Shanghainese gourmet Shen Jialu felt the literati's ability to describe food from Su Shi's poems, and it happened that a friend invited him to visit Taizhou, not far from Shanghai, to visit the "Jiangnan Food Capital" with a lot of ties to Su Shi. Shen Jialu will experience the Taizhou cuisine on the 3rd day of travel: Qinhu Lake Fresh, Taizhou Morning Tea... Share it with us in words.
In the territory of Taizhou, Jingjiang and Xinghua turned around,
Revisiting evokes my good memories, and the first visit triggers my passion for exploring,
And the flavor of food makes me more happy, and the bottom of my tongue is fragrant.
Taizhou has a very Jiangnan atmosphere.
Now that I think about it, I have written food articles for more than 30 years like a dream, and I am really seduced by Su Dongpo's old predecessors. You look at him, blurted out a poem, but whenever there is a wind or two things coughing up beads and spitting jade, it teaches people to hope that Mei can quench their thirst and have endless aftertaste. For example, pufferfish, knife fish, carp, elbows, yokan, oysters, lychees, bayberry, oranges, etc., come by hand, lively and fragrant, even if it is an ordinary Hainan Island country food ring cake, he also wrote a different mood: "Slim hand rubbing jade color is uniform, and the green oil is fried out of tender yellow and deep." Night to spring sleep knows the weight, squash the beauty wrapped around the gold. "The ring cake is similar to the painting style of the sesame oil steamed bun eaten by the people of northern Jiangsu, but in the poet's pen, it is hooked with the red gold arm of the beauty! Forget it, don't eat it, quickly put in the colorful screw makeup.
At present, autumn is high and refreshing, and the fragrance of dangui is fragrant, and I naturally think of a poem by the old man of Dongpo: "The lotus is exhausted and there is no rain cover, and the chrysanthemum residue is still proud of frost branches." A good year is the time when the orange, yellow, orange and green. "Su Shi has a deep relationship with Jiangsu and will not repeat it here. Under the pattern of great prosperity in the catering market, orange, yellow, orange and green are just the background colors of the creation, as well as hairy crabs, old duck soup, blue fish bald lungs, roasted lotus root, crispy horn diamond, etc. Not long ago, my friend invited me to Taizhou to play for a few days, and sometimes the flavor waited for me to taste, how could I miss the opportunity?
Taizhou, which is only a 2-3 hour drive from Shanghai, is no stranger to Shanghainese. After entering the new century, I will visit every three or four years, and every time there are new discoveries and big surprises. Before only know that Taizhou has Mei Lanfang Memorial Hall - Plum Garden, has not been able to figure out how big its administrative division is, but also blame the situation is stronger than people, now know that Taizhou City under the jurisdiction of Hailing District, Gaogang District, Jiangyan District and other three districts, around several county-level cities, such as Xinghua, Jingjiang, Taixing is also managed by it. Today we are talking about Qintong Hui Boat, Maoshan Hui Boat, Qinhu Lake Water Eight Fresh, Fengcheng River Night Tour, Xinghua 10,000 Acres of Lotus Pond and Thousand Stacks of Flowers, all of which are taizhou's tourism brand.
This small trip for three days, in the territory of Taizhou Jingjiang, Xinghua turned around, revisited my good memories, the first visit triggered my passion to explore the ghost, and the flavor of food made me more happy to fly, the bottom of the tongue is fragrant. The products and cuisine of a city are actually the accumulation of history and culture, the richness and diversity of flavor cuisine and the openness of the market, which is the embodiment of the vitality, creativity and integration of the city.
Catfish lion head
Taizhou cuisine should be an integral part of Jiangsu cuisine, but has its own style, mostly related to water systems and products, such as rice cake and eel is a traditional local dish in Jingjiang. Jingjiang Xiangjiang river looking at the sea, the river is full of fresh, fishermen were once a large group, rice cake pie fish is based on the fisherman's dish change, with jiangbai strips (commonly known as anchovies) three times into the fried crisp, the bottom of the pot left oil will be onion shredded sautéed out of the incense, poured with secret sauce and then put in some fried rice cake slices, covered with the whole fish slightly boiled to collect the juice can be potted to the table. The fish is crispy and soft, and the rice cakes that are fried until they crust penetrate the fish flavor and are very delicious. The idea of also serving dishes and orders has always aroused wide resonance in Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces.
