Whenever I go to an unfamiliar city, except for the downtown shopping street there, I always go to the small vegetable market there, because I think that the small vegetable market is the place where I can best understand what the locals eat.
This time in Taiyuan, Shanxi, there is a small vegetable market behind the hotel where I live, but they are called the extra large market. After dinner, I went there and found that several of the shops selling pastries sold a kind of round cake with a potholed surface, both thick and thin.
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I asked the lady boss, "Lady boss, what kind of cake is this?" "Stone cake." The hostess replied. Curious, I asked, "Stone cake?" It doesn't look like a stone either. The lady boss pointed to the boss who was making cakes,
He said, "Because this is baked in stone, it is called stone cake." "
Only to see the boss spread a thick sheet of cake on the dark and shiny small stones,
Then came a pot of stones covering the pie,
With the passage of time, the smell of wheat slowly wafted out from between the small stones, and some small stones were pulled apart, and the thick small cakes were burned by the hot stones with faint scorched yellow pits, like craters on the surface of the moon.
Then the boss copied it in the stone with a clip, and clipped the cake out,
Then remove the stones that may be clipped on the cake, so that a bumpy stone cake is completed.
I asked the lady boss again, "What is the difference between this stone cake thick and thin?" "The thick one is wrapped in sweet and salty filling, and the thin one is not filled." After saying that, the hostess enthusiastically handed me a thin stone cake and said to give me a taste. I took it,
Took a bite, because it was very crispy, so this stone cake instantly cracked into several pieces, eaten in the mouth, carefully tasted, can eat a unique northern salty aroma, there is a strange taste that can not be said, let me not feel the appetite, just want to click and bite to destroy it.
The lady boss introduced me to this stone cake again, saying: "In the past, after the harvest of wheat in the local area, I would bake this stone cake, take it to visit relatives and friends, celebrate the harvest, and whoever had a daughter-in-law gave birth to a child, the mother's family would also bake the stone cake to visit and show congratulations." This ancient custom, out of Yao, folk call stone cake 'Yao Wang Cake', 'Huaxia First Cake'..."
This lady boss really talked about the culture of this stone cake, and let me give a thumbs up. "Well, delicious, the hostess weighed me a pound." "Okay, is that the taste you eat?" The hostess asked me. I asked, "Is there any other flavor?" "What you just ate is plain, with shallots and peppers." "It's good to weigh one pound each, and the one with the filling in it is also good to weigh me 2 pounds each." I'm afraid that if I have the filling soon, I will buy a few less to taste. The hostess gave me the weighed stone cake, and I couldn't wait to take a thick stone cake, wanting to taste what the filling was.
One bite down, it is brown sugar flavor,
The outer crust is crisp, and the filling inside still has a little bit of fluidity,
It tastes dry and fragrant, and the more you chew it, the more fragrant it is, and I feel that this taste is comparable to the cake snack in the pastry room.
Back in Ningbo, when my parents came to pick me up, I saw that I carried two large bags of things.
I helped to get it, and I said, "Not heavy, very light." "What did you buy?" "Cookies." When I got to the car, my mother glanced at this large bag of stone cakes, with disgust on her face and complained: "Ka Xiao Yuan, Ka Yuan Lu brought eye biscuits to come, and also scattered, not afraid of moisture, what age is It, oh, all kinds of cookies in the supermarket are much older." I immediately said, "This is an antique grade stone cake, and our ordinary supermarket certainly can't buy it." Mom asked, "What loaf of bread?" "
The father on the side said: "It is a 'living fossil' of Chinese food, and there is a cloud in the Ancient Shi kao, "Shennong called Shi Min Food Valley, and ShiMijia burned stones and ate it." 'Stone cake should be the name of the Tang Dynasty, now it should be called stone cake.' I looked adoring and boasted, "So powerful, you know this?" A few years ago, that science-seeking show," Is It True? There was stone cake in it, and then I learned a little more, but I hadn't eaten it yet. "Wow, let's try it." I handed it to my dad, and after dad tasted it,
I asked him, "What's the point, good food?" "Not bad, this cake has a double taste, the place where the stone is pressed is much thinner than the place where it is not pressed, and it is also very crisp, and where it is not pressed, it is slightly thicker, and the bite is more chewy." Mom took a stone cake and said, "Is the ugly bread as delicious as you say?" She finished eating and said, "It's not bad, it's very fragrant." "
Within a few days, all the stone cakes I bought were eaten, and my mother, who began to dislike this cake, also bought a box of stone cakes on Taobao.
This potholed stone cake conquered my mother's stomach with its authentic taste. After arriving, I tasted, although the taste is not much different from what I bought, but it is slightly harder, not as crunchy as I bought, I really regret not bringing back a few pounds.
Be careful when eating stone cakes, because there may be stones on them.
Edit: Some of the images from betty come from the internet