the lychee, and this second verse is about today's protagonist - anchovies.
Drunk in the deep alley of the spring wind, Xiao Xun Xiang Xu small bridge east, bamboo leaves full of golden bells.
Green apricot yellow plum Zhu Pavilion, anchovy bitter bamboo shoot jade plate, ether tincture Ren worry attack.
This is the Song Dynasty Wang Qi wrote the poem "Wangjiangnan Anchovy", the east wind sends spring, when the apricots are green and the plums return to yellow, it is also the season when the sturgeon is on the market, inviting three or two confidants, hiding in the deep alley, drinking wine, tasting the flavor of the anchovy, it is really a great pleasure in life.
Yangzhou Wang's Garden Image source: Yangzhou Tourism Network
It is spring, and if it is placed in the ancient salt merchant era, this season is the best season to eat anchovies (April to May).
Anchovies is a kind of migratory fish, usually inhabit the ocean, every year in the late spring into the Yangtze River to spawn, to autumn and then back to the sea, every year punctual, so called anchovy.
Anchovies are impatient, eating and swimming very quickly, and often die from being hit by obstacles and descaling. The "Tune Ding Collection" has this description:
"Its sexual scales, one with the net value, the thesis does not move, protecting its scales also".
It is said that the anchovy is very delicate, and once the net touches its scales, it will not move, so the anchovy is also known as the "scale fish". The ancients liked to give the species a unique character, believing that the anchovy was reluctant to live, elegant and high, so that the world rarely had a glimpse of its vivid beauty.
Therefore, the great literary scholar Su Shi of the Song Dynasty called it "the best of the southern country" and praised it in poetry:
"There are still peach blossoms in spring, and the flavor is better than sea bass."
In fact, like atlantic herring made into canned herring, it is only poorly resistant to oxygen, and it will die when it comes out of the water.
The anchovy is tender and has a fat and mellow taste.
And Su Dongpo's poem, "Bud ginger purple vinegar hot silver fish, snow bowl qinglai more than two feet, there are still peach blossom spring in, the flavor of this is better than the sea bass" is the grace of the anchovy, fat and mellow expression vividly.
Steamed anchovy (modern farmed anchovy)
Steamed anchovy is a traditional dish of the Han people in Jiangsu, the anchovy is silver and white, fat and tender, refreshing but not greasy. When eating, if you dip it with Zhenjiang balsamic vinegar and ginger minced, it is even more flavorful.
People eat anchovies with scales. Fish scales are the most essential part of anchovies. It is said that as the taste of diners is getting higher and higher, when some high-end restaurant chefs make steamed anchovies, they take off the scales of the anchovies and string them together with thread, and then put them on the anchovies when steaming, so that the nutrients in the scales drip onto the anchovies with the steamed juice, so that most of the nutrients in the scales can be retained, and the form is renovated to attract attention.
In addition, the anchovy made by the traditional "mash" method in the Gangnam region is also very famous, and the "bad anchovy" is mentioned in the "Golden Plum Bottle":
“...... Backward is the inside and outside of the blue and white disk, holding a plate of red rich willow swallow steamed rotten anchovy, sweet and delicious, in the mouth, bone spurs are fragrant. ”
A few words are enough to make people salivate.
Because of its fame, from the Ming Dynasty's Wanli calendar year, anchovies became a tribute and entered the Forbidden Imperial City. By the Kangxi dynasty of the Qing Dynasty, anchovy had been listed as an important dish in the "Manchu Han Whole Table". However, as mentioned earlier, due to the delicate nature of the anchovies, they die quickly once they leave the water. Therefore, it is not easy to taste the anchovy killed alive. At that time, the tribute to the emperor was only pickled anchovies.
Even if it is pickled, the delicious taste of anchovies has also fascinated the emperors in the deep palace. In the imperial era, anchovies made tributes for more than a hundred years.
However, the "delicious" Qianlong, after eating the pickled salted fish, also took the opportunity to taste a handful of fresh taste in the lower Jiangnan, which can be described in the "Yangzhou Painting Record". During the Southern Tour of Qianlong, the Manchurian and Han dynasties prepared by the Yangzhou "Big Kitchen" for the accompanying hundred officials were divided into five grades, and the steamed anchovies belonged to the third class, inferior to the abalone wing swallow, bear paw deer tail, and higher than pigs, sheep, chickens and geese.
Compared with the emperor's thousands of miles of food, the exquisite local salt merchants will enjoy a lot.
When hungry, they would send several dinghies to net the rapids. There was a fire in the boat, firewood and grass were burning vigorously, and a pot and kettle filled with water was placed on the stove. After catching the fish, take advantage of the live jump, remove the gills and intestines, and immediately get off the pot. Subsequently, the dinghy rowed and returned to Yangzhou. When you arrive at the mansion, the fish is cooked and fragrant, and you can taste it in the mouth, and the delicious taste is no different from cooking it yourself on the river.
Garlic anchovy (modern farmed anchovy)
Yan Ziling, a famous scholar of the Eastern Han Dynasty, because of the fun of fishing in the Fuchun River and the beauty of anchovies, once refused the call of Liu Xiu, the Emperor of Han Guangwu, and took his wife and son to live in seclusion on the banks of the Fuchun River, cultivating fishing and ending the old forest spring, which has been passed down as a good story throughout the ages.
Peng Ji of the Northern Song Dynasty listed "anchovies with many bones" as the first of the "five hatreds" in his life, and Zhang Ailing once said that there were three hatreds in life: "one hates the anchovies are thorny, the second hates the begonias are fragrant, and the third hates the dream of the Red Chamber."
However, due to the excessive predation of humans, anchovies have become a distant legend: in the Fuchun River Basin, anchovy resources have been depleted since the 1970s, and in the Anhui section of the Yangtze River Basin, where the main anchovy production area is, a fisherman surnamed Zhang accidentally caught a 2-kilogram small fish in 1994 became the final record.
Ham steamed anchovy (modern farmed anchovy)
To this day, we can only masturbate by tasting the long-tailed anchovies in Southeast Asia, or the American herring on the other side of the ocean, but we know very well in our hearts that this is by no means the kind of delicacy that the emperor never forgets, this is by no means the memory of the river that we have passed down from generation to generation, and this is by no means a Jiangnan style that connects countless histories and cultures.
At that time, the treatment of salt merchants was no longer blessed to enjoy.
The scenery of Yangzhou during the Qing Dynasty