Chapter 14 leather shell

Thick or thin, soft or firm, most of the foods that we incorporate into our daily diets have a shell, the hard ones are called shells, and the soft ones are called skins. Even the most basic foods like wheat noodles and rice No exception. Compared with the eating behavior that takes "meat" and "nuclei" as the ingestion target, the existence of skin and shell is logically resistant: spleen and shell are originally a survival or self-protection tool given to animals and plants by creation.From the human point of view, the skin and shell are both an obstacle to eating and a part of food. Obviously, this duality depends on the invention of fire and the progress of cooking.Most predators other than humans, except for a few primate mammals and nut-eating birds, do not have the technical means to remove food husks or process them into food.

Although human skinning and skin and shell processing technology has been continuously improved, and skin and shell foods have emerged in an endless stream, the culturally anti-civilization or "indecent" subconsciousness of skin and shell still lingers.In a formal banquet, too much food with skins and shells will undoubtedly reduce the standard of the banquet, and it is even more taboo for guests to remove the skins and shells by themselves.Regarding the joy of the moment when I personally uncovered the hairy crab shell, I once compared it to "Alibaba opening the cave where the treasure is hidden". However, in most high-end restaurants, the crab shells are carefully opened in advance.

As for cheap things like peanuts and walnuts, the skinned ones are more expensive in the market. Peanuts not only need to be shelled, but also have to take off the pink underwear.When I was in primary school, for one year every Thursday afternoon, I went to the famous "Yangzhou Restaurant" on Nanjing East Road to participate in collective labor. The content was to undress peanuts.From the perspective of an amateur skilled craftsman, I think it is better to regard it as a cultural baptism and circumcision rather than stripping off the peanut kernels to meet the needs of profit and cooking.The means of skinning or shelling are more or less violent and greedy.The small landlord "Zhou Papi" got its name because it imitated chicken crowing with human voice to artificially advance the legal clock-in time, and got the pleasure of exploiting other people's surplus value.

Compared with the skin, the shell is not only difficult to boil, even if it is rotten, it is difficult to swallow, and the taste is even more difficult to talk about. Although the shell is not edible, the process of his existence becoming non-existent is a very important part when we eat, especially for dried fruit foods.For example, melon seeds, small walnuts, and pistachios that we love to see and love, half of the reason why we feel "delicious" is related to the fun of peeling.As for the shellless melon seeds and small walnut kernels sold at expensive prices in the market, even though a process is eliminated, they are tasteless and tasteless, as boring as a mystery novel in which you know who the murderer is before you finish reading the preface.

When we hate a person so much, we will grit our teeth and say: "Eat his flesh, drink his blood, gnaw his bones, sleep his skin".This way of expression, on the surface, is completely in line with the deconstruction process of the physiological structure of a flesh and blood body, but in fact it conveys a growing indignation through the reverse advancement from civilization to barbarism. According to our eating and cooking experience, some skins and shells can be eaten as well as sleeping, basically depending on their toughness and taste. Pig skin is the most common food, and the popular delicacy made purely from pig skin is the most popular "meat skin jelly" in northern China.This kind of gelatinous food often appears as appetizers or snacks with wine in restaurants in the north.The method of making it is: cook the pork skin for a while, spread it out and cut it into strips, add ingredients (salt, pepper, aniseed, soy sauce, green onion, ginger, garlic, etc.) and boil until the skin is golden red, then Wait for it to solidify.

If the Dongpo meat is not skinned, it will damage the beauty of the layers of color, so it will lose the contrast of toughness and softness in the taste and the pleasure it brings.As the upper layer of a side of pork belly, the gelatin that is slowly stewed out of the pork skin and seeps into the lower layer is the key to the delicious Dongpo pork. Obviously, it is the rich gelatin that makes pigskin so popular. Even high-end dishes such as Buddha jumping over the wall and shark's fin cannot be separated from the assistance of pigskin. The dried pigskin has long since evaporated.The delicacy of Huaiyang soup buns and Shanghai pan-fried buns is due to the selfless dedication of frozen pork skin in the filling.Due to the high density and high melting point of pork skin jelly, after the buns are cooked, the flour and other fillings absorb part of the gelatin of the pig skin and at the same time turn into a mellow soup in the bun cavity.As for the roast suckling pig, it is the skin that is eaten.Whether the so-called "flower-skin suckling pig" is "transformed" by fire or by culture is really unclear.

