Chapter 10 I just want a bowl of hot soup

In the Wei and Jin Dynasties, people were romantic. Below Cao Cao, the seven sages of the bamboo forest in Jian'an were all romantic and suave.There is no shortage of wine, but less stuttering.The Xiongnu offered Cao Cao a box of crisps, and Yang Xiu led his generals to eat them. At the end, he played Cao Cao with a word game of "one bite of crisps per person".Of course, it can also be seen that even the halva was cherished at that time.In the Wei and Jin Dynasties, noodles were called soup cakes, and they were probably boiled whole noodles.Cao Pi suspected that He Yan's face was pale with powder, so he coaxed He Yan to eat it with soup cakes to see the effect of his sweating. It can be seen that this food may not be delicious, but it is indeed steaming and very useful.

It is said that my country's food civilization is the best in the world, which is true.The eight major cuisines of our country, the full banquet of Manchu and Han Dynasty, and small dishes, are full of atmosphere.Compared with the monotonous Westerners who only cook but don't cook, it's a fairy day.Yuan Meili talked about shark fin and sea cucumber in detail, and Li Yu talked about wine, fish, tea and meat in "Idle Love Occasionally", and the knowledge is gone.It's just that scholar-bureaucrats are scholar-officials after all, and ordinary people may not be able to taste whether the shark's fin is good or not, and whether the sea cucumber has a strong tooth juice.For the poor old people here, when discussing whether a bowl of soup is good or not, there is only one standard: whether the soup is thick or not.

The older generation is nostalgic, and often teaches us when we eat: when drinking soup, we should slip to the side and sink to the bottom, and pick up slowly.People like me who are afraid of fishbone often wonder when drinking fish soup: it’s too late to hide the fish, why are you still fishing slowly at the bottom?At that time, I hadn’t been hungry yet. I went out a lot, walked around, and after a few hungry meals, I understood.People of the older generation have their own philosophy. When they want to be full and warm, they count on a bowl of hot soup. There are vegetables and meat in the soup, and the thick juice is boiled out to fill their stomachs with salty taste.

It is rumored that some time-honored brands in the south have a pot of soup that can last for a hundred years, and they burn it day and night to cook, just to sell "this soup is ready for home".The time is long and the taste is extremely thick.I don’t know how many big ingredients are melted, and I don’t know how many old soups, which are priceless treasures, such as the century-old sauce from the lo-mei shop, the century-old wine from the cellar of the restaurant, the kimchi jars that have been passed down for generations in central Sichuan, the cigars or Pu-erh that have been boring for half a lifetime. generally.That soup is for connoisseurs.An expert can smell the quality of the soup, how much ingredients are used, and the degree of heat.It's like a master architect looking at a house, seeing the style at a glance, hanging the birdcage casually, and walking in the courtyard.However, there are too many poor people in the world, what they want is not carved beams and painted buildings, resplendent and magnificent, but tens of thousands of thatched huts, seeking a place of shelter.As ordinary people of my generation, it is the right way to rush to a place in winter to drink a bowl of soup and eat a few pieces of meat to warm up.Soup is such a thing: it is not considered a meal, but it can be frugal or extravagant. It is the most effective way to relieve cold and hunger, so it should be thick.Not to mention the hot soup, even the soup for Qushu should be thick.There are different ways to make sour plum soup in old Beijing, but the general spirit remains the same: smoked sour plums—dark plums—boil in water, add rock sugar as needed, cool and filter, and finally come out to be “thick”.

At the end of October, the wind suddenly picked up, kicking away the remaining summer heat, and the autumn coolness suddenly stopped.After getting cold, I found that I was particularly hungry.The cakes and snacks stored in the room are eaten into the stomach, like a mud cow entering the sea, I am afraid that the stomach will become a bottomless pit.When I go out to walk the streets, bakeries, deli shops, pizza shops, buffets and the like don’t whet my appetite, but when I go to places like Malatang and ramen restaurants, I can’t walk. I have to go in and eat hot and spicy soup. order something.The thick and rich soup boiled, burning the tongue and mouth in mouthfuls, swallowing it with a gulp, and the stomach suddenly warmed up, and the back felt itchy with comfort.That's more than enough to enjoy.

People who are away from home especially love bowls of soup.In order to write "Liao Zhai", Pu Songling cooked mung bean soup and served it to people on the side of the road. Using the material of "blackmail" stories, it can be seen that a bowl of soup is really a treasure dropped from the sky to passers-by.When I was young, I went to the countryside to accompany my grandparents. Occasionally, I would see foreigners who couldn’t meet relatives and didn’t know the nearby hotels and restaurants.The country people are shy and just ask if they can have a bowl of soup.Grandma served a thick bowl of vegetable, tofu and shredded pork soup, and tears filled the eyes on the other side.My grandma said that in earlier seasons, a bowl of soup in winter could save lives.

The meaning of soup is especially obvious in winter.There are many stories like this in the past dynasties in China: It is snowing heavily outside, and the owner sits at home, eating a bowl of thick and thick soup.Hearing someone knocking on the door, he said loudly: "I'm hungry and cold, please drink a bowl of soup!" Stories such as saving a thousand gold are low-probability legends, and the poor and the poor are in line with the vast majority of examples.The host opened the door, the guest broke in, splashed snow on the bamboo hat, and the host brought a bowl of hot soup.Before drinking it, the warmth of caring for the old and the poor rose together with the white steam, saving lives and warming people's hearts.This is a typical Chinese civilian legend: for those who walk alone in the cold night, hungry and cold but helpless, the most humane and most practical thing is nothing more than a bowl of hot soup to drink.