Chapter 44 Pagoda Eel

Pagoda rice field eel is a famous dish in Dameishan Xinhua. It is named Pagoda rice field eel because it looks like rice field eels curled up like pagodas.In the depths of Damei Mountain, the eating habits of the mountain people have their own uniqueness. They eat authentically, eat all kinds of species, eat like hair and drink blood. Pagoda eel is their masterpiece. During the Western Han Dynasty, there were more than 100 kinds of expensive dishes in Changsha's diet, and cooking methods such as stewing, stewing, roasting, frying, frying, and smoked meat were complete.In the depths of Dameishan, the food production is still very primitive, and they live a life of drinking blood.It was not until the Song Shenzong period that Meishan was established in Xinhua and Anhua counties, and advanced cooking methods and Central Plains culture entered Meishan, and eating habits began to change slowly.

Meishan is located in the central part of Hunan Province, with a warm climate, abundant rainfall and superior natural conditions. It is the junction of hills, basins, mountains and forests.Domestic animal husbandry and fishing are well developed, and the diet of Meishan people pays attention to freshness, hot and sour, soft and tender.River delicacies in the stream and aquatic products in Tanaka are very popular among Meishan people. Loach, rice field eel, and dried shrimp are often found on the dining table, so the catering industry calls them cat eaters.However, Meishan people are not able to catch loach and rice field eels all the time during actual production and labor.After they planted in spring, loaches and eels began to jump out of the mud and swim in streams and paddy fields. Farmers would bump into loaches and eels in the farmland during the process of plowing, weeding, fertilizing, spraying, and harvesting. Will miss the opportunity to catch loach and eel.As long as you catch one, you will find a grass vine on the ridge of the field, wear the cheeks of loach or eel, hang it on the farm tools, and take it home after working to satisfy the children's fishy food smell.Housewives will not cook a pot of dishes for one loach or eel, but fry the caught loach and eel on an iron pan, put them in a bowl, store them, and wait for other loaches and eels to cook together.After a few days of work, you can usually get more than ten or even dozens of loaches and eels, and you can cook a bowl of good food and improve your life.

At the turn of spring and summer, the rainy season in Meishan comes, and the loaches and ricefield eels that are diverted from the water gather in the fields and rivers. There are two best seasons for catching eels. One is spring planting, when the mountains and fields start to mobilize, and the farmland is filled with water after winter soaking. The eels feel the water is warm and the weather is dry, so they come out to cool off at night. Farmers light pine or kerosene The lights turn all over the field, this is the mountain people catching eels.One is the harvest season, when the rice is already golden, the farmers drain the water in the farmland and wait for the harvest, and the eels dig holes in the ridges of the fields and hide in them.After harvesting the rice, the children found these small holes and followed the hole with one finger to find the eel escaped from the other end, which was easy to catch and became a reward for the children.If you catch eels like this, you can catch a lot of eels in a day, which is enough for a family to have a good meal.The children will clamor for their mother to cook pagoda eel, and the mother will happily cook the delicacy of pagoda eel.

To make pagoda rice field eel, it is best to choose a medium-sized rice field eel, the size of a little finger, and raise it in salt water for two or three days. Fierce and quick. When making pagoda rice field eel, wash the vegetable pot, add a little water to the pot, put the eel in, cover the pot, and regenerate the fire, the fire will get bigger and bigger, the water in the pot will boil immediately, and will burn dry soon , The eels began to become ants on the hot pot, scurrying around, crackling in the pot.The temperature in the pot continued to rise, and the eel began to roll and jump, and its body twisted into a ball, forming a spiral shape, and the mucus was naturally removed.After simmering for a few more minutes, the eel will take shape and look like a pagoda, so you can uncover the pot and turn off the open flame.

