Chapter 13 Huixian eats sea cucumber

It is unbelievable to say that the best sea cucumber I ate in my life was in Huixian County, Xinxiang District, Henan Province, and it was during the "Cultural Revolution". Going to Hui County was also an inexplicable thing. In the spring of 1968, middle school students in Beijing faced the fate of "going to the mountains and going to the countryside".In addition to waiting for the school's arrangement, you can also contact the village where you jumped in the queue and settled down.A dozen or so of our good friends from different schools proposed that they could join the queue to settle down in the countryside of Hui County, Henan Province, and they made a few detours to contact the captain of a local production team.To be on the safe side, we had to send two people to Hui County for inspection first, so another classmate and I volunteered to go there.

An interesting thing by the way.Naturally, we took the train without a ticket when we went. We bought a platform ticket from Beijing Railway Station and boarded the train, and the night was safe and sound.At that time, the "big series" had been over for a long time, and the order of the railway had improved, especially the strict crackdown on trains without tickets.When we arrived at Xinxiang Station the next day, it was already daylight. According to the rules of the train at that time, "everyday reading" was organized in the compartment, that is, one or two people were selected to take the lead in reading Chairman Mao's works for everyone.When the train conductor walks to any carriage, he can appoint one or two people to lead the reading. As long as he looks like a person with a bit of culture, he can appoint you to read.In our carriage, we were just the two appointed.When going out at that time, a copy of the "Old Three Articles" was always necessary, just like money and food stamps, it was essential.While we were reading aloud, the conductor and the policeman began to check the tickets, we suddenly became nervous, but we still kept reading aloud.Originally, I could just read one article, but in order to delay the time, I went on to read "The Foolish Old Man Moves the Mountain".At this time, the tickets are almost checked, and who can interrupt the person who is reading Mao?When these people have started to check the tickets for the next car, they have not finished reading "The Foolish Old Man Moves the Mountain", so they have finally passed this level.

I got off from Xinxiang and took a car to Huixian County. The production team I was looking for was not far from the county seat, but it took more than ten miles to walk.After finally finding the captain surnamed Wang they contacted, he politely showed us around the village and the fields.I remember he said that a local work point is seven cents, and if you work well, you can earn 8-10 work points a day, which was already a good place at that time.Finally, he took us to a warehouse where wheat seeds were stored, and said that when the educated youth came, it could be vacated as a dormitory.In order not to disgrace our mission, we also took out a small notebook and wrote down the basic situation he introduced, and prepared to go back and report to everyone.

After finishing business, it is natural to visit some local attractions.Although Hui County is barren, it was the hermitage of the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Forest in the Wei and Jin Dynasties. There were Baiquan and Zhulin Springs there.During the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, stone-laying of Baiquan was built around the bank to form a rectangular Baiquan Lake.There are many places of interest such as Xiaotai Temple on the shore of the lake, which is enough for a half-day tour.It was dusk when we returned to the vicinity of Chengguan in Hui County. After a day of fatigue, I am exhausted. First of all, I need to find a place to eat.At that time, the county town of Huixian County was still in a state of disrepair, and there was no electricity near the Chengguan.Finally, I found a small restaurant with electric lights on the edge of the county seat. Although it was a place for dinner, it was a small shop with only one table of customers.At that time, there were no individual restaurants in urban and rural areas, and no matter how small the place was, it was still state-owned.There are six or seven unpainted wooden tables and stools in the shop, and the green brick floor under their feet.With the dim light, I looked at the shop but it was very clean, so I found a table and sat down.Look at the names of the dishes written on the water sign on the wall, it is also very rich.After a few days of travel fatigue, and my mouth was very dull, I decided to have a good meal here.I ordered two or three dishes, all of which cost about 40 to 50 cents. At this time, the waiter introduced, "Let's have a braised sea cucumber!" Ask him how much it is, and he said it is 6.4 yuan. Six yuan in 1968 was definitely not a small amount. I clearly remember that at Fengze Garden in the west of Kou Nei Road, Zhushikou Grain Store, the sea cucumber with green onion was 4.8 yuan, and the sea cucumber with green onion was roasted in Xisi Tongheju and Cuihualou, Dengshikou. It's only about four yuan, and it's definitely the best plum blossom ginseng.What's more, in this poor country, there are no good sea cucumbers, but there are no good crafts.Unable to withstand the enthusiastic recommendation of the waiter, I finally ordered one.

The first two or three dishes were served very quickly. After a taste, the taste was really good, no worse than the Erhu restaurant in Beijing.The last one served was braised sea cucumber, which was served in a one-foot large plate, and the quantity was huge, more than twice that of Fengzeyuan.On the plate are large black ginseng with plum blossoms of average size, all of them are shiny and shiny, and the same size.The ginseng is like a papillae, round and fat, with an attractive color. Even if you don't put the chopsticks on it first, you can see its shape and color, and it surpasses the big restaurants in Beijing.

Although sea cucumber is one of the "Eight Treasures of Seafood", it has no taste except fishy smell. It must be cooked in two soups of chicken and meat, served with rock sugar and rice wine. The soup is rich and mellow, which is considered a good craft.To make roasted sea cucumbers, you must choose high-quality black ginseng or plum ginseng. Today, many roasted sea cucumbers made in general restaurants use black ginseng and topaz ginseng, which are called ginseng but not in reality, so they are not considered sea cucumbers.Even the sea cucumbers used in Fengzeyuan, Cuihualou and Tongheju in the 1960s can only be eaten in high-end banquets today.The second is the technology of raising sea cucumbers, which is difficult for ordinary families to master. If they are not cooked well, or they are soft and rotten like mud, or hard as rubber, they cannot be cooked.The last step is simmering and roasting. Sea cucumbers have no umami taste, so they need to borrow the umami taste of chicken and meat. This requires simmering.After eating it in the mouth, the soup has been sucked, and it has no taste when chewed.Burning depends on the heat, wine and sugar should be appropriate, especially a small amount of rock sugar, otherwise there will be no crystal color.

This plate of sea cucumber in Hui County is not only very pleasing to the eye, but also tastes delicious when you taste it with chopsticks. It can be described as smooth and soft.In terms of taste alone, it can be called crisp and waxy, soft and crisp.What's even more rare is that from the entrance to chewing, the taste is integrated, and there is no feeling of thick juice and weak quality, which is a must. After feasting, I was really surprised to be able to eat such delicious food in a small county in Henan.Fortunately, the business in the store is slow, so I want to meet this culinary expert.The waiter invited the chef out of the kitchen, who is already in his sixties and is indeed a local.After praising his craftsmanship, he asked about his experience. He introduced that he was 63 years old this year and was born in Hui County. At the age of 14, he was taken by his relatives to Jinan, Shandong as an apprentice. He was in charge of big restaurants in Xuchang and Xuchang, and he didn't retire until last year and returned to his hometown, Hui County.After the restaurant asked him to help, they bought a lot of raw materials that they had never heard of before, and added a lot of new dishes to the water brand.But at the time of the "Cultural Revolution", business was still not very good.

More than 30 years have passed, and how many sea cucumbers I have eaten since then, and how many feasts I have experienced, no matter whether it is in the north and south of the river or on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, I have never eaten braised sea cucumbers that can compare with it.