Chapter 17 Sensual Kitchen (text/brief)

With regard to the kitchen, we should have the grace to accept that it is the most provocative and sensual place in a house. I stubbornly believe that the color tone of the bedroom should approach the translucent blue sky and glaciers, or the feeling of a stranger falling out of the white sleep of the remote mountain village after the heavy snow stops.I think, before moving into the hard coffin berth, we'd better learn the quietness for one person on the soft spring berth, and study a posture to avoid slumbering alone. As for the kitchen, please allow me to say without hesitation, that is the living world, living in style!

I have been secretly recording my kitchen and recipes for a while. It is equivalent to a person who fears the loss of youth with a photobook to preserve his youthful appearance. My kitchen notes are the dialogues of the flesh.Let's start to imagine, in a warm and complicated kitchen, a conservative woman happily washes vegetables, shoots, cuts, chops, planes, gouges with various knives... She is familiar with various cooking methods, as long as there is a With a double-port gas stove and two sockets, she can make frying pans, stewing pans, ovens, electric pans... form a song and dance troupe. (You must think she forgot the microwave, no, she hated it as if it were a sinner.) When all kinds of fat smells floated in this kitchen: the snoring of ripe hooves, the white carcass of steamed cod, When the tender groans of bamboo shoots, the call of scallops, shiitake mushrooms, and choy sum, and the childlike sniggers of assorted tofu soup, she had already prepared all kinds of matching tableware and green vegetable leaves for decoration, and peeled two soft tomatoes , Served on a small celadon dish with painted flowers, it looks like a Taoist monk!She admired peeled persimmons so much.Then, she sat at the dining table, carefully tasted the taste of each dish, measured the temperature with her lips, put it in her mouth, chewed, swallowed, and felt the electric current caused by the food sliding into the body and entering the stomach along the esophagus; Familiar with the rhythm of her stomach's peristalsis, sometimes like a silk pouch being moved by a breeze, and sometimes when she was particularly greedy, she felt that her stomach was not only equipped with a grinder, but also with gears.

Yes, this is me.In the life of eating alone with the elegance of the last generation of nobles after loving to cook delicious dinners, my kitchen notes faithfully record the super-friendship relationship between each food and me.Including how the most homely Hsinchu rice noodles made me stir-fry with big bamboo chopsticks while devouring half a pot of rice noodles. In the kitchen, pull out the cutting board and kitchen knife, take out the old ginger from the basket in the corner, and slap it hard—like slapping Wang Baochuan’s lover to death in a cold kiln, cooking a pot of brown sugar ginger soup, drinking it all under the lamp Sweat and tears.That kind of warmth is from the rural era, as if an old friend came to see you in a bullock cart.In the notes, it is not difficult to find improved varieties, such as how "Sishen Tang" became only Gorgon fruit and Chinese yam, and later how it specialized in the hard-to-buy Chinese yam potato, and how it made my body feel like an electric shock.

When I was old, I must have been in a nursing home in a certain hot spring area. The fleshy texture and sensual fragrance had long since faded away. I was like a piece of new Dongyang spicy beef jerky, sitting dignifiedly on a wicker chair to bask in the sun.I hope I still have the strength to read the kitchen notes slowly with a magnifying glass. When I read a dish every day, I will stroke my stomach like a pet’s head, inviting it to recall those secret joys with me. I want my life to end with the memory of the hoof, no matter how the ghosts of my mother and aunt will stare at that time, I insist on stewing it with a bottle of sorghum, sautéing a handful of garlic, and frantically spreading whole plants of fresh coriander and pride cinnamon leaves, like my chaotic and unwilling to be slaughtered life.

※Note: This article is excerpted from Jian Jie's collection of essays "Rouge Basin". *** [This article is sponsored by "Literary Vision" ( ]