To say that I am a foodie is not an exaggeration at all, because my eyes light up when I see delicious food, haha, so I grow chubby and never lose weight. People say I'm rich, so whatever, as long as I'm healthy and happy, it doesn't matter whether my figure is good or bad, just let nature take its course.
Speaking of special snacks, we have to mention my hometown, a small county in western Hunan. The place is not big, the folk customs are very simple, and the cultural atmosphere is very strong. The market not far from the pier is bustling with people, and the narrow streets are lined with small vendors. My favorite thing is to go to the market with my mother, because this day is busier than usual and the products are much richer than usual.
The people here are ingenious and can come up with many ingenious recipes and make many amazing delicacies. The most famous is the local sour radish. Don’t underestimate this humble snack. It has a unique taste and is very popular. It is even exported now. Many people bought it as gifts for relatives and friends, and everyone praised it after tasting it.
Let me introduce a brief preparation method. Locally produced red radishes are large and round. Choose medium-sized radishes, wash them, cut them into slices, put them in a jar and soak them in acid water. Ten days and a half month will be enough. Of course, this sour water is specially made, and rock sugar must be put in it. It tastes sour, sweet, and very crunchy. I remember that when my eldest sister got married, the family bought a lot of these radishes to entertain guests, but they were all wiped out. (Article reading website: www.sanwen.net)
Glutinous rice and lotus root are a sweet dish. Farmers there like to grow lotus root in summer. There are many ways to eat lotus root. The familiar ways to eat lotus root include stir-fried lotus root slices, stewed lotus root with pork ribs, and cold salad with white sugar. There is another way to eat the lotus root here, which is to cut the lotus root into sections, clean it, fill the gaps with glutinous rice, and then fry it in a pan. The fried texture will be very good, fragrant and sweet, and very delicious. tasty.
One of my favorite breakfast snacks when I was a kid was golden glutinous rice cakes. The vendors cut the glutinous rice into triangles and deep-fried it in oil until it turned golden brown. The whole street could smell the strong aroma. . It cost five cents each, but it was still hot in my hand, so I couldn’t wait to take a bite. It was so hot that I grinned and felt satisfied at the same time. You see, the outside of this glutinous rice cake is golden and crispy, and the glutinous rice inside is sweet and soft. The fragrance is always lingering in your mouth. Hey, I'm not going to lie to you, it's absolutely delicious.
Children are so greedy that they only think about eating when they go to the market, haha. No wonder I am so dazzled by so many delicacies, and the gluttons in my stomach are jumping around, making me restless. After jumping up and down for a long time, you must be hungry. Let's have a bowl of rice tofu. The soft rice tofu plus special chili sauce stimulates the taste buds with a strong spicy taste, whetting your appetite. Often you can’t get enough of it even after just one bowl.
You must know that the chili sauce here is also a special food. My mother is an expert in making chili sauce. She will select good dried red peppers, wash them and dry them in the sun, heat the oil, put the peppers in a pot and fry them until crispy. The heat must be controlled properly, otherwise the peppers will burn. Take out the fried chilies and mash them vigorously in a ceramic mortar with a wooden hammer. Garlic and ginger must also be added to make the spicy sauce especially fragrant. Put the mashed chili powder in a glass bottle and drizzle some sesame oil on it. This will keep it for a long time. When you want to eat it, spoon it out a little to make seasoning. It is a good seasoning. Whether the cold dish tastes good or not depends on this chili pepper. The sauce is seasoned.
During the Qingming Festival, people who visit tombs will also prepare a special delicacy to offer sacrifices. What is it? Of course it’s mugwort glutinous rice. Speaking of this glutinous rice, because the process is complicated and it requires special ingredients, it is not available in ordinary times. It is considered a seasonal snack. In April and May, mugwort can be seen everywhere on the edges of the fields, green and exuding a special scent of mugwort. Just carry a basket and you can fill it up in half an hour. After returning home, wash the wormwood, rub it with salt water to remove the bitter water, add some salt, add glutinous rice and chopped bacon and cook together. Wow, the cooked rice is shiny green, it is full of color, flavor and is very eye-catching. And it will exude a unique fragrance because the ingredients inside include wormwood, glutinous rice, and bacon. If you think about it, when these three flavors are mixed together, I believe there are few people in the world who don't like this delicacy.
Northerners like to cook Laba porridge during the Chinese New Year, but our southern town likes to make glutinous rice cakes. My aunt lives in the mountains. Their family lives in a wooden stilt building, which is warm in winter and cool in summer, which is very comfortable. During the New Year, there was a bumper harvest of glutinous rice in the fields. To celebrate the good weather this year, everyone would cook the best glutinous rice, put it in homemade stone mortars, and send more than a dozen strong laborers to take turns pounding the glutinous rice into glutinous rice cakes. This is a hard job. Pounding hundreds of kilograms of glutinous rice into glutinous rice cakes has to be done from early in the morning until dark.
I was lucky enough to see the process of making glutinous rice cakes. The scene was very spectacular. The man took off his shirt, sweat was flowing on his back, and the muscles on his arms bulged rhythmically, steam rising in the white winter mist, like a Hercules, with a more primitive and unrestrained beauty than those bodybuilding coaches. It’s a pity that there were no cameras at that time, otherwise I would have been able to take some good photos.
The glutinous rice is pounded and made into round glutinous rice cakes by hand. I tried weighing it, and the average glutinous rice cake is four to a pound.
Of course, there is also the biggest one. This kind of glutinous rice cake is larger than ordinary glutinous rice cake. It is about the size of a basin, with a hole left in the middle. After drying, it is tied up with a rope and hung on the wall. When you want to eat, just cut a piece and cook it. . In addition to white rice glutinous rice cake, you can also add mung beans to make mung bean glutinous rice cake. Or add dried wormwood to make wormwood glutinous rice cake, both are very delicious. When eating, you can add lard to cook the cabbage and add some salt; if you like sweets, you can add sugar. You can also fry it in oil. The simplest way is to bake it directly on the charcoal fire and wrap it with pickles or sugar. The roasting process is very interesting. Use tongs to bake on the charcoal fire. When the middle of the glutinous rice cake bulges and turns into a big, round fat man, it is cooked. At this time, you can take it out and stuff it with various ingredients in the middle. It is very delicious.
The round glutinous rice cake symbolizes good weather and abundant harvests this year, which means good luck. It tastes delicious and is easy to cook, so this custom has been passed down. It is made with glutinous rice because it tastes good. Every year, my aunt gives our family dozens of kilograms of glutinous rice cakes. When not eating, just soak them in a basin with cold water and they can be stored for a long time.
After leaving the familiar hometown, leaving the familiar people, and leaving behind the hometown-style delicacies that I grew up growing up with, I suddenly realized that everything in my hometown is so kind, beautiful, and intriguing. Occasionally I meet my hometown in my dreams, and the feeling is as sweet as before, as if I have become that gluttonous little girl again.