The good memories of eating fish seem to have occurred in Suzhou. One year, just into the spring, I ran to Suzhou, Guanqian Street, eunuch lane old shops lined up, Songhe Tower, Deyue Lou are famous chefs sitting, I prefer Xinjufeng, mother oil boat duck, cherry meat, stir-fried shrimp, jujube mud cake, are mandatory every time.
Go more, just want to change the flower head. Ask the store manager if there are any spring "seasonal goods". "Seasonal fresh goods" is Shanghainese, that is, seasonal dishes, eating seasonal dishes, is today's popular food concept "do not eat from time to time".
Peach blossom flowing mandarin fish fat
In fact, "not eating from time to time" comes from the Analects. Zi Yue: "The evil color does not eat, the stink does not eat, the loss of food does not eat, and from time to time does not eat." If you don't cut it right, you won't eat it, and you won't eat its sauce." The rules of Confucius's diet are really exquisite, and they are not eaten properly, and they are not eaten when they are dipped in the wrong sauce. And "not eating from time to time", saying that it is not eaten until the meal is served in a day, and there are also sayings that "time" refers to "season, season", that is, the diet should conform to the season.
This "from time to time do not eat", easy to say, in fact, quite luxurious. Zhang Han, a famous scholar of the Western Jin Dynasty, said in the "New Sayings of the World", "Seeing the autumn wind, because of the thought of WuZhong's vegetable soup and perch, he said: 'Life is too expensive to be suitable, how can you be bound for thousands of miles to ask for a knight?'" 'Then he was ordered to return.' "It is said that because of the autumn wind, he thought of the fat sea bass in his hometown, and it was the season to eat the sea bass, so the officials did not do it, and returned to their hometown to eat fish.
In ancient times, in order to be able to "not eat from time to time" and eat some "fresh goods", it was necessary to give up being an official. Or modern good, want to eat directly by high-speed rail to Suzhou, sit in the restaurant to speak non-standard Suzhou dialect asked: "Ah has a quota when fresh food to eat?" ”
"When the fresh goods are so angry, Naia wants to get some pond fish to eat?"
Pond fish I know, qing dynasty poet Chen Xuan's "West Lake Bamboo Branch Words", there is a poem "Qingming Tubu fish first beautiful, heavy nine balls of navel crab fat", Tubu fish is tang fish, there are two sentences after the word: "Mo Wei Bai Gong can not throw away, on the food also forgot to return", is to say that the Tang Dynasty poet Bai Juyi in Hangzhou to do too punctual, praise for the West Lake produced pond fish, it can be seen that the pond fish as early as the Tang Dynasty is famous delicacy.
Three shrimp tofu and pond carp stewed egg
The practices in the "Hangzhou Recipe" are "spring shoots roasted tubu fish", "sauce roasted tubu fish" and "ivory tubu fish". The first two can be roughly understood by imagination, and the latter "ivory tubu fish" is to remove the head and bone of the pond fish, and make the fish meat into an ivory-like high-end dish, and now Hangzhou has disappeared.
Hangzhou people regard pond fish as a treasure, but Nanjing people do not want to see it. Yuan Ming wrote in the "Suiyuan Food List", "Hangzhou takes tubu fish as the top product. And the Jinling people are unworthy, and their eyes are tiger-headed snakes, and they can laugh. ”
Suzhou is not far from Nanjing, obviously more knowledgeable about eating, neither offering the most precious treasure, nor denying it completely, but looking for its most delicious time point.
This theory is very modern, as if it should come from the mouth of some world-renowned celebrity chef who can make amazing and delicious food from ordinary ingredients that are unimaginable, and the trick is to grasp the characteristics of the ingredients and cook them in the most suitable way with the best seasonal and state.
In the eyes of Suzhou people, pond fish is eaten when cauliflower is full of flowers, and this season, as written in the "Suiyuan Food List": "The meat is the most tender." Fry, boil, and steam. It can be pickled mustard as a soup and soup, especially fresh. ”
It sounds really advanced, when Ye Jianying entertained Prince Sihanouk in Suzhou, there was a soup with pond fish head flap, which was praised by the prince. Suzhou folk, on the other hand, stew the whole pond of snakehead eggs, if served to the British, will definitely evoke nostalgia - because it looks a bit like the famous British dish "Looking up at the stars".
Why is pond fish delicious? It is said that because of his living habits, he likes to hide under the water, walk with the soil, and be lazy, so his skin and flesh are delicate and delicious. Moreover, the more critical point is that the pond snakehead is not very able to be artificially farmed, and the basics that can be eaten are grown in the wild environment, or rivers, or ponds, in the final analysis, it is a modern city like Shanghai that cannot be eaten, and Suzhou has to eat, of course, to taste, "Or, just come to a pond fish stewed egg?" ”
Before the words came out, I felt regretful, and I could even imagine that the store manager had forced the word "foreign plate" in his stomach and did not spit it out. This season the pond fish is still too small, and the stewed egg will grow up a little longer, and it is time to eat "rotten pond fish fillets". How do you mess up fish fillets? Ya, that is, the two pieces of live meat on the pond fish are batched down and fried.
