Osmanthus sugar rice cake, gangnam flavor on the tip of the tongue

"Roses, Osmanthus Flowers, Sugar"

Text | Zhou Huacheng

Yu entered the Suzhou Lion Forest. Living in the middle of the city, like being in the middle of ten thousand mountains. A very small courtyard (I have forgotten its name) has two magnolia trees, two laurel trees, one pomegranate tree, and one loquat tree.

Huang Yun said that in the past, these four things were planted in the courtyard of Suzhou. Magnolia and osmanthus are full of gold and jade, loquat is golden, and pomegranates are multi-child and blessed.

The autumn breeze rises, the osmanthus blossoms, and the fragrance that flutters in the courtyard is fluttering, not to mention the good meaning of the golden jade, the fragrance alone is enough to make people intoxicated. The literati of the old days were truly elegant. For a stone, a pond of lotus, a tree, a flower, you can spend a day, or even half a life. Under the osmanthus tree, a cup of tea, a volume of old books, a new song to be sung, the osmanthus flowers are clustered down, and a little or two points of gold fall into the tea cup, and the good situation is good.

Laymen also cherish osmanthus flowers. In the late autumn of last year, in my hometown in the countryside, I used a bamboo pole with my father to knock the osmanthus flowers, accumulated a thick plaque, dried it and sealed it, made tea to drink, or made osmanthus sugar rice cakes to eat, and sometimes mixed a little in the mochi dipped in sugar, all of which were very interesting.

Osmanthus sugar rice cake, available in many places in Gangnam. Or, there are glutinous rice, there are osmanthus flowers, there are osmanthus sugar rice cakes, probably can't be wrong. Last winter, I was also in a family-run workshop in Binjiang, Hangzhou, and I watched the workers make rice cakes, which is also a seasonal business, and every recent year, they have to be busy for a month, and on other days of the year, this small workshop does not start.

The finished rice cakes in the small workshop are ordinary, but they are white strips, and the people buy them back to their homes and wait in the water, and eat them for ten days and half a month. In the past, there was also a kind of high-end rice cake in Hangzhou, called "rose rice cake", but it was quite luxurious, and not everyone could eat it.

The so-called rose rice cake is a rice cake made of roses. Master Jin Jiang, an old pastry worker, remembers that half a century ago, when he first entered Yixiangzhai as an apprentice, he knew that this kind of pink rose pastry was not something that ordinary people could enjoy. Every September, when the heat of late summer is blowing in the first autumn wind, he will follow his master to Suzhou. "There is heaven on the top, Suzhou and Hangzhou on the bottom", this fascinating errand is to purchase rose buds. Why are there flower buds? It turns out that once the buds bloom, the rich fragrance of the roses is lost for the most part. You must return to Hangzhou overnight when they are about to open.

The rose buds had not yet woken up, perhaps with clear dew, and they were poured into the sour juice made of green plum brine with a loud bang. In the production process, this belongs to the "first exercise" soaking, and in the Hangzhou dialect, "one exercise" is "one time". The soaking of the plum juice is to fix the color with acid and maintain the beauty and delicacy of the rose petals. The second exercise is soaked, and it must be soaked with white sugar, with eight carved dragon vats (each with a capacity of about five hundred liters), sugar pickled, sealed, and waited for the magic of time. When the time comes, this rose brine is complete.

When it's time to beat the rice cakes, add the rose brine.

The glutinous rice was already steaming, the heat was steaming, and the strong man was working bare-chested, the stone mortar struck, the mallet hammered, and the stone slab pressed. In the common atmosphere of rice and floral fragrance, rose red quickly penetrates into the glutinous rice white. Pink rice cakes mixed with rose petals, at this time spread on the wooden board, while the heat is not dissipated, quickly cut one by one, tiles stacked, and then cut into slices, this piece of pink rice cake, cooled later, instantly edible, no need to cook additionally. Therefore, the amount of rose rice cake is not large, generally customized by large households, made at a time, and immediately sent to the house. As soon as the food box is opened, the pink of that purpose still has residual heat, which is really a delicate and exquisite snack.

Such rose rice cakes have probably retreated from the old time in Hangzhou. The rice cakes that you usually see are the same white rice cakes. To think about it, just move in the back. Rice cakes, in addition to roses, can also be osmanthus flowers, sugar. Therefore, osmanthus sugar rice cake is a second-class approach, but in my opinion, it is also very delicate.

There are many ways to eat sugar rice cakes, which can be steamed, boiled, fried, and baked. After steaming, simply slice the rice cakes and place them in a bowl and steam them to soften them in water. When steaming, brown sugar, or white sugar, and sun-dried osmanthus flowers are applied. Brown sugar people add brown sugar, white sugar people add white sugar, the color is not the same, the taste is slightly different.

Cooked to eat, it is made into a soup rice cake, very simple, the rice cake into the water to boil thoroughly, fished and drained, soft glutinous added. At this time, prepare osmanthus candy, or osmanthus sesame candy, and dip it into the food.

There are also fried to eat. It's the best to eat, but it also takes some formalities. First, the rice cake is thinly sliced, fried in a vegetable oil pan until it bubbles back to soft, add brown sugar, osmanthus flowers, sweet and sticky, and chewy, very delicious. After the autumn, many more exquisite restaurants have such a staple food to provide.

As for grilled eating, it is a game that children often play. Directly put the rice cake strips on the iron brazing, set aside the fire to bake, but also has a different flavor, but if you are not careful, you will be scorched and can not eat.

My family must eat rice cakes on the morning of the New Year's Day, which means that the year is high. Although it is not as luxurious as rose rice cake, a bowl of osmanthus sugar rice cake can also make people feel fragrant.