Qinhu silver fish and Qinhu green shrimp are also ingredients for chefs to show off their skills, but the former scrambled eggs and the latter are the most prominent. The white water fish in "Qinhu Four Joys", steamed after a little salt, is also something that people can't stop tasting. Shanghainese people pay special attention to the "osmanthus turtle", the local restaurant should also be seasonal diners, the chef will chop the turtle pieces after the oil, aggravate the material red boiled, slightly spicy to fishy, fresh and fragrant, but also have a unique flavor. There is also a braised pig's tail, which is the part with the most epidermis on the pig's body, rich in gum, full of elasticity, and the taste is good enough to make people fly.
Catfish were originally only found in the spring, but now they can be plated all year round. Jingjiang's catfish lion head has become a famous dish, the chef will be the catfish bone removal and peeling, take the back of the white meat, cut into small cubes, green onion white and ginger cut into green onion ginger rice, diced fish with salt stir, and then add the appropriate amount of fat diced and mix well, rub into a ball slightly larger than the table tennis balls, into a pot of boiling water to cook and set, and then put into chicken soup to simmer for two hours and then put into the cup. The head of the catfish lion is as white as snow, smooth and tender as crisp, and after entering the mouth without the help of teeth, it melts in one sip, fresh and plump.
Crabs are said to be better than Yangcheng Lake crabs in terms of solid flesh.
Autumn is also regarded as the crab season by foodies, Qingmu red hair Qinhu crab and Yangcheng Lake hairy crab can have a fight, steaming is also the usual routine, but the crab powder has a large space for display, such as crab yellow lion head, crab yellow wang tofu, and a rare crab yellow powder skin elsewhere, this is the famous Jingjiang dish, crab meat crab yellow dismantled to use, ginger slices are soaked, crab powder and broth, and then under the upper mung bean powder skin, seasoning and stir-frying juice, crab powder is fragrant, the powder skin is soft and sticky without bean fishy, two phases mixed, there is a visual effect of jinyu full of halls, and the taste is fat , non-stick and non-diarrhea, can be called a must in Wuzhong.
After chongyang, the mountain orchards and vegetables also fell and were harvested. Sweet potato porridge is delicious, fragrant, sticky, sweet, rotten, young and old love. Boiled soy beans are similar to the shanghai people's stir-fried sauce, and the thick oil red sauce is also mixed with green edamame, zibaiding, bamboo shoots, kaiyang and diced pork, which are salty and sweet, and the nostalgia is amiable. Buckwheat balls, sautéed spinach, and radish roast meat also have an appetite for me.
Jadeite roast for sale.
The local specialty of xiangsha taro is worth a taste, I don't know if Jingjiang xiangsha taro and Taicang xiangsha taro are the same species, but the same texture is delicate, the powder is moderate, the aroma is rich, long boiled, long-term storage is not rotten, under the fine taste, you can also catch a trace of chestnut fragrance, so there is also a "chestnut in the taro" reputation. In Jingjiang, I ate the double-flavored sweet potato, and the chef blessed it with gravy and chicken juice, which was soft and delicious, rich and fragrant. Fragrant taro roast meat and fragrant potato roast chicken are also home-style, worth a lot of food.
In Jingjiang you must experience morning tea. At seven o'clock in the morning, the autumn breeze is cool, the old street tea house is already crowded, the crowd is noisy, and the locals respect the "three treasures of morning tea" - hot dried silk, fish noodle soup, crab yellow bun. There are also book review performances in the teahouse, male and female double files, painting sounds and colors, heroic nature, and children's love. I have eaten crab yellow bun many times, and each time it is a new experience, and I can't get tired of eating it. Taizhou dry silk is slightly different from Yangzhou dry silk, and local tea customers have always conceited that Taizhou dry silk is better than Yangzhou dry silk. The tofu workshop uses soybeans from the Lixia river area as the material, and the dried tofu made is generally 2.7 cm thick and white as jade, and the chef will use a crescent knife to cut the dried tofu into more than 20 layers of thickness and uniformity, this cooking technique is called "floating". The length of the dried wire that "floats" is uniform, and the thickness is uniform. Then it is cut into silks, which are like wisps, and the fine ones can pass through the eye of the needle. In 2008, the dry silk making technology was included in the second batch of intangible cultural heritage list by the Taizhou Municipal Government.
