Source: Three cooks
Cai Lan has an article about his trip to Dalian, specifically mentioning the stew in the wet market.
"The vendor heats it over low heat, puts in the stew cut into small pieces, flips the skin with chopsticks to brown it, and puts it on a plate for later. On the other hand, the garlic paste mashed in the mortar and the sesame juice from the small grind are poured on top of the freshly fried stew... Just eat it, haha, get poisoned by the stew. ”
Stewed seeds are actually gum-like pieces of sweet potato starch mixed, stirred, heated and solidified with water, and then cut into small pieces, served over low heat and less oil, and slowly fried until golden brown on both sides.
In many areas of the north, such a hot stew, with different ingredients, bite down, soft, sticky, fragrant, crisp, all in the mouth.
For Dalian people far from home, the most nostalgic taste will not be raw seafood, but stewed.
A small door face on the side of the street, a large pan, the stew is in the pot to play a rattling, a small wind blowing, no Dalian people can resist the double temptation of sound and aroma.
The raw material for making stew is particularly simple, that is, the sweet potato starch is mixed with water, while heating, while stirring into a translucent paste, all the stew is also called "stew".
Stewed seeds are generally made with sweet potato starch, which is sweet potato starch. Compared with other types of starch, sweet potato starch is the lowest value of all starches - black, but the strength is particularly strong, so the stew can not be fried in the pan for a long time.
Sweet potato starch
Although Dalian people love stew, its origin is not in Dalian, but in Yantai, Shandong, on the other side of the Bohai Sea.
According to the Shandong Fushan Culinary Association's compilation of "The Hometown of Lu Cuisine - Fushan", stew was inadvertently created by the Men brothers of Zhifu Island in Yantai, Shandong.
More than a hundred years ago, the Men brothers in Yantai to sell vermicelli for a living, one day the powder was ready, but because of the rain, can not make vermicelli. In a hurry, the door brother invited the villagers to eat the flour blanks fried in a frying pan.
In order to prevent eating a bad stomach, the Men brothers deliberately pounded the garlic produced in Shandong into garlic sauce and mixed it in the fried flour blank, and they did not expect that this helpless move was actually praised. So under everyone's suggestion, the door brothers supported the pot and the stove to sell fried flour blanks, when the diners asked for the name, the door brothers thought about their surname, casually said "menzi", and later felt inappropriate, named "stewed".
Later, as the crowds of people from the Kanto came to Dalian, Lu cuisine and various snacks followed, including stew.
In the era of lack of food and clothing, stew is a snack to improve people's lack of taste, as the material gradually becomes abundant, stew has become a childhood memory of a generation of Dalian people.
After the 1970s and 1980s, on the streets of Dalian, it was common to see vendors pushing carts or setting up sheds to sell stews.
More commonly, it is actually in the wet market, where adults go in to buy vegetables, and children sit on a stew stall, use two thin wires to "nest" into small forks, tie up a piece of fried brown stew, and carefully put it in their mouths.
For Dalian people, stew must have "ge". The "ge" in Dalian dialect is actually the outermost layer of the crispy shell after frying, which is as charming as the pot in Cantonese pot rice.
In order to eat more "ge", Dalian's stew is never square, but a variety of irregular shapes, and strive to increase the surface area.
The fried stew is crispy on the outside and soft on the inside, poured with garlic water and sesame sauce, and the saliva immediately flows down.
After the 1990s, stewed zi went from street food to restaurants and restaurants, and three fresh stews made with sea cucumbers, shrimp and snails also became one of the representatives of Dalian cuisine.
Dalian people love stew, but stew is not unique to Dalian.
One year, in Qinhuangdao, Hebei Province, a classmate pulled me and said, take you to eat our Qinhuangdao specialty- fried stew.
Compared with the stew in Dalian, it cannot be said to be very similar, it is simply like a dime.
It wasn't until more and more places were going that it became apparent that stew was a universal presence throughout the north.
Yantai is the origin of stew, across the sea from Dalian, and the stew in the two places is similar in production, taste and eating.