Scoop up fish fillets
The dishes are served, and they don't seem to be much. Suzhou people are delicate, used to eat convex butter, but also a small cup, now the bad pond fish fillet, but also a small dish, however, the small amount is extracted from the essence, a small cup of convex butter to four or five crabs, the dish in front of you also have to use a dozen pond fish bar.
This dish is indeed kung fu, that small two pieces of meat from the batch, sizing, slippery, the whole process is complete in shape, not broken or scattered, it is not easy. The heat is also important, the so-called "boiling", that is, the hot pot of warm oil, put in the Western catering industry, is now popular "low temperature" cooking, keep the meat inside the wet and tender. The fillets of the pond are so slippery that the taste is smooth and tender. The fish on the plate is like hibiscus chicken slices, snow white and tender. Hangzhou "ivory tubu fish" seems to be a similar practice.
The first feeling in the entrance is the touch between the lips and teeth, as if it is a living thing, all because the pond fish meat is smooth and tender, if it is replaced by other fish species, such as grass carp with rough skin and thick flesh, it is conceivable that it will be much inferior. Then there's the taste. It is said that it is a bad smell, in fact, the bad taste is not heavy, compared to the bad taste of Lu cuisine, Su cuisine pays attention to the umami taste of the ingredients, so the focus of the word "slip" is more in the word "slip", and the bad has become a foil and foil.
At this time, the few dishes eaten in front of it dimmed, such as stir-fried shrimp, and previously praised its delicious teeth, after tasting the "bad pond fish fillet", I felt that "shrimp is not as good as fish", after all, the biological evolution level is lower, cultivation and creation are naturally different, and there is less spirituality, just like in the classical legend, fish can transform into adults to interpret the story of "chasing fish", and shrimp can only be used as shrimp soldier crabs will run away from the dragon set when the water floods the golden mountains.
There are many old shops in Suzhou, and there are only a few delicious ones. In the past, I read the food travelogue of Taiwanese writer Lu Yaodong, because he missed the delicious taste of his hometown in Jiangnan, the two sides of the strait could not wait to come to Suzhou to eat, but all the way to eat all the way, the taste was not the taste in memory, things are not things, ingredients chefs and methods have undergone earth-shaking changes.
In fact, the reason why Suzhou cuisine is delicious is that in history, Suzhou has rich and developed products and economy, and has trained many excellent chefs, while there are many literati intellectuals, and in the Ya Gathering, it has invisibly injected a lot of cultural nourishment into Suzhou cuisine, making it relatively mature and elegant. For example, three shrimp noodles, a small river shrimp in shrimp paste shrimp and shrimp processed separately, to make a bowl of noodles, the chef's creativity and "skills" and "work", creating a delicious taste. And change a chef, or kung fu is no longer as good as before, the taste is lost. The reason why Lu Yaodong was frustrated was that the chef had changed and the taste had changed. Even now, noodle shops such as Three Shrimp Noodles are famous for TV programs, and the traffic has become sales, and it is difficult to guarantee kung fu, and the taste has declined.
But why should you focus on Suzhou? One year I followed the locals to Taihu Lake, and ate a whole fish feast in a farmhouse restaurant by the lake, not a famous chef cooking, relying on the spirit of natural ingredients, the taste is really unforgettable for many people.
Taihu Lake became famous as a place to eat fish very early, and Han Zhao Ye's "Wu Yue Chunqiu" recorded that Gongzi Guang and Wu Wang were good at "burning fish" and sent warriors to Taihu Lake to learn how to make "hot fish" for three months.
The "hot fish" method of Taihu Lake is similar to the "grilled fish" eaten in the streets and alleys now: after grilling the fish, it is then fried in a copper pot, and this "frying" is not fried in modern cooking, but the cooked white meat is put into the hot sauce and flavored. A Piece of Warring States copper cookware excavated from the tomb of Marquis Yi of Hubei Province is used to "burn fish", divided into two layers, the lower layer is put on charcoal fire, the upper layer is fried with fish, and when it is excavated, there are complete fish bones in the pot on the upper layer.
Gongzi's optical "hot fish" was not purely for eating, he conspired with Wu Zixu, let Zhuan Zhu learn "hot fish" and then make it for Wu Wang's staff to eat, and hid a fish intestine sword in the "hot fish" and gave it to the staff, taking advantage of the fact that the staff was focused on eating fish, quickly pulled out the sword to assassinate him. It sounds a bit like the story of Jing Ke stabbing the King of Qin, Jing Ke hid the dagger in the map, the assassination of the King of Qin failed, and the Prince Guang hid the sword in the belly of the fish, the assassination was successful, becoming one of the five masters of the Spring and Autumn Period.
