This kind of acid is not acetic acid on the market, but a sour soup invented by Taijiang people themselves. Rice-washing water is put into glass jar and pottery jar for sealed storage, and the fermentation time depends on the temperature change. Hot days are short, cold days are long, and it can be produced in two days in summer. This rapid acid change depends on the climate in Guizhou. This extreme warmth and humidity inspired various enzymes in the rice soup, singing and dancing, singing an altar full of incense and dancing a refreshing dance. All kinds of sour soup have unique flavor. Beef and mutton were wrapped in sour soup and immediately lost their flavor. Sour soup leaves are the main raw materials for making residue peppers, as well as sour soup radishes, which are unforgettable to eat.
Among all the fish dishes in sour soup, the most famous one should be fish in sour soup, and the talent of Guizhou people in using spices can be seen in this dish. A pot of authentic sour soup fish usually uses ten spices. Needless to say, common condiments such as onion, ginger, garlic, perilla, pepper and pepper leaves. As a Jiangnan native, I came to this place further south, and the plants below were my first taste.
Fish coriander, as its name implies, has two herbs to remove fishy smell and enhance fragrance when cooking fish. One of them is the common mint with round leaves, which is regarded as an aromatic plant by people in the Yangtze River Delta. Most of them are made into bonsai for viewing, and their unique taste is also used to disperse mosquitoes. Dried mint leaves and brewed tea are the best products to relieve sore throat-I remembered Dr. Wu, who I met when I was working in Hangzhou, and was a school doctor at that time. One day, she specially sent me a packet of mint leaves from her hometown in Henan, saying that it was planted and collected by her grandmother. Old people's things are always warm, and I often think of that packet of gray mint leaves. -In Quzhou and Jiangshan, Zhejiang, where food is spicy, they also cook with mint, with a little fried snails and braised fish, but not as frequently as here. A few leaves are enough, and the planting area of mint is not a piece. There are one or two plants in front of the house.
The most precious spice in sour soup fish is litsea cubeba, which is a high-grade aromatic oil. The raw material is the fruit of a deciduous small tree, which grows on the sunny slope in mountainous areas. In September and 10, at the end of autumn, the seeds are completely mature and can be picked. The weather is getting colder and colder, and the seeds of the branches will slowly fall off. The Miao people are catching the tail of autumn and trying their best to collect these precious gems. Mature Litsea cubeba is black, but in fact, in Taijiang, this fragrance is essential in daily diet, so the bright yellow flowers and green fruits of Litsea cubeba are on the table because of that faint fragrance.
Litsea cubeba, one of the world's precious spices
The perfect sour soup fish should also be added with a unique vegetable in southwest China-Cantonese cuisine-which is the characteristic of Yunnan, Guizhou and Hunan. The shape is similar to that of taro plants, but it is thinner, almost half or even a third of the latter. It only eats the long stems on the ground, removes the leaves and cuts them into small pieces, then puts them in the soup.
There are a lot of coriander around the fish, and the heat is bubbling, like a fragrant hot spring, and the fishy smell on the fish is gone. Scoop a slice and serve it on a plate dipped in Chili powder, onion and salt foam, or put the green pepper roasted with charcoal fire in a bowl and grind it: that's perfect. Fish pieces soaked in seasonings and green pepper juice will stay fragrant after a bite.
In addition to the herbs used in daily diet, some herbs also appear in certain seasons and festivals. Cotton and vegetables are kneaded into cotton vegetable cakes for girls' day, Buddleja flowers are boiled into clear yellow rice, black glutinous rice in long summer is leached with black rice leaves, rice leaves, wormwood and calamus are soaked in plant juice during the Dragon Boat Festival, and the rice grains are fragrant and fragrant. Acorus calamus and wormwood are all over ancient Chu, and natural goodwill is quietly preserved and continued in rich plants and customs.
Facing the dazzling array of spices in the market, I can't help but think of Qu Yuan, a child who came from Chu all the way, who sang a ballad with vanilla, thus establishing the profound meaning of "vanilla beauty" and being praised by later generations. Guizhou people use herbs to remove the fishy smell from food, and add the color of rice grains, leaving a beautiful experience of body and mind, just like Qu subclass.