The eels caught by the mountain people are different from those in the city. There are large and small eels, and there is no fixed number.When making pagoda eels, the internal organs are generally removed.The chef takes out the eel from the pot, removes the head and tail, and then removes the internal organs.There is also a simple method, which is to tear open the mouth, and the eel is divided into two parts. The internal organs are naturally exposed, and the internal organs are removed, the head is unscrewed, and the tail is cut off, which becomes the essence of the food.Some big eels in Meishan weigh half a catty each, about two feet long and as thick as a stick, so the bones must be removed and the eel meat should be torn into multiple pieces.After tearing off the internal organs, the back meat must be torn off line by line, leaving only the bones.These are just rough processing, and the cooking has not yet begun.

There are two main ways to make pagoda eel, one is to stir-fry, directly fry the dried eel, the meat tastes tender and smooth.One is frying in oil. The rice field eel is fried dry and fried with auxiliary ingredients. The meat tastes firm and crispy.With the improvement of farmers' living conditions, oil-exploded pagoda eels are becoming more and more popular among farmers, and mountain people have higher and higher requirements for taste. The cook cleans the iron pan and burns half a pot of vegetable oil.Farmers like to use vegetable oil to fry things, and some directly use lard to fry. It is not good to eat when it is cold in winter.After the oil is boiled, gently throw the eel that has been removed from the internal organs into the oil, and you will hear the sound of squeak, and a layer of white mist immediately rises on the oil pan, which is misty, and the mist gradually decreases. Turn the eel with a spoon to prevent it from sticking to the pan and fry it. The eel should be fried thoroughly, crispy, and crispy. When there is little white mist, you can remove the eel and drain the oil.In addition, take a pot, put a little oil, put ginger, garlic cloves, and chili until fragrant, and then stir-fry eel.The skin of the rice field eel burst open, soaked in oil and water, burnt yellow or black, and the shape of the pagoda is elastic and fixed, and it is ready to cook.Put it into the dish, add green onion, red, white, black, green and multi-colored, the fragrance is elegant, making people mouth watering.

Meishan people eat the delicious pagoda eel, and their appetite greatly increases. The spicy pagoda eel is crispy and delicious to bite, and it is full of spicy taste. The salty eel meat is very suitable for rice. The sound of fish, so hot that it is so hot, can be heard endlessly. Some mountain people have simple pictures, and the internal organs are not removed when cooking, and the internal organs are torn off when eating.These people are generally people who like to eat fishy smell, and they are unwilling to let go of a loach or eel.They eat pagoda eel and have their own magic method. They directly grab the eel with their hands, pinch the upper and lower lips of the eel with both hands, tear it apart forcefully, the internal organs directly fall to the ground, put the eel meat back into their rice bowl, and then slowly Come to taste in a gentle manner and eat with relish.People who are a little gentler in the family use chopsticks and mouths instead of hands, clamp the head or neck of the eel with chopsticks, bite the back of the eel with their mouths, and tear the back of the eel with light force, line by line. Tear off to expose the spine of the back.Then use the same method to tear off the abdominal meat, leaving only the spine and the viscera in the abdominal cavity, which looks a bit tragic.

As the saying goes in Meishan, "Eat one eel in summer and one ginseng in winter", so Meishan people especially like to eat rice field eel.Modern medicine shows that the nutritional value of eel is the same as that of ginseng. Every 100 grams of eel meat contains 18 grams of protein, 1.4 grams of fat, and multiple vitamins such as phosphorus, calcium and iron.It is a high-protein and low-fat food, especially suitable for middle-aged and elderly people.Traditional Chinese medicine records: it is sweet in taste, warm in nature, and non-toxic. It enters the liver, meridian, and kidney meridian. It can nourish deficiency and damage, remove rheumatism, dredge meridians, strengthen muscles and bones, and treat tuberculosis, wind-cold-damp arthralgia, postpartum leaching, and diarrhea blood etc.

