Chapter 20 Chengdu braised duck feet

Walking in the streets and alleys of Chengdu, if you pay a little attention, you can see many lo-mei shops with strange signs. Most of them use duck parts to attract customers. The most common duck feet are duck feet, which are called duck feet in Chengdu. I live in Changsha, which is known as the city of delicious foods by outsiders. Although the common people are greedy, there are not so many lo-mei shops.I have been traveling in Chengdu and its surrounding cities for a long time, so I know a little about Sichuan cuisine.The characteristic of Sichuan cuisine is that there are many cold dishes (stewed dishes), and any meat, offal, and miscellaneous items can be stewed into cold dishes.Sichuan cuisine is divided into three types: stir-fried dishes, hot pot, and cold-tasting cups. Cold-tasting cups are mostly cold dishes and casual delicacies for drinking.

Passing by lo-mei shops, I often see adults and children eating duck feet with relish, but I feel that there is nothing to eat.The last time I went back to my mother-in-law’s house with my wife for the holiday, the eve of my return to Hunan, my wife accompanied me to buy snacks for the train. She suggested buying some flippers to eat on the train, and I didn’t refuse. As the saying goes: eat in Sichuan, taste in Chengdu.Chengdu people pay equal attention to both rigidity and softness when it comes to spiciness, which is both spicy and fragrant, spicy in the fragrance, fragrant in the spicy, and numbness is indispensable.Chengdu Plain, located in western Sichuan, is rich in products and has a warm climate.Pengzhou on the outskirts of Chengdu has a long tradition of raising ducks and produces a lot of ducklings. Jiuchi Town is the distribution center.Pengzhou Zai Duck is tender and sweet, and is very popular among Chengdu people.

The people in Chengdu are delicious, and there is a song "Zhu Zhi Ci": Where do you go when the sun is oblique and the opera is scattered, and the banquet and music live together in Liuhe.Three big money to buy good flowers, cutting cakes and ghost legs to make a fuss.Qingxing had a bowl of sweet porridge, only vegetable soup and noodle tea.Fried cake ears in cold cakes, and fried cakes in the hanging oven.I just bought the fork, and it's hard noodles called pastry.The siu mai wonton is full of slams, and the glutinous rice balls are newly added with hanging powder.It is very well said, and I was deeply touched by the days in Chengdu.

Chengdu people eat ducklings in over a hundred ways. There are dozens of duck heads, duck wings, duck necks, duck tongues, duck livers, etc. I have tasted more than ten kinds of ducklings. Never tried the feet. We passed by several lo-mei shops, looking for traces of duck feet. The quantity is not much, and the price varies greatly.I am very puzzled, the same duck feet are all stewed, why the price difference is so big?I carefully observed the color of the duck feet, and then I realized that the price of the bright color is higher, and the price of the dark gray color is slightly lower.When I was having a hard time choosing which one to choose, my wife suggested that I buy a few of each, so that I could know the taste once I ate it.I think her method is very good, so I bought half a catty of it.

Braised duck feet are mainly boiled with red brine. The red brine for making stewed duck feet needs white wine, salt, rock sugar, green onions, ginger, fennel seeds, cinnamon, licorice, pepper, fragrant leaves, cloves, grass fruit, soy sauce, monosodium glutamate and other seasonings. juice.Remove the foam from the boiled duck feet, remove it and put it in red marinade on high heat and continue to cook until the duck feet can be chewed, then remove it, rub with sesame oil and put it on a plate. It can be eaten or served as an appetizer. Eat while gossiping.The duck foot board just out of the pan is golden in color, delicious and fragrant, and exudes a salty fragrance.

When we got home, we opened the plastic bag, and the stewed duck feet exuded a tempting aroma of stewed duck feet. I couldn't help but pick up one and chew it, it was salty and a little tough.Duck feet are different from marinated chicken feet, the surface is no longer sticky to the mouth, the hamstrings on the calf are crispy, and there is a crisp sound when biting, and you can feel the friction and clucking between the teeth; the meat between the duck webs and duck feet is delicate , fresh, sweet and delicious, with a long aftertaste; the small bones and meat of duck feet are easy to remove, but some of the tendons still stick to the bones. It is a pity that it is not clean.My wife saw that I was eating very seriously, and she couldn't help but grabbed one and started to chew.I gnawed through one quickly, and my wife asked me to try duck foot boards from other lo mei stores.I ate one of each and was totally convinced of their prices: the lighter the color, it looked bright and golden, the crisper the tendons of the calf, the purer the taste, and the chewier it was; the darker the color, it looked dark brown, The stronger the taste of soy sauce and lo-mei, the less crunchy and chewy it tastes, and instead waxy and salty taste, which loses the taste of gnawing bones.I suddenly remembered a sentence that a friend once said to me about gnawing duck feet: "Eating duck feet on the street, I can't stop eating every time, and the bones of the duck are chewed to pieces. The more you chew, the more delicious it is."

Seeing that I was so forgetful about eating, my wife asked me to compare the duck miscellaneous pieces eaten in various places.I carefully recalled the duck miscellaneous pieces I ate in various places in recent years, such as duck racks in Changsha and duck necks in Wuhan.I think the biggest difference is that each place uses different ingredients to remove the smell of duck. Chengdu people use peppercorns to make duck feet, Changsha people use cinnamon and star anise to make duck bones, and Wuhan people use mustard for duck necks. Same effect - less taint. The next day, we went to the expensive lo-mei shop to buy a pound of duck feet and took it on the train to eat.