Duck blood soup can be called a delicacy that blindly leads to the dawn of human civilization.
When it comes to diet in prehistoric times, the term "Ru Mao drinks blood" is often indispensable. When human civilization has not yet ignited the flame, there is no difference between human recipes and animals, and this is described in the Book of Rites and Fortunes: "There is no cremation, eating grass and wood, the flesh of birds and beasts, drinking their blood, rueing their hair, not having hemp silk, and wearing their feathers." ”
With the enlightenment of civilization and the development of cooking technology, in addition to sashimi, vegetables and fruits, "raw food" is no longer the protagonist of the human table. In European culture, "drinking its blood" has long been a footnote to portray such a "strange person" as Count Dracula; and the "grinding teeth and sucking blood, killing people like hemp" in the famous Chinese poem "Shu Dao Difficulty" has also paid for the tiger and the long snake. From a cultural point of view, human beings seem to be getting farther and farther away from this scene of "bloody dawn".
However, the human stomach and intestines have successfully betrayed the pen and ink of human beings - the taste of blood on the tip of the tongue, and have never withdrawn in the history of human diet, otherwise it would never have bred such a delicious duck blood vermicelli soup.
Blood-eating traditions after the Blood Dawn
Whether it is Western or Chinese food, diners have never let go of their love for blood. Three-point cooked filet steak, brown from the outside to the inside gradually turned to bright red, with the cutting of the knife will ooze a silky blood; Cantonese cold plate white chopped chicken without seasoning white boiled, eat with chopping, bone and flesh articulation is often accompanied by blood color - although there are many diners worried about the disease from the mouth into the mouth so suffering from avian influenza, but senior Cantonese food controllers want is the white chopped chicken that is impenetrable fresh and tender taste, too ripe but snubbed the taste buds.
The blood color of steak and white chopped chicken comes from "raw food", and Chinese who are good at managing food will naturally live up to the variety of potside stoves: the animal blood is boiled and condensed with salt, and the blood is solidified into the shape of tofu, thus becoming "cooked food". This kind of blood tofu is called blood wang, and "wang" is a square borrowed word for "衁", which refers to blood. There is a sentence in the "Spring and Autumn Left Biography and the Fifteenth Year of the Duke of Qi", which means that the sheep are slaughtered without shed, which is an ominous omen. The blood in the famous Sichuan cuisine Mao Blood Wang refers to this blood tofu, which is eaten hot and eaten, which is quite the essence of Sichuan hot pot. The word "Mao" is a pun: one is the Chongqing dialect, which means "sloppy", corresponding to the miscellaneous ingredients; the other is that the miscellaneous ingredients are represented by Mao Belly - so it seems that Mao Blood Wang may be understood as the Chongqing version of Northeast Chaos Stew with spice and spicy.
If "mao" is understood as hairy belly, that pot full of hairy blood is a combination of miscellaneous and bloody. Speaking of this, people can't help but think of Ma Yuan, the "Skull Mountain White Bone Cave One Qi Immortal" in "Fengshen Yanyi". Ma Yuan had claws on the back of his head, feeding on people, and when he was fighting with Jiang Ziya and others, he encountered a "people's woman", so he "stepped on the woman's chest, stepped on the woman's thigh, and cut the sword through her clothes, revealing her belly." Ma Yuanhuan stabbed the sword through the inside of his navel. A rush of blood will come out. Ma Yuan copied the blood with his hand and ate a few bites in a row; touched the heart in the woman's stomach to eat. Left touch right touch can not be fished, two hands in the stomach touch, just a cavity of hot blood, and there is no five viscera. If this is not used as a bad taste, then the blood of the "people's wife" can be made into blood for this Ma Yuan to feast on.
Compared with the blood tofu cut into pieces in Chongqing, the northeasterners' method is more rugged: taking blood and melting salt, mixing with lard and chopped onion, salt, ginger powder, pepper and a dry seasoning directly enema and tightening, cooking it becomes a blood sausage. White flesh and blood sausage is one of the signatures of Manchu cuisine, derived from the sacrifice ceremony of shamanism, according to the "King Ding Manchuria Sacrifice God Sacrifice Heaven Ceremony", white meat blood sausage is "a man from Manchuria who enters a high table, bends a knee crisp, pours blood into the intestine, and also boils in the pot", and has gradually become a home-cooked dish in the northeast region. The white meat and blood sausage is bright and bright, tender and delicious, and it is a perfect match with sauerkraut - in the northeast, the status of a large pot of "sauerkraut stewed white meat blood sausage" is definitely not under the "four major stews in the northeast".