Cantonese are experts in eating skin, because their understanding of fish skin is not limited to fish skin and peanuts.Shunde's traditional snack "smooth fish skin" is a masterpiece of fish skin from Cantonese.Boil the skin of raw fish or grass carp for a while, add ginger and spring onion to remove the fishy smell, and then serve it. Serve with ginger, garlic, sesame oil, soy sauce, and vinegar. We have already discussed the joy of peeling and eating shelled nuts. In fact, in addition to natural skins and shells, human beings have been bionically producing artificial and acquired food skins and shells in order to satisfy their own appetites and game psychology. Engaged in the work of "painting skin".

Artificial "skinless" foods, such as buns, dumplings, wontons, etc.; artificial "shelled" foods are none other than canned food.In fact, most of the canned food is not delicious, but in order to open these unpalatable cans, how many wonderful tools have we invented and improved? If the purpose of these efforts is only to get the contents of the can "Content", I am afraid that persuasion is not enough, in addition to taking into account the great pleasure obtained in the process or ceremony of "opening" or "unsealing". Founded in Daliang, Shunde, the famous dessert "Shuangpi Nai" spread by "Wenxin" in Xiguan, the selling point lies in the two thin layers of "milk skin".In order to obtain them, the production of "double skin milk" is extremely cumbersome: first boil the milk with sugar over a slow fire, divide it into three bowls, and after cooling, you can get the first layer of milk skin made of milk.Then, use a toothpick to pick up the corner of the milk skin, pour the liquid milk under the skin into another large bowl, keep the milk skin at the bottom of the small bowl, stir the beaten eggs with the milk in the large bowl, and pour it back The three small bowls with the first layer of milk skin are steamed in the cage, and the second layer of "skin" will be formed, and the skin grafting operation will be completed.

In addition to these exquisite "artificial leather", there are some animal shells, which are inedible, but are used to reproduce a kind of vigorous simulated hunting process of "dragging from the shell to the outside".For example, hollow out a large enough conch, mince the conch meat, stuff it back into the conch shell together with minced pork and a variety of seasoning fillings for cooking, and finally put the shell on a plate.The delicacy brought by this method and the pleasure it inspires in form are very similar to Roland Barthes' striptease in essence, that is, the key lies in the process of "taking off" with "how to take off" as the core. Clean, and the meaning disappears without a trace.

The congenital or non-congenital existence of skin and shell is not so much a challenge for the eater, as it adds a lot of fun to the game.Just as anyone who doesn't hate eating fish will see the fishbone as a provocation rather than a challenge or obstacle.At the same time, peeling apples has become a craft and a stunt that can be performed. This kind of game spirit often achieves both intelligence and sensibility in the subconscious state of the participants.If the pleasure experience based on "wrapping/unwrapping" is the acme of sensuality (for example, the Brothers Grimm wrote in "Snow White" that the king took off Snow White's feet like "peeling an eggshell") silk socks on top), then, on the intellectual level, the process of finally obtaining edible meat and kernels by peeling off the skin and shell is completely in line with removing the dross and extracting the essential, discarding the false and retaining the true, from one to the other, from the surface to the other. A kind of linear happiness arises spontaneously by the general laws of knowledge and practice in it.

Although the empirical results are faithfully waiting for our fingers inside the skin and shell every time, and there will never be such blindness and conflicts as "the ones outside the shell want to rush in, and the ones inside the shell want to escape". Chaos, however, as far as cognition is concerned, the result of "stripping" often leads to nothingness. The title of another unfinished novel by Mr. Qian Zhongshu comes from a French idiom (lecoeurd'artichaut), which means that the heart is like Lily, after peeling off layers, there is nothing left in the end. The existence of the skin and the shell can easily make us believe that the truth is always covered up, and the "mysterious veil" should and can be unveiled by us, and then the truth will be revealed to the world.However, the Japanese writer Kobo Abe, who is famous for his mystery novels, once used clams as a typical shell animal to write: "In fact, this thing is really like a shell. The more you touch it, the tighter it will be closed. Take it a little." There is no way. Try to pry it open, and it will die, and then there will be nothing. Just wait for it to open itself."