Chapter 23 Taste of Jixi

Although Hu Shi left his hometown very early, no matter where he went, he never forgot the hometown food of Jixi, Huizhou. The more famous dishes in Huizhou cuisine include hairy tofu, wrinkled pumpkin buds, fine sand meat, Huizhou meatballs, Huizhou Yipin pot, etc.Among them, edamame is a special product in Jixi and Xiuning, and it is also Hu Shi's favorite. After the tofu is fermented, it will grow about an inch of white fluff (mycelia), hence the name hairy tofu.A famous dish made with edamame is called tiger skin edamame. Its preparation method is very simple: cut each piece of edamame into three small pieces.Put the frying pan on a high heat, add rapeseed oil, and heat until it is 70% hot.Put the edamame into the oil, fry both sides until golden, and when the surface is wrinkled, add diced green onion, minced ginger, monosodium glutamate, white sugar, refined salt, meat broth, soy sauce, simmer for two minutes and serve. It is best served on the table Served with a dish of chilli sauce.This dish is delicious and appetizing.Because of its yellow color and tiger skin stripes, it is called tiger skin hairy tofu.

In fact, frying edamame tofu on both sides until it turns yellow and frying twice-cooked pork in Sichuan cuisine will also have an unexpected effect, because the taste of edamame tofu is much thicker than that of ordinary tofu. Huizhou Yipinguo is a famous dish in Jixi, and it is also a special dish of the Hu family for hospitality. Liang Shiqiu visited Hu Shi's home for the first time, and Hu Shi's wife Jiang Dongxiu cooked for him. Huizhou Yipin Guo was cooked for him.Hu Shi said to Liang Shiqiu, you are Jixi's son-in-law, of course we must entertain you with Jixi's famous dishes.When the meal was ready, Liang Shiqiu saw an iron pot being brought to the table, and the tangy aroma made him salivate.Liang Shiqiu ate it layer by layer from top to bottom.The top layer is cattail leaves, the second layer is fried duck pieces, the third layer is marinated chicken pieces, the fourth layer is egg dumplings, the fifth layer is oily tofu, and the sixth layer is large slices of half-fat and half-lean pork , the bottom layer is bamboo shoots, a specialty of Huizhou.The taste of the whole dish is progressive, plump, smooth, crisp, tender and palatable.Liang Shiqiu was full of praise after eating, and described in the article: "A large iron pot with a diameter of two or three feet was served hot, and the inside was still boiling. One layer of chicken, one layer of duck, one layer of meat, and one layer of fried tofu. It is decorated with some egg dumplings, radishes and green vegetables, and it tastes great."

Cai Yuanpei, the president of Peking University, also ate Yipinguo at Hu's house.But Yipinguo is not Cai Yuanpei's favorite. He likes to eat Dongpo pork made by Jiang Dongxiu in Hu's house.Cai Yuanpei himself is well versed in the way of gourmet food. He once introduced the method of Babao Duck to foreign friends.He can cook this dish himself, and it is said that he cooked it himself at Hu Shi's house. The recipe of Huizhou Yipinguo reminds me of another representative dish of Anhui: Li Hongzhang Chowder.This dish is made of sea cucumber, fish maw, squid, ham, magnolia slices, yuba, pigeon eggs, pork belly, chicken, scallops, etc., neatly stacked in a large bowl and steamed in a steamer.Of course, this dish is much more high-end than Yipin Guo. It is said that Li Hongzhang used this dish to entertain the American envoy when he visited the United States, and it has been famous overseas since then.

Speaking of pot dishes, there is a little story: I went to Huayuan County, Xiangxi, Hunan more than ten years ago. When I passed a small town, I ate a kind of pot dishes with my friends in a small shop on the side of the road.In the store, an iron pot is first placed on the charcoal stove on the table. After the stir-fried dishes ordered by the guests are served, they will be poured into the heated iron pot immediately, and stacked on top of each other. From the top to the bottom, the taste is very wonderful, and the more you eat, the more delicious it is.Because there is actually another cooking procedure here.

The first layer of dishes I wanted was stir-fried twice-cooked pork with sharp peppers, then fried kidneys (stir-fried with pickled peppers), the third layer was small fried chicken, the fourth layer was fried fragrant dried, and the fifth layer was fried green bamboo shoots with fungus.Why does this place have this way of eating?I asked the locals, and the answer was that because the local area is an alpine mountain area, the stir-fried dishes will be cold soon after serving, so this way of eating was invented.This way of eating inspired me a lot. After I got home, I prepared it to entertain friends in the same way, and the effect was very good.

There are also some representative dishes in Anhui, such as the sandy horseshoe soft-shelled turtle, which is stewed with ham and soft-shelled turtle. Anhui cuisine consists of Yanjiang cuisine, Yanhuai cuisine and Huizhou cuisine.Cuisine along the Yangtze River is represented by the local dishes of Wuhu and Anqing, and later spread to Hefei, where it is good at cooking seafood and poultry.Cuisine along the Huaihe River consists of dishes with local flavors in Bengbu, Suxian, Fuyang and other places.The Huizhou cuisine in southern Anhui is the representative of Anhui cuisine, and it comes from Shexian County under the Huangshan Mountain.Since Tunxi Town on the banks of the Xin'an River is famous for tea, Hui ink and other local specialties, and is a local commercial center, Anhui cuisine has also been transferred to Tunxi.

Huizhou is located in a mountainous area, and people live in poverty, so that Huizhou dishes are heavy in oil, so Hu Shi liked greasy taste all his life.It is said that when Hu Shi took Liang Shiqiu to eat at Hui cuisine restaurants, he always told the shopkeeper when he entered the door: "Guys from Huizhou, please work hard." Hu Shi also likes to eat fatty meat.It is said that every time the colleagues of "Independent Review" have a meal, the colleagues at the meeting will leave the fat to Hu Shi, so that he can eat to his heart's content. Another Huizhou famous dish, stinky mandarin fish, is also Hu Shi's favorite.This dish is also called Tunxi stinky mandarin fish.Tunxi was originally an unnamed town at the foot of Huangshan Mountain. After 1840, Shanghai became my country’s foreign trade port. The special products in Anhui’s mountainous areas were originally shipped from Jiangxi, and then they were exported from Xin’an River to Hangzhou to Shanghai.Tunxi became the commodity distribution center of the province.Every year after the Double Ninth Festival, the local mandarin fish will be picked up for sale in Tunxi.Since it takes six or seven days to travel from the place of production to Tunxi, in order to prevent the mandarin fish from deteriorating, some processing must be done before departure.Generally, the mandarin fish is put into a wooden barrel, and a layer of mandarin fish is sprinkled with a layer of light salt water. When staying on the way, the mandarin fish is turned over again. In this way, when it is transported to Tunxi, the mandarin fish will still have red cheeks and bright eyes, but it will be wet. There was a strange smell.After being cooked in hot oil by the chef, this kind of mandarin fish tastes very delicious, so Tunxi stinky mandarin fish became famous.This dish has a history of more than one hundred years.

In 2008, the poet Li Yawei sent chefs from the Xiangji Kitchen restaurant in Chengdu to learn how to cook stinky mandarin fish at the Huangshan Restaurant owned by Anhui poet Zhou Qiang.Later when I went to Chengdu, Li Yawei entertained me at Xiangji Kitchen. The first dish was stinky mandarin fish.This dish is tender and delicious, with a slight smell. The beauty is beyond words.