Boiled flour is one of the local snacks in Putian.
In my memory, every year after my mother's "sweeping patrol", my father always divided into a family in the evening to cook a pot of delicious stewed flour. At noon on Chinese New Year's Eve Day, according to the custom, after the whole family has eaten the boiled flour, the mother will also reserve a bowl full of boiled flour and a bowl of poured cone-shaped dry rice on the stove, known as "next year bean soup" and "next year's rice", which means that there is more than this year, and next year the family still has surplus grain to eat.
The prevalence has its own special historical reasons. In the early days, Putian was located on the coast, and due to disasters such as droughts, floods, typhoons, and typhoons, the grain harvest was poor all year round, and the people's lives were very hard. During the New Year's Festival, all the crushed rice noodles, broken noodles and green vegetables in the house are boiled into a pot. In order to make the New Year more decent, the people added some starch water to the pot to make it as thick as possible, so that the belly could be filled. Over time, this small farmhouse omnivorous dish has been continuously improved and refined, and after adding some accessories, it has been transformed into a delicious dish.
In the streets and alleys of Putian, you can often see the specialty shop of boiled flour. These specialty stores inherit the craftsmanship of the elderly and provide quick convenience for fans of stew. Some small restaurants are innovative and varied, such as mountain stewed flour, bitter snail stewed powder, seafood stewed powder, abalone stewed powder, large intestine stewed powder, etc., the taste is better and more unique.
The raw materials for boiling flour cooking can be more or less, and it is easy to be simple and simple. Authentic noodles are also carefully selected, such as: the sweet potato flour selected is local, and the rice noodles and noodles are handmade. As for the accessories, they can be adjusted as appropriate, such as pork belly, sea oysters, pig blood, pig intestines, oil tofu, tofu, shrimp skin, Chinese cabbage, shiitake mushrooms, celery, coriander, ginger, etc.
After washing the pork intestines, pour them into a pot and bring to a boil, add an appropriate amount of cooking wine to remove the fishy and face, and then cut into about 1 cm long. Pork belly shredded, pork blood and tofu diced, oil tofu cut in half, shiitake mushrooms cut into silk, Chinese cabbage also cut into silk, ginger sliced, all staple foods, accessories are prepared, set aside.
Heat the pan, add a small amount of cooking oil, sauté the pork belly and pork intestines, then add the shredded mushrooms and ginger slices and simmer until the pot is fragrant. Add the appropriate amount of broth (or water), and when the soup is boiling, bring the pig's blood, oil tofu, tofu, shrimp skin, Chinese cabbage, celery, etc. into the pot and bring to a boil. When the soup is boiling, disperse the fresh sea oysters in the pot, cook for 2-3 minutes, add crushed rice flour, crushed noodles, and cook for a while. Finally, gradually pour the starchy water into the pot and stir slowly to prevent sticking to the pan until the flour is thickened.
At this time, the red of pig's blood, the white of tofu, the powder of pork, the black of shiitake mushrooms, the green of celery, and a pot of colorful delicacies are pleasing to the eye. Beat the baked flour into the basin and sprinkle a handful of coriander, oil-pressed peanuts, oil-pressed seaweed shreds, etc. when it is served.
Putian stewed powder has a history of more than 460 years. According to legend, on the Chinese New Year's Eve day of the 41st year of Ming Jiajing, the people were busy celebrating the New Year, when suddenly the Wokou came to attack. The people did not have time to make Chinese New Year's Eve meal, so they had to mix the prepared vegetables together and boil them into a pot, and after eating, they fled to the mountains. Since then, in order to commemorate that period of unforgettable past, the people of Putian have agreed to eat stewed flour every year Chinese New Year's Eve noon, as a warning to themselves.
I think that cooking boiled flour is more like living at home: slowly boiling with the fire of the years, hooking the qi with the water of emotion, implying that the family gets along harmoniously and never separates.
(Source: Meizhou Daily Author: Liu Qinghua Editor: Huang Bin)