Just like the rainy season is also called moldy rain, umeboshi is also called "moldy dried vegetables". In fact, there is no time connection between plum vegetables and plum rain, but they are all produced in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, so plum vegetables have a strong Jiangnan taste.

It would be a mistake to think that umeboshi is made by pickling mustard greens, Chinese cabbage, or snow mushrooms and drying them in the sun, and that salted vegetables and umeboshi are the same thing. In fact, the real dried plum vegetables are taken out of the pickle jar and steamed in the pot, and then tied into a small handful, hanging on bamboo poles and ropes to dry thoroughly.

When it is semi-dry, it is necessary to return to the pot to steam again, and then dry it. Generally speaking, it's mostly in the late spring when the sun is shining. There are also people who cut the steamed pickles in advance and dry them in bamboo plaques until they are soaked in the soothing and calm breath of the twilight sun. Good dried plum vegetables, without thick stems and old leaves, pinched in the hands of salty tide and salty tide, dark color, there is a kind of investigation of the world's gloom and sprinkling.

When traveling to Shaoxing, you usually have to bring back a small package of fennel beans and "moldy dried vegetables" as a souvenir. Speaking of Shaoxing moldy dried vegetables, it is really the word "mold", because their pickles are not dried in the sun after cooking, but dried in the dark like making moldy beans, which are mostly black and red, and the older they are, the more fragrant they are. The dried plum vegetables we have here are slightly yellow and refreshing, and the pungent atmosphere is much lighter.

But whether these two dishes are made of button meat or roasted pork belly, they are all the same delicious, the next meal is delicious, and then put the rice pot on the steaming after the second meal, the more steamed the more considerate and soft, the more steamed the more oily and flashing, and the aroma strikes people. Speaking of which, they are really this life, they need meat the most, and they need to absorb the fat and fragrance of meat, so in the era of lack of oil and meat, they can only secretly sigh that heroes are useless.

On March 6, 1935, Lu Xun said to his mother in a letter sent to Shaoxing: ...... A small package was also received the day before yesterday, and half of it was immediately distributed to the third child. The dried vegetables are very delicious, and the children love to eat them, because they have never eaten such dried vegetables.

He also specifically mentioned in the article: "In Shaoxing, whenever spring returns to the earth and the wind and sun are beautiful, it is a good season to pickle moldy dried vegetables......"

People are always so full of nostalgic emotions, for some tastes, they are entangled for a lifetime. This is how your taste buds are preferred, because of the soil and water, because of the early years of growth, those ordinary but magical flavors of food are interpreted as the accumulation of a certain culture and emotion.

In fact, the dried plum dish is not noble at all, and in the countryside in the past, it was almost a must-have for every household. This thing has a thick taste, especially able to absorb the aroma of meat and oil, and the smell of fishy meat has long been lost in the deep fragrance of plum vegetables. Among them, the stewed meat with plum vegetables is the most effective, the square meat pieces cut out of the pork ribs between the fat and thin flowers, with Shao wine, sugar and other ingredients, as long as the heat is good, it must be remediated to be stylish, the meat is full of elasticity, and even the luster on the meat skin has a bit of reverie and quiet simplicity.

Its trick is to simmer first and then steam, the more times you steam the more fragrant, the dried vegetables are black, the entrance is soft, slightly sweet, the color of the meat is red and bright, rich in sticky juice, and even the pulp cavity is overflowing with meat. Some people who cherish their body shape are afraid of extreme fat on weekdays, but it is difficult to resist the temptation of stewed meat with plum vegetables.

The umeboshi vegetables are made of button meat, both in color and taste, which are eye-catching. If you can endure this cumbersome, you might as well give it a try, the method: use a rice cooker to steam the pork belly in the upper drawer until it is five mature, put soy sauce marinate and set aside; cut the dried plum vegetables, put soy sauce, meat fat, sugar, and steam it in the drawer until crispy; fry the pork belly in hot oil until the skin is blistered, remove and drain the oil; put another wok to leave the bottom oil, add ginger and garlic to stir until fragrant, put in the pork belly, cooking wine, soy sauce, sugar, Cut the cooled pork belly into thin slices, neatly stack them on top of the dried plum vegetables in the bowl, steam until the meat is crispy, and pour the marinade into a thin thicket. Its vegetable aroma and meat flavor penetrate each other, oily but not greasy, fresh and glutinous sweet, and the taste is wonderful.

