Life Essay｜Smoked Green Beans from Grandma

Smoked green beans are a specialty of my hometown, which has been passed down to just a few townships. In September and October, a lot of beans are ripe. After picking off the bean knots and peeling out the bean flesh, pour it into a large iron pot of boiling water to blanch it while it is fresh. Sprinkle some fine salt, it can be fresh, but also can make the beans color more green green green. When the beans turn color, fish them out to dry, and then lay them flat in an iron sieve. The stove set up a large piece of charcoal, the fire head without too much heat, hidden red charcoal fire best, and must ensure that no smoke, otherwise the smoke flavor will affect the taste of beans.

The sieve rests on the eye of the stove removed from the iron pot, and then from time to time to turn the beans in the sieve, until the bean skin wrinkled, fragrant, it is considered to be a good baked. Pour into a bamboo basket to dry, then bake the second sieve?

Smoked green beans are not properly preserved, after a period of time will be soft and tasteless. In the past, the old family's preservation trick is: the smoked green beans into the gauze sewing bag, into the bottom of the lime in the Beng, sealed Beng mouth, so put on a year and a half, smoked beans are still like new color will not be bad. Only the water is completely absorbed by the lime, bite up crunching. But used to make tea, after the water moistened beans have no effect on the taste. Now the refrigerator instead of lime Beng, smoked green beans in the refrigerator freezer, even after several months to take out, placed at room temperature a few hours later, the flavor is still the same as just out of the sieve.

The old family home if there is a rare guest suddenly came to the end of a cup of smoked bean tea, the host family will often have the courtesy to apologize, blushing to say a sentence: "ah ah, sorry, smoked bean tea are not brewed for you to drink. For the more sophisticated, the smoked green beans are also mixed with fried white sesame seeds, pickled tangerine peel and diced carrots. The tea in the cup, rich in color and a blend of five flavors, is eye-pleasing, throat-soothing and appetizing.

Smoked green beans are eaten dry, with an endless aftertaste. Pinch a few grains into the mouth, chewing slowly and swallowing Dudu leisurely taste that light salty silk sweet slightly fragrant, that enjoyment of food, about the same as Su Manshu at any time to pull out a five spice beans in a coat pocket to chew a little bit more or less. Smoked green beans mixed with fresh soy sauce as a congee dish, the flavor is definitely not inferior to soy sauce, not inferior to fermented bean curd, not inferior to meat floss, not inferior to peanut rice.

Most women in my hometown would bake smoked green beans, but I always felt that among the smoked green beans I ate, my grandmother's baked ones tasted the best.

Grandma's baking beans, the selection of materials is extremely careful. If the beans are too tender, the baked beans are not chewy; if they are too old, they are too hard to chew. Grandma often choose eight full knot, peeled out of the beans are not tender and not old, baked out of the beans similar to jasper, the taste is not salty, not soft and hard moderate. Baking beans is a piece of work that requires patience, baking a sieve of beans, often have to spend two or three hours, a little negligence, the beans will be outside the scorched inside not cooked. But Grandma never had such a phenomenon, so the neighbors often asked Grandma to be the gatekeeper.

When I was about ten years old, my grandmother started to smoke green beans to supplement her family's income. Every morning at dawn, Grandma put the baked smoked beans into the Hangzhou basket, covered with a towel, and went to the vegetable market to sell. After selling them, she would go back to the market to buy more beans for the next day's business. All of this had to be done surreptitiously, because it was speculation, the "tail of capitalism," and once discovered, it was bound to be cut off! Finally, there was a time when Grandma mobilized the whole family to peel and bake the smoked green beans for a day and a night, and they were mercilessly thrown into the city river under the Boulding Bridge by the inspectors together with the basket.

A few years later, a smoked green beans store opened in the town, and the beans were sold to Suzhou and Shanghai. Although the life of Grandma's family has improved, uncle in the social factory as a technician, aunt became a land worker, cousin opened a wholesale department of daily necessities, but nearly seventy years old Grandma baked up smoked green beans, all day long happy and free to do her small business.

In the fall of one year, the city of literature and art session of some people invited to visit a country, the smoked green beans as a hometown special gifts to each other, the other ate, even said "delicious! Yummy!" I went home to visit my grandmother. I went home to visit my grandmother, told her about this, nearly eighty years old grandmother excitedly asked: "A true? A true?" As if the smoked green beans were baked by her own hands.

It's the time of the year when smoked green beans are on the market. I'm not sure if you're going to be able to get a good deal on a new one, but I'm sure you're going to be able to get a good deal on a new one. After dinner, grabbed a handful of put into a transparent glass cup, sprinkled with some Longjing or white pieces, rushed into the boiling water, beans such as emerald in the tea floating and sinking. Drinking smoked bean tea, watching TV and chatting, such a night is tasty.

Counting on my fingers, my grandmother has left me for fifteen years.