Text / Danshui Spring
Fuzhou’s cuisine and techniques have evolved and been passed down for thousands of years, forming something unique and unique. These unique characteristics are affected by the geographical environment and natural resources, so that Fuzhou people are good at cooking seafood. In addition to focusing on the inherent taste of the ingredients, they also emphasize elegance and freshness, and are good at seasoning with shrimp oil to enhance the freshness. He also prefers sweet and sour food. No matter how delicious it is, he likes to use it most in cooking. Therefore, just as the saltiness and freshness of shrimp oil are the key points of Fuzhou flavor, the aroma and mellowness of red glutinous rice wine are worthy of the definition of Fuzhou flavor.
Fuzhou people have established rules on what foods they eat during certain seasons and what seasonings they use. Stir-fried clams and fried snails seem to be available in midsummer. The pickled fish must also be in season with the wind. Only the big silver carp that is opened in the pond after Laba Festival can become the speciality of entertaining guests during the Spring Festival.
In Fuzhou, an ordinary piece of rotten bamboo shoots may be connected with the stories of the four big families of Lin, Chen, Huang and Zheng in Fuzhou in the late Qing Dynasty. The crab cakes and crab sauce sold by an old man from a cart in Min'an Village, Tingjiang, are irreplaceable to Lao Gan Ma in the hearts of many Fuzhou people who go abroad to work hard in their careers. Even if they have traveled thousands of miles, they have to take a few cans with them to a foreign country. For them, the aroma of old wine and distiller's grains in the dragonfly sauce mixed with the freshness of the dragonfly is the taste of their hometown of Fuzhou. Shuibu Broken Shop’s braised small intestine cooked in ancient ways will be talked about by several friends who grew up in Fuzhou. The signature dish of Wenru No. 9 is the eel infused with oil, which is crispy and tender. In addition, the eel is produced in the coastal towns of Changle Meihua and Zhanggang. It has soft bones and tender meat. It is often a must-have dish at political and business banquets. . The lightly fragrant snail slices and drunken chicken are indispensable in almost all Fujian cuisine banquets, as well as the sweet and sour lychee meat, which has become a classic symbol of Fujian culture.
These street dishes have names, surnames and places. In addition, the unrefined mutton soup hotpot is topped with a pot of home-brewed green and red old wine, and they are served in the cold wind. It will bring people so much warm winter reverie. As for the freshly baked cake outside Qingcheng Temple, with slices of red pork belly sandwiched inside, I thought this was the Chuqiao of the world's Roujiamo.
For Fuzhou people, red glutinous rice is not only a unique taste bud memory, but also heralds the arrival of winter. Fuzhou people have the custom of making home-made green and red wine. Around the winter solstice, when the temperature turns cold, it is the best time to make wine. After fifty days of fermentation, it can be used to entertain relatives and friends during the Spring Festival. Therefore, green and red wine is also called spring wine.
The green and red wine made from the finest glutinous rice and Fujian red yeast rice is crystal red and translucent green, full-bodied and mellow, with a long aftertaste and a very strong wine. According to Zhou Lianggong's "Min Xiaoji", there are Yudaichun, Xishihong, Zhuangyuanhong, Bixia wine and other famous Fujian wines. It refers to Fuzhou’s green and red wine. After Yu Dafu drank green and red wine in Guling, Fuzhou, he praised the green and red wine in his "Travel in Fujian": "The color of the wine is as red as peach blossom juice; the dregs floating on the surface are like lumps. , more like the rouge on a beauty's face... After tasting it for a few times, I felt that this sweet wine made from red lees was really a sweet wine without parallel in the world, with the taste of champagne. The strength of Shaoxing."
When new wine is opened, the wine juice needs to be drained. The lees settled at the bottom of the tank are dark red in color and have a peculiar mixed aroma. This kind of fragrance has both wine aroma and appetizing aroma. It is difficult to describe. Fuzhou people call it bad aroma. This kind of lees is called red lees because of its ruddy color. The red lees used in Fujian cuisine is the essence of this green and red wine.
The red lees has a bright color and a mellow aroma. Used in the preparation of dishes, the aroma of wine is overflowing and the aftertaste is endless. In Fuzhou, there are many ways to make rice noodles, including boiled rice noodles, pulled rice noodles, fried rice noodles, stir-fried rice noodles, drunk rice noodles, etc. Using red rice noodles in a dish is like putting bright rouge on the dishes, and just one look at it is enough to whet your appetite. . It can be called a unique place in Fujian. These different cooking techniques each have the functions of antisepsis, removing fishy smell, adding fragrance, adding color, appetizing, and refreshing the spleen, which constitute the unique flavor of Fuzhou cuisine. This kind of food culture also affects surrounding cities, and even in the shadow of Taiwanese cuisine, there is still no lack of the legacy of Fujian.
The red glutinous rice pork that came to Taiwan with Fuzhou ancestry is the one made by Taiwanese Hakka people that is closest to the original appearance of Fuzhou. They call the red glutinous rice "Pork", and it is mostly made in the late twelfth month of the lunar calendar. It is used to worship gods and ancestors. It is a traditional New Year dish of the Hakka people. The Hakka people must use cooked meat to make red lees meat, which is first coated with salt, then marinated in red wine lees for a week, and then coated in flour and deep-fried. On top of the rich aroma of wine, a bit of fried crispy flavor is added. There is also a special snack called red glutinous rice balls. The sweet and sour glutinous rice flour is wrapped in diced pork belly marinated in red rice flour, as well as chopped winter bamboo shoots and shiitake mushrooms. Fry in hot oil until golden brown and then dip into soup. It has a soft, chewy texture, sweet and sour taste and a slightly salty taste. It is also a favorite among Taiwanese foodies and men.
