Nanjing is like a book, reading at the age of 15 has the charm of a 15-year-old, reading at the age of 30 has the style of a 30-year-old, and reading at the age of 50 has the feeling of being 50 years old. After all, the ancient capital of the Six Dynasties, the capital of the Ten Dynasties, and many personnel changes have left their traces here.

Everything about the duck is grilled just right: the skin is thin and crispy, the meat is moderately fat and lean, the juice is full, the meat is rich, not to mention the brine, it is a moment to witness the miracle......

To open the conversation, you can chat with Londoners, and you can talk to Nanjingers about duck, especially roast duck.

Although the saltwater duck is famous, not everyone loves the salty duck taste, but the roast duck hidden in the small shops in the streets and alleys, with the aroma of the roasted meat, quietly occupies the tip of the tongue of the city.

There are hundreds of duck shops in Jinling City, if you ask the old Nanjing people which store has the best roast duck, they will have more eyes shining, and their mouths will be like a river in an instant, like a few treasures.

Nanjing people have two feelings for duck shops: childhood sweethearts, and the duck shops at the door of the house are the best from snacks to big!

Love at first sight, I can't stop eating once, and I'd rather drive from the east of the city to the west of the city than queue up for its ducks!

Either way, if you want to eat a delicious duck, you always have to queue up. When it was time for dinner, the city's inhabitants flocked to the duck shop, standing in a line, surrounded by neighbors, patiently waiting for the ducks in the oven to flip and color.

At this moment, roast duck, brings people together.

It is basically the welfare of the old city, mainly distributed in the area of Nanhu Lake and Jiqingmen near Shuiximen, around the Confucius Temple Scenic Area, and in the old alleys of the Xinjiekou area, such as the Mingwa Corridor.

Many old stores have been open for decades, and a family has been operating steadily for generations, and no matter how good the business is, there are few branches. Customers are also familiar faces, from snacks to large, even if the location of the store has changed several times.

Unlike the white-feathered, fat-fat duck of Beijing, the roast duck here is made of black-feathered, relatively small lake duck or hemp duck.

In addition to occupying the time and place of raising ducks and eating ducks, ducks have a huge demand for meat ducks every year, and they also need the surrounding water town areas to continuously give ducks a steady stream of offerings.

The owner of the duck shop will personally go to pick up live ducks in the water town, which is better than landlubbers, ducks are the same as cress, there is water to live, and they are fresh.

The days used to be slower, and the duck's lifetime was only enough for one trip. Every year, when the rice flowers are fragrant, the ducklings in northern Jiangsu will cross the river to the south in hundreds, while eating small fish and shrimp, quacking and singing all the way along the water network to Nanjing City, and when they arrive at the destination, the ducks also grow fat and strong.

It's time to be eaten, too!

In the early days, the duck shop was called Duck Shop, and the stove used to roast duck in the oven was about one cubic meter, and it was made of special bricks to make the upper and lower sizes, which could be fire-resistant and tempered, and now it has been replaced by a light and movable white iron stove.

In the roast duck shop that is roasted and sold, you can often see an iron stove more than one person high, the furnace body is in the shape of a barrel with two sections up and down, the top is large and the bottom is small, and the stove cover resembles a cone-shaped bucket hat, which is the simmering oven. When the temperature in the oven reaches the requirement, extinguish it, put the duck embryo in the furnace and cover it tightly, and roast it at residual temperature.

Because it is not exposed to open flames and is environmentally friendly, the duck's moisture is preserved, the meat is fuller and tenderer, and the juice under the duck's skin is richer.

The water poured into the duck cavity during roasting not only enhances the taste of the duck meat, but also serves as a raw material for making brine. The duck meat is cooked during baking, and the essence of the duck meat penetrates into it, which is very fresh.

When roasting the duck, the other side should set up a pot, with ginger, green onions, cinnamon, bay leaves, garlic, dried chili, thirteen spices and other more than a dozen kinds of condiments, slow heat to make marinade. Wait until the duck is baked, pour the roasted juice and the marinade in the pot together, and pour sugar, rice vinegar, and refined salt while it is hot.

Although you don't have to sit on the ground to eat, it also has its attention and persistence: the marinade must not be avoided, and it must not be over-soaked, so all roast duck restaurants will pack the marinade and chopped roast duck separately, and the bulging marinade bun is usually a little hot, and it is poured on the roast duck when you get home.

This small action of pouring brine gives the duck a sense of ritual. Nanjing roast duck has less subcutaneous fat, and the meat is soft but tough. After absorbing the brine, the cut duck meat blends with the original juice, which is fragrant, sweet and salty, and has a rich taste.

Ming tile is a glass that was boiled into liquid with sheep's horns in ancient times, and then thinned into pieces after adding color and solidifying. The lamp made of bright tiles is transparent, no fire, and not brittle. And the Ming tile corridor is a business road named after this craft, and the Ming tile is hung high, and the shops are lined up.

Today's Mingwa Corridor is still brightly lit and crowded. There are two shops on the street that have to queue up when they open: one is Jinwei Chestnut, which is only in business for half a year, and the other is Jin Hongxing Duck Shop, which has a long queue all year round.

The length of the queue is one of the criteria for testing the taste, and in order to maintain the purity of the taste, even if the business is so good that the business is booming, the boss will only open a single one. Through the bright glass window, I saw that the freshly roasted duck jujube was red and oily, and the fat oozing from the crispy and burnt skin was fragrant, which undoubtedly gave a shot in the arm to the people waiting in line.

If you buy a whole duck, you don't have to cut it, you don't have to queue up, and it's a green channel in the queue.

Everything about the duck is grilled just right: the skin is thin and crispy, the meat is moderately fat and lean, the juice is full, the meat is rich, not to mention the brine, it is a moment to witness the miracle......

The Nanjing roast duck dipped in marinade is like a Victoria's Secret angel with wings on his back. The salty, sweet and fragrant marinade penetrates into the duck meat, and when chewed, the juice is fragrant and the meat is tender, and the taste is rich, and the gluttonous insects in the stomach pour out of the nest.

Freshly baked roast duck, the fishy smell dissipates after a little resting, and the temperature is just right. If you want to eat fat, you can chop the front breast (duck breast to the waist), and if you like chewy, you can cut the back seat, waist to the duck leg. The golden skin melts the fat and becomes charred and crispy, and the juice of the duck meat is well locked, and it is smooth and fragrant when chewed.

The duck meat is plump but the skin is thin and there is almost no fat under the skin. The marinade is bright red in color, and the taste is sweet with a hint of plum, and the duck meat is soaked in it and the mouth is particularly greasy.

A little spicy and sweet neutralize, the marinade is extraordinarily flavorful, the meat is firm and chewy, and the skin is elastic and tender when torn between the teeth. Their duck intestines are also very clean, bright in color and juicy in taste, and SC Johnson once thought he was eating fruit.

The old house is deep in the courtyard, the restaurant stalls, simple and elegant, and the contrast is interesting, just like the restaurant, teahouse, street and alley market in the late Qing Dynasty and early Republic of China.

Welcome, skillful cook, little sister next door, respectful. Charcoal stove low fire, wild vegetables in season, original, heirloom.

Discuss banquets, gather relatives and friends, eat delicious food, listen to local songs, talk and laugh between empty cups, hearty. In fact, life is blissful.

Qi said: Elegant and vulgar appreciation, the original taste of folk customs, is a big name file.