The method of cooking fish in the Spring and Autumn Period is actually similar to that of now, in addition to "hot fish", there are also fish soup and steamed fish. In "Wu Yue Spring and Autumn", there is a story about steamed fish, saying that Lu Lu and his wife and daughter Teng Yu ate together, there were steamed fish during the meal, And Lu Lu ate half of it, leaving the remaining half to his daughter, and Teng Yu was furious: "The king eats fish and insults me!" "As a result, I committed suicide. This brain circuit is also difficult to understand, why rewarding half a fish is humiliation? Either Suzhou is rich in fish, Teng Yu feels, I am a princess, can not eat a complete fish?
Flower silver carp head
Taihu Lake farmhouse restaurant whole fish banquet, the fish on almost all complete whole, most of them are steamed, there are also braised, pots of various fish on the table, I rely on my small knowledge of aquatic products to identify, there are Ang thorn fish, bream, river eel, etc., there is a particularly huge long is the white water fish, one of the "Three Whites of Taihu Lake".
I have never seen such a large white water fish, perhaps because of the depth of the Taihu Lake, I can't see this kind of size in the vegetable markets in Shanghai. Casserole stewed turtle, is also the season, the so-called cauliflower turtle, is the rape flower season, turtle after hibernation to wake up, the most delicious.
In the eyes of Suzhou people, turtles are also fish, so there are turtles at the whole fish banquet. And Suzhou fish folk proverbs, there are also turtles: "The head of the mandarin fish in the first month pond is thin, the peach blossom mandarin fish fat in February, the turtle supplements the body in March, the anchovy with green onions in April, the white fish eats the belly in May, the bream is fresh as chicken in June, the eel is stewed in soy sauce in July, the mackerel in August should eat lungs, the crucian carp in September should be stuffed with meat, the grass carp in October should be sacrificed, the silver carp should eat a head in November, and the bluefish should eat the tail in December." ”
The folk proverb middle month should be the lunar calendar, simple sentences, is the true taste of food. For example, bream, belly meat fat and fishy, back meat thick, is not a good river fish, the price is cheap weekdays will not think of eating, but I deliberately tried to eat in summer, and it is delicious and different. Most of the fish in the folk proverb have been eaten before, but the catfish has never had the opportunity to taste it. Suzhou Mudu has a catfish lung soup is very famous, called catfish lung soup, using the liver, the real name should be spotted liver soup.
The name of the catfish lung soup is related to the calligraphy master and the elder of the Republic of China, Yu Youren. It is said that in the autumn of 1930, Mrs. Yu Lao and his wife went to Taihu Lake to enjoy the gui, and on the way back, he passed by Mudu, and he went to the Shijia Hotel in the town to dine. The shop specially made a spotted liver soup, praised after the old food, and wrote down: "Old Gui blossoms in the world, watch the flowers walk all over the Taihu Lake, return to the boat wood to remember, thank you Shijia catfish lung soup." Perhaps it was the old Shaanxi people who could not understand Suzhou dialect and misheard the spotted liver as "catfish lung".
Whether it's spotted fish or catfish, I haven't seen it. Using the Internet encyclopedia spotted fish, there is indeed this entry, saying that the spotted fish is commonly known as "black fish", named from the black patches on the body.
"Blackfish" is too common, generally is the soup, never heard of anyone eating blackfish liver, or Suzhou people have different preferences? I went on to look for the catfish, and found that the catfish is a fish similar to the pufferfish, which can be inflated like a ball floating on the water, and it is recorded in the "Orthographic Pass", "The bandage fish is shaped like a pufferfish and is small, with a green back, no scales, no color on the tail, and white thorns on the abdomen." Customary to catfish. "It looks a bit like this, the puffer fish is characterized by liver beauty, and the mackerel is like a pufferfish, so it also eats liver."
In Wang Jun's "Gu Su Zhi", the mackerel is a spotted fish, and it is classified with the puffer fish: "The spotted fish is like a puffer fish and small, and the taste is also plump." "The internal organs of puffer fish are poisonous, and the catfish grows in the inland rivers, and the internal organs are not poisonous, so the people of Suzhou eat the catfish."
The practice of spotted liver soup is recorded in the "Suiyuan Menu": "Spotted fish are the most tender." Peel and defile, divide the liver and meat into two kinds, simmer it in chicken soup, and serve three parts of wine, two parts of water, and one part of autumn oil. Add a large bowl of ginger juice and a few stalks of green onion to remove the fishiness. ”
It is said that after the cold dew, the mackerel is fat and fat, and the liver is taken to make it. But I eat whole fish feast is spring, I did not want to be able to meet the squid, saw the table plate, steamed a few, also did not see, asked the shop is what fish, vaguely listen to like the squid, and then look at it only found that there are several white "pieces of meat" on the plate, clamped up to taste, plump and tender, obviously liver, and no fishy taste, it seems to be squid, and then taste the fish, but also the Jiangnan fish species spirit and fresh temperament, that kind of freshness just fished out of the lake, is really better than all artificial conditioning processing, the original spring catfish is good, it seems, The people who know best how to eat fish are the fishermen.