In the previous article, rest assured, you are not eating nail snails In the article, I mentioned qingdao's "sea melon seeds" and accompanied by a picture of longitudinal ribbed snails, which is a deliberate sale of a "flaw", I know that there will be good people who will object to "sea melon seeds". Sure enough, many people left messages and sent research questions: Are you sure that it is a sea melon seed?
Qingdao "sea melon seeds", longitudinal ribs weave snails
I can certainly be sure. Although the brick family is not from Qingdao, he has lived in Qingdao for more than 20 years, and he is still sure of this common sense of life. Regardless of outsiders, in the context of Qingdao, the term "sea melon seed" refers to the longitudinal ribbed weave snail/nassarius variciferus. If you don't believe it, you can just ask a local native what the sea melon seeds are, and if you don't think of them as stupid roe deer, you should get the same answer. Of course, it is impossible for a knowledgeable folk naturalist like me not to know that the "sea melon seeds" in the southern coastal areas have another meaning, and at least two kinds of double-hulled shellfish are called "sea melon seeds" by the locals.
Zhejiang's "sea melon seeds", rainbow clams
A living rainbow clam
In order from north to south, the first to be introduced is the rainbow cherry clam /tellina iridescens, also known as rainbow cherry clam, plum clam, flat clam, etc., curtain clams cherry clam family. A small shellfish, the shell is long oval, only 2 cm long, extremely thin and fragile, the surface is gray and slightly fleshy red, the size and shape of the melon seeds, so it is also known as "sea melon seeds". Because of its delicious taste and favored by people since ancient times, the ancient shiyun "ice plate piled up broken glass, half green onion and half with mud, Mo Xiao wife tooth wheel, plum blossom pieces bumping rhinoceros", probably said that it is.
Qingdao's "sea sand", smooth river blue clams
According to the distribution area of rainbow cherry clams, Liaoning, Shandong and other northern seas seem to have produced, but it is mainly in the Zhoushan area of Zhejiang Province as the most successful, and there are also a large number of artificial cultures. There is no such "sea melon seed" in Qingdao, but there is a shellfish commonly known as "sea sand" that is similar to it, that is, the smooth river blue clam /potamocorbula laevis, one of the famous four small seafood in Qingdao, because of its small size, it is generally crushed for shrimp feed, and only the residents of the Chengyang River Loop prefer this thing.
Clams
Bidding farewell to Zhejiang, we continue to patrol south along the coastline, into Fujian guangdong, we will find that the identity of "sea melon seeds" may have changed again, this time into the Xunshi muscle clam / musculus senhousei, also known as convex shell muscle clam. Do you think this thing is very much like a purple mussel? It seems like that they are both members of the mussel family, so the xunshi muscle clam, like the purple mussel, lives on the attachment through foot filaments in adulthood.
The shell is about the same size as the rainbow clam, the shell length is 17-24mm, the shell is generally triangular, and there are brown or purple-brown radial stripes and wavy patterns from the top of the shell to the posterior edge, which is thin and transparent, so it is also called "thin shell". The flesh of the female clam is red, and the flesh of the male clam is white, which is similar to the purple mussel. Although this object is small in size, it is not inferior to its deliciousness, and it is especially loved by places such as Xiamen in Fujian and Chaoshan in Guangdong. Mr. Cai Lan once commented: "Enjoy this dish, it is the soup left at the bottom of the bowl, and no other seafood is more fresh and sweet than it." ”
China's land is vast, the coastline is long, there are many local dialects, and there may be other small seafood called "sea melon seeds", but the more important ones are probably these three: Qingdao's longitudinal ribbed snail, Zhejiang's rainbow Ming miao clam and Fujian Guangdong's Xunshi muscle clam. So, who is the most authentic "sea melon seed"? There is no solution to this question, they are all local names that the masses have agreed upon and liked to hear, and it does not matter whether they are authentic or not. Endure in disbelief.