My grandfather is very fond of eating eel, and he has invented many strange ways to eat it. The most common one is to use the leftover pagoda eel to cook noodles.I have eaten it with my grandfather a few times. The noodles taste very delicious. The more they are cooked, the sweeter they become. When Meishan people leave their hometown and wander in other places, the first dish they miss is their own pagoda eel.I have lived in Changsha for more than ten years. Every time I meet a fellow villager and talk about the food in my hometown, I think of my mother's pagoda eel.In fact, in Changsha, the gourmet capital, there is also Pagoda eel, but its name is different. Changsha people are used to calling it Taijitu.

Changsha people have made some improvements to pagoda eel. In the vegetable market, eels are raised in different sizes, and the price is priced according to size, which provides ideal conditions for making pagoda eel.The rice field eel with the thickness of chopsticks is the ideal material for making Pagoda rice field eel. After two days of feeding with clean water and a few drops of vegetable oil, the eel is scalded to death in boiling water. There is no need to remove the internal organs, and the whole eel can be fried in a frying pan.Turn over while frying, the rice field eel automatically curls up into a compass shape, sprinkle with salt, soy sauce, white wine, shredded ginger, cover the pot and simmer thoroughly, and put it in a plate or sea bowl.When eating, you don't need to tear off the internal organs, because after deep-fried and dried up, the internal organs have no peculiar smell and taste more tenacious.

Tai Chi Diagram is a graphic of Taoist thought theory. Zhou Dunyi, a master of Confucianism in Dao County, Hunan Province, explained Tai Chi Diagram with the concept of Neo Confucianism.Neo Confucian thought took root and developed in Yuelu Academy in Changsha, and penetrated into the folk.People of Neo-Confucianism see that the image of the eel curled up is just like the shape of yang and yin in the picture of Tai Chi, so they named the eel after the picture of Tai Chi, and put it on the banquet of the people of Changsha, which made the food culture more ancient and elegant, and made the people of Changsha more. Food boom. I have traveled all over the country, and there are countless delicacies made with eel, especially in the Jiangnan area, where the way of eating varies from place to place.Well-known eel dishes include Shuangxian roasted eel, raw steamed eel section, fried eel in sauce, fire-roasted eel, fried eel shreds, braised saddle bridge, Tai Chi eel, etc., all of which are very delicious. In Honghe County and Tonghai County of Yunnan Province, there are different methods of pagoda eel. The Bu family, a branch of the Yi nationality in Honghe County, has a very strange delicacy called fire-roasted eel. Cooked with cooked eel, it tastes spicy, dry and fragrant, delicious and refreshing.After harvesting the early rice, the Bu family turned over the fields and built ridges. At night, the eels came out of the mud. Young people of the Bu family tied eel baskets around their waists, held torches in their hands, and caught the eels with bamboo tongs.The rice field eels are caught home, put into the fire of mother and child in the fire pit, burned alive into a circle shape, and then strung on bamboo poles. It becomes the first choice of meat dish during festivals or family visitors. Xingmeng Fishing Village in Tonghai County is inhabited by authentic Mongols, who are descendants of the Yuan Dynasty entering Yunnan more than 700 years ago.When the Mongolian soldiers were stationed at Qutuoguan, they often went to the Qihu Lake in Tonghai to graze horses and mastered the skill of catching ricefield eels. When the Mongolians caught ricefield eels, they did not learn how to eat them from the Han people. They still wrapped them in lotus leaves and smeared them with mud. Throw it into the fire and roast it. After roasting, it is very fragrant. All the eels are curled up into circles, like a Tai Chi pattern. Taiji pattern is the treasure of the town house that can drive away evil spirits among the folks in southern Yunnan. Anyone who suffers from bad luck in life can always think of this pattern, put green pine hair on the top of the door lintel, ask someone to draw a Taiji picture, and write "Jiang Taigong here".Tai Chi eel has a beautiful color and fragrance, and it can also bring good luck to diners and wash away bad luck. Although I have eaten different kinds of eels and the pagoda eel that is close to the ancestor, I still can't forget the pagoda eel in my hometown, and I hope to eat the pagoda eel made by my mother.