Zou Zhaotao
Summer, the season of eating bad goods. All kinds of cold dishes, bad chicken, bad duck, bad shrimp... The aroma is fragrant, but it is always the same, and the soul of all bad dishes lies in the distillation waste - the lees.
The aroma of wine comes from ancient times
Wise Chinese realized early on that wine, in addition to drinking, can also give ingredients a beautiful flavor. In the late Northern Wei Dynasty, the Qi Min Zhi Shu already had a bad meat practice: "With water and wine lees like porridge, salt makes the meat salty, the inner rod burns the meat in the bad, the house is shaded, the drinking and eating are scorched, and the summer month is not smelly for ten days." ”
"Qi Min Zhi Shu" Data Chart
Workers put lees on Xinhua Photo
However, as pointed out in the "Qi Min Zhi Shu" record, when the "bad" flavor has not yet been fully exploited, this pickling method is more often served for the purpose of food preservation. In this regard, Wen Zhao, a poet of the Qing Dynasty, once wrote a poem and lamented: "During the forbidden slaughter season, there is no taste, and the bad meat and dead fish have been abundant." In their eyes, "bad" meat is just a substitute for fresh meat, not a better choice.
The ancients had a unique experience in the production of bad goods, and bad goods were frequently seen in the "book of daily use" five or six hundred years ago. The "bad cabbage" in the "Farm Garden Handbook" is worth mentioning, its process is far more complicated than the bad fish, a good "cheap thing expensive to do": "the fat and tender vegetables are not mothed in the shade to dry the water vapor." The stems are soft, and every two pounds are mixed with one pound of bad and four pounds of salt. The bad vegetables churn each day apart, and ten days later they are picked up to wipe off the old bad. Another pound of good bad, three pounds of salt and twelve bad vegetables, and the bad vegetables are churned in each day. When ripe, put it on a small altar and pour the juice on it. ”
"Farm Book" Art Orphan Online Picture
In ancient times, the production method of bad goods was not a rule, and often a hundred flowers bloomed. For example, the "bad fish" practice contained in the "Complete Collection of Essential Things at Home" is slightly different from the above-mentioned "Farm Garden Handbook", and the step of "wrapping the fish shards with paper to cover them with bad things" may be a new trick?
With the recognition and recognition of "bad" getting higher and higher, bad goods have also changed from the initial "preservation" to an independent flavor, and the tasters' requirements for "bad" have gradually become refined.
Yuan Ming's "Suiyuan Food List" is unique, proposing that meat needs to be "slightly pickled" before it is "bad", and this "micro" word alone can make people speculate for a long time. During the Kangxi Dynasty of the Qing Dynasty, the "Guangqun Fang Spectrum" included a pickle called "sugar lees eggplant", which was practiced as "tender eggplant in August and September, the thread was drawn out, and the soup was fried in live water to cool down." Mix the bad salt well into the altar mud and seal it, and use salt for each pound and a pound of eggplant. This recipe selects "young eggplant" and "living water", which checks the finished products at the source of the ingredients, and its ingenuity can be seen.
Historically, the Yangtze River Delta region has formed a number of well-known bad goods industry centers. For example, Shaoxing, the hometown of yellow wine, is famous for its rotten chicken pickled in yellow wine lees.
Shaoxing Bad Chicken Infographic
Ningbo, which also belongs to the eastern Zhejiang region, is popular in the "bad world" because of the bad fish: Mr. Zhang Ru'an of the Zhejiang Eastern Literature and Shi Taidou once wrote an article "Bad Fish Trivia". Mr. Zhang pointed out that ningbo bad fish had been viewed long before it was chanted by Li Bai. At least in the Qing Dynasty, the bad sea goods produced in Ningbo have been exported to Jiangsu, forming a local special industry.
Ningbo Fragrant Fish With Fish Infographic
A mouthful of cool and fragrant for a hundred years
After more than a thousand years of accumulation, especially the washing of the climax of the development of Ming and Qing food culture, the Chinese in the 20th century has a developed bad goods tasting system. In 1940, a cookbook scholar elaborated on the picky "selection" link in the preparation of bad meat: "The first step in the preparation of bad meat is to choose bad meat. The bad meat used for bad meat is the residue left over from making rice wine. This bad color is dull yellow and tastes extremely delicious. If you mistakenly buy the leftover mess from the liquor, it will not be suitable. Secondly, this kind of bad is probably always the next year's goods, and the new bad fragrance is far better than the old bad. ”
What's more, senior gourmets also treat bad goods as treasures to enjoy in detail - a 1918 article mentioned that the visual and entrance effects when tasting bad crabs should be "crab yellow does not disperse, and there is no harm in sand", so it is exquisite!
Food hobby in their own brewed goods under the kitchen/goodnight A-Z figure
In the world of bad goods in modern China, bad oil is the magical embellishment of "wild". In 1927, a miscellaneous article in the Nie Family Language Magazine praised the bad oil as "added to the dish and delicious taste".