The same sweet potato starch, the same sesame sauce garlic water, and even the same kind of wire fork for eating stew.
The only slight difference is that the stew in Yantai also adds shrimp oil and shrimp paste, which is full of seafood.
In fact, many years ago, Dalian's stew also had shrimp oil, but it has become less and less common in recent years.
In addition to Dalian, Yantai, Qinhuangdao, similar eating methods and methods exist in many places, such as in Dandong, the stew will be cut more squarely; in Jilin, the stew will be renamed "fried powder", although the name is changed, but the things are still those things.
When you arrive in Tianjin, the stew becomes a little different.
"On the second of February, the dragon looked up." In the days of Tianjin people, in addition to cutting hair on February 2, another thing that must be done is to eat stew.
Tianjin's stew is different from Dalian and Yantai's, it is made of mung bean noodles, the color is green, and there are some vague transparency, which looks like a large piece of green jade or jade from a distance.
When you get out of the pan, cut into square mahjong chunks of the size, fry in a pan over low heat with a little oil, fry until several sides have a golden "Ga'er", and then mix in sesame sauce, salt, garlic juice and vinegar to eat.
The stew made of mung bean noodles has a more delicate and soft taste. Some Tianjin people will even roll stewed seeds and stir-fried vegetables into spring cakes, eternal carbs with carbs, and flatbread rolls everything.
It is not only Tianjin people who can use mung bean noodles to make stews, but also Urumqi people in the far northwest who also have the habit of making stews with mung bean noodles.
The seasonings are also pretty much different, but drizzling with Xinjiang peppers will make the stew taste more fragrant. The difference is that the people of Urumqi eat stew during the Spring Festival in the third month of the lunar calendar.
Entering Hebei, the style of stewing suddenly changed, from vegan starch to the existence of meat.
In Dingzhou, Hebei Province, locals grind lean meat into small pieces (but can not be completely ground into meat paste), put it in a sweet potato starch paste and boil it together, lump it, cool it, dry it in the sun, and finally smoke it together.
This process is very similar to the process of making "powder sausages" in the Beijing-Tianjin area. Dingzhou stew made by such a tedious process is like a huge sausage, which is also commonly known as "meat enema" by the locals.
After slicing, whether it is steamed, stir-fried, stewed, or mixed, you can eat a solid meat feeling.
In addition to directly adding meat, there are also stews with the help of meat flavor, that is, stews in donkey meat fires.
The Hejian and Baoding factions, which are in full swing in the donkey fire, can reach a consensus on one thing - stewing.
After cooking the soup and oil of donkey meat, it must not be wasted, boil the soup, add starch, stir while pouring donkey oil, until it is viscous, put it into a freeze, which is the stew in the donkey meat fire.
Whether it is Hejian pie or Baoding pie, there is a practice of adding stew to the donkey meat fire, for diners, on the one hand, to reduce costs, on the other hand, compared to the crispy fire and fragrant donkey meat, the stew provides a richer taste, soft and crisp, rigid and soft.
From Hebei to Henan, Yuzhou's stew is meatless, but it makes a full meat feeling.
Yuzhou's noodles are freeze-dried and cooked soft, then add sweet potato flour and stir well, steam into a drawer to form a large piece. The Yuzhou stew made, fried, fried, cooked, fried, stewed or cold mixed, can even replace the presence of meat.
In fact, the emergence of this snack is largely due to the lack of material abundance, which can provide a slightly similar taste to meat, but also have a greasy aroma that was not too sufficient at that time.
Similar combinations of substances, in addition to stewing, in fact, there are shaanxi fried cold powder, Beijing fried enema and so on.
Today, we have long been freed from the embarrassment of meat shortages, but for stew, many places have not lost enthusiasm, of course, because the love of the golden combination of fat and carbs has been deeply imprinted in our genes.
At the same time, the crispy shell, the soft and sticky heart, this kind of crispy and tender contrasting taste, are always being chased.
Even if it is no longer scarce, it will always be remembered.