The "package" of duck blood in duck capital
The spicy compound of Beichuan cuisine and the mellow and luxurious of Northeast cuisine, Blood Wang has put on a delicate veil in Huaiyang cuisine. The raw materials of Blood Wang are roughly divided into northern livestock and southern poultry, northeast Shang pig blood, and Huaiyang area is mainly chicken and duck blood. The most famous dish is the traditional Nanjing snack duck blood vermicelli soup, as the name suggests, which is based on duck blood and vermicelli as the main ingredient, and the scriptures are slowly simmered into soup.
Duck blood vermicelli soup is popular in the north and south of the great river, especially in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River. Nanjing and needless to mention, three hundred kilometers away from Nanjing, shanghai streets, in addition to Lanzhou ramen, yellow braised chicken rice and Shaxian snacks, there are also a variety of time-honored Suzhou snacks, and its shop names and decoration styles are mostly easy to identify, such as old Shengxing, old Shengchang, old Hongxing, etc., although the back is often followed by the three words of "soup bun restaurant", but behind each cage of successful soup buns, there is always a bowl of great duck blood vermicelli soup.
As the core city of Jinling cuisine, Nanjing, known as the "Duck Capital", has been famous for its "Jinling Duck Cuisine World" since ancient times. The duck dishes here are not just saltwater ducks, and the Nanjing people have explored endless possibilities in ducks. Roast duck, sauce duck, plate duck do not need to be mentioned, just take the duck blood vermicelli soup as an example, if the diners hope to come up with the formula of "duck blood vermicelli soup = duck blood + vermicelli + soup", it will appear to be ignorant of the true face of duck blood. The authentic formula should be: "Duck blood vermicelli soup = duck blood + vermicelli + soup + bean bubble + duck liver + duck intestine + duck gizzard + duck heart ..." A small bowl of soup, the portion is not large, but it is likely to include a miniature duck full table.
Since there are so many "duck flavors", why is duck blood vermicelli soup named duck blood? In fact, the predecessor of duck blood vermicelli soup is Nanjing's long-standing duck blood soup. Of course, duck blood soup is not a one-man show of duck blood, indispensable duck gizzards, duck intestines and other flowers, in addition to coriander, chives, bean bubbles, squeezed vegetables, peanuts and rice and the like - of course, the protagonist is naturally spicy duck blood. Unlike duck gizzards and duck intestines, the spicy duck blood itself can be processed into a dish independently, and the spicy duck blood stir-fried over a small fire is then cooked in a spicy sauce soup, which is rich in addition to the fresh aroma of the duck blood soup.
During the Qing Dynasty, chefs gradually added fans to duck blood soup, and opened the taste buds of diners in one fell swoop, becoming a famous product in Jinling cuisine. In fact, fans and ducks really have a relationship, which is to mention the Zhaojun duck, which is called "China's Four Beautiful Famous Dishes" with "Guifei Chicken, Mink Cicada Tofu, and Xi Shi Tongue". According to legend, Wang Zhaojun, who was born in Chudi, was not used to eating noodles after he came out of the plug, so the chef soaked the noodles and oil gluten together and cooked them in duck soup, which was very much in line with Wang Zhaojun's appetite. Later generations then cooked noodles, gluten and fat duck into dishes, named Zhaojun duck. The allusion of Zhaojun Duck is also attached to posterity, but the fate of fans and ducks seems to be providence in the dark.
The "blood type" transmutation from Jinling to Shanghai
Duck blood soup was transformed into duck blood vermicelli soup in Nanjing, while in Shanghai, this soup was turned to chicken and duck blood soup.
Chicken and duck blood soup is similar to duck blood soup, except that there is more chicken in the raw material. In the legend of old Shanghai, chicken and duck blood soup was created by a peddler named Xu Fuquan during the Republic of China. That is, street food, naturally taking the civilian route: a deep-bellied cast iron pot soup commonly known as "iron cow", separated by aluminum skin in the middle, with hot blood on one side, and chicken head and chicken feet hanging soup on the other side. The so-called hanging soup refers to the cooking technique of slow simmering with nutrient-rich ingredients such as large bones and ham, so that the soup is nutritious and fragrant, and it is not difficult to imagine how many diners from the south and north "smell the wind" in front of the stalls of Xu Fuquan. Every time a guest visits, a little chicken heart chicken liver chicken gizzard chicken intestines and the main ingredient chicken and duck blood, and finally accompanied by green onion sesame oil pepper powder, the taste is enough to melt a whole old Shanghai lane.