In Huizhou, whether it is Shexian or Tunxi or Xiuning, the crispy, fragrant and spicy plum dried vegetable baked cakes are freshly baked in the charcoal oven on the street, and the burnt side is also embedded with fragrant black sesame seeds, which is definitely an unforgettable flavor food. Nowadays, even the Mid-Autumn Festival mooncakes filled with dried plum vegetables can make a full house. You can also cook the umeboshi and chop it with minced meat as a filling to make flavored buns.

Cowpeas, lentils, small bamboo shoots and even eggplants are steamed and dried, and the name is slightly adjusted to be called plum cowpeas, plum lentils or something, and in winter, they are stewed with pork belly, and the taste is also quacking.

Hemp sticks are one or two inches long sesame sticks of candy. This fish is just so long, the head is small and pointed, the body is thin and round, the scales are blue and white, a bit like a miniature herring, because its shape is the size of a wheat ear, so some places are called wheat ear fish, and there are also called car keys, yellow tubes.

Small hemp sticks are a kind of small fish that are very many and annoying in the water, but anyone who has ever fished has learned the helplessness of this small fish. The fish float moved, touched the ground again and again, touched the ground again and again—as if there was a play, you jerked the rod up, and the fishing line thrown into the air flashed brightly, but it was a very small fish, so small that you couldn't figure it out when you took it off, and such a delicate little mouth would be greedy for bait and swallow the hook......

And it's unreasonable. If you ignore it, the bait on the hook will be eaten up immediately, and if there is any movement, you will lift the rod, and this small fish seems to make you unable to finish it. In this case, there seems to be no better way than to change the bait or change the place.

But among all the small fish, the best one is this little hemp stick. The small hemp strips are not only tender and tender, but also very convenient to eat, with almost no thorns in the meat, only a spine in the middle. Its scales are so thin that they don't need to be batched, and there is only a thin intestine in the stomach, so it doesn't matter if you pinch it or not. It's hard to get all the little hemp sticks, because it's impossible to catch all of them unless it's crazy.

Therefore, the usual small hemp sticks are stewed with other small miscellaneous fish. But after it is burned and served on the table, the slender and round little hemp sticks are always taken away by the person who can eat it with chopsticks first. Experienced people always pick as many small hemp sticks as possible when buying small trash fish.

In the early days of winter in the countryside, the family would often get a bunch of trash fish with small hemp sticks, clean them up, boil them in a pot, put them on the plate sauce and water grinding peppers, and cook them until the soup is very thick and thick, until the flesh of the small fish will fall into the soup. Sprinkle some green onions, garlic sprouts or coriander leaves from the vegetable garden before cooking, and the aroma is very attractive.

Generally, several bowls are boiled, one bowl is hot and eaten, and the rest is left to be frozen into fish jelly. The next day, when I opened the cupboard for breakfast, I brought out the small fish jelly, which was like a creamy translucent amber color like a preserved egg, and the bright red peppers and dark green garlic seedlings were all wrapped in the fish jelly.

The colder the weather, the thicker the fish jelly is condensed, pick up a piece with chopsticks, the entrance is smooth and slippery, take a sip, the tongue is wrapped and melted, the mouth is full of deliciousness, sandwiched with the spicy feeling of pleasure, whether it is a small fish or fish jelly, it is the freshest, especially can be eaten.

There is also a wonderful taste of small hemp strips: use salt for a little day, dry and deep-fried, similar to the method of pepper and salt, the entrance is extremely crispy, the flesh and bones are crispy, it is really a good dish to accompany the wine. In the era of material scarcity, in the middle of winter, a plate of small hemp fish jelly is half a bottle of dried potato wine, plus a plate of salt beans, and a pair of old brothers may scrape out a lot of heart-wrenching words.

Small hemp strips like stone gaps, in the waters of some stone revetments, you can often see groups of small hemp strips swimming around, flickering. Sometimes I can't bear to see someone catch a lot of these nimble little fish out of the water with a wire net.

When I went down to a stream full of rocks alone to find fun, I found that whether it was a deep pool or a shallow stream, there were many small hemp and agile figures drifting. It's just that these small hemp strips born in the Lingshan stream have changed slightly, their body shape is more narrow and long, and their pectoral fins and tail are abnormally large, which must be the result of long-term adaptation to the turbulent water in the mountains.

Even in a stone nest, he caught a small hemp strip dressed in a beautiful camouflage ring. At that time, the sun shone in along the canyon from the west, gently shining through a gurgling stream, which was uncontrollably beautiful. In this world, how many people know the beautiful camouflage ring-patterned small hemp strips? The rhythm of life fixes a form, and the rhythm of flowing water is so peaceful and peaceful......

Almost with a sense of reverence for nature, the small fish with many rainbow ribbons was released back into the current.