Chapter 57 food

food When it comes to eating and drinking in Europe, who always thinks of Paris, not London.Needless to say anything else, just say fried yam eggs.French ones cut into small domino pieces are yellow, oily, and fragrant; British "chips" are half yellow and half black, lukewarm, dry, and have no smell. Just be full.Besides, when I eat British food, the main course is nothing more than fried beef ribs and lamb ribs, served with two vegetarian dishes; I remember living in the same family for four months, and I only ate fried calf liver once, which is considered a new trick.But the dishes are simple, and there are benefits; bad ingredients are easy to see, as in mainland China, cooks make bad things good, which is not the case in England.Probably they themselves felt bored, so in 1926, a lady named E. White organized a British folk cooking society to search for recipes from all cities and towns, hoping to exchange some British dishes. Tricks, make it tasty.In December 1931, the Cooking Club held a dinner party and selected five dishes (including soup and dim sum) from recipes dating back to the eighteenth century. They were said to be delicious and effortless.At this time, it is the year of domestic products in the UK, so the newspapers are quite eloquent.However, the current European fashion is to eat less and eat faster. Those old antiques are probably out of date.

Eat fast, because you are busy, Europeans can't take our time like us, everyone knows.Why less?For hygiene, of course it is good, but there are other things: women and men are afraid of getting fat.Women are afraid of being fat, and they will look ugly when they are fat; men also love that kind of effort, and want to look like a sportsman.This naturally refers to middle-aged and young people; but there are plenty of old men with big bellies.Europeans have three meals a day, and the portions are quite different.Like Germany, there is only coffee and bread in the morning, and cold food is often eaten at night, only lunch is heavier.French morning is coffee, moon bud cakes, and lunch and dinner seem to be average.In Britain, breakfast and dinner are equally important, and lunch is lighter.Britain pays attention to breakfast, which is the same as in Chengdu and other places in my country.There are wheat porridge, ham and eggs, bread, tea, and sometimes smoked salted fish and fruits.Lunch is very simple, you can just eat a piece of toast and a cup of coffee; some small restaurants sell lunch boxes, such as cold fish and meat, but they don't sell dinner boxes.

The first-class restaurants in London are always French dishes, and the second-class dishes are divided into Italian, French, and Swiss dishes; restaurants in the old city and tea restaurants are the local tastes.Tea restaurants and fried restaurants are actually another name for small restaurants.The "rice" in tea restaurants originally refers to lunch, but the items sold are not simple, and dinner is full; frying shops sell other things besides fried beef chops and lamb ribs.I have never been to a first-class restaurant, but I have been to two Italian restaurants.A large one in Oxford Street, with girls juggling and dancing at dinner.I just remember that the first dish was oysters and the like; a special plate with seven or eight round grids around the sides, with half an oyster in each grid, which tasted very elegant.The other one is on Yuston Road, which is also a lively place.This one is small, and the macaroni is the best; cut the noodles into small circles that are half a cent long, fry them in butter, spread them on a plate, sprinkle with cheese (jisi) powder, easy Delicious, beyond words.There are also deep-fried "搦气粉", tender and fragrant, which can't be compared with scallops and scallops; only Ningbo's oyster yellow seems to be close.

There are three cheap tea restaurants: Lyons, Express Dairy, and ABC Bakery.Each has opened many shops, spread all over the city; ABC is relatively rare and expensive, and Lai Ensi has the most.The fried veal veal liver and the braised duck cubes at Express Dairy are both delicious; they cook the duck cubes over a charcoal fire, so they have a Chinese flavor. The ABC fried beef liver is also available, but it is always too hot to eat. The dim sum is well baked, and some items can be compared to the French bakery in Peking.Lai Ensi doesn't seem to have anything outstanding; but his family has two "corner shops", both at the corners of the downtown area, and they have delicious food there.The corner store has two rooms on the upper and lower floors, and three rooms on the third floor, each of which can accommodate about 1,500 people; there are bands playing music at night.As soon as I entered, I saw that it was crowded with people, and the aisle was narrow enough, but it was quite spacious (a British student ridiculed it as "the palace of the poor", which may be good); I often searched for a long time and stood there for a long time. Wait for an empty seat.All three of the shops had waitresses, except in two corner shops which had some male waiters—the male waiters were more expensive.Both male and female waiters wore black uniforms, and the females even wore white hats to entertain guests in layers.Tips are only required in the corner shop (although the words "no tip" are marked on the door), and there is no need to tip in the three shops opened elsewhere.I went to a corner shop once, and the grilled chicken was delicious; but a chicken leg costs one yuan and fifty cents in China, and chicken wings are more expensive.Tea restaurants sometimes have dominoes and so on for the entertainment of the guests, but few of them ask the waiters for them to play; where there are many customers, there are always people waiting for a seat, so there is no need to prepare them at all.In addition, there are some oyster shops that specialize in oysters, which are not cheap; a landlady told me that it is "unhygienic", but there are many people who eat them.It is not suitable to eat oysters in summer, so the British say that there is no "R" in the name of the month (May, Six, Seven and August), and oysters are not in season.There are also seven or eight Chinese restaurants in London, and the price varies greatly, depending on the location.Although the dishes are a bit high or low, they are all Cantonese flavors in disguise, far less good than Shanghai Xinya.A bowl of chicken wontons in a Guangdong restaurant costs one yuan and six cents in China, which is expensive enough.