Blanch the shreds.
Jingjiang friends told me: Taizhou's big white dried is salt brine point, relatively hard, Yangzhou's big white dried is gypsum point, soft and sticky, Jingjiang chef will put the dry silk into the alkali water tank soaked for a while to make it soft. The soaking time and alkaline water concentration must be adjusted with the season. Teacher Fu has been in the industry for decades, and has long been naturally inductive, and can only understand, can not speak. This soaking process is also called alkali extraction, alkali extraction is not enough, dry silk is soft on the outside and the inside, and the taste is not good. Excessive alkali lifting, dry silk rotten, no elasticity. Teacher Fu can make an accurate judgment by pinching it with his hand or stirring it in the water with chopsticks.
The scene of scalding and drying silk is recorded in "Flavor of the World", the chef will cut the tofu into strips, use boiling water repeatedly boiled six times, and then soaked in warm chicken soup, the morning market opens, the guests call, the chef from the large basin to shake the plate, covered with a handful of ginger shreds, moved to the side of the large pot to scoop up a spoonful of boiling water from top to bottom, let the ginger flavor penetrate into the dry silk, and then decant the hot water, add open foreign, bamboo shoots, coriander, tender ginger shredded, and then pour on the self-made soy sauce and sesame oil. According to a friend of Jingjiang, a handful of ginger silk on top of this is also very exquisite. Ginger, must use the newly harvested autumn ginger, after shredding the appearance is very high, on the top of the dry silk like a flower bud as tempting, to the window backlight photo, the effect is very good. The taste is slightly spicy and slightly spicy, and it is served in the mouth and chewed together with the smooth and soft dried silk to enhance the flavor of this dish.
Jingjiang's hot dried silk is also called five-flavor dried silk, because some shops will also add some squeezed vegetable shreds, shiitake mushroom shreds, ginger shreds, coriander leaves and pork strips to the dried silk. However, I think that the plain straight style of blanched dried silk can highlight the original fragrance of dry silk, and the steamed to the taste of the open grain crumbs is enough to sublimate it.
Three-pack.
Three-diced buns, shochu buns, and soup buns are of course also standard for morning tea, so you can't miss them when you walk by. According to the store manager, Jingjiang soup buns are won by thin skin and juicy filling, and there are more than 30 production processes. "Although there are certain technical standards for making soup buns, each store has a unique trick that has been passed down from generation to generation, or noodles, or boiling soup, or mixing filling, and the gestures of the master are also different, which makes The soup buns in Jingjiang have small differences and endless mysteries." The store manager also said: "Making soup buns is a unique secret skill, even ordinary dim sum chefs can't afford this job, only professional soup bun masters, after entering the industry for five or six years, can be handy." ”
Jingjiang's crab yellow soup bun.
Here comes the steaming soup buns! Snow white crystal, more than 30 folds of the mouth are delicate and uniform, the whole is like a full and round, thousand petals tightly wrapped, budding jade chrysanthemum, plus the skin is as thin as paper, almost transparent. With a slight push of the cage drawer, you can see the soup inside the bun vibrating slightly, and there is really a kind of soft and delicate that has been blown apart.
However, the soup bun can not be directly picked up by hand to eat, the service lady explained to us the twelve essentials: gently lifting, quickly moving, first open the window, and then suck the soup. I did this, biting the edge of the bun through a small window, sucking my lips, and the hot soup instantly filled my mouth, how fresh, how beautiful! After sucking the soup, the inner wall of the skin was also dipped in a lot of soup and crab yellow meat residue, and then dipped in rice vinegar mixed with ginger shreds, which was both appetizing and greasy.
Old diners must eat soup buns must be placed in a white porcelain basin, which is probably the tone of eating soup buns. However, transferring the soup bun from the cage drawer to the basin requires skill, if you use chopsticks to pick it up, the skin is thin and the bun is heavy, and it is inevitable that the skin will break the soup. The astute service lady stepped forward to operate for us, three slim jade fingers picked up a bun, quickly flipped over, the hot bun flipped into her palm, and then moved to the guest without hurrying, turned over and pounced on the center of the plate, the soup bun trembled slightly, unscathed.
Jingjiang's crab yellow soup wrapped in a large shape of beautiful soup is full of fresh taste, and I ate two to hold on. Eat in Taizhou, "Tai delicious"!
Huaiyang crab yellow soup bun.