Food is the most important thing for the people, and knowing how to eat is the greatest respect for life. It can be eaten all over the country, and every ethnic group and every place has its own unique food. In the early 1980s, a dish of lightly fragrant conch slices created by Fujian masters Qiang Mugen and Qiang Ququ not only entered the State Banquet Hall of the Great Hall of the People, but also entertained US President Ronald Reagan and Cambodian Prince Sihanouk. He also won gold cups and grand prizes in national cooking competitions. Fried eels, lychee meat, etc. have also gone abroad and spread to Southeast Asia, America, Australia, Canada and other parts of the world. Nowadays, local dishes from various places have become a way for people to return to their original nature after getting tired of eating big dishes.
There is the certain willfulness of letting nature take its course after traveling through thousands of rivers and mountains.
At the beginning of spring, I went to a spring wine with the theme of bad fragrance. It was indeed a big crowd-pleaser. The chef was the chef of Juchun Garden. I heard that the ingredients alone took many days to prepare. Looking back now, the tender and smooth cucumber fish is expensive, but the drunken duck slices are the most delicious one-color cold meat. According to the owner's introduction, the ducks bought must be fed with distiller's grains for a week. After cleaning and air-drying, take the boneless breast and leg meat and marinate it slightly with Maotai wine. Fry it on both sides. After cooling, mix in good grains of rice. After soaking in the flavor, the finished product will have a red appearance, crispy skin and tight meat, and the mellow aroma of wine and duck meat will be integrated into one. Su Dongpo must have eaten it before he came up with the poem "The red lees is sour to the duck, but when mixed with wine, it is sweet."
It is worthy of the skills of the chef of Juchunyuan. The three-shredded chicken with marinated rice has fully demonstrated the subtlety of knife skills and the essence of raw rice. The braised frog is also delicious, and the double-crisp stir-fried chicken is even more crystal-clear. Brilliant. Drunken banana clams, grilled seaweed, marinated duck gizzards, mixed jellyfish, the four cold dishes are delicious in color. The quantity is not large, but it is fine. It cannot be chewed, so it can only be savored. If you like it, you can also dip it in the bright red crab sauce, and the humble cold dish will instantly become a scenery full of color, flavor and flavor. I won’t go into details about the greatness of its catchy taste. It seemed that every foodie at that time praised it. Even the home-cooked seafood razor clam soup is cooked as described in "Ode to the Braised Razor Clam": "The small golden knife is cut towards the frosty sky, the more youthful and thin it is, the more youthful and thin it is. The red glutinous rice cake is taken out, and Xiaoji is speechless. Crazy, the artistic conception of "smelling razor clams and plum blossoms together".
The famous "Luan Zao Sheep" is said to be famous in Taiwan, but Fuzhou's home cooking is actually more sophisticated. The mutton is green-skinned goat meat purchased directly from the mountains of Fuqing. The radish cubes on the hob, as well as the lettuce cubes, were white or green, the mutton was simmered thoroughly in red lees, the large casserole was steaming on the table, and the speakers not far behind him were casually playing the Fujian opera "A Dream in the Garden" "The aria of "The Spring Banquet" seemed to push the Spring Banquet into the depth of field of the late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China. There is also the wintersweet Qinggong from Linyang Temple in Beifeng, which exudes a slightly subtle fragrance. Unknowingly, it also makes people feel that what is cooked in the casserole of this ancient house in Fujian is elegant, vulgar, and smooth.
I have tried Master Qiang Zhentao’s Snail Slices at Chunhua Restaurant, but the one that day was nothing special. It was delicious only because of the exquisite knife skills and stir-frying. but the chef’s craftsmanship is hidden in the minimalist seasonal vegetables. A dish of winter bamboo shoots and wild rice simmered in chicken oil shows the mystery of the dish; people with different soil and water seem to be able to see the clues in their diet.
A dinner of spring wine is so exciting, mainly due to the skills of Fujian cuisine masters and high-quality authentic ingredients. But because of the high price, it can only be "highbrow". I think that a good food culture must develop in addition to precipitation. You must have an attitude to study culture with the attitude that others don’t understand it, and you may not really understand it yourself, so as not to lead to the decline of cultural inheritance. This reminds me of Fuzhou cuisine. Although seafood cuisine is Fuzhou’s strength, there are also popular home-cooked dishes with easily available raw materials, such as lychee meat, drunken pork ribs, light eel, etc. As long as the cultural drama is performed well, it will not be difficult to promote them nationwide.
It’s a pity that Cantonese food is gone and Sichuan food is back on the streets of Fuzhou today. Watching the young man speaking Mandarin with the flavor of shrimp oil, hey, hey, he was eating fish head with chopped pepper and spicy hot pot. As a result, I often complain to my friends in the Fuzhou catering industry that it is difficult to eat really good Fuzhou cuisine. Old Fuzhou people probably have to question whether they eat such labor-intensive and expensive tricks like "Buddha Jumps over the Wall" on weekdays. As for the bad fish and bad meat that every family must eat during the Spring Festival, they don't have to blindly pursue sweet and sour. Adding some spicy food is also good. good.
——At least it can make the smell of Mindu more intense!