Enshi squeezed broad pepper

Friday November 22, 2019 Sunny

Squeezed pepper has always been a special dish of my hometown of Enshi Tujia in Hubei Province. It is appetizing and refreshing, and it is a Tujia specialty that makes people salivate. When I was a child, every family would make such a few pots of fragrant squeezed peppers! The taste is sour and spicy, and it is a good meal that can be appetizing.

When I was in high school in the city, my grandmother would often fry me a large plate of squeezed peppers for me to take to school to eat. Sometimes in order to buy their favorite books to spend all the ration money, when there is no money, they will go to the canteen to order a dime of rice, and then mix it with squeezed pepper, which is really fragrant! It was this squeezed pepper that accompanied me through the poor youth.

Twenty years ago in Wuhan's Zhongnan Hospital for further study, when I left Enshi, my grandmother brought me a large plastic bag of squeezed pepper, every weekend Enshi hometown dinner, everyone's favorite is the squeezed Pepper fried bacon I brought, a full bag did not take long to eat. Even if you are far away from home and your relatives, when you eat this dish, you still feel the taste of Enshi, the taste of grandma, and the taste of your hometown, which is really evocative.

Enshi people are particularly fond of sour and spicy, there is a folk proverb of "do not eat sour and spicy for three days, the heart is like a cat scratching", and it is in this context that the squeezed pepper was invented and flourished in the land of Enshi. In our hometown here, one of the housekeeper's dishes that we treasure for many years is squeezed pepper. This kind of dish can be seen on the dinner table of every household, the sour aroma is delicious, and everyone, men and women, young and old, love to eat a hundred.

Moreover, the wanderer who is out misses this taste even more, and I am like this, I have been outside for nearly half a year, and the squeezed pepper makes me dream. I didn't expect my daughter to be the same as me, the last time we and her father and grandmother video, my daughter also said that she wanted to eat roasted bacon with squeezed pepper, and asked my grandmother to fry something to send over.

There are many ways to squeeze the pepper, stir-fry, burn, pickle, fry, both dry stir-fry and soup. When choosing chili peppers, it is best to use peppers after the lunar white dew, and the taste is good, otherwise it will be too sour. The method is basically to first chop the red pepper finely, and into the bun grain noodles, the bud noodles are best used in enshi's small yellow bud valley, put into the fried altar and pressed layer by layer, the surface is placed with a layer of tung hemp leaves or plastic paper, tightened with a grate, the jar is poured into the brine basin, and the seal can be stored for several years without deterioration. After a month, it is fried.

When you want to eat, you can dig some out at any time, steam or put it in the pot and fry it, put in oil and salt can also be fried and then add vegetable leaves and water, when the soup is eaten, called squeezed pepper paste, appetizing and refreshing, increase appetite. Especially when making steamed meat, it is indispensable to squeeze the pepper, so that the steamed meat is not greasy, refreshing, easy to digest and absorb. Most of them are stir-fried with pork, and the bacon stir-fried and squeezed pepper is a must in the Tujia diet, with a slight reddish color and a very special sour and spicy taste.

My dad's stir-fried peppers are full of flavor and flavor, and they are also very delicious, and my daughter and I like it very much. Not only that, but many of my friends in Enshi, as long as they remembered my father's squeezed pepper, would run to my house to drink and eat this earthy color of the squeezed pepper. Many years ago, when my good friends met, they still said: I miss the taste of your father's squeezed pepper! These friends only want to satisfy their appetites, and they don't want me! It made me half dead.

Friend Meimei sent a sentence in the circle of friends "Tujia sister baby standard: bean skin, squeezed pepper, potato", her girl is studying in Wuhan, but also miss the food in her hometown, she is preparing for her children. My daughter also wanted to die, so I left a message in her circle saying: My girl also wants to squeeze the pepper! She immediately sent me a private letter saying: Give me the address, and I will send you some squeezed peppers from Grace to fulfill your and the girl's wishes. I was also not polite and immediately sent her the address. Unexpectedly, she really took action and immediately fried it at home and sent it to Beijing.

Friends do not need to be polite, too polite will pull away from each other. The people who surround you all day and just want to squeeze the good out of you are not real friends. And those who seem to be far away, in fact, always pay attention to you, when you are happy, do not deliberately flatter you; when you need, silently pay for you, care about you, that is the real friend.

Meimei and I met in the book club, we began our spiritual journey from the book, often communicated happily together, and then had many intersections in work and life, although she was a little younger than me, but like a sister, she cared about me, helped me, supported me, so that I would not be in the wind and rain on lonely days. In the days at home, we will get together whenever we have the opportunity. I remember on the bank of the Qingjiang River, the two of us drank some wine with shrimp and squeezed peppers, talked about things around us, and laughed like children in the Water of the Qingjiang River. Who says there is no real friendship between women?

I have been out for half a year, occasionally we will chat on WeChat, on weekdays everyone is very busy, there is no time to make a special phone call. Maybe this is the best state between friends, there is something to say hello, nothing to do, have to be idle, talk on WeChat, chat, silently care about each other. Perhaps, you don't need too many words with each other, because a real good friend doesn't always have an endless topic to talk about, but doesn't talk together, and doesn't feel embarrassed, he will only silently care about you on the side and give you when you need it.

Yes, between friends, the simpler the better, the same is true for people, there is something to contact, nothing to do with each other. Good friends are telepathic, your magnetic field will connect those who have a common frequency with you, turn strangers into familiar people, and then turn familiar people into a group of like-minded people who can start a business, everything does not need to be deliberately pursued, and success will naturally come naturally. True friendship is not rhetoric, but the person who gives you warmth at critical times.

Meimei's concern for me will also be sent to Beijing with this squeezed pepper, accompanying me in my lonely and dull days. This squeezed pepper is always accompanied by love! When I was a child, it was my grandmother who made the taste, which has always accompanied my adolescence, and then the taste made by my father, and the sour and spicy and refreshing taste that I have every day at home. And in the days away from home, it is friends who silently care about your taste, and the squeezed peppers made by different people have its unique taste, because this dish is often poured into the heart of the cooker, and the most cherished thing is that everyone who is still cooking for you!