Papers on Old Beijing Snacks

Snacks, also known as snacks, are an indispensable part of food culture in various regions, showing strong local characteristics. As an ancient capital, Beijing is also a place where thousands of subjects, large and small, have rested for hundreds of years. The "snack culture" here is naturally profound. Although with the impact of modernization, McDonald's, Pizza Hut and other "foreign snacks" can be seen everywhere, making some authentic Beijing snacks gradually fade out of people's sight, there are still some snacks with a long history that still maintain their unique characteristics and wide appeal, attracting people's taste buds.

Today, I recommend several Beijing snacks, including snowballing usury, Aiwowo, sugar ear, inby, bean juice and so on. Although most of these snacks are pasta, their tastes are quite different and can meet the needs of different food lovers.

1, snowballing

Rolling on a donkey is one of the ancient snacks in Beijing, and it is still well known by people. Its raw material is yellow wheat steamed with water, and the dough will become soft with a little more water. In addition, soybeans are fried and rolled into flour. When making, the steamed yellow rice flour is wrapped with soybean flour and rolled into pieces, then wrapped with red bean paste (or brown sugar), rolled up, cut into small pieces of about 100g, and sprinkled with white sugar. Because snowballing usury is rolled in soybeans after it is made, it is very similar to real snowballing usury in rural areas, hence the name. In fact, this is just its common name. Its proper name is bean powder cake, but few people know it, but the common name of "snowballing usury" is almost known to everyone.

Now go to the snack bar in Beijing, and you can buy snowballing usury at any time. Although people have replaced yellow wheat with glutinous rice flour when making snowballs, the appearance is still yellow because of the practice of rolling soybean flour outside, and it still retains its original fragrant, sweet and sticky characteristics, as well as the rich flavor of soybean flour, so it has undoubtedly become a famous snack in old Beijing and won the favor of people in Beijing and all over the world.

2. Love me.

Aiwowo is a traditional snack in Beijing. The preparation method comprises cleaning and soaking glutinous rice, steaming in a steamer, cooling, kneading, drawing into small dosage, pressing into round skin, mixing with peach kernel, sesame seed kernel, melon seed kernel, green plum, golden cake, sugar and other materials to make stuffing, and finally wrapping the stuffing into glutinous rice skin. It is worth mentioning that the stuffing of Aiwowo should be fried in advance, and the glutinous rice used for the outer skin has been steamed and can be eaten when cooked.

It is understood that Aiwowo is a snack with a long history, which originated in the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty. This point was confirmed in the Chronicle of Liu Ruoyu, an internal supervisor in Wanli, which recorded: "Sesame and glutinous rice are cold cakes and pills are nests, that is, the ancient' not falling'." It can be seen that this snack was called "Wo Wo" in the Ming Dynasty, and was later renamed "Aiwowo". It is said that an emperor liked this kind of nest very much, and when he wanted to eat it or wanted to eat it, he ordered: "Yu Ai Wo Wo." Later, this kind of food was introduced to the people, and ordinary people could not and dared not say the word "imperial", so they omitted the word "imperial" and called it "Aiwowo". It is understood that Aiwowo was not listed until around the Lunar New Year every year, and it was only sold in late summer and early autumn. It is a spring and autumn variety, and now it is available all year round. People can taste the unique flavor of Aiwowo at any time.

3. Pea yellow

Pea yellow is a seasonal delicacy in Beijing in spring and summer, which can be divided into "coarse pea yellow" and "fine pea yellow". The reason for this difference is that pea yellow was originally a folk snack and was later introduced to the court. After the improvement of the imperial dining hall in the Qing Dynasty, there was a difference between "coarse" and "fine". "Coarse pea yellow" is made by peeling white peas, stewing beans with twice as much water as peas, then frying with sugar, adding gypsum water and cooked dates, stirring evenly, putting them in a big casserole, cooling them into blocks, deducting them, cutting them into diamond-shaped blocks like cakes, and putting small pieces of gold cakes as decorations. Common in spring temple fairs, it is a typical spring food. The production method of "fine pea yellow" is more elaborate, that is, the first-grade white peas are boiled and screened into paste, and white sugar and osmanthus are added. After solidification, cut into small squares two inches square and less than half an inch thick, and put some honey cakes on them. They are good in color and taste, delicate and pure in texture, and melt in the mouth. They are deeply favored by Empress Dowager Cixi, and therefore they have become well-known court snacks.

