Chapter 10 Dairy snacks in the old capital

Speaking of Peking cheese, people who are in their early forties must have grown up in Peking, so they may be able to know what Peking cheese tastes like and what it is like.If a young man in his forties was born in Beiping, he probably has no impression of cheese at all, and he has never even heard it mentioned. Beiping cheese is a kind of cold drink and sweet food that Manchurians eat every day.The raw materials used to make cheese are mainly pure milk without water, plus an appropriate amount of fermented rice and sugar, and the bowls are roasted over charcoal fire, and to a certain extent, they are condensed with ice.It is really smooth as fat, sweet in the mouth, not only has a cold fragrance, but also melts the heart and spleen. Drinking a bowl after a meal can really dissolve food and relieve greasy, and it is also a supreme product for sobering up.

In the early years of the Republic of China, there were no more than a dozen cheese shops in Beiping and outside the city. In the early years, Xiangleixuan in Xihuamen, Erheyi in Ganshiqiao, and Erhexuan in West Chang'an Avenue were the most responsible. The famous cheese shop, later, because the Dashilan area outside Qianmen became more and more prosperous day by day, and more and more opera restaurants opened, so a cheese shop opened in Menjia Hutong.In the ten years of the Republic of China, because Wangfujing Street was close to Dongjiaomin Lane and Huayang, Dong'an Market became a shopping center in Northeast City. Following Dong'an Market, a store called Fengsheng Gong opened in Lizheng Street.Because the shopkeeper’s mind is relatively new, he invited a chef who used to be an expert in supplying dairy snacks in the inner court of the Qing Dynasty. After the tour guides boasted to tourists from all over the world, Fengsheng Gong Cheese really made a splash.

If the cheese in the cheese shop cannot be sold out on the same day and there is some leftover, it must not be saved until the next day, because there was no freezer at that time, and if the cheese was left overnight, not only the cheese would be diarrhea, but the taste would also be rancid.Therefore, the cheese that cannot be sold on the same day must be baked and smelted into dried cheese that night to sell. The shape and color of the baked dried cheese are like sticky walnuts, and they are sold in terms of weight.Since dried cheese is concentrated cheese, it can be weighed but not counted. It seems that the price is quite expensive. A shop can't produce a catty or two of dried cheese a day.There are customers who specialize in buying dried cheese, and most of them ask the cheese shop to pack it into a box and take it to other places to give away to relatives and friends. If they buy it for themselves as snacks, they will only buy three or four taels at most, otherwise they will not be able to eat it for a week. , probably all melted.Isn't the dried cheese in general cheese shops not stored?But Mr. Fengsheng is really good at it. The dried cheese baked by his family is taken to Nanjing and Shanghai for a month. There is no problem at all, and it is absolutely not sticky or melted.

During the period of the Beiyang government, Mrs. Godley, the Spanish minister stationed in Beiping Dongjiaomin Lane, admired the cheese of Fengsheng the most. She said that eating bread with cheese was more delicious than any noble cheese in Holland.Later, when the minister resigned and returned to China, the wife of the minister always asked Mr. Fengsheng to send a few catties of cheese to Spain for Christmas every year. According to her, Chinese cheese is the highest-grade Chinese toffee that does not stick to the teeth. It really describes it a little bit. Not bad. In addition to selling cheese, Fengsheng also sells milk rolls and milk pastries.Milk rolls are made of milk and rolled with haw jelly, or stuffed with black, white sesame seeds and white sugar.Rolling the hawthorn cake while rolling the sesame stuffing is called mandarin stuffing. You hear how elegant the name is.The snow-white small porcelain plate is three inches long, white on the outside and red on the inside, and the milk roll is as plump as fat, not to mention eating, just looking at it makes people salivate.The milk pastry has sesame and white sugar fillings, as well as jujube paste fillings.Because this is a delicate snack, bean paste stuffing cannot be served on the table.The milk pastry is put into the mold with a thicker milk skin, wrapped with stuffing and then knocked out. There are squares, rounds, plum blossoms, and concentricity. If you go to the cheese shop to drink cheese, as long as the clerk rolls the milk At the upper end of the milk pastry, no one wants to pick up two pieces to taste it.

There is also a creamy snack, which is called "milk black" in Manchurian, and it is the best sweet in Manchuria.Each piece of milk black is the size of a chess piece, and it is divided into three colors: milk yellow, water red, and light blue. It is forked with a small silver fork and delivered to the mouth. When the mouth is squeezed with the tongue, it will melt into a thick frankincense slurry. Well, the raw materials used are probably nothing more than milk and cream. I think all the fellows from the inland who have lived in Peiping will probably have an indescribable feeling when they mention Peking dim sum, like a faint homesickness.But if you take a closer look, it's not always the case.Because in Taiwan now, although the provinces and counties in the mainland have everything to eat and drink, but if you are tired of ice cream and want to drink a bowl of cheese and a piece of milk pastry, it can be said to be extremely difficult.

In the past ten years or so, there was an ice drink shop on Zhonghua Road in Taipei. It once sold cheese for two days. When it tasted like cheese, it was almost like almond tofu, and it was not like cheese.One year during the Dragon Boat Festival, the owner of Dashuigou Town in Kaohsiung had a sudden whim and made a few bowls of cheese for his own enjoyment. By chance, the author went to eat pie, and he kindly gave me two bowls for tasting.Compared with the cheese on Zhonghua Road, it is indeed superior. I have been in Taiwan for more than 20 years, and I have finally eaten cheese.