To be precise, the earliest chicken and duck blood soup in old Shanghai was born around the fourteenth year of the Republic of China (1925), and before that, the duck blood soup in Nanjing had been circulated for more than a thousand years. From the duck blood soup in Nanjing to the chicken and duck blood soup in Shanghai, the flow of this has a strong regional cultural color. Ancient southeast China was dominated by water transport, ships from northern Jiangsu, northern Anhui all the way to the south, the departure fashion is a plush young duck, to Nanjing when the most suitable as an ingredient for the fancy years - from the perspective of ingredients, this is also quite "ten" taste. Nanjing is known as one of the three major furnaces of the Yangtze River, duck meat has less fat and low heat, from the perspective of traditional Chinese medicine, it is warm and cool to defeat the fire, which is also in line with the health of Nanjing people. Shanghai is located at the mouth of the Yangtze River, facing the sea with a suitable climate, and the efficacy of the duck is naturally not so valued by Shanghainese.
Another important reason is that Shanghai was originally a good breeding chicken production area. Pudong chicken, commonly known as "Nine Jin Huang", which is rich in Nanhui, Fengxian and Chuansha areas, is an important category of three yellow chickens, and its meat is delicious and nutritious, and it is suitable for braised, fried, steamed, and stir-fried sauce, not to mention the white chopper known for its exquisite materials. There are many famous products with chicken as raw materials in Shanghai's cuisine, such as chicken bone sauce, drunken chicken, yellow braised chestnut chicken, etc., and Pudong three yellow chicken is named after the ingredients. There is a "Little Shaoxing" on Yunnan Road on the east side of Shanghai's "Big World", and its signature Small Shaoxing Chicken Porridge has long become a classic in this group of snacks after two generations of efforts. Xiao Shaoxing chicken porridge is named "Xiao Shaoxing", which uses authentic Pudong chicken from Shanghai, from which you can also see the tip of the tongue on the side of the water and soil.
With high-quality ingredients, it is not difficult to understand why Nanjing's duck blood soup has been upgraded to chicken and duck blood soup after coming to Shanghai. In contrast to "Little Shaoxing", Shanghai Old Town God Temple once had a very popular food stall called "Old Wuxi", which sold chicken and duck blood soup. In addition to chicken offal, the chicken and duck blood soup of "Old Wuxi" also has a killer skill: "little egg yolk". The so-called small egg yolk refers to the mature egg in the belly of the chicken and duck, and this egg cannot be predicted in advance, and whether it is expected to wait until after the stomach is opened can it be known - which involves an anecdote. In 1973, Prince Sihanouk, who was exiled to China, arrived in Shanghai, and the Nancheng District, who was in charge of receiving him, killed more than a hundred chickens to find the same specifications of "small egg yolks" in order to make a perfect chicken and duck blood soup. After all, the legend is only a legend, if there is such a thing, then the blood in this bowl of "perfect" chicken and duck blood soup may be even deeper.
"Old Wuxi" has become a thing of the past, and the chicken and duck blood soup, a civilian snack, has indeed continued. Of course, chicken offal and "small egg yolk" may not be so common, but some tofu will be put in the home cooking, hooked with a thin sauce, and it is also tender and crisp and fragrant to drink.
Mao Blood Wang, White Meat Blood Sausage, Duck Blood Vermicelli Soup, Chicken and Duck Blood Soup These four dishes are all stewed and the like, in fact, Blood Wang is also a good raw material for small stir-frying, such as "red and white tofu", with blood Wang and tofu as raw materials, accompanied by soy sauce, cooking wine, coriander, etc., and then with starch color, the red and white staggered appearance is also equally attractive.
Taiwan also has a traditional pastry called pig blood cake, which is coagulated and steamed with pig blood and glutinous rice, also known as rice blood cake. When you eat it, you can dip it with soy sauce paste and chili sauce to peanut flour, and insert a bamboo skewer to hold it directly in your hand, which is one of the indispensable snacks in Taiwan's night market.
Blood is strong, blood sausage blood soup blood cake is also it - the human blood-eating wind is of course a long and long time, but the way of blood eating is interpreted so varied, I am afraid that it is only Chinese...
Author: Jiang Yinlong
Image: pixabay, extranet
Editor: Wang Xiaoli