In Xi'an, in addition to a variety of steamed buns and noodles, there are also dim sum.
Xi'an has a variety of dim sum and taste, among which there is a kind of shortbread known as the "first point of Western Qin" that has attracted much attention.
Shortbread, also known as "mille-feuille shortbread", was first created in the Tang Dynasty, this thousand years of inheritance, after several wars, but still passed down to this day, which shows its importance and popularity.
Speaking of making this "thousand-layer shortbread", there are still many exquisite, a total of four processes of making puff pastry, noodles, cake making, and frying, which can be said to be extremely delicate.
Making puff pastry is actually making pastry. The production of pastry is an indispensable part of the production process of many dim sum, and its production method is simple to say, but it is extremely challenging to do the skills of cooking.
Take a certain amount of flour, add oil and mix well, then knead, and finally make a pastry. It can be said that most of the final success or failure of the dim sum is in this pastry.
The second is the harmony noodles, which are also different from the usual way of the japanese noodles. Usually, whether it is making noodles or dumplings, steamed buns, and noodles are almost always directly made with warm water, but when making shortbread, it is different.
Take the flour, add an appropriate amount of boiling water to the flour, stir it constantly to turn it into a snowflake-shaped dough, and then spread it out to cool.
After it has cooled, add cold water and oil to stir and knead until it becomes a soft and smooth water and oil surface.
The next step is the process of making cakes. The prepared pastry and water and oil noodles are each picked into a mixture of basically the same size.
Take a water and oil noodle agent, flatten it into a circle, wrap it in a puff pastry agent, completely wrapped, roll it into a long piece, roll it up from one side, roll it up again, roll it up again, and then roll it up from the side, this time roll it into a thick and uniform strip, and then roll it into a long piece that is thicker than one inch, roll it up again and cut it into two from the middle pair. Then each side faces upwards and uses a rolling pin to roll out a round cake embryo that is three inches straight. (This process is extremely complicated, and I can only give a rough idea here. ）
The rest of the cake embryos are also prepared one by one according to the previous method, and then stacked neatly and ready to be cooked.
After all the preforms are ready, the next step is to fry.
Put enough oil in the pot, when the heat is 60% or 70% hot, the oil pot is removed from the source of the fire, one hand uses a spoon to continuously stir the oil in one direction, and the other hand puts the cake embryos in the oil pot in turn. Depending on the size of the pan and the amount of oil in the pan, the amount of cake embryos can be added.
After putting the cake blanks, put the oil pan back on the fire and continue to slowly stir the oil surface with a spoon to prevent the cake embryos from sinking into the bottom of the pan.
When the pan is fried until it floats on the oil surface and the two sides are jade white, you can use a colander to drain it and then plate it.
Sprinkle the surface of each fried shortbread with cotton sugar, minced plums, sugar osmanthus flowers and a few rose petals, and a shortbread is ready.
The process of making shortbread requires extremely fine, for example, when making pastry and water and oil noodles, the proportion of water, oil and noodles must be strictly controlled, and it is best to wake up for a while after kneading; when rolling out the cake embryos, gently push and roll from the middle of the noodles to the sides to ensure that the puff pastry layer is clear and neat; the prepared cake embryos, before the pot, it is best to change them with a small towel to prevent their moisture loss from causing dry cracks.
Of course, the above is only one of the production processes of shortbread, the production method of shortbread is different, there are fried and baked, the finished product appearance presented is also different, but they all belong to the category of shortbread, and the taste and use of the feeling are similar.
In the streets and alleys of Xi'an, there are often shops selling shortbread, some long-established shops, and there are long queues at the door all year round, all of which are people who want to buy a few to go back to relieve their hunger. Even occasionally, you can see a few foreign tourists queuing up to buy shortbread, and after buying them, they are full of praise.
In fact, there are many differences in the flavor of shortbread, in addition to the most common shortbread, there are also shortbreads with fillings, such as what fresh meat filling, beef filling, black sesame filling, etc., each golden crisp, delicious.