In the beautiful wine city of Luzhou, in addition to the wine culture that has been passed down for thousands of years, there are also many delicacies. Among them, there is a delicacy called "Naxi Bubble Gum", which was once a good memory of many Luzhou people.
Naxi is now a district of Luzhou City, where the Yongning River runs through the lofty mountains and mountains into the Yangtze River. More than a hundred years ago, locals invented the "bubble gum" food. Speaking of its origins, it is also directly related to the shipping industry at that time.
At the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the People's Republic, there were more than 200 large and small boats of the Naxi people. At that time, the guilds of the wooden boat shipping and logging industry were called the Wang Ye Hui. The meeting period of the Wangye Society is the first six days of June every year, and on that day, each boat family will make a good dish, and go to the WangyeHui to pay tribute to the Wangye.
Naxi bubble gum
One year, the offerings that Lin Dashan, the boatman, took out were not ordinary home-cooked dishes, but a rectangular piece of sugar. The crowd felt very strange and went forward to watch. Lin Dashan generously let everyone taste it, and as a result, everyone was amazed and asked him what kind of sugar it was. Lin Dashan said embarrassedly, "I can't say it well, so why don't you come to my house and see how our family is doing?" When the crowd heard this, they were more interested and followed Lin Dashan back home.
Along the way, Lin Dashan said that this was inadvertently invented by his son Sanwa. Speaking of which, there are still tears from Sanwa. It turned out that just half a year ago, Lin Dashan had a cousin who was the leader of the militia group, and because he offended a domineering regiment leader, he had to rush to the Lin family to temporarily take shelter. They planned to punch a boat by Lin Dashan early the next morning, send their cousin downstream, and then find a way out of Sichuan. So the night before, Lin Dashan asked his wife to prepare some grain and candy for his cousin to carry on the road. Mrs. Lin is very kind and does her best to prepare food and snacks for her cousin along the way. When she put the white sugar and water into the pot and boiled, because the neighbor had an accident, she told Sanwa to keep an eye on the stove and master the heat.
But Sanwa was a child after all, and after a while she began to doze off. When he woke up, he found that the stove had been extinguished for a while. At this time, Sanwa saw so much syrup in the pot, which immediately aroused the worms, so he tried to reach out and pull some syrup that had begun to cool, and licked it with his tongue. There is still a lot of syrup in the mouth, and there is no idleness in the hand. He happily stretched and overlapped the syrup in his hand, so that as he came and went, the syrup was made into a long strip by him. Just as he was having a lot of fun, Mrs. Lin returned. Sanwa was afraid of being scolded, and quickly threw the long strip of sugar in her hand into the sesame box next to her. In order not to be discovered by Ah Niang, he also shook the sesame box, so that the sugar cube was shaken under the sesame seeds and hidden.
The makers make Naxi bubble gum by hand
Unexpectedly, Lin's wife still found some syrup stuck on Sanwa's hand, and couldn't help but say a few words to him. Sanwa was aggrieved in her heart, and whimpered: "Every time I can eat sugar at the New Year, this time it is not easy for my cousin to come, my father let me make sugar, I tasted it..." Before the words were finished, Lin's wife signaled Sanwa not to mention her cousin's matter, so as not to be known by the neighbors and leaked the news. Where Sanwa understood the danger inside, she cried loudly.
Lin Dashan and his cousin heard Sanwa crying and immediately went to the kitchen to coax him. Sanwa slowly stopped crying, and seeing that her father didn't blame him, she pointed to the sesame box and smiled: "Daddy, mother, I also made a piece of sugar for my cousin, you see." "When Lin Dashan found the rectangular sugar block from the sesame box, it was very unexpected. And then, everybody tasted it, hey! The taste is truly extraordinary! Not only is it sweet, but after sticking sesame seeds, it also has a little more flavor. The most amazing thing is that there are many small bubbles in the sugar cube, so that it does not feel grinding the mouth when eaten, and it melts in the mouth. Next, Lin Dashan asked Sanwa to repeat what she had just done, and made a bag of sesame sugar cubes for her cousin.
After the cousin left, Lin Dashan and his wife repeatedly studied and decided to fry the raw sesame seeds in advance, and finally let the sugar cube stick to the cooked sesame seeds, which tasted more mellow and delicious...
When the crowd arrived at Lin Dashan's home, they witnessed the sesame sugar cubes made by their family of three working together, and they couldn't help but marvel. When they tasted it again, they saw that there were countless large and small bubbles in the cross-section, and each hole was round, shaped like a foam board, with a sweet taste, crunchy slag, and not sticky teeth, so everyone called this sugar block "bubble gum".
Packaging for sale naxi bubble gum
Later, after continuous experimentation, some experiences were obtained: the optimal ratio of Sichuan white sugar, caramel sugar and Naxi sesame seeds was 2.4:1.6:1. The specific steps are:
1. Sauté sesame seeds. The color and size of the sesame seeds must be controlled just right.
2. When boiling white sugar, the injected water should exceed the height of one finger joint of white sugar. After about thirty minutes of boiling, the sesame sugar water will gradually boil.
3. When the syrup in the pot reaches a certain consistency, pour them into other containers and then place them in cold water to cool naturally.
4. Enter the "sugar pulling" process. Knead the soft syrup into a circle, then hang it on a fixed stand, and then gradually elongate it. And it's elongated while spinning it constantly. In this process, the air also enters the syrup, laying the foundation for the next step of production. This process is more dangerous, be sure to pay attention to the palm of the hand not to be burned.
5. When the syrup is pulled to a certain length, two people need to pull one end on one side, and the third person controls the width of the syrup in the middle, so that it is equally wide and narrow. Then the three of them cooperated to fold the syrup repeatedly. In this process, air will also melt into the syrup to form bubbles. Next, stretch the syrup strips to a dozen meters and place them on a long board sprinkled with sesame seeds.
6. Repeat the previous process, and then place the second and third syrup blocks.
7. With a knife, cut these syrup strips into sugar cubes of the same length. At this time, the temperature of the bubble gum that has been formed has also dropped to room temperature.
8. Finally, let the sugar cubes be covered with fragrant sesame seeds and you're done.
Today, Naxi bubble gum has become the intangible cultural heritage of Luzhou City. I really hope that the persistence of sugar masters can inherit the production skills of bubble gum, and also continue the "tacit understanding" and "love" of every household.
About the Author:
Mei Zhirong, whose real name is Mei Zhirong, is a member of the Guangzhou Young Writers Association, the vice chairman of the Council of the Story Writers Association of Yantan District of Zigong City, the founder of the Luzhou Jiangyang District Poetry calligraphy and painting institute and the member of the Luzhou Poetry Society, the poetry teacher of Luzhou Community University, the poetry and calligraphy training teacher of Luzhou Southwest Medical University, and the calligraphy teacher of Luzhou Meiqi Education. I have been engaged in the creation of words for many years, and I am good at suspenseful stories, folk tales and the creation of poems, words and links. So far, he has published nearly 1 million words of stories and novels, which have been scattered in various domestic publications. And actively participate in the national essay collection, many times won awards.