Suzhou is famous for its exquisite diet. As a staple food, pasta is usually more important in the north than in the south, but in Suzhou, people often take pasta as breakfast and enjoy it. Suzhou people value not the noodles themselves, but the soup and special toppings inside, and even the soup below is unwilling to make do.
Old people in Suzhou only love one mouthful of noodle soup. Soup is not the first bowl of soup, but the first pot of water used to cook noodles. Whoever arrives first can grab the first bowl of noodles under the noodle restaurant that day. Suzhou writer Lu described a special image in the novel The Gourmet: "A thousand bowls of noodles, a pot of soup, when you put down a thousand bowls, the noodle soup will be burnt, the noodles will not be so refreshing and slippery, and there will be a smell of noodle soup." At four or five o'clock in the morning, the master of the noodle restaurant hung up the soup and made the topping. At six o'clock, the guest who took the first sip of noodle soup pushed the door and pushed in. It can be said that a bowl of noodles is a morning!
Soup is the soul of a bowl of Su-style noodles. Clear soup color is the highest realm of Su-style noodles. The soup here is called "hanging" rather than burning, which is intended to force out the natural flavor of food. To sip a good soup, you should cook it with pork, ham, native chicken, fish head, eel bone and other ingredients for at least one day.
Halogen is a combination of various spices and seasonings, which really determines the direction of soup. The secret recipe of marinade is often prepared by the noodle shop owner himself, and it is also the foundation of a noodle shop. Su-style noodles are divided into red soup and white soup. The difference is that soy sauce and sugar are added to the red soup. The soup is dark red as amber, and it tastes salty and sweet. White soup does not add soy sauce and sugar, and clear soup is seasoned with rice grains and garlic leaves.
When eating pasta, you should pay attention to whether there is a cover or not. It is green, wide and tight. Put the toppings directly on the surface when pouring, and put the toppings on the platter when crossing the bridge. Put more garlic leaves when it is green, but not when it is green. Wide soup means more soup, while tight soup means less soup.
Characteristics of Su-style noodle soup:
The toppings of noodle soup are very particular, not all dishes can be used as toppings.
One of the characteristics is that the ingredients are fresh and fresh. The ingredients of Su-style noodles must be fresh, except kimchi. At most, it is fried fish and crispy meat, which are processed into semi-finished products in advance. Salted foods such as salted chicken, salted fish and bacon cannot be used as toppings.
The second feature is seafood and pig offal. Seafood, mainly shrimp. There are fried shrimps, shredded shrimps and pickled shrimps. Viscera, including fried kidney flower, fried pork liver and fried belly silk. There are also shrimps with internal organs, such as fried kidney flowers with shrimps and fried belly shreds with shrimps. In addition, the Soviet-style noodles have the classic "double-poured noodles", and the standard is fried fish and crisp meat. The most classic Su-style noodles are shrimp eel and shredded shrimp eel. The shredded eel must be fried, bounced, tender and tested.
Third, the toppings must be fried. Su-style noodles, with a big pot at the bottom, are cooked, but only one bowl of noodles is served at a time and cooked for one minute or even dozens of seconds. The gyro must be fried in a bowl. A noodle restaurant usually has thirty or forty kinds of toppings, and the master can't hold on without some skills.
There are more kinds of toppings. Take the menu of Yuxingji in Suzhou time-honored noodle restaurant as an example. Toppings include: vegetarian bread, fried shredded pork, shredded Chinese cabbage, shrimp fried eel, beef, three delicacies, pork liver, assorted shrimp, crab powder, raw fried eel back, etc.