Xiaoli/Hua
When the taste buds taste all the joys and sorrows of the world, and when the copied delicious food is at your fingertips, we miss the time that we can’t go back, and the simplicity and sweetness contained in the home-cooked taste. It may be a simple plate of fried radish balls, a bowl of handmade noodles with poached eggs, and a plate of dumplings, which are neither complicated nor expensive. But deep down, we always know that this is a taste that can never be sold or replaced.
——————
At the beginning of the new year, "this year’s New Year’s Eve must be booked early! The long-lost taste of the year is in this meal. "Such words come to my face. The New Year’s Eve dinner is always the most important meal in Chinese. It not only symbolizes family reunion, but also is a year-end summary of the years-the old year has come to an end at this moment, and the new year will start a new chapter.
In this meal, I don’t know how many fireworks in the depths of memory are carried-the taste of my mother when I was a child, the gathering of friends wandering alone, and the family gathering after time flies. From the flavor of hometown to the flavor of north and south, there are several similarities and differences, all of which are marked with the brand of time and growth. New Year’s Eve, like a family portrait, records the moments of gathering emotions again and again and is mounted on the wall of time.
"New Year’s Eve" in time: the taste of a cook with his own hands
My hometown is in Henan, and my diet is generally biased towards pasta. When I was a child, fresh fish and shrimp were not common. The most common thing I ate during Chinese New Year was "braised vegetables". Cut all the chickens, silver carp and tenderloin, which are one meter long, into pieces, marinate them and fry them in oil pan. The fried things need to be packed in pots, and the weight is amazing. They are similar themes of New Year’s Eve dinner every year.
When grandpa was alive, he cooked the annual New Year’s Eve dinner. He put the fried chicken, fish and crispy meat in a celadon bowl, added a little water, put the onion, ginger slices and star anise, and steamed them in a big pot. Steam until the inside and outside are crisp and rotten, and you can take off the bones with a sip, and you can serve.
There is often a bowl of sweet rice in the steamer, which is for children. It is similar to the eight-treasure rice in the southern region. It is steamed with glutinous rice, raisins and red dates and can only be eaten during the New Year. In addition, there are several cold dishes, such as shallots mixed with tofu, mixed with fungus, stewed pig ears, roast chicken and so on.
When I was a child, I was at my grandparents’ house, eating New Year’s Eve dinner and listening to firecrackers far and near outside. When the firecrackers became more and more intensive, and the TV hosts lined up in a line, beaming with auspicious words, jiaozi, who was stuffed with Chinese cabbage and pork, went out of the pot, ate a bowl of soup with water, then fell asleep and woke up, and it was the new year.
During the Spring Festival, grandma also likes steaming jujube buns and frying Ye Er. Squeeze the steamed bun into various shapes, including flowers, snakes and frogs, which are simple and lovely. I have never learned this craft, and I will never have another chance in the future. Fried hemp Ye Er is similar to fried dumplings, except that it is flaky, golden and crisp, and the more you chew it, the more fragrant it becomes. There are two flavors, sweet sprinkled with sesame seeds and salty dipped in sesame salt, which are children’s favorite.
Later, I came to work and live in Shanghai. If I can’t go home during the Chinese New Year, I will try to cook by myself. Apart from jiaozi, I can barely cook a few less authentic side dishes, such as braised pork, grilled crucian carp with scallion, pickled fresh, etc. Although the taste is average, I am grateful enough for a new year’s eve dinner with meat and vegetables and friends.
In the traditional New Year’s Eve dinner of Shanghai locals, several delightful dishes are essential-cold dishes such as white-cut chicken, four-happiness baked bran, local smoked fish, and stir-fried dishes such as sweet and sour pork ribs and fried shrimp. Sixi baked bran means "getting rich", boiled chicken means "good luck", and sweet and sour pork ribs, fried shrimp and a hot soup dish are "family photos". The casserole of hot soup dishes is full of egg dumplings, bacon, meatballs and yellow sprouts … According to a friend in Shanghai, when she was a child, egg dumplings were all made by herself. A special iron spoon with a long handle is used as a tool, and the skin of the egg dumplings can’t be broken. If it is broken, it can’t be served, because the egg dumplings are shaped like a gold ingot and used as the finale of the family photo. Only when they are complete can they win a good title.
A friend lives in Changzhou, Jiangsu Province, and her family must eat shrimp (winding), bean sprouts (Italian food) and fish (leading with tail) for the New Year’s Eve dinner, not to mention the taste. Just hearing this, the atmosphere of the New Year is suddenly full.
Southerners generally pay more attention to their minds and then head south. Guangdong people call this New Year’s Eve meal "reunion dinner". Before eating, you should worship your ancestors and offer incense sticks. Every dish on the table is exquisite for good luck. Xiamen people eat hot pot, and a pot means "one product is rich". In contrast, in the north, the form is lighter and the content is heavier. Except for a bowl of "jiaozi", the others can do whatever they want.
I once had a New Year’s Eve dinner in Heilongjiang, and the biggest feeling was that they really loved stews. In addition to "hard dishes" such as pot-wrapped meat, skin jelly and blood sausage, there are at least one or two or even three or four sea bowls on the table, which are filled with big stews filled with soup and water. Common stewed mushrooms with chicken, stewed vermicelli with three scales (a kind of cold-water carp, with less scales and less thorns and thicker meat), stewed pork belly with sauerkraut, and stewed pork-killing dishes, and then pasted a circle of big cakes from yellow wheat, with rice, soup and vegetables all in one pot. Of course, this is a more local way to eat.
