Crisp sugar is also known as lotus leaf stalk sugar, wheat straw sugar, because the color is like wheat straw, the honeycomb-like pores inside such as lotus leaf stalks and named, the Zhang Huiming family who lives in Taiping Town, Shidian County, has focused on making crisp sugar for four generations, because the craftsmanship is exquisite in the local as long as the crisp sugar is mentioned People will think of "Taiping crisp sugar", the perfect combination of crisp and crisp, is not only the inheritance of wisdom, but also people's love for taste.
Zhang Huiming has watched his family make crisp candy since he was a child, and small workshops of less than 20 square meters have been dappled by the years everywhere, and Zhang Huiming, 67, has also become the most exquisite person in the family's sugar craftsmanship.
Taiping crisp sugar craftsman Zhang Huiming
My family has been doing it for four generations, over a hundred years, from my grandfather, my mom, to me, and now I'm ready to hand it over to my children.
It is the persistence of the Zhang family that allows the craft of crisp sugar to continue. The raw materials of crisp sugar are simple and simple, only sugar and corn, corn is sieved to remove impurities, set up a wood fire to raise the pot, corn in the hot pot by the heat burst open can be out of the pot for later. Boiling water in the pot, pouring sugar clockwise stirring, water gradually volatilizing, bubbles become dense, making a grunting and dull sound can start the pot, with the last sugar leftover scraps together in a thick iron basin, and then quickly put into the cold water basin too cold, the spatula repeatedly stirred so that the hot thick slurry gradually solidified, relying on experience to judge the best moment of ductility quickly pulled into shape, too hot too soft shape is not good, too cool too hard easy to pull off.
The core technology of making sugar is that when two people start to pull, they must be pulled within one or two minutes, and the (best) sugar that is made is pulled open, and there is a large hole in the middle, and there are seven or eight small holes like honeycombs and lotuses around it.
Arm strength is the basic skill of sugar makers, Zhang Huiming will lift more than 40 pounds of stones every day to practice arm strength, more than half a hundred years old he can always pull sugar in one go, a piece of pulled crisp sugar on the board, and then according to the proportion of packaging into small pieces neatly arranged, with damp gauze covered for a while it is easier to wrap corn.
In addition to crisp sugar, Zhang Huiming's peanut candy is also very popular, maltose and white sugar boiled for more than ten minutes after the peanuts are poured, the peanuts are cooked thoroughly and begin to "crackle", the aromas of peanuts and syrup are mixed together, beaten with a thick wooden scoop to the middle of the paved corn, quickly flattened with a knocking board, and then rolled thin while hot with a rolling hammer, and then cut into small squares, the color is bright, and the crisp peanut candy is completed.
Some food is always new, and some are more mellow the longer, just as this crispy and sweet crisp sugar has a long history and tastes a century-old aftertaste.
Editor of this issue: Lu Yingxian