Cuisine on the tip of the tongue a Zhuji rice cake

The calendar has flipped to the twelfth month of the Gregorian calendar, and it's time to say goodbye to 2017 and usher in a new year, 2018. At this time in my hometown of Zhuji, it is the time for every family to grind rice flour and every household to make rice cakes. Zhuji rice cake is as Zhuji people proud of the food, from their own table to high-grade hotels, from their hometown to Hangzhou, Shanghai and other big cities, and won a lot of praise.

"The hearts of many good high, harmonic system of food. Righteousness of the year to win the year, in order to pray for the year ripe". This poem of rice cake, which was circulated in the late Qing Dynasty, vividly tells that rice cake not only serves as a delicacy on the table of ordinary people, but also is a good wish for people to pray for the New Year, and for their lives to be higher than one year.

At the end of each year, the custom of playing and eating rice cakes. It has existed since ancient times, and the custom of eating rice cakes has been passed down to this day in honor of Wu Zixu. In 514 B.C., Fu Chai, the son of the king of Wu, killed Wu Zixu after he succeeded to the throne on the basis of slanderous rumors. Before his death, Wu Zixu told his men, "If the country is in trouble after my death and the people have no food to eat, go to the city gate and dig three feet under the wall, and you will find something to eat". Later, when the Yue State attacked the Wu State, the soldiers and civilians in the city were deprived of food, Wu Zixu's subordinates led the soldiers and civilians to dig under the wall, and they dug out a lot of "city bricks" that could be used to feed the hungry. It turned out that the "city bricks" were made of glutinous rice powder, which was a plan set up by Wu Zixu during his lifetime to "accumulate food to prevent emergencies". The people and army of Wu relied on these "city bricks" to tide over the difficult times, and since then, every New Year, the people of Wu have to make rice cakes similar to the "city bricks" to commemorate Wu Zixu. Zhuji may have belonged to the land of Wu and Yue. The first thing you need to do is to make sure that you have a good understanding of what you are doing and how you are doing it.

I remember when I was a kid, my dad would harvest the sun-dried rice at the end of the year and go to the processing plant to thresh it into rice. Then the rice clean, half dry and half wet rice to the village processing plant grinding into powder. It was necessary to have a lot of people to make the rice cakes because it took a lot of manpower to make the rice cakes, and even though we were still young, the whole family would come out to make the rice cakes. If there weren't enough people, neighbors were invited to help ......

The rural processing plant was especially busy at this time, with people lining up for the rice by the stone bucket (a kind of bamboo basket). The process of making rice cakes is usually like this: first, the rice is poured into a large funnel on a machine, and when the machine is turned on, the white rice flour slides into the shiro in a swollen, bulging white cloth bag. It is then carried to the steam room, where the rice flour is added to water and then kneaded. It is important to add water at this point, as it depends on the dryness or humidity of the steamed rice vermicelli, so this is done by an experienced chef. Next, the kneaded rice noodles are poured into a wooden steamer on the earthen stove and steamed. After steaming, it is poured into a large basket, and two wooden bars (somewhat like a stir-fry spatula) are used to break up the cooked rice flour in boiling soup, commonly known as "gao hua". After breaking up the "gao hua" into a large funnel that presses the rice cake. At this time, with the roar of the machine below the funnel, two white rice cakes keep flowing out, then you need to take the left and right two people each with scissors, next to each of the two bowls of water (for fear that the scissors and rice cakes stick), one hand to hold the rice cakes with one hand to quickly cut, put it back. At this time, the thickness and length of the rice cake depends on the two people who cut the rice cake. The person standing next to the rice cake cutter quickly spreads a strip of rice cake in a large bamboo basket, because there are many large bamboo baskets in the processing plant, so when one is full, it is quickly removed and put on a shelf to cool. Another empty one is immediately picked up. Our task was to turn over the cooled rice cakes. The freshly made rice cakes were white and soft, and when you bit into them, they were soft and smooth with a hint of rice flavor, which made them especially delicious. When the rice cake is a little cooler, we will be put away one by one, neatly yards in the stone bucket ......

The next day will be the stone bucket white fat rice cake one by one wrench out (the rice cake has been a little bit of adhesion between). The next day, the white rice cakes will be taken out one by one (the rice cakes have been sticking to each other a little bit). When the rice cake is dry and a little cracked, it will be put into the tank full of winter water, so it can be kept for a long time.

This is now the machine to play the practice of rice cakes, while the previous handmade rice cakes. The first steps and machine rice cake, and so the rice flour steamed into a "cake flower", it is poured in a large stone mortar, with a large wooden pestle, the head of the iron wrapped, a person to hit the stone mortar "cake flower", a person quickly turn inside the gradual formation of dough "cake flower". One side quickly in the side of the water basin to dip a little, the action should be fast: one is afraid of "cake flower" sticky hands, two can give the hand cooling. It is similar to playing mochi in the countryside. The physical strength of the person playing rice cake should be good, because it is very tired, so often have to switch to play. When the "gao hua" has become as strong as mochi, you can pull a piece of cake and roll it. At this point, you can pull a piece of rice cake, roll it into a ball, put some brown sugar on it, or put some fried radish and vegetables on it, and it tastes very good. We call it "rice cake porridge" here. At this time, you can pull out a small piece of the mochi-like dough, press it onto the wooden mold of the rice cake, and pour it out in a compacted form into a shiny rice cake. At that time, some families also made realistic forms of chickens and fish. Therefore, every time a family paid homage to their ancestors, the rice cakes resembling chickens and fish were placed on the offering plate, which had the significance of "high year after year" and "surplus year after year", and was very dignified. Unfortunately, handmade is always replaced by advanced machines, and now these handmade rice cakes are rarely seen, most of them are machine-made rice cakes as described above, and there are also a lot of colorful vegetables and fruits rice cakes, more and more varieties of ......

However, zhuji rice cakes are not the same as those of the neighboring cities, which are soft and smooth. The first thing you need to do is to get your hands on some of the best rice cakes in the world, and you'll be able to do it in a way that makes you feel good. Not like some places rice cake only soft sticky not Q bullet, and sticky teeth. So Zhuji people in their hometown specialties to friends and relatives in Hangzhou, Shanghai. Deeply loved by everyone. The first thing you need to do is to get your hands on a pair of these.

There are many ways to eat Zhuji rice cakes. The simplest is to cook it with water and put some soy sauce or sugar on it. That's a quick way to do it in the morning when I was studying. I remember the most delicious rice cakes were fried by my mom, when the New Year pig was killed. The pig had just been killed and everyone was tired. At this time, my mother will cut the rice cake into pieces, with garlic, asparagus slices, and of course, ready-made fresh pork, lard meat and asparagus stir-fried well to serve up, and then poured into the rice cake stir-frying, to be rice cake fried soft, then in turn into the meat and asparagus slices stir-frying, pour a bit of soy sauce, sugar, monosodium glutamate. Then put the garlic, stir-fry a few times, a bowl of fragrant, colorful and fragrant fried rice cakes burned well. Eat a bowl, the freshness of pork; asparagus crisp; garlic fresh aroma, coupled with the soft and smooth rice cakes. Several flavors of freshness, sweetness, crispness, aroma, glutinousness and Q will stay on your tongue for a long time. Can't stop ......

There are many other ways to make rice cakes:Grandma made leek buds, asparagus, shredded pork fried rice cakes, as a snack egg sweet wine rice cakes ...... rice cakes can be fried or boiled or steamed, can be made in a variety of cuisines. Although the practice of rice cakes change, but the same is the taste of home, unchanged is the hometown forever memory. No matter how far you go, no matter where you are, always out of the hometown of attachment!