Red taro rice? Red taro steamed buns?
Text/Ding Jianshe?
My childhood was accompanied by red taro growing up day by day. "Red taro rice, red taro steamed buns, I can't live without red taro..." was the first ballad my mother taught me. My mother told me that when I was a child, I was a "sick boy" with a sallow face and skin. When my mother gave birth to me, there were three years of natural disasters. It was a miracle to give birth to a baby in ten months, and those who survived were even rarer, a miracle among miracles. How can the mother have milk to feed her child if she doesn't even have enough to eat? The survival instinct made me cry day and night. Even so, my mother still had to work in the fields. She felt uneasy while working in the fields. She was always worried that I would fall out of bed. There was always me crying and making a fuss in front of me. The hallucination of crying endlessly. When work was over, my mother would always rush home in three steps and two steps at a time, eager to breastfeed me. However, my mother's milk supply was really pitiful, and her crying continued after just a while. There was really no other way, so my mother tried to feed me red taro. Strangely enough, I was surprisingly adapted to the red taro. I stopped crying while eating with my little mouth moving. From then on, the red taro became only one year old. Less than 100% of my daily essential staple food. In order to prevent my crying during the long night from affecting the rest of the family and even the neighbors, my mother would choose the best one from the steamed red taros every day, wrap it in a towel and put it under the pillow. Once I woke up hungry at night, she would Feed me red taro so that my mother can have a peaceful sleep at night and work in the lake with peace of mind during the day. As I slowly started to remember, I grew up day by day, and my understanding and dependence on red taro also increased day by day.
There are roughly two ways to make red taro rice. One is called red taro bones. Wash the red taro, then chop it into pieces with a kitchen knife, put it in the pot, and add Use enough water to cover the red taro. Finally, cover the pot and let it cook until cooked. Transfer it to a bowl. The red taro is sweet, and the red taro thin lek (soup) is also sweet. After eating the red taro, drink the thin lech. , the remaining red taro skins are left to feed pigs, chickens, dogs, etc. The other is steamed red taro. Put the small red taro in a pot and steam it on a grate, then pick it up in a bowl. The big ones are placed as high as a hill, and you hold them with your hands. Peel and serve. When rural people eat red taro rice, few of them sit at home and eat it. Most of them come out with a bowl, either in front of their home or in a crowded place while chatting and eating. Look at whose bowl the red taro is stacked high, because the higher the red taro is stacked, the more edible it is. The more you eat, the more powerful you will be! This is actually a public display of masculinity and muscle display.
Red taro buns actually refer to the steamed buns or pancakes made from red taro, cut into dried red taro seeds, dried and ground into dried red taro noodles. It should also include making red taro. Fenmianzi (starch), rice dumplings made from leftover powder residue. There is also a season for eating red taro rice. Every year before the 15th day of the eighth month of the lunar calendar, it is the time when the gluttonous season has stopped, and most people are in a state of food and cooking shortages when the noodle vats have bottomed out. (The noodles mentioned here are dried red taro noodles. It’s dried red taro seeds). At this time, due to the large temperature difference between day and night, the red taro expands quickly, so many people begin to peel the red taro sporadically and put it into the pot. All we ate at this time were spring red taro, which made me hungry and not delicious. Only when the late red taro, that is, the red taro in wheat stubble, does it really come into the season to eat red taro. The late red taro is stored in the red taro cellar to prevent freezing. First of all, this is what the family eats throughout the winter. , and secondly, to save enough red taro seeds for next year. The red taro taken out from the cellar has been saccharified after being stored for a long time, giving it a good taste and high nutrition. Even so, when the red taro seedlings start to grow in the spring of the next year, and when the red taro sprouts are called red taro sprouts in farming, the season for eating red taro will be over.
In contrast, red taro buns are made from dried red taro noodles and can be eaten all year round. At that time, almost every household was made of steamed buns or pancakes made with red dried noodles. Making steamed buns is very simple. After kneading the dough, knead it into dough, hold it in your hands, use your thumbs to make round nests while rotating them, and then steam them on a grate in a pot. For steamed pancakes, you use your hands to pat the dough into pancakes and stick them around the edge of a pot for cooking porridge or red taro rice. When the rice is done, the steamed buns are ready. One thing almost never changes three times a day, and I get bored every time I eat it. This is the case with red taro. Eating it all the time will cause stomach acid, and I don’t want to swallow it just eating it. So I thought of a way to put chili sauce in the wowotou. In Wowo, when you take a bite of the steamed bun, you just dip it in a little chili sauce. It is both delicious and delicious, so there is a jingle of "just dip the steamed bun in the chili sauce, and the more you eat, the fatter you get." In order to improve the taste of the buns, some baking soda is added when kneading the dough, so that the buns will not be too hard and difficult to digest. At that time, I thought about when rural people could completely solve the problem of food and clothing, and when they could say goodbye to red taro buns with one piece of dough, even if they could eat large flower rolls that were black on the inside and white on the outside like my grandfather! With this beautiful vision, I signed up to join the army in 1979, thus bidding farewell to red taro rice and red taro buns that I had eaten for eighteen years.
History is always dramatic, just the second year after I joined the army! , my hometown implemented the household contract responsibility system with household responsibility as the main form. A year later, I wrote a letter from home saying that after the household responsibility system, the countryside had undergone earth-shaking changes, and every household had a big steamed bun with a piece of noodles.
I was so happy at the time. Yes, everyone in the house eats steamed buns, so who cares about red taro rice and red taro steamed buns? Since then, red taro rice and red taro buns, a staple food that rural people have eaten for twenty years and raised for two generations, have unknowingly faded out of the lives of rural people and become an unforgettable historical memory for our generation...
About the author: Ding Jianshe, a native of Yongqiao District, Suzhou City. In 1981, he began to publish works in "People's Frontline", "Dawn News" and other media. After retiring to the second line in 2017, he has published works in "Dawn News", "Suzhou Work", "Suzhou Radio and Television News", "Suzhou Mass Culture", " He has published more than 30 essays, poems and folklore works in newspapers such as "Yongqiao Times" and "Anhui Business Daily".