N Haidu all-media reporter Luo Danling Mao Chaoqing
Correspondent Chen Xiaojing text/photo
Red paper bags, mazhi, swastika cakes... Before the Spring Festival, the most important festival for Fuzhou people is the sacrificial stove. The New Year's Sugar New Year Cake is a unique sweetness at the time of the festival stove, and it also leaves a happy time of childhood in the memories of the older generation of Fuzhou people.
In the early morning, on Lian'an Road in Mawei District, a shop called "Xianzhang Cake Shop" wafted out the aroma of wisps, which is an Internet celebrity shop that purchases New Year sugar cakes. The small shop operator Lin's father and son, for more than 30 years, only to inherit the most authentic taste and sweetness, their cake making skills have also been selected as the fourth batch of intangible cultural heritage in Mawei District.
Customers come early in the morning to buy New Year's Cakes
On January 16, Haidu reporters came to this small shop to find the sweetness of ancient and early taste.
The small shop is famous and comparable to "beautiful and there"
At 5:00 a.m., the shops get busy, and the aroma wafts from the back kitchen to the old street, attracting neighbors to buy fresh pastries with firewood temperatures. Many Imbers buy four or five bags of their favorite cakes, afraid of being late and running out of stock.
Lin Xianzhang's father is making New Year's Eve cakes
"Xianzhang Cake Shop", taken from the name of the owner Lin Xianzhang. Here "front shop and back factory", only more than 20 square meters. Although the shop is small, it carries the livelihood of the family and the reputation of the neighbors.
Lin Xianzhang is a "post-80s", and his craftsmanship comes from his father Lin Bixun. In the 1980s and 1990s, Mr. Lin operated cakes in the original Mawei Supply and Marketing Cooperative, and the reputation of the shop at that time was comparable to that of "beautiful and have". Later, the Mawei Supply and Marketing Cooperative was demolished, and Mr. Lin opened a shop on Lian'an Road.
Lin Xianzhang and his father are making New Year's Eve cakes
From a young age, Lin Xianzhang decided to go home to inherit his father's craftsmanship when he was in his 20s, and now, he has changed from a handsome boy to a cool uncle and grown into the top pillar of the family.
This month is the busiest time for small shops - making New Year's Cakes requires the mobilization of the whole family. On one side is the orderly production line, on the other hand is an endless stream of customers. The family divides labor and cooperates, and it is happy and harmonious. When it's time to eat, they need to take turns eating, and sometimes a piece of steamed bun will pass. In the face of new and old customers, Lin Xianzhang's face was full of bright smiles.
Making New Year cakes is a hard craft. Lin Xianzhang said: "Every process of cake requires hand-made, and once it is sloppy, the taste changes. In the past, when the craftsmanship was not perfect, it was often burned by the hot oil that splashed. When making cakes, you have to stand all the time, keep turning the spatula, and at night you are sore in your waist and arms. Lin Xianzhang said.
Effort always pays off. Lin Xianzhang's small shop is quite famous within a radius of tens of miles. A customer who came to see told reporters that the sweetness of the pastries in the small shop was moderate, and the taste of each special cake was just right, which was different from the machine production. "Their family's New Year's sugar New Year cake, the material is real, the craftsmanship is very good, every year the stove is sacrificed, relatives want me to buy it on behalf of Fuzhou (downtown) to go."
Mazhi best-selling the most difficult to make
The small shop is very careful when purchasing raw materials. Lin Xianzhang said that the flour purchased by their family is high-gluten flour. Lianjiang Danyang glutinous rice, which is 6 yuan a catty, is more than twice the price of ordinary glutinous rice.
There are 12 kinds of pastries in the traditional Fuzhou New Year Sugar New Year Cake, including peanut slices, salty and sweet 2-flavored almond cake, phoenix crisp, lard fried rice, lard cake, money cake, peanut candy, swastika cake, red paper bag, inch jujube, Mazhi and so on. Among them, Mazhi is the best-selling.
Sweet and crispy mochi
The raw material of Mazhi is a fruit blank, made of glutinous rice and taro, and kneaded together to be hard. The thick thumb of the fruit must first be rolled in the oil at room temperature, and gradually expand into a round rolling "small fat mound". Subsequently, these "little fat mounds" will enter the boiling oil and be fried into a shiny golden brown. The fried fruit blanks will be placed in a dustpan to be screened, at which point the un-fried fruit blanks will be picked out and eliminated.
Freshly fried machi fruit blanks
The next step is to boil the sugar, adding maltose, sugar and water to the pot. This step is very challenging. Lin Xianzhang said that the syrup is too thin to stick to the sesame seeds, and too thick is easy to stick to the teeth, and it must be done just right. To this end, Lin Xianzhang has a trick, that is, use chopsticks to dip some syrup, if you can draw the best state. The boiled syrup must be evenly wrapped around the fried fruit blank, and then quickly coated with a layer of sautéed white sesame seeds. In this way, a delicious dish full of childhood flavors is completed.
In addition to Ma Zhi, Lin Xianzhang's specialty pastries also include gift cakes. His family's cake has a bit of salty taste, and when you take a bite, a strong aroma of fatty pork and green onions comes to your nose, which makes people breathe in. However, the gift cake is a delicacy that Fuzhou people only think of in the Mid-Autumn Festival, and lin Xianzhang only made it occasionally a few years ago.
Gift cakes made by the Lin father and son
Click: Fuzhou people's sacrificial stove
Whether it is a New Year's Sugar New Year cake or a gift cake, the thoughts that come from the taste buds every festive season are the inheritance and continuation of traditional culture.
So, why do Fuzhou people develop the habit of eating New Year's sugar cakes for the New Year? According to teacher Zheng Ziduan, a folklore expert, the New Year's Sugar New Year Cake is an important sacrificial item. The 24th day of the twelfth month of the traditional lunar calendar is the day of the sacrifice of the stove, and according to folklore, on this day, the king of the stove and the grandmother of the king of the stove have to go to heaven to report to the duty, and the people on the ground always have to make a lot of sweet food to block their mouths, so that they will not "say bad things" to the Jade Emperor. After the offering, the New Year's Cake naturally becomes a favorite snack for families, especially young children.
Today's New Year Sugar New Year Cakes are mostly more than ten kinds of cakes in a big gift bag. Zheng Ziduan said that when offering the stove, there is more than one kind of sugar new year cake to the god of the stove. Old Fuzhou people like to use sugar cane to tie red rope, this section of sugarcane also specially to retain the sugarcane tail, in addition to water chestnut, "early birth of noble children" (red dates, peanuts, guiyuan, melon seeds), dried beans are also necessary for old Fuzhou to sacrifice stove tribute.
Interestingly, many people in Fuzhou worship the stove on the twenty-third day of the Waxing Moon. The scholar Lu Gongming wrote in "The Social Life of Chinese" that in Fuzhou in the Qing Dynasty, sixty percent of the families were sacrificed on the 23rd day of the waxing moon. Teacher Zheng Ziduan believes that this practice is related to the history of the family, like the Manchus living in Fuzhou, who also sacrificed the stove on the twenty-third day of the waxing moon.