4, sugar ears

Sugar ear, also known as honey twist, is a snack dessert that looks like a human ear, hence its name. The method of making sugar ear is complicated. The first thing to do is to make a blank, that is, add alkali to the good fermentation surface and add brown sugar to the other surface. When making, divide the fermented noodles into two pieces, roll out one piece, then spread the same rolled brown sugar noodles on it, roll out another piece of fermented noodles and spread it on the brown sugar noodles to make two layers of fermented noodles and one layer of sugar noodles. Cut into strips of about 5 cm with a knife, press one side of the strip into a slope shape, combine the thin side and the thick side, and then cut into small pieces of about 40 g; Open a knife edge in the middle of the small piece, then open it, turn in the thin side and fold the thick side to form an ear-shaped blank; After the blank is made, pour peanut oil into the pot, heat it to 50%, fry the blank in oil in batches, take it out when it is golden yellow, drain the oil, and soak it in warm maltose for one minute while it is hot, which is commonly known as honey; After the sugar ear is soaked, dish it out and let it cool.

The key to making sugar ears is to fry them thoroughly, eat honey evenly, and put a proper amount of alkali at the same time, so as to make a honey twist with bright brown butter, soft and sweet taste and no sour taste. It is understood that in Beijing, the honey twist in Nanlaishun restaurant in the south of the city is the best. It was once rated as "Beijing Famous Snacks" and "China Famous Snacks". People who like sugar ears might as well have a try.

5. Centralization

Inby, like other Beijing snacks, is an ancient food, which has been loved by people for thousands of years because of its dark yellow color, bracelet shape, crisp and delicious taste and unique flavor. As early as the Song Dynasty, Su Dongpo wrote a poem about inby, that is, "Hand rubs into jade, jade is fried into yellow, and sleeping in spring night at night is insignificant, which is regarded as the first product advertisement poem in China." In the Ming Dynasty, Li Shizhen's "The Valley of Compendium of Materia Medica" also recorded: "The people are short of salt, so they are twisted into a ring and fried."

If you want to make inby, you need to melt salt, alkali and a little alum with warm water, add water to stir the flour into dough, then knead the dough repeatedly by hand, put it on the chopping board for 3 hours, then flatten the dough, cut it into strips with a knife, put it on the chopping board, hold one end with one hand and the other end with the other hand, and roll it into flat pieces with a thickness of about 6 cm. Every two medicines are stacked together, and a knife is cut in the middle with a small fry knife, and both sides cannot be cut through. When the oil is heated to 50%, hold one end of the raw inby blank by hand and put it into the oil pan, then spread it from the middle with chopsticks to make it into a bracelet shape, turn it over after setting, fry it to purple, and then control the oil. Inby made from this is crisp and refreshing, and even if it is stored for ten and a half months, it can guarantee the same quality, and it is as crisp as ever, so it has always been popular. When people eat sesame cakes, they often like to be caught in the middle of by. When drinking bean juice, they must eat inby. It is one of the few old Beijing snacks suitable for men, women and children in Xian Yi.

6. Bean juice

After talking about inby, I have to mention its old partner, Bean Juice, which is also one of the prestigious traditional snacks in Beijing. Bean juice is actually the leftover of mung bean starch or vermicelli. Soak mung beans until they can be twisted and peeled, then take them out, grind them into fine pulp with water and pour them into vats for fermentation. Starch sinks to the bottom of the tank, and soybean juice floats on it. Fermented bean juice must be boiled with water in a big casserole, then boiled with fermented bean juice, and then kept warm with low fire, and served with food. Similar to inby, soybean juice has a long history, and it is said that it was a popular folk food as early as Liao and Song Dynasties. Later, it was said that it was the 18th year of Qianlong (1753), and someone recommended bean juice to Emperor Qianlong. The script wrote: "Recently, new bean juice was sent to Ilibu to check whether it was clean and drinkable. If there is nothing clean, I will collect two or three bean juice machines and send them to the chef. " As a result, the bean juice from the people soon became the royal meal of the court.

Bean juice is generally sour, slightly bitter and slightly sour, like swill. Therefore, most people who drink bean juice for the first time will find it difficult to swallow, but after pinching their noses twice, they will change their original views on bean juice, not only not rejecting its taste, but also becoming addicted, and they will miss it very much if they don't drink it for a few days, which is one of the reasons why ugly bean juice will become a famous snack in old Beijing. In addition, according to nutritionists, the nutritional value of soybean milk should not be underestimated. It is rich in protein, vitamin C, crude fiber and sugar, and has the effects of dispelling summer heat, clearing away heat, warming yang, invigorating spleen, stimulating appetite, expelling toxin and removing dryness. In this way, it is not surprising that many people would rather queue up every day than drink soy milk.

In addition to the above, the famous snacks in old Beijing include candied fruit, paste sugar, noodle tea, prickly heat, fried cake with cream, toad spitting honey, pork chops with ginger sauce and so on. They carry the long river of history and have been passed down to this day. They are an excellent choice for people to taste Beijing cuisine and appreciate the long-standing food culture in the capital.