Chapter 49 coquettish radish

Among the homely flavors, Zhang Ailing also likes a "radish stewed meat" made by her aunt Zhang Maoyuan.The beauty of this dish is "simmering" and the combination of radish and meat.Simmering is a more delicate cooking method than stewing.Use slow fire for simmering, and medium and low fire for stewing; stewed dishes have less soup, which basically melts into the food, and the taste is more intense. The main purpose is to eat the ingredients themselves, while stewing is more for drinking soup. Simmering is an aristocratic method, and it takes too much time. When I was young, I ate more radish stew that my mother made for me.At that time, there was a shortage of oil and meat, so my mother tried to use pork skin, pork bones, kelp, and radish to stew in a pot to satisfy my greed.

Mother's radish stew has a finishing touch-add tangerine peel.If not available, fresh orange peel can also be used.After stewing the meat, take out the orange peel and don't eat it, but the taste of the meat has been sublimated by it. I remember when I was eating oranges when I was a child, my mother would deliberately keep the peels, put them on the window sill to dry, and save them for use. The delicacy of stewed meat is inseparable from ginger, tangerine peel and dried peppercorns. These "three swordsmen" have the skills of removing fishy smell, removing greasy, and increasing aroma respectively.Sometimes I will also put a few dried chilies, the purpose is not to increase the spiciness, but to remove the fishy smell and enhance the aroma.

Adding tangerine peel when stewing meat has not been valued by many people at present.My practical experience is that when stewing meat, especially pig, beef, and mutton, adding a little tangerine peel will have unexpected effects. Traditional Chinese medicine believes that tangerine peel is bitter in taste and warm in nature, and has the effect of regulating qi and invigorating the spleen.Modern nutrition has also confirmed that orange peel is rich in vitamin C and B, which is of great benefit to the human body. How to control the amount of stewed meat and tangerine peel?For two or three catties of meat, one orange peel is enough.

Radish stew, radish is also one of the protagonists.It is best to use frosted radishes for the stewed radishes, which have a lot of water, are sweet and crunchy.I once made a comparison with the radish stew before and after the frost, and the taste is really much worse. Radishes can be stewed or simmered with almost any meat, making them a popular meat lover.The refreshing, crunchy and sweet radish can comfort each other with the meat, establishing a lover-like rapport and adding flavor to each other. But radish's favorite husband is mutton, which can make radish more coquettish and provocative.I have eaten stewed mutton with radish many times with my friends. In the end, the radish is often eaten up, and there is still a lot of mutton left, which shows how attractive the radish moistened by the mutton is.

If radish is a little lover, it belongs to the kind that rarely annoys meaty men: very refreshing and dignified, pleasant but not clingy, standing next to fleshy men has its own special charm. The relationship between radish and meat reminds me of Zhang Ailing and Hu Lancheng, of course when they were in love.At that time, Zhang was like an innocent radish, nestled in Hu Lancheng's arms: crisp and sweet when eaten raw, soft and sweet when eaten cooked.