I once asked them why they love stews so much, and the answer was that the temperature in the northeast was too low. When there was no central heating before, in winter, it was almost impossible to cook small dishes at home. After this dish is fried, that dish will be cold. It is better to stew a large pot of hot soup and eat it comfortably. The whole family sat on the kang and ate together, and it felt more lively.
Guizhou people want to eat pickled vegetables, fried bacon, sour bamboo shoots, pickled peppers and boiled fish during the New Year, which is sour, spicy and unpleasant; In addition to the "raw salted seafood" that Chaoshan people are good at, they will also hold out the "New Year’s Eve" of rice. Sichuanese will say, "We have not only hot pot, but also salty and sweet …" Although they are different, when it comes to New Year’s Eve, the most memorable thing is always the taste of home when I was a child.
"New Year’s Eve" keeping pace with the times: choose old brands and prepared dishes at will.
Although it is lively and festive to have a reunion dinner at home on New Year’s Eve, there is always someone working silently behind happiness. When parents are getting older, young people are not good at cooking because of their busy work, and they don’t have the heart to manage a big table of time-consuming and laborious New Year’s Eve dinner, it can also be a convenient and grand choice for the whole family to eat out together.
When it comes to eating out, there are more choices, especially in big cities, where the barrier between cuisines is only one road away. Whether to eat seafood dinner or hot pot, choose light Cantonese cuisine or solid local cuisine, can be rich and frugal by people.
It is hard to find a table for the "Chinese time-honored brand" New Year’s Eve dinner. Xinghualou Restaurant, a time-honored Chinese restaurant in Shanghai, has always been the first choice for Shanghai people’s traditional New Year’s Eve dinner. It focuses on the style of Cantonese cuisine, and absorbs the strengths of this local cuisine. Its reputation and quality for decades have attracted a group of loyal "fans". According to the manager of Xinghualou, some old guests enjoyed themselves. As soon as last year’s New Year’s Eve meal was finished, they turned around and decided on this year’s dinner. Aunt Liu, who booked the New Year’s Eve dinner early, said that a kung fu dish like Babao glutinous rice duck, instead of tearing apart the bones at home, carefully selecting more than a dozen ingredients, and then spending most of the day steaming slowly, might as well order one directly in the restaurant.
It is understood that more than a month ago, the New Year’s Eve dinner in Xinghualou was robbed. Other established restaurants, such as Yuyuan Green Wave Gallery Restaurant, Wang Baohe Hotel and Golden Age Shunfeng, are also popular, and the lobby and boxes are also fully booked in the morning, which is quite popular.
The flavor of the prepared dishes is not diminished. As a new trend of catering consumption, the rise of prefabricated dishes in the past two years can be described as hot. On the one hand, it solves the problem of inconvenience in buying food and eating out during the epidemic, and at the same time provides a nutritious and simple diet for busy migrant workers.
Especially, with many time-honored restaurants joining the prefabricated vegetable market and launching their own brand of prefabricated dishes, the quality and flavor of the dishes have been qualitatively improved. Over the past two years, a small white kitchen like me has always prepared some prefabricated dishes in the refrigerator, such as crystal shrimps and hand-grabbed lamb chops in Xinghualou, elegant beef in oyster sauce and white-leaf knots, chicken soup with pepper and pork tripe, chicken coconut, roasted fish with green pepper with Sichuan flavor, mutton soup and stiff bones in Inner Mongolia, etc., all of which are frequent visitors in the freezer. When eating, you can add some seasonal vegetables and mushrooms according to your own preferences, which is simple and quick, and no seasoning is needed. Therefore, I also call prefabricated dishes lazy dishes, because they are so suitable for lazy people.
As the Spring Festival is Approaching, take a grocery shopping app as an example, where you can buy the signature dishes of "Green Wave Gallery" such as Squirrel Mandarin Fish and "Cai Changqing" such as metapenaeus ensis drunk with plum, as well as fried chicken with soy sauce in Taotaoju, Guangzhou, and fried bread crabs in typhoon shelters.
If you don’t know how to choose, it’s more worry-free to simply buy a whole set of gift boxes, such as the New Year’s Eve gift box launched by the old Shanghai hotel. The price is divided into different grades of several hundred to 1,000 yuan, and there are eight, ten and sixteen different combinations of local dishes. Chicken, shrimp, fish, meat, staple food and dessert are all available and properly arranged.
These time-honored pre-made dishes all adopt advanced fresh-keeping technology, trying to keep the color and fragrance of the food at the moment of production, and each dish is marked with gram weight, so that consumers can see at a glance. Before eating, you only need to use a steamer or an air fryer for simple processing, and you can have a feast in ten or twenty minutes. On New Year’s Eve, a novice can become a chef in seconds.
The times are progressing so fast that it is dizzying. There are always faster ways to advance and change our lives. However, the more modern people choose and see, the more we will miss the distant truth hidden in the depths of memory.
When the delicious copy is at your fingertips, distance is no longer a problem; When the taste buds taste the ups and downs of the world, we miss the time that we can’t go back, and the simplicity and sweetness contained in the taste of home. It may be a simple plate of fried radish balls, a bowl of handmade noodles with poached eggs, and a plate of dumplings, which are neither complicated nor expensive. But deep down, we always know that this is a taste that can never be sold or replaced.