Chapter 18 Zhongshan graminearum

Cantonese eat many things that are unimaginable to northerners.Eating snakes, cats, and monkeys is already staggering, but eating dragon lice and grass insects is also disgusting to northerners. In 1991, I went to Zhongshan, Guangdong to attend an academic conference commemorating the 80th anniversary of the Revolution of 1911. I stayed at a hot spring hotel near Zhongshan. It was almost dinner time, and Director Cheng insisted on inviting me to eat outside.The hot spring hotel is nearly an hour's drive away from downtown Zhongshan, and the hospitality is hard to be rejected, so I had to let him go.The car stopped between Hot Spring and Zhongshan, and he led me into a restaurant. This restaurant faces the road on one side and the lake on the other, and the place is very open.

Let's eat crab first for dinner. It is very fresh river crab. The two pincers are fat and plump, and it is very enjoyable to eat.After eating crab, get up and wash your hands, and continue eating.This restaurant is a bit rustic, not particular, the dishes are well done, but the utensils are very dilapidated.After eating one or two seafood dishes, I brought a plate of egg custard-like things. After careful observation, I think it is similar to the iron pot eggs of Hou Defu, a famous Henan restaurant in Beijing. It can be said to be completely similar.This kind of dish is called "long (sound palm) egg" in my family, and I often ate it when I was a child.

When I cut it open with chopsticks, I found that there were many variegated substances on the section of the iron pot egg, such as minced meat and leeks.Director Cheng asked me to taste it first, and said that it is the special dish here, and it is also the main program he invited me to dinner today.Hearing what he said so well, I put a piece in my mouth, it was soft and delicate, with a good taste, it tasted like eggs, but also a bit sweet like fish and shrimp, with a hint of tangerine peel.Taste it carefully again, the slightly hard powder in the egg is indeed the powder of tangerine peel, but those milky white things like rice grains, I really can't guess what it is.The host insisted that I eat first, and then talk after I finished eating.

A plate of "Iron Pot Eggs" was almost eaten. The owner said that this is a famous dish in Zhongshan, called Hechong Stewed Eggs.Grass worm is a kind of worm that grows in rice fields. It is fat, fat and rich in protein.Grass worms are the fattest in autumn, so October is the best season to eat grass worms.When farmers are working in the fields, they catch them by the way, wash them and cook them white, then they can be eaten.Grass worms, also known as clam worms, are originally born along the coast of the ocean, but they also swim in fresh water.There are many clam worms in the waters of the Pearl River. They are food for fish in the water, but when they sneak into the farmland, they specialize in sucking the nutrition of rice roots and become pests in the rice fields.They belong to the annelidae Trichopoda Nereisidae, so they are also called verrucous snout nereis.Cantonese eat worms, and the worms are the best in Zhongshan, so they are called "Zhongshan worms".It is said that in Zhongshan, stewed eggs with Hechong is a famous dish.

The method of stewed eggs with worms is to break up a few eggs first, add a lot of worms, minced tangerine peel, minced garlic, and seasonings and mix well. It can be steamed like steamed egg custard, or put oil in the pot, such as It is fried like an egg in an iron pot, and what I eat is the latter.I asked Director Cheng why he lived in a hot spring hotel and never entertained people in our meetings to eat this dish?Director Cheng said with a smile: "It's thankless to invite you outsiders to eat this thing. This thing is like the maggots you northerners say. Who would eat it?" Vegetables" means that I no longer have the courage to eat chopsticks.