Bad oil can make plain tofu glow in an instant, and diners who know how to do it will not miss it. There are countless famous tofu dishes cooked in bad oil, such as "boiled old tofu in bad oil", the method is "tofu boiled to water after cooking, with mushrooms, mushrooms and other soups and boiled in bad oil." Each large bowl of tofu, 2 halves of bad oil, and sprinkle a large spoonful of crushed almonds with dry blowing and blowing. ”
Bad oil quickly understand the encyclopedia figure
In 1934, "Yi Ming" wrote the "Four Laws of Bad Dishes", which demonstrated the method of marinating bad meat, bad fish, bad chicken and duck, and bad vegetarian dishes. The article's evocative portrayal of bad fish and bad vegetarian dishes is rare and worth transcribing here.
The author describes the bad fish practice as, "Cut the belly of the carp, wash it refreshingly, wipe the inside and outside with salt, put the rope through the head of each carp, break a few bamboo chopsticks, each one is about two inches long, stretch out the open belly of the fish horizontally, hang it in a ventilated place and blow it dry and hard, remove it, and cut it into squares." Use a few small urns, a few pounds of good wine, first lay a thick layer of wine at the bottom of the urn, lay a layer of fish on top, and then lay a layer of wine to brew. So the fish and the sake are spaced apart until the mouth of the urn, and the spices are mixed in each layer. The urn mouth is sealed with a bamboo basket, and the urn mouth is sealed with bad mud, and the grave is like a mound, which can be opened for food after a month. ”
The author also emphasizes that the main "secret" of the amazing taste of bad fish is the time of pickling, as long as the natural "better the flavor" as long as the marinade is thorough.
The bad vegetarian dishes described in the "Four Laws of Bad Dishes" make readers in the heat and boredom of the summer tongue-in-cheek: "Put the dried bamboo shoots, water tendons, and soybean sprouts into the pot to cook, add salt, star anise, fennel, peppercorns, soy sauce, and the soybean sprouts in the three things need to be slowed down." Cooked and multiplied into a tile bowl, it is also pressed on top with kudzu wrapped in incense, and the wooden lid is pressed tightly, and it can be eaten the next day. The author prompts readers who are interested in trying bad vegetarian dishes, these fragrant pickled vegetables are "the most suitable for cold food, accompanied by porridge delicious!" ”
Bad edamame is a famous corner in bad vegetarian dishes Shaoxing network map
However, in modern China, the protagonist of bad goods is still meat, of which chicken and duck occupy the top spot.
In 1940, the food writer who signed the name "Wenqin" published an article in the Shanghai "Family" magazine introducing the method and eating of bad ducks: "I bought a duck and put it in a porcelain jar and stewed it. After simmering, skim off a layer of oil on the soup noodles, open the lid of the jar, and when the porcelain jar is cooled, you can add ten peppercorns, three stalks of green onion, a teaspoon of good sorghum wine, and half a cup of bad brine. So I took a dry cloth, wiped the lid of the jar, covered the porcelain jar, and moved it into the refrigerator. After five hours, you can take food. When eating, scoop up the duck, chop it into small bowls, spoon the soup from the jar and pour into the bowl. ”
Bad Meat Infographic
Bad taste platter infographic
In 1956, an old chef at a restaurant in Meilong Town introduced the cooking method of "Summer Fever Relief Famous Dish" - "Bad Water Chicken":
"Choose the fattest chicken, white, add water, simmer over low heat, and temporarily pick up the chicken after cooking." Leave the original juice, add salt, monosodium glutamate, ginger, green onion and cook, while the original juice is cooked, add the sake lees to inhale the original chicken juice (preferably with Shanghai fragrant lees). Then squeeze out the chicken juice and drain it so that the flavor of the juice is added to the original juice. Cut the chicken into pieces, remove the head, feet, and back bones, and leave the wings. There is a saying in the eater: 'White chicken should make a big turn'. Multiply in with a jar, pour the chicken juice into the lid, put it in the refrigerator, and put ice around it to freeze until it freezes inside. ”
These two meat dishes are a little greasy, once stimulated by the lees, the umami taste is not reduced and refreshing, and then sent to the refrigerator to freeze, the crystal clear meat jelly loose wine aroma, enough to let the diners indulge in it.
Mellon Town Restaurant Infographic
Warm tips, although bad goods are good, you can't be greedy. After all, for health, pickles still do more harm than good. Five hundred years ago, Shen Zhou's "Guest News" recorded: "Sun Shiqing, Changshu, occasionally ate bad chicken, and immediately suffered abdominal pain for three or four days. The chicken is slightly yellowish, or poisoned also. "In the future, when friends taste the taste and enjoyment given by the distiller's lees, please remember Mr. Sun Shiqing's abdominal pain!"
Editor-in-charge: Zhu Zhe
Proofreader: Yan Zhang