Chapter 35 Aunt Chen's two or three dishes

Aunt Chen is my mother, an excitable and calm housewife. When I went home during the Chinese New Year, I didn't help with housework at all, and I was actually a little worried.One day, I went to the kitchen to see what was delicious. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a pot of rice washing water. I wanted to say that an unfilial daughter should do the little things within her power, so she picked it up and poured it into the toilet, thinking triumphantly, "Whatever? It can help a little too."After a while, Aunt Chen said excitedly: "Something strange happened, all the pork rib soup I cooked in the afternoon disappeared!"

When she was calm, Aunt Chen was domineering.My mother often forgets to bring her wallet when she goes out to buy vegetables, but she can buy a lot of vegetables on credit every time—this is the strength, which shows that her title of "the first lady of the vegetable market" is not covered.One year on New Year's Eve, as soon as she came back from shopping for groceries, she calmly rummaged through the boxes.I said, "Mom, what are you looking for?" She said, "I went to the chicken seller just now, but he wasn't there, so I just took a chicken and left. I'm looking for his phone number now. "Later, I found Mr. Chicken Seller's card (the vegetable market industry also needs to print business cards this year), and the chicken seller said that he hadn't noticed that a chicken was missing, and he gave our family New Year's greetings... The mother who made a decisive decision took it with bare hands. A chicken came home, so that the family's New Year's Eve dinner was not hindered at all. What kind of plot is this, I really knelt down.

Aunt Chen is a typical Chaozhou housewife, hard-working, dexterous and capable, in line with all the imagination of Chaozhou women in the market, and more than that.Cooking and cooking, knitting sweaters, stepping on the sewing machine, festival sacrifices, even repairing faucets, connecting fuses, carrying boxes and painting walls... There is nothing she can't do.When I was young, my mother was everything to me, and my relationship with my father was not very good, so my mother was even more my heaven and my place. Being with her meant that everything could be resolved.Sometimes when I think of my mother's hard work these years, I will understand where my worrying personality of wanting to control everything in my hands today comes from.But a woman like Aunt Chen, who is soft on the outside and strong on the inside, did not ignore the most important cooking skills because she is talented in other areas of life. She cooks well.I think the proudest moment in my life is when someone says, "I heard that there are many delicacies in Chaozhou", I smile badly and say innocently, "I think my mother cooks the best food."

You can take this as an unscientific food judging standard, but this does not prevent you from knowing about my childhood rice bowl. Aunt Chen's best dish is boiled soup.Chao-style boiling soup is completely different from Cantonese-style Laohuo soup. For housewives, the focus of boiling soup is on the freshness of raw materials rather than ingredients or heat.My mother used to be a cashier at the power company, and it didn't take long for me to make a pot of boiling soup when I got home in the evening, so that I could eat right away when I got home from get out of class.A pot of clear water, a little sliced ​​meat, and a handful of vegetables can make a delicious bowl of hot soup.Sometimes I buy slices of grass carp belly, add sour pickles, quickly simmer in boiling water, add some minced galangal and winter vegetables, sprinkle with white pepper, and it has another flavor.

Occasionally, when there is time, Aunt Chen will make "Diaoguaku", which is to use a slightly thick cucumber to peel, cut into short rollers, hollow out the middle, and peel off the skin of the shrimp by hand. Chop it into a puree with lean meat and stuff it into the center of the cucumber.If the restaurant outside makes this dish, it will always be watertight. The cucumber and the shrimp meat in the middle will not dare to go half a step beyond the Leichi, and they will be served neatly and neatly.The homemade ones are not so particular about the scene. My mother directly threw the "Diaoguaku" into the soup to cook, and actually boiled a pot of soup that looked like Sunkist orange juice, and finally sprinkled green onions. It has a good color and fragrance, and it tastes like seafood mixed with meat and a little cucumber flavor. I can drink three or four bowls casually.

I want to know Chaoshan’s home-cooked food, but I have never eaten spring mother’s old duck bamboo shoot soup. I can only review your life with sympathetic eyes.The big bamboo shoots that start to grow in March and April appear in bamboo baskets with the color of the earth, and the peasant women and farmers bring spring into the streets and alleys in this way.Buy a tender bamboo shoot, peel off the shell at home, and cut it into pieces with a hob. Under my strong suggestion, Aunt Chen will keep the most delicate part of the bamboo shoot, which she pinches off by herself. She is full of affection, and probably only has such patience with her own daughter.Bamboo shoots are boiled in boiling water, old ducks (sometimes ribs can also be used), lean pork meat with a strong flavor, sometimes an extra piece of ham or bacon is added, and boiled in clear water like this, there is no mystery Craftsmanship, the last pot of bamboo shoot soup is so elegant that it can be made into a poem in seven steps. It is very sweet without adding any ingredients, and all it needs is a little salt.

This soup should be attributed to the bamboo shoots produced in the mountainous areas in the suburbs of Chaozhou. The spring bamboo shoots unearthed after the "Grain Rain" are mostly hemp bamboo shoots. They are crispy and tender in the mouth, and they have a fleshy feeling. The plant fibers are soft and hard, and the aroma of bamboo shoots It is different, it is not aggressive, and it is even difficult to describe, but after mixing with the aroma of meat, it has a particularly delicious taste, which is a kind of joy of looking far away from the rivers and lakes and singing the praises of the country.Old people like to say that "bamboo shoots will reverse old diseases" (bamboo shoots are difficult to digest and can easily cause old stomach problems). Fortunately, I have a good appetite since I was a child, and I can always eat as long as I ask.

In winter, Aunt Chen would also make egg dumpling soup for me who had just cycled home and had cold hands and feet.She uses shredded ginger to fry poached eggs, and while the frying pan is still at high temperature, she quickly pours in a spoonful of water, adds brown sugar into it, and gets a steaming bowl of sugar-watered eggs.Later, I tried to make it myself. It turns out that it is so difficult to control the oil of fried eggs. The oil must be used just right so that the soup that comes out of the "chi-cha" will not be too oily. If the heat is well controlled, the soup will Only then can it be white and pleasant like milk.

In terms of cooking, just like every housewife's simple and delicious craftsmanship, Aunt Chen has been making some fixed combinations since I was a child, and rarely innovates, so it left a deep impression on me.For example, stir-fried eel is the best way to cook vegetables, fried pork belly is the best choice for sauerkraut, chicken thighs are best fried with sand tea sauce, beef must be paired with Chinese cabbage, stir-fried fresh squid with leeks are the best...these are all ordinary works , the advantage is that the oil and materials are the best that can be bought at home. As for the skills and so on, I really can't brag about it in front of gourmets.

However, I don’t want others to recognize this feeling. If I were asked to explain why I think it’s delicious, I might still slander, “It’s so strange, who wants to tell you this?” I think this is love. Hey mom, I love you so much.