One day in late spring this year, a friend drove me to eat farm food near Juntian Lake in Xuancheng. They were all booked in advance by phone. We walked into the farmhouse, where the local chicken was stewed in the stove crockpot, the aroma was tangy, the bacon and garlic sprouts were fried in the pot, and the rare cured pork feet and steamed moldy beans were put aside.

There is an old man in the backyard guarding a large iron pot, stewing firewood hot pot rice. Curled up on the firewood pile was a fat chestnut-colored civet cat, guarding so many delicious foods, and in the middle of the day, it could rise and fall, its belly tugging, and snoring heartily. What caught my eyes the most was that a little girl next to me was cleaning up a small half basket of loaches...... Hey, loach, it's been a long time!

Then a tall middle-aged woman came over and burned the cloth loaches that the little girl had packed for us. She fried the loach until it was browned on both sides, and the shape was complete, and they were simmered in sauce and vinegar and spicy water. The old man in the backyard also called over, took the little girl's work, did not speak, and filled the stove with firewood and grass in the hole, and time seemed to go back to the past......

When the smell of fish in the pot was so great that the middle-aged woman finally took off the lid of the pot and served it to a porcelain plate. Although the cooking is not delicate or even coarse, with only ginger, garlic and chili peppers, the flavor of the flavor is very prominent. The spines of the loach are generally very hard and not easy to cook and crispy, but the meat is tender and plump. That's called fresh!

Eating saury and fish is eating, and eating loach is also eating, as long as it tastes, it can be pleasant. There is a saying that "loach is not as good as an eel, and an eel is not as good as a fish", and in my hometown, loach is not counted as a fish. When I was younger, I had many opportunities to spare stretch fishing, pile fishing, maca, wire nets, clip nets, and drag old sow nets, so that in addition to scaly fish, I also ate a lot of loaches.

Only the snake-like loach never eats fresh, but pickles it with small trash fish and then dried and steamed it, salty and fresh and chewy, and it is very good for rice. Nowadays, far away from the countryside, I want to eat loaches stewed in coarse salt plate sauce, so I occasionally buy some farmed loaches from the vegetable market and make them myself. Although it is impossible for a decent person to order food in a big restaurant, the insignificant loach often brings a long-lasting aftertaste to my ordinary life.

At this time, in the countryside, it is the early summer when the neem trees bloom. Under which sky should those egrets that are like clouds fly up and down? I think the place where the egrets stop is always the home of the loaches......

The snail is the wrist of the snail group, super large, and the smallest is larger than a quail egg. Snails have a spiral-shaped shell, which is their iconic house, and they carry it wherever they go. "Making a dojo in a snail shell" means that it is a very good thing to move as much as possible in a cramped space. The countrymen call the snail shell "warehouse", and the round lid like a plastic sheet that sticks to the snail meat is called the "warehouse door cover". We usually see the snails sticking out of their fleshy bodies with two exaggerated pointed antennae, which are actually just the feet on which they walk, and when there is movement, the fleshy feet that seem to have eyes are withdrawn into their shells, and the "barn door lid" is tightly closed. In animal taxonomy, both snails and mussels are mollusks. The edible part of mollusks is their well-developed foot muscles. Wherever they walk, they leave a mark that twists and turns like a book from the sky.

Picking up a snail with three fingers means that the hand is coming. This snail is also really easy to pick up, at your fingertips, from the seedling field ditch on the seedbed after the Qingming Festival, to the foot of the rice trees that have just been tillered in early summer, they are calm and quiet in the shallow water of the Qingming Dynasty, especially in the morning when the sun just rises the most, you can pick up half a basket after walking two or three ridges. Sometimes you can see two people who are affectionate and sticking together, and they are doing things that have been together for a hundred years, and it seems that the world is full of wind and moon, and even the snails can scratch the itch. At that time, no pesticides or chemical fertilizers were used in the fields, and yellow eels, loaches, small fish seedlings, green and yellow grasshoppers, and small gray-brown soil frogs with striped thumbs were lively and jumping, and they were everywhere.

It is also easy to find snails in clear flowing streams. Usually, the shell of these snails is covered with long green moss, which ripples with the water, as if they are small green turtles raised by people today. If the shell is pale yellow and thin, and the warehouse is round, it indicates that it is a young snail of good quality. The snail is also the same as people, young and active, although walking slowly, but after all, you can see some changes; the old snail that does not move, although the "warehouse door cover" is open, but like an old monk who dozes off and sits, with a long time of motionlessness, to tell about the vicissitudes of life, about the forbearance and difficulty of life.

