If asked: what is the greatest legacy of the Manchu people in the food world? One might say sakéma and Manchurian cuisine. But one is a popular snack and the other is high in the clouds, neither of which is a delicacy in the usual cuisine. Then there is a question: is it that Manchu cuisine is not common at the table of the common people?
In fact, this is not the case, is located in the birthplace of the Qing dynasty outside the Northeast, home cooking in many dishes from the Manchu dishes, and even many Northeasterners do not know that each meal they eat, not from the Han Chinese cuisine.
Rice buns
Eating rice buns is often referred to by Northeasterners as playing rice buns. To have a meal of rice buns, you need to have the following ingredients: cabbage leaves, rice, potato sauce, egg sauce, cilantro, shredded cucumber, stinky vegetables, and green onion leaves. The cabbage leaves inside are the soul of the dish. This cabbage leaf is a Northeast specialty, and Northeasterners use it specifically to make rice packets. People judge whether the cabbage leaves are good or not, just by smelling it, delicious cabbage leaves will emit a strong fragrance unique to their own.
As for the stinky vegetables, at first hearing the name thought it would be very smelly, but not so, it is also a raw vegetable, the taste is refreshing, mouth and teeth, if the rice bag with stinky vegetables, the enjoyment of the taste buds will go up a notch.
Drifting outside the Northeast can not eat home specialties does not matter, online shopping provides us with great convenience, in the Internet, we can find many farmhouses, specializing in selling fresh Northeast cabbage leaves and stinky vegetables. Once we get the ingredients together, we can make it.
First, mix rice, potato sauce, egg sauce, cilantro, shredded cucumber, stinky vegetables, green onion leaves and other ingredients together according to your serving size, then unroll a large cabbage leaf, spread the mixed ingredients onto the large cabbage leaf, and finally roll up the leaf, even if it’s ready.
If it is a child’s rice packet, usually the mother is the one to beat, and the first bite of the tasteless cabbage stalk is naturally eaten by the mother, so that the child can have the rice packet full of mother’s love and delicious ingredients in the first bite. It can be said that the rice bun is very much in line with the taste of Northeasterners who like sauce, and the ingredients are a perfect combination of carbohydrates and vitamins, which Northeasterners do not love it?
Sticky bean buns
Northeast sticky bean buns are a common winter staple for Northeasterners. Why is it common only in winter? Because in winter in the Northeast, the outdoors is a natural refrigerator, and sticky bean buns are very convenient to freeze outdoors.
If you want to eat sticky bean buns, you need to prepare yellow rice flour, white sugar and red kidney beans. Soaked kidney beans boiled over high heat, add a sufficient amount of white sugar, then stir and mash until the beans are soft, cool and then dough into a small ball, this is the bean filling, and then fermented yellow rice flour to wrap it into a bean bag, steam it in a pot, it is ready.
Generally will steam a lot at a time, can not eat it will be put in the outdoor vat frozen, want to eat when you take some, if the freeze can not take down, but also have to use some tools to pry down to do. You can stick some sugar when you eat it, the full intake of carbohydrates can make the northeasterners spend the long winter happily. However, you should not eat too much, eat too much stomach will be uncomfortable, the northeastern language called “heartburn”.
Sticky bean bread is also a traditional Manchu food, which is easy to store and portable. Therefore, it was also used as the main food by the Manchu people who hunted, farmed and marched between the black water of the White Mountains. And nowadays, people can no longer be satisfied with eating sticky bean bread only in winter, but now they can eat it all year round whenever they want.
Northeast sauerkraut
In the days when transportation and greenhouse technology were not developed, there were only three seasons when fresh vegetables were available in the northeast, and in the long winter, everyone had to eat sauerkraut. 80 years later, northeasterners have a common memory of buying cabbage in the fall and eating sauerkraut in the winter.
In the northeast, families will store autumn vegetables in the fall, regardless of the pearls, regardless of the pounds, but on a hundred pounds to buy. Vegetable vendors directly with the cart to the home, the scene is very spectacular, so that foreigners jaw dropped.
Hundreds of pounds of cabbage bought back, you can start pickling. Pickles need a large jar, the cabbage layer by layer into the jar, pour water, and finally pressed on a large stone, you can wait for the fermentation of microorganisms in the jar, more than a month to eat pickles.
Now, people’s life is better, living in buildings, winter can also eat fresh vegetables, but we still want to eat a bite of sauerkraut from time to time. Just eat is not too much, some people do not mind the tedious but also personally pickled, in some loosely managed community hallway, now you can still see the pickle jar, smell that smoky pickle smell.
I have to say, to the winter pickled pickles have been deeply imprinted into the genes of Northeasterners, this is not a kind of storage vegetables for the winter behavior, but a kind of pursuit of the past taste of sentiment.
Kill vegetables
The most delicious way to eat sauerkraut is to stew pork, such as killing pork dishes. Eating pig-killing dishes is the northeast rural pig-raising family yearly activities, not only to feast on the same village folks, but also call on relatives in the city, which is the highest courtesy of rural hospitality in the northeast, the relationship is not iron are not invited.
Kill the pig dish originated from the Manchu shaman rituals after the end of the custom of killing pigs to eat pork. Shaman ritual, is a ritualistic activity, and eat pork dishes also have an important ceremony, that is the first step to kill the pig. This is the main event before doing the pig killing dish, killing the pig will be a lot of people around, cheering the main knife man, people attach great importance to this process, without it, the pig killing dish is also no taste.
Catching and killing pigs is a laborious job, and most men have to do it. Just see the men into the pig pen, seven hands and feet to catch the fattest one, with the prepared rope will be tied to the fat pig’s small feet. Just listen to the pig as has predicted their fate, while struggling and screaming, but the strong male class strangled the fate of the throat. The men carried the pig to the long-established wooden platform, stabbed in the neck to bleed, the bottom of the pig’s neck was put in a good basin, blood collection, so as to make blood sausage.
After the pig was processed, it was unloaded into small pieces according to its parts. The big iron pot in the house has already boiled water, just waiting for the pork to be cooked in the pot. After all the parts of the pig are cooked until they are soft, they are sliced and served, including white meat, five-flowered pork, big-boned pork, pork face and other parts of the pork, as well as various offal such as pork heart and liver. The pork is served with garlic sauce, so that it tastes good.
The old soup with the pork cooked in it is best for cooking blood sausage. The intestines are washed several times, then one end is tied with a rope and then filled with fresh pig blood, and then this end is tied tightly after it is filled. After the blood sausage is cooked and sliced, it can be eaten with garlic sauce or red oil, or spread on top of stewed sauerkraut and eaten together. The amino acids and fats collide with each other, and the freshness of the sauerkraut can well dissolve the grease, and the taste buds can enjoy infinitely.
A fat pig can’t be finished in one meal, so the hospitable host will pack a few pockets for the guests to continue eating at home. The guests are not polite, not only pack, but also tell the host beforehand which part of the meat they like, so that the host specially left. In the northeast, this is called “not a bit outside”, “not a bit pretend”.
In addition to these, there are corn noodles made of sour soup, at the bottom of the instant noodle flavor despise chain chicken stewed mushrooms, which are all Manchu dishes, are regular guests on the table of the Northeast. Northeastern people always seem to give the impression of the people of the country left a big mouth to drink and eat meat, I have to say, this is indeed a bit of nomadic legacy of the meaning of the wind.
A side of soil and water to nurture a side of people, a side of dishes to nourish a side of people’s taste buds, no matter where they move to in the future, the memory of the taste will be like an old acquaintance, knocking on the tongue exclusive side of the taste buds, evoking the deepest feelings of the heart of the countryside.
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