It is said that Suzhou people have a sweet tooth, but it is not true. Mr. Wang Zengqi once said, “Wuxi people eat sweetness, they put so much sugar in the bun filling! Suzhou people are just light. Mr. Wang is half right. The meat in sauce, braised hoisin, and squirrel fish are really light. The name of the dish is very “thick oil and sauce”.
More relevantly, Suzhou people eat fresh. Fresh, to pay attention to the season, distinguish the origin, with ingredients, pay attention to the fire, and even and eat the environment, the state of mind is closely related. Lu Wenfu wrote the gourmet, to the chef lecture Su Bang dishes, from the kitchen salt all the way to the banquet hall side of the commentary, a full week to speak. Delicate, rhyme hidden, Su Bang dishes, in the end, is an attitude.
Su Bang cuisine is exquisite, and also related to the character of Suzhou people. Grandma is in her seventies, usually a bit “wooden”, but the preparation of small dishes, spirited, one will not buy wrong. Before going to the grocery store, she put a list in her basket, and when she bought the same, she crossed out the same, and when she came out, the white paper was scratched into a barcode, and nothing was left out of her basket!
What is the most pleasing dish to Suzhou people? From the chef to the kitchen aunt, they will all tell you.
Seasonal dishes.
In Suzhou restaurants, some dishes are destined to have no price. Perch, mandarin fish, white fish, and malan head are all followed by two words on the price list: seasonal price. “If you don’t violate the farming season, you can’t beat the grain.” This is the season for farming. Eating vegetables is also seasonal. Spring artemisia and leeks green scary; summer morning green bean porridge, fried broad beans at night, snacks are hanging around the neck of the salted duck eggs; wait for the autumn wind up, crab feet itch, crabs in the steamer bundled tightly, fresh meat moon cake children grabbed vigorously; hey, in winter, bamboo shoots, fresh meat, salted meat, casserole, salt are not put a grain: pickled duck fresh!
At the right Time, eat the right dish, this is the wisdom of the Suzhou people.
Qingming snail fat like a goose, snail only how much a catty? The snail is bought from the market, raised in clean water, and the meat is taken with a toothpick and stir-fried with leeks, adding salt to make it taste great. Before Qingming, it is the time when leek is the greenest and snail is the fattest, a partner, leek to remove the fishy snail, snail into the meat flavor of leek, two suitable. Snail with leeks, just like in the commentary, the lady always and the scholar private, can never be wrong. To one after the Qingming, the leek grows leek buds, the leaves are not tender, chewing; snail, it is pregnant with a small screw in the stomach, such as eating gravel, hard to swallow!
Hangzhou people on tea, divided into Ming Longjing and Ming Longjing, Ming snail in me, not less than the Longjing silk!
Broad beans are divided into local and foreign, when it comes to foreign broad beans, vegetable sales granny nose almost skimming to the ears: we only sell local beans! Local beans glutinous and sweet, soft and crispy shells, fragrant. Empty mouth to eat, there is a sweet taste. Fried beans heavy sugar, I put sugar at Home, without a small spoon, pick up the sugar canister on the shake, accidentally hand off, that really fly straight down three thousand grains, sweet to you believe. Eat up the tip of the tongue a roll, a grain of beans down the throat, the mouth does not need to sip – it has to be tender like this! Peeling fava beans but annoying, nails peeled and painful and astringent, my mother called me in the kitchen, “help me peel some fava beans to!” I hid in the study and went to read!
Why are they called broad beans? Probably because they are the beans that silkworms eat when they are raised. In summer, silkworm babies are crawling on mulberry leaves.
The crabs in Taihu Lake also taste good. Around the Mid-Autumn Festival, families set up round tables to watch the moon, enjoy the osmanthus flowers, and eat crabs. The fragrance of osmanthus was like fermenting in the air, and I kept sneezing. Crab with yellow wine, Shazhou You Huang, adults love to eat, secretly smashed a bite, hurriedly pooh on the ground.
The crab, which was tied on all fours, was served on the stage, steaming. “Let’s see how long you run amok!” The male crab paste is the fattest, rich but not greasy, I do not eat: “like snot!” I was so angry that my grandmother flew me a shoe sole. “Debt collector!” The other people are laughing, crab paste, a good thing to grab. The female crab three or two is appropriate, crab yolk like Gaoyou duck egg yolk, with a little red, fresh!
In the winter, everything is depressed, the northerners are hiding cabbage for the winter. Suzhou people also want to eat fancy. The Tibetan lamb is on the market, and the frozen crystal-like jelly-like lamb cake is suitable for drinking. For New Year’s Eve, egg dumplings and meat dumplings are made with home-made meat sauce, gently simmered by a small stove, with green onions dotted around the meat, refreshing. One egg dumpling, the size of a treasure, is floating in the pot, blessed. After the frosting, the leaves are cut off and simmered in rice with fresh meat and sausage to make salted meat and vegetable rice. The heart of the vegetable was kept, and that was another dish.
The grandmother spoiled the children by eating only the hearts of the vegetables.
Mr. Ye Shengtao, also a native of Suzhou, talked about his hometown, not about anything else, but about Ulmus. The leaves are thin and slippery, floating in the Soup, and the leaves are curled and bent like dark green satin, opening freely, as if no one had tidied them up. The chopsticks are not even held, so you can’t pick them up. The leaves are coated with a layer of mucus and are so slippery that when the chopsticks are touched, the leaves will stay in the soup and not get up. Ulva and silverfish are cooked together, which is a famous dish. The silverfish is as small as a grain of straight shrimp, and it can’t be caught. I didn’t like this dish when I was a kid, probably because I was very stupid with chopsticks, and I looked at others with aggression, like eating a green olive. The soup is sticky, slightly bitter and slightly astringent when spooned. Not necessarily.
But Ulva and silver fish, out of Suzhou, have never been eaten again. The slightly bitter and sweet taste, after a long time, is like the osmanthus tree in the courtyard, the fragrance is a bit distant and tickles the heart with bitterness.
I left Gusu, became a wanderer, there are three years. The dog meat in Pengcheng, the roast duck in Jinling, the buns in Yangzhou, the soft pocket long fish in Huai’an, are they not delicious? No, they are not. Some classmates brought Xuyi lobster, and everyone grabbed and made a fuss, hating to stretch out more chopsticks, splashing soy sauce on their shirts, chewing in their mouths and breaking in their hands, enjoying the taste.
Just because, it’s very much like the taste of lobster at home, right?
“Dreams do not go to Jiangnan.” Sometimes at night, I often dream of my mother, my grandmother’s dishes, and when I wake up, my pillow is soaked through. I miss the Food of my hometown, I miss the people of my hometown
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