At that time, the way to eat snails was very simple. Raise the snail in the water and spit out the gray flocculent filth, and then put it into the boiling water to remove the "warehouse door cover", remove the snail tail stomach and intestines, pick out the lump of meat, wash it, cut it into coin thick slices, scoop some sauce beans, grind the pepper and coat it, pour a few drops of sesame oil, put it on the rice pot and steam it out, except for a little muddy, the taste is very good. My grandmother used to make slag powder snails, the same method as tamales, but the snail meat had to be loosened with the back of a knife beforehand, otherwise the extremely tough foot muscles would be too hard and difficult to steam.

The snail has long become a flavor food in food stalls and star-rated hotels. In fact, if you want to learn an apron husband, it is not difficult to make a snail at home. The oil in the pot is hot, put in the pepper, ginger, garlic, fry the fragrance, then pour in the pre-cooked snail and stir-fry for a few minutes, put soy sauce, rice wine and sugar, fragrant and other seasonings and stir-fry a few times, and finally simmer for a while over low heat, and finally put MSG to stir-fry a few times, a fresh and spicy, red and bright pleasure delicacy comes out. For those who are close to the taste of Shanghai and Zhejiang, such as me, put less spicy ingredients and more dripping sweet and sour, as long as they are not overdone and old, the same is that the snail meat is crispy and refreshing, and the aftertaste is long.

Now the fried snails are very popular. Even on the streets of Beijing in the summer evening, it is common to see diners eating snails with beer glasses. The snail is originally a scenery in the south of the Yangtze River, and most of the snails in the north are artificially bred and are alienated snails. I have seen fried snails on the flavor snack stall that belongs to the Jinsong ground on the Guangming Bridge in Beijing, the worker uses a vice to cut off the tail of the snail one by one, clean, drain, hand it to the master and pour it into the oil pot, spray the wine and stir-fry it as a meal, add ginger, garlic, salt, sugar, red pepper, five spices, monosodium glutamate and a small amount of water, simmer for five or six minutes, get out of the pot, sprinkle with chopped green onions, and serve it with a strong spicy flavor. The trick is to make sure that the soup is small and sticky, so that the snails can taste good. However, some diners eat in a strange way, using a toothpick to pick out the snail meat and dip it in the soup, then put it in the mouth and chew it, and then raise the beer glass to drink it, you will imagine that it is a kind of leisurely food tasting that cannot be experienced in a star hotel.

Shanghai Old Town God's Temple, the worst snail is the most delicious. There are two kinds of snails, one is to remove the net meat and steam it with white dregs, and the other is to marinate it with dregs juice. The taste is loyal and soft, and the rice wine boiled by the old ginger is the best. In the late spring of last year, my son came to Nanjing to attend an international conference. We rushed over as well. In the evening, I deliberately chose to eat by the glittering Qinhuai River. After the food was served, my son ordered a cup of bird's nest and a snow clam for me and his mother respectively. But what I'm interested in is the crucible snail chicken, in fact, it is the sub-rooster cut into small dices and fried snail meat, and then the base soup pot, with enoki mushrooms and soybean sprouts as side dishes, ginger and garlic are heavy, the soup is red and oily, and the snail meat and chicken are tender and refreshing.

The snail stuffed pork is also a steamed dish, which is very delicious and has a unique and delicate meaning. But I've never done it myself, but I've only read an introduction in a cooking book: mince pork loin and snail meat with fresh shrimp and put in seasonings to make a filling. Then stuff the mince stuffing into the snails, put them one by one in a deep dish with chives, ginger slices, and cooking wine, and steam them in the steamer for about ten minutes. The book specifically pointed out that the snail meat is tender and must not be oversteamed.

If it is said that the shrimp and crab meat is the spring and snow, and the snail is the lower riba people, then, following the fragrance of the snail stuffed meat, to recall the taste of steamed snails with soy sauce beans back then, it seems to be a spiritual return after prosperity. I remember when I was young, because I envied the string of calvary Buddha beads on the chest of the comic strip monk Shangsha, I once painted the snail shell red, painted the black hole of the eyes, mouth and nose with a brush, and then cone out the thin eyes at the bottom of the snail shell, and threaded a string of skull snail shell necklace, which was terrifying and interesting. Hanging on his shirtless chest to show off everywhere, scaring some little kids, making chickens and dogs jump, very proud.