Sometimes I feel that the smell of Wuxi is hidden in the old house. The wooden window frames emit a mild and sweet musty smell after being exposed to the sun for a long time. It's not really a musty smell, but when you take a whiff, you know you're home.
If these ten dishes are called "Jiangsu flavor", how can we actually cover them comprehensively and exhaustively? It must be noted that they are the lifeblood of each family's livelihood.
Everyone knows the sauced pork ribs. In front of the window of Sanfengqiao, the queue has never been too long, and the bones are wrapped in amber sauce, which looks real. However, I didn't like the plate in the store that was cut into regular rectangular shapes. What I remember most is a piece that my grandmother took out of a steel pot when I was a child. The bones are not completely separated, but there are some tendons attached to it. It has a little toughness when bitten, and that is the real taste. Sweetness comes first and saltiness comes at the end. This is the way to show it to outsiders. At home, sweetness and saltiness have already blended with each other, making it difficult to distinguish them.
The "fresh" bite that is limited to spring
Spring is the busiest time for Wuxi people.
As soon as the sound of "pickling fresh food" appears, spring in the true sense has already begun. The bacon was hung between the window sills last winter, and was blown by the strong northwest wind and became firm; the fresh meat was the recently purchased ribs; the bamboo shoots were freshly excavated from the mountains of Yixing and were still attached to the soil. My grandmother did not allow me to learn, claiming that little girls’ hands were delicate and peeling bamboo shoots would damage the nails. So I moved a small stool and watched her get busy.
As soon as you lift the lid of the pot, the white air rushes toward your face, making you shed tears. But you don't avoid it, you just like the salty aroma and sweetness hitting it directly. Is it so fresh that it makes your eyebrows fall off? It's not that it fell off, it's that the eyebrows were lifted up by the freshness. They were in a high-raised state and couldn't come down.
There is also the fried white fish. The "Wuxi Jingui County Chronicle" praised it as "white as silver, and it can be mixed when touched with chopsticks." This is the expression of the literati. My grandfather could only say: "This fish, at any rate, looks like garlic clove meat." "With a flick of the chopsticks, the fish meat becomes petal-shaped, snow-white and pink, wrapped in the aroma of bad taste. It is sent to the mouth without chewing. It melts after a sip, leaving a mouthful of wine aroma, which makes everyone a little tipsy.
Not only is it sweet, but it’s also quaint.
It is said that Wuxi cuisine is sweet. Yes, but not entirely.
Different from other things, Liangxi Crispy Eel is coiled in a dark shape like a pagoda, just like a black antique. When I was a child, I thought it was a snack, so I reached out to grab it. But the adult fought back and said: "This is a dish! It is the pearl of the cold dishes!" I didn't understand what the pearl meant. I only understood that it had a crunchy texture and made a "click" sound when I bit it. The sweet and salty taste of the sauce exploded in my mouth instantly. It was sweeter than any potato chips. Last year, it was featured in the CCTV Lantern Festival Gala. The chefs began to reduce the sugar content and the presentation became more exquisite. But I always think about the old ones, the ones with more sugar and sticky to the teeth. That’s what I looked forward to when I was a kid.
Taihu Drunken Crab has become the favorite of the new school. Wuxi people are very courageous and set the rules for drunken crabs as the first in the country. How big the crab must be and how long it has been drunk are clearly written down. It sounds a bit rigid, but I think it's pretty good. It was as if a charming and elusive Jiangnan woman had been married to a matchmaker according to the rules and brought back home, giving her a status. From now on, the freshness and sweetness contained in the mellow aroma of wine is a stable and trustworthy happiness.
Grandma’s ancient taste
After all, the most overbearing thing is meat stuffed with gluten.
One article mentioned that this dish is "an ancient dish with the taste of my grandmother", which is very accurate. The gluten here is water and oil gluten, which is hollow and looks like a small ball. Grandma sat at the table, slowly poked a hole with her thumb, and filled it little by little with the minced meat mixed with soy sauce and sugar, until it was full and round. At that time, I was secretly eating raw meat filling next to me, but she scolded me as a "little greedy cat".
When you bite into the burned gluten, the soup splashes out in a "sizzling" way. It's so hot that you can't help but gasp, but you don't want to spit it out. That's what it feels like when your grandmother looks at you, her eyes full of smiles.
There are also fried shrimps. There is a short story about an old chef who was able to fry high-quality shrimps plate by plate. He also cooked shrimps for higher-ranking leaders in the agency cafeteria. However, due to problems with his leadership, he was also involved and was transferred to the countryside. It’s hard to tell whether the story is true or false, but what he said is correct: high-quality shrimps should be fried four to five times at a time, gently shaken and waved with a shovel once, and then taken out of the pan after three times with a shovel, showing a crystal clear state. This is not cooking, it is clearly practicing kung fu. This is the stubbornness that Wuxi people have towards their slightly "innocent nature".
So, you ask me what is the "most Wuxi" flavor?
I can't answer.
Is it the thick oily red sauce used to cook the pork ribs?
Is it the pureness of the stir-fried shrimp?
Or the touch of warmth that slips into the throat in the three-strand silverbait soup?
Maybe neither.
It may be that you have been away from home for many years, and after waking up from a dream in the middle of the night, you suddenly taste that extremely weak fishy smell with the characteristics of Taihu Lake water.
It's you, no matter how far you go, as long as you smell the aroma of bad smell, smell the fragrance of soy sauce, smell the fragrance of plums, you will be stunned for a few seconds.
What you wrote in the comment area is not actually the name of the dish.
You can't get back that little bit of time.
Comments NOTHING