Reunion banquet in the mountain city fireworks: Chongqing people’s Mid-Autumn Festival family banquet
In Chongqing, the taste of the Mid-Autumn Festival is not only the sweet mooncakes, but also the pot of Jianghu vegetables boiling with red oil, and the aroma of rice noodles and meat emanating from the steamer.
This is a taste ritual that belongs to the family. Every dish is like a mark with regional cultural characteristics, deeply imprinted in the memory of the people in the mountain city.
The prelude to a banquet is often a dish of spicy red-oiled beef slices .
High-quality beef tongue, tripe and beef are blanched in cold water and sliced as thin as cicada wings by skilled hands, so thin that they are almost transparent to light.
This knife skill is just like the old saying goes. The lung slices need to be sliced thin and the sauce needs to be fragrant. Just like a family living together, it must be delicate and delicate to be delicious. The finishing touch is the red oil carefully boiled with Shizhu red pepper. It is mixed according to the golden ratio of three parts red oil, one part pepper oil, two parts soy sauce, and half part white sugar. It is wrapped with minced garlic and ginger, and then poured on the meat slices.
The moment it enters the mouth, the first thing that blooms is the fat aroma and mellow feeling of the red oil, followed closely by the iconic Sichuan peppercorn oil with a numb and refreshing aftertaste, which perfectly sets off the elasticity of the beef tongue and the crispness of the tripe.
Next on the table was a hearty plate of Gele Mountain Spicy Chicken .
Chop local chicken, marinate it, and fry it in 60% hot oil until golden and crispy.
Then heat up a hot pot again, use Jiangjin green peppercorns as a starter, and add a large amount of dried chili pepper segments to explode the burnt aroma that can penetrate the roof. Quickly stir the chicken pieces evenly to fully mix them.
The whole red and bright plate, piled with red chili peppers, hides the crispy outer layer and tender inner diced chicken. It is so numb that you can get addicted to it, and it is so spicy that you can enjoy the spicy pleasure. Children always like to eat it. Searching for sesame seeds that are crispy and fragrant, the adults will smile and say: "Slow down, there is the moon, the symbol of the mountain city, hidden in this spicy chicken. You have to taste it slowly."
If spicy chicken is the passion of Shancheng, then Maoxuewang is the passion of Yuzhong Wharf.
A piece of authentic Chongqing Laozao hot pot base melts in the hot oil and turns red in an instant.
In order, add the tender duck blood, then the crispy tripe, then the yellow throat, and the flavor-absorbing lunch meat, supplemented by bean sprouts and enoki mushrooms. In just three minutes, a pot of piping hot "stew" is ready.
When it was brought to the table, it was full of red oil and still bubbling. The duck blood was so tender that it started to tremble when I picked it with chopsticks. When the tripe was put into my mouth, I could clearly feel the crispy feeling between my teeth and my mouth.
Often, my mother would give grandma the most tender duck blood. In the steaming steam, every face would be flushed by the warmth.
Amidst the spiciness, a few mellow and mild dishes are the highlight of the family dinner.
The roasted pork ribs with chestnuts are a gift from the mountains. The ribs are first stir-fried with rock sugar until they become sugar-colored, and then stewed until they are soft and fall off the bones. The chestnuts from the Qijiang Mountains become pink, glutinous, and sweet after being stewed in the gravy for more than 20 minutes. Zi gnawed on the ribs and said, "It's more delicious than moon cakes." The old man responded with a smile: "This chestnut tastes like the moon in the mountains. Eating it will make the reunion last longer." And the cage of steamed pork with rice flour is a memory passed down by the elders of Banan .
Pork belly slices are wrapped in five-spice steamed pork powder, oil-absorbing potato chunks are placed underneath, and steamed slowly in a pot.
When it comes out of the cage, the meat is oily in color, the rice noodles are spicy and salty, fat but not greasy.
When my father looks at this dish, he always thinks of his childhood: "It still tastes the same, it hasn't changed."
Of course, a sumptuous Mid-Autumn Festival banquet is indispensable with refreshing dishes.
A sour radish and old duck soup is a reflection of my mother’s craftsmanship.
The pickled radish brewed in-house in an earthen pottery jar is slowly stewed in a clay pot for two hours together with Dazu's old duck.
The soup is clear and sour, which just soothes the taste buds activated by spicy food.
The dish called Braised Rapeseed with Mushrooms was given a beautiful meaning by my grandma: the rapeseed must be cooked whole, which is like a family in a neat state.
After a full meal, two desserts brought the feast to an end.
The brown sugar glutinous rice cake is crispy on the outside and drizzled with thick syrup, which is the aroma of rice passed down from generation to generation.
What the children are looking forward to most is the snowskin mooncakes made by themselves, with sweet black sesame fillings wrapped in springy outer shells. Although they are only eaten by the new generation, they still carry the same feeling of reunion when they are homemade.
This table of dishes is the geographical and taste coordinates of Chongqing .
From the chili peppers in Shizhu to the peppercorns in Jiangjin; from the chestnuts in Qijiang to the kimchi jar in Banan.
They are not just food, but also the character of the mountain city. They are cultural symbols woven together by the river breeze and the smoke of fireworks.
During the Mid-Autumn Festival, under the full moon hanging high in the sky, the family sat together, and when they picked up the chopsticks, they tasted the most real, authentic, and hot affection in this land.
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