There are two kinds of fish that I love to paint in Chinese paintings, one is the catfish with a smart beard, and the other is the spotted mandarin fish with a wide back.

Li Eel, one of the eight strange people in Yangzhou, painted a mandarin fish, a wicker through the big mouth of the mandarin fish, leading upward, next to a garlic and two pieces of ginger, the inscription said: "Daguan green onion, tender sprout ginger, new taste when the giant mouth is fine." This is not only the true meaning of secular life, but also an optimistic and positive attitude towards life that all living beings need.

The mandarin fish is ingenious, harmonizing the "expensive" sound, which can be described as a spiritual affair. There are also those who write "osmanthus fish", which are clustered by their pylorus, commonly known as osmanthus fish.

"The egret flies in front of the Xisai Mountain, and the peach blossom flowing water is fat for mandarin fish. "Mandarin fish has been fortunate enough to swim for thousands of years in China's most beautiful poetry and literati paintings. In fact, what mandarin fish really like is still water or clear slow currents. When the mandarin fish swims in the water, it is black and mushy, and the surface of the water is gray-brown with a blue-yellow color, and the huge mouth with a lower jaw that extends beyond the upper jaw looks very strange.

In the early morning or evening of April and May every year, the mandarin fish swim violently in the top water during the breeding period of the mandarin fish, and flock to chase the waves on the surface of the water. At that time, the fish we ate the most was mandarin fish. My child, in particular, was fed to him because of the spineless and firm garlic cloves of garlic clove, and we sometimes fed him with food, so that his head was unusually large, and he still had a special anxiety about going to school early and skipping grades. Friends joked that it was all high-protein mandarin fish that overnourished his brain cells.

Generally speaking, all carnivorous fish taste delicious. The staple diet of mandarin fish is small fish and shrimp, and some small fish in the shape of spindles or sticks like small hemp sticks are the most easily swallowed. Mandarin fish are lazy, and lie in stone crevices and pits during the day, and do not move much. However, mandarin fish have unique hands, and after swallowing fish and shrimp, they will spit out fish bones and shells. The intestines of mandarin fish are very short, almost a large stomach pouch that reaches to the gills, and the inside is usually swollen and filled with small fish that have been swallowed.

The dorsal fin spines and pelvic fin spines of mandarin fish are poisonous, and if you are accidentally stabbed, they will swell and hurt so much that you will grin and breathe in the cold. The fastest growing is the mandarin fish, the largest I have ever seen weighing forty-eight pounds, with a dark body, and although it died from the shore, it still looks angry, with white eyes facing the sky, and a terrifying mouth full of jagged teeth, large enough to fit into a large fist. The big-eyed mandarin fish is slender and slow-growing, but the bigeye mandarin fish is the most delicious.

For ingredients such as mandarin fish, too much processing is added to the snake, washed and steamed with green onion and ginger, it is an excellent dish. Usually eat steamed mandarin fish in a restaurant, there is a fragrance on the table, which makes people's appetite move, eat in the mouth, the meat is tender and fresh, smooth and smooth, and it is difficult to achieve this level by doing it yourself at home. If you want to say a little trick, that is, you have to pick about eight taels of fish, more than one catty, the meat quality is too old.

Fish with deep markings are usually more fragrant, while those with lighter markings and almost white are more tender. Cut the fish and wash it, cut it obliquely on the back, the knife is deep to the bone, smear some refined salt inside and outside, and leave it for a while, and the taste is the most delicious after the part of the protein is decomposed into amino acids. In my experience, steamed fish should not save green onions, and few green onions will have a strong fishy smell. Use a large pot to spread three taels to half a catty of green onions, put the fish, then put cooking wine, cooking oil, ginger slices, steam over high heat for eight to ten minutes, see the fish's eyeballs protrude, and then burn the hot gas and turn off the fire for three or four minutes.

This "焐" is very important, many people don't know, without going through the "焐" and steamed directly, the fish meat is old, and the fish skin is easy to crack. When eating, pour the original juice at the bottom of the basin on the fish, or add the original juice to the chicken soup, chicken essence, refined salt and then pour it on the fish, so that there is not only the taste of the original juice, but the fish body that is close to the fish basin will not be soaked to rot.

If it is a soup, choose two or three fish weighing four or five taels, fry them slightly in the oil pan, put water into the flattened ginger pieces, and cook them for 20 minutes over medium heat. Add chicken essence and chopped green onion before eating. This soup is as white as milk, the fish is fresh and tender, and if you add the cut snow mushrooms into the pot, it can be especially fresh. Vinegared mandarin fish is also easier to make, the fish fillet out of the cross pattern, dry the water, evenly spread a layer of egg white stirred out of the starch paste, fry in the pan until browned, remove and serve.

Take another pot on the fire, put oil on the heat, add green onions, ginger and stir fragrant, add vinegar, cooking wine, sugar and water to boil, thicken with starch water, then pour sesame oil, put in the green onion segment, that is, into sweet and sour marinade. The marinade is poured over the fish while it is hot, squeaking and penetrating fully into the flesh. The appearance color is golden, crispy on the outside and loose on the inside, sweet and sour, fresh and delicious. The squirrel mandarin fish and grape mandarin fish in the restaurant are roughly the same, but the slices of fish require a lot of knife skill and patience.

Special mention should be made here of "stinky mandarin fish". "Stinky Mandarin Fish", formerly known as "Tunxi Mandarin Fish", also known as "Stinky Fresh", is the first signature dish of Hui cuisine. The biggest feature of "stinky mandarin fish" is that it "smells stinky and tastes fragrant", which not only maintains the original flavor of mandarin fish, but also mellow and flavorful, while the bone spurs are separated from the meat, and the meat is lumpy.

When a plate of stinky mandarin fish is brought to the table, a strong smelly aroma comes to the nostrils...... Use chopsticks to gently pry away the white garlic, red pepper, and green onion covering the fish, and then peel off the fish skin, pick up a piece of tightly coagulated garlic clove meat, and under the tongue, there are so many complicated deliciousness lingering between the teeth and tongue!

Legend has it that in the early years, traders transported the mandarin fish from the Yangtze River to the mountains in wooden barrels every winter to sell, and in order to prevent deterioration, they sprayed a layer of fish with a layer of wine and salt water for storage, and turned it up and down regularly. Three or five days later, the fresh fish was transported to Tunxi and other places, and the gills were still red and the quality had not changed. After frying, low heat and fine burning, like stinky and fragrant, salty and fresh through the bones, it has been passed down to this day, and the reputation remains unchanged. Throughout the ages, anyone who has been to Huizhou has not tasted the "stinky mandarin fish", and it is a pity.

One year, two friends and I were passing by Jixi, and the car stopped at a restaurant outside the city, so we only ordered three or four dishes because we had to hurry. I didn't know that the plate of "stinky mandarin fish" in the middle couldn't stop eating, so I shouted to the store to serve another plate. The proprietress who was quite charming came over and said sorry, there is no stock at home.

Seeing that we were still unsatisfied, the proprietress smiled and said "Wait a minute", and took away the leftover head and tail skeletons on our table. A few minutes later, the proprietress brought us a large blue and white porcelain bowl full of spinach and tofu soup, and told us with a smile that it was made from the head and tail skeleton of "stinky mandarin fish". We first tasted it in disbelief, and the taste was beyond imagination, and the three of us ate and drank it all in one go. A friend said that the head and tail skeleton may be able to make another bowl of fresh soup.