Chapter 52 fall in love with rotten bean dregs

Zhang Ailing also likes fried bean dregs: "Tofu dregs, poured with the remaining braised pork broth and fried, it is a good dish. It can be seen that it is sensitive to absorbing the taste of meat; it is piled up into tiny balls, and it is more crumbled than bean puree." Meat." Okara is really not a high-end food material, and farmers often use it to feed pigs.The reputation of bean dregs is not good—people complain that the quality of the project is not up to standard and call it "tofu dregs"; even when they look down on a person, there is a saying: "A flower on the outside, but bean curd dregs inside".

But okara is actually a good thing, one of my most memorable childhood delicacies.My mother makes vegetable tofu, soak the beans, push them out with a small stone mill, mix them with dregs and soy milk, and then boil them. After boiling, chop the vegetables into fine pieces and cook them together. Add some brine, or kimchi water, let the bean dregs and soy milk be eaten together, and then dipped in some roasted peppers, it will bring the deliciousness of the bean dregs to heaven. Another way for my mother to make fried bean dregs is to fry them with the lard residue left over from oil refining: burn the dried chili and stir-fry with oil residue and bean curd residue, and finally add fresh green garlic sprouts into the pot.Garlic sprouts can enhance both color and aroma.

After living in Beijing for a long time, sometimes I still miss the delicious bean dregs from my childhood very much, so I went to the nearby tofu shop to ask for bean dregs as raw materials.It was much more, the boss thought I was raising a pet, and said, your pet is very special, you eat bean dregs.I laughed and said I was my pet.By the way, I will teach the boss how to stir-fry bean dregs: stir-fry pickled cabbage with minced meat (or minced ham) and bean dregs, and add garlic sprouts when cooking.After he did it in the same way, he said goodbye to me and praised that the fried bean dregs were delicious in my way.

Zhang Ailing mentioned that using the leftover braised pork to stir-fry bean dregs coincides with the principle of gourmet food.In fact, there is a famous dish in Jiangxi, "Snowflake Mud", which is fried with braised pork and bean dregs; Sichuan famous dishes include duck with bean dregs and pig's head with bean dregs. Dishes made of bean dregs are often elegantly called snowflakes, which seems to conceal the humbleness of bean dregs.In fact, bean dregs can be regarded as elegant.Great gourmet Tang Lusun especially likes to fry bean dregs with ham oil, saying that it is crispy and crispy in his mouth, and it is better than Fujian pork floss.It is said that Jiang Dongxiu, the wife of the great scholar Hu Shi, is the best at frying bean dregs, which is also fried with minced ham.When he was in Taiwan, when Hu Shi ate this dish, he would say that it was not only a meal, but also comforting homesickness. He also jokingly called this dish "dream-fulfilling dish".

Bean dregs also have the effect of curing diseases.When I was a child, I fought with others and my legs became red and swollen. When my mother saw it, she immediately found bean dregs, baked them in a casserole, and applied them to the swollen areas. After two times, the swelling subsided. Zhang Ailing's younger brother Zhang Zijing once recalled that when she was a child, Zhang Ailing especially loved to eat a Hefei meatball. It was made by a maid at home, which was to stuff the prepared meat stuffing into glutinous rice, add egg juice, and deep-fry it in a frying pan. This Hefei meatball must have come from Eileen Chang's great-grandfather, Li Hongzhang, who was from Hefei, so it was only natural that the servant knew this dish.

There is also a famous meatball dish in Anhui—Huizhou meatballs. It is to chop three fat and seven thin pork into mud, roll them into balls, roll them on glutinous rice soaked in water, steam them in a basket for 20 minutes, and then hook them up. Thin Gorgon. This method of adding glutinous rice balls is very common in southern rice-producing areas, and we also have them in our hometown. They are called pearl balls. They are eaten after steaming, without thickening. I remember that in the 1980s, you had to go through the ancient town of Gongtan to go to the county seat.At that time, we crossed the river by ferry, because the ferry was only available every morning, so we had to arrive the night before.There is an elder brother named Wang Yao in the town who makes pearl balls very delicious.Every time I want to cross the river, I will greet him in advance, let him make a big plate of meatballs, chat and drink together and wait for the ferry, which is very pleasant.