Sometimes I feel quite strange.
We guys are in an office building, chewing dried fruits with the words "natural drying" printed on the packaging bags, but we can't taste the natural taste at all. Until one day, you bite into a wrinkled dried apricot from Xinjiang, even with a little bit of dust on it. The sweet and sour feeling with the heat of the sun will instantly lock you in place.
That bite is not sweet, but light.
Past events in the Nang pit
At about four or five in the morning, the alleys in Kuqa Old Town were still dark, but there was already that scent of wheat floating in the air.
I have seen a craftsman making naan stick his body into the hot naan pit, and the beads of sweat on his forehead have evaporated from the heat before they have a chance to fall down! The dough he held in his hand stuck to the wall of the pit with a snap. This was a contract reached between time and heat.
Here, a lifetime of muscle memory is transformed from the cake and eat method emphasized in "Essential Art of Qi Min".
No need to weigh or measure, just weigh it with your hands and you will know that it is fermented just right.
The center of the freshly baked naan is thin and crispy, while the edges are thick. When you bite into it, you will hear a clicking sound, as if you have chewed up the entire Tianshan area's sunshine and swallowed it in your stomach.
Sheep are big and beautiful
The ancients made characters and told us their secrets long ago.
The word "beautiful" means sheep at the top and big at the bottom.
The sheep grazing in Xinjiang are fed not feed, but licorice, ephedra, and Haloxylon ammodendron. The water they drink is melted water from the snowy mountains. They walk a day's journey every day, and the unique aroma of the herb is completely permeated in the meat. The local people do not use complicated and various seasonings when cooking. They just stew it in water and sprinkle it with a handful of salt. The mutton is so tender that there is no need to chew it. Just sip it gently and it will disappear on the tip of the tongue.
No odor.
In other words, it's not the smell of smell, it's the smell of wind.
Sweetness under the Flame Mountain
The old man Cen Shen is very good at scaring people. "The fire cloud condensed on the entire mountain and did not disperse, and the birds did not dare to come over thousands of miles away."
But he didn't know that the place where the bird could be roasted was the paradise of grapes.
During the day, you get plenty of sunshine, and at night, you are affected by the obvious large temperature difference, which forces the sugar to be locked up. Under the grape trellis in Turpan, those crystal-clear beads looked like fruits, but after biting them open, it suddenly became apparent that they were actually concentrated honey.
The drying room can be called a magical existence. It is hollowed out on all sides, allowing hot air to pass through it. The grapes are hung there, there is no need to rush, they can slowly accept the blowing, hand over their moisture to time, and keep the sweetness to themselves. The resulting green pearl seems to be melting when put into your mouth. The sweetness is rich in layers and will not make people feel tired**. It is like the character of Xinjiang people, direct but not rough, forming an amazing fit**. **.
Jujube that survived
To be honest, the first thing I want to talk about is dates.
When I heard something, I was shocked inside. Back in the 1960s, a snowstorm came in Hotan. The temperature at that time was as low as dozens of degrees below zero. The wind blew straight on my face, and it felt like a knife passing through it. Many trees died due to this extreme weather. They were frozen solid and hard, and by the next spring they would no longer be able to sprout new leaves.
But those jujubes and gray jujubes were carried over.
How can they know how to be strong? They just need to dig their roots deeper and let their skin grow thicker. The technicians in the Corps then carefully maintained them one by one, just like taking care of children. Only in this way can the current thin-skinned and thick-flesh condition be achieved, and the satisfying feeling of having a lingering fragrance lingering in your mouth after biting into it.
The jujubes of Ruoqiang are even more outstanding.
In that place, there are very few rainfalls in a year, but the light and heat resources are so abundant that they are inexhaustible. The dates were hanging there and were sun-dried to a black and red color. When you took a bite, they tasted very sweet and had a mellow taste. It was not sweet from industrial saccharin, but earthy and heavy.
First steamed once, then paused and dried, and then steamed again. After three steamings and three dryings, the dates took on a shiny black color and tasted soft and waxy like candied fruit, but they had a completely natural taste.
Nuts along the Silk Road
Badam wood comes from Persia, which was called Persia at that time and is now called Iran.
After running for thousands of kilometers, it finally took root in Xinjiang. The shell is so thin that you can pinch it with one hand to open it, and the kernels inside are quite plump. When you chew it, your mouth will be full of oily aroma. This kind of paper has the properties of paper, and the local people call it "Kakazi". The crisp and clicking sound that appears when peeling it off sounds like a kind of enjoyment for people.
Zhang Qian also brought back walnuts. Over two thousand years ago, Hotan's thin-skinned walnuts were large, thin-skinned, with yellow kernels and surprisingly high oil content. The older generation said that eating walnuts can nourish the brain. I don't know whether it is true or not, but I do know that peeling a Hotan walnut and having a milky aftertaste does make people a little smarter - at least smart enough to understand what good things are.
Pistachio got its name well.
This thing existed more than 40 million years ago and was introduced to China during the Tang Dynasty. Its shell is slightly open, as if it is smiling. The nuts are green in color and have a crisp texture when bitten into them, with a fragrant smell and a hint of sweetness.
Figs in memory
When I was a kid, I didn’t understand figs.
I thought it really cost nothing. Later I found out that the flowers bloomed in the belly and were very low-key.
The figs produced by Artush are so soft that they are difficult to pick up when they are fresh. When you take a bite, the honey flows along the corners of your mouth. However, the fresh flesh cannot be stored for a long time, so it is dried in the sun. After drying, the skin of the fig looks wrinkled and resembles an old man's hand. However, after biting open, the inside is still soft and tender, and the taste is sweet. There are also those small seeds hidden, which make a crunching sound between the teeth.
That sound is like the echo of time.
Why Xinjiang?
I have been thinking about it for a long time, why are the fruits in Xinjiang so good?
Not because of technology.
It's because there is no other way.
That place is extremely dry, extremely sunny, and very cold in winter. If the fruit wants to survive, it must accumulate all the sweetness and shrink all the nutrients into the small core. This is survival wisdom, not business calculation.
And those people.
Those masters who have been guarding the Nang pit all their lives, those farmers who prune fruit trees in the wind and sand, those old ladies who carefully arranged the dried apricots one by one to bask in the sun, there is no anxious mood in their hearts, and there is no feeling of anxiety in their hearts. They just wait quietly, waiting for time to transform fresh fruits into dry fruits, waiting for the summer sunshine to be placed in the pockets of winter.
A little selfishness
Finally, I want to talk about how to eat it.
Don't treat these items as snacks.
That's food.
Put the dates into the boiled porridge, and the rice aroma of the porridge will bring out the fragrance of the dates. After drinking this porridge, you will feel the warmth in your stomach.
Grab a handful of raisins and sprinkle them on the yogurt. White is white and green is green. It makes you appetizing.
Peel the walnuts and eat them with naan bread. The simple and unpretentious feeling of satiety presented in this way is more solid than any Michelin.
During the New Year, a fruit plate is placed on the table, with red dates, green raisins, yellow almonds, and brown walnuts. When relatives and friends are peeling the shells while talking, such a scene is truly the embodiment of a successful reunion.
The year before last, I received a package sent from Xinjiang. I opened it and found dried apricots wrapped in kraft paper. There was a square note folded in the corner of the paper. There was only one sentence on the note: "The quality of the apricots last year was very good, and there were a lot of them to dry, so I sent some to you."
At that moment, I suddenly understood that what we were eating was not dried fruit, but the thoughts that came from thousands of miles away, those unspeakable concerns, and the sweetness condensed by time.
If sweetness had a shape, it would probably look like Xinjiang.
Comments NOTHING