It has been more than 50 years since I saw the hawkers who pushed the pickpocket cart through the streets and alleys in the middle of summer; even in some snack bars in Beijing, there are very few people who operate the traditional snacks of old Beijing in the summer. This makes me miss the vendors who used to sell steak cakes more and more, and I want to eat a few bowls of grilled cakes on the hot summer days. To be precise, the grilled cake should be a summer snack in the old Beijing snack, which is a refreshing and appetizing food to relieve the heat.
In the summer of the old Beijing city, grilled cakes and cold powder were popular snacks for the people. The method of grilling cakes is very simple, which is to first mix the soba noodles into a thin paste, pour them into boiling water, turn off the heat and stir into a ball of cold water to form a dough. When eating, use a knife to cut a piece of round cake from the noodle lump, and then use the knife to cut into long strips into bowls, pour soy sauce, vinegar, chili oil, salt, garlic juice, sesame mustard paste, etc., riding on the cool energy of the five flavors, three or five mouthfuls of grilled into the mouth, that tendon, cool, refreshing, stimulating feeling makes people feel a "cool" word, both appetizing and relieving the heat, from the heart so cool.
When I was a child, there were often steak cakes sold in the summer alleys. As soon as the vendor pushed the cart and shouted, many buyers, adults and children, ran out of the various courtyard doors. I remember a 40-year-old vendor who, every time he pushed his cart into an alley, he immediately stood around his car full of buyers. After the peddler stopped the car and began to operate, he put four or five bowls on the surface of the car at once, and then accurately cut from the noodles small pieces of round cake-like dough of uniform size, and cut them horizontally and vertically with a knife, and the bowls immediately appeared in a uniform number of small strips; then he took the mixed sauce, poured the juice in each bowl one by one with a small spoon, and put the ingredients in the hands of each buyer, but the chili oil was taken by the eater himself from the glass jar placed on the side according to his own taste. Because the hawkers are sharp and neat, even if there are many buyers, they will not wait a long time, and everyone will be able to eat quickly. There are really many buyers who eat two bowls at a time, and even eat three or four bowls, so the hawkers do not worry about bad business.
At that time, if you go out for a walk or a walk, sweating in the hot sun, if you want to eat a bowl of grilled cakes, it is not difficult, and you will soon meet a vendor selling steak cakes or a snack bar selling steak cakes.
If you look at it according to people's requirements for good color and taste of food, the grilled cake does not seem to be elegant, and the gray and black color may not be very comfortable for some people to see. In the earlier works of some literati, the grilled cake was also described as very "disgusting", such as the description of the grilled cake in the book "Yandu Small Food Miscellaneous": "Sex evil is now a steak cake, dragging mud and water a mess." Scabs are inexplicable, vinegar and garlic smoke people spicy number. "But no matter what you say, almost all old Beijingers love to eat grilled cakes, which is not only the taste and cool taste mentioned above, but also the raw material buckwheat used to make grilled cakes is said to contain a variety of vitamins, which have therapeutic effects on diabetes, hypertension, heart disease and other patients, and it is beneficial to eat." As early as the Ming Dynasty Li Shizhen's "Compendium of Materia Medica", it was said that buckwheat "solid stomach, good strength, continuity of spirit, can practice the five visceral impurities." So it's a nutraceutical.
I once published an article saying that culture has supported Beijing's time-honored foods, because many old Beijing traditional foods have cultural heritage. Take the grilled cake, in the 1930s, there was a literati Zhang Drunkcai for a Mr. Lu painting the snack picture of the grilled cake with an oil poem, the poem said: "Cool food flavor blended, condiments mixed to give more; summer scenery is good, the cake car seems to shuttle." Buckwheat kneading dough is strange, cold meals and hot food are suitable; Beiping specialties are called envy, vinegar garlic and shredded radish. Mr. Zhang also wrote oil poems for the drawings of many Beijing snacks, which shows that the snacks of old Beijing in the past seem to be elegant, but they are very popular with literati and inkers.
For a long time, I couldn't see the steak cake in the snack bar in Beijing, and I saw the steak cake again in 1998 in Nanlaishun, a famous long-established snack bar in Beijing. At that time, our unit held a meeting of the directors of the offices of the relevant departments of various provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities, and friends from all over the country wanted to eat old Beijing snacks very much, and when I contacted Nanlaishun, I saw that there were grilled cakes, which was the height of summer, so I ate two bowls in a row. On the day of the meal of nearly 80 delegates, I found that everyone loved these snacks, including steak cakes. This made me feel that old Beijing snacks were still influential.
As for the vendors who used to push cars through the streets and alleys to sell steak cakes, they have not been seen for more than 50 years. The scene of the old Beijing hutong formed by the many cake carts seems to be left in the memory of people over the age of 60. Sometimes I wonder, if this extremely simple, summer-relieving snack steak cake comes out in large quantities, can it be recognized by today's young people? I think the answer is probably: I'm afraid it's hard!
To read the previous issues, please click "Read the original article"