You can eat a kind of sweet biscuit (muffin) and nest cake (crumDpet) in the tea restaurant.The sweet biscuits are like our fire, but there is no filling, soft and slightly sweet, as if they are made with rice flour.There are many small nests on the surface of the nest cake, like a honeycomb, which is relatively thin, and it seems to be mixed with rice noodles.Both of these probably came from France; but the sweet biscuits came earlier, at least two hundred years ago.Most of the cooks lived in Drury Lane, where the famous opera garden was; they used to sell dishes on their heads and ring bells in their hands.At that time, everyone loves to eat it. They bought it, spread a lot of butter on it, and grilled it hot on the fireplace in the living room or dining room.This kind of leisure life is very interesting.But later, it was easier to soak in oil, more fragrant, not too thick, too soft, more crunchy, and more beautiful in style; people gradually liked it, so they bought less sweet biscuits.A lady felt sad when she saw this situation; she wrote to the "Times" to complain about the sweet sesame cakes. "The Times" specially made a small editorial, advising people to eat sweet biscuits to preserve the ancient style; but they would rather keep aside the bad things that the lady said about the buns, probably the commentator also loves the buns .

At Easter (March), people eat pancakes, which are also sold in tea restaurants; this was originally eaten by confessors on Shrovetide (at the end of February) before going to church after dinner, but now they eat it in the morning .The cake is thin and crisp, slightly sweet.The "fat keke" (transliteration of pancake) sold by Beiping Zhongyuan Company is too "fat" and soft. ——Speaking of pancakes, I think of one thing: Berkshire Country, Massachusetts, USA has a custom of "pancake eating competition". Two pieces of cake, and hot coffee with sausage.This can be regarded as "really big belly".

The British drink tea every day around 4:30 p.m., with toast and butter.When inviting a tea party, there are naturally other things, such as ham sandwiched with bread, raw pea sprouts sandwiched with bread, tea scones, and so on.They take afternoon tea very seriously, almost as a necessity.It can also be used to treat guests, which is much easier and cheaper than treating dinner.The British like to drink tea, and the French are the opposite when it comes to coffee; they can't make coffee well either.Most of the tea I drink now is Indian tea; although the tea restaurants sell Chinese tea, there are very few customers.Of course, it is also related to not allowing the spillover of rights and interests, but it is not conducive to the publicity of Chinese tea (such as saying that the brewing process is not clean) and the tea taste is too weak are the main reasons.Indian tea is strong and bitter, and it is perfect with milk and sugar; Chinese black tea is not strong enough, but has a good aroma.The strange thing is that it is sold in tea restaurants, and the color and fragrance are so light that there is no shadow.How the tea would be transported out like that is really inexplicable.

Occasionally on the street, you will come across someone selling peanuts in a basket (also in Paris), and someone pushing a four-wheeled cart selling fried chestnuts, which reminds people of their homeland.Peanuts and chestnuts are all packed in small bags. There is a charcoal stove on the chestnut cart, and they are fried, packed and sold at the same time.These small brokers are also quite quaint and embellished on the streets of London.Chestnuts are fried dry, which is too different from our "sugar fried". ——The British also eat dried fruits, such as walnuts, hazelnuts, torreya, and Brazilian black water chestnuts (formerly known as BrazilDs, produced in Brazil, and commonly known as "American black water chestnuts" in China). It is not very good to go to China too much.They have a special kind of dried fruit holder, which is like pliers. When you put the dried fruit in, you squeeze the handle hard, and with a sound of "click", the shell shatters, and some of them jump into the distance, which is also fun.There are melon seed clips in Suzhou, which are like scissors, but they are only exquisite and small, and they don't need to be used with strength.

Made on February 4, 1935. (Originally published in "Middle School Students" No. 53 on March 1, 1935)