Ma Xiaoliang, who was chewing potato chips slowly, watched others talking and laughing and picking up the mutton shabu, that gluttony!

After all, for Yanjing, every autumn is the most popular time for shabu mutton. A slightly famous restaurant is often the one where the lamb is in full swing inside, and the queue outside is in full swing.

If you ask the boss how many tables are left, even the boss will hint to you: don't wait, go to another house to eat, I'm afraid you won't be able to wait for three or two hours.

This time the choice of this is also a time-honored brand, although it is Sunday noon, but the flow of customers is still very large.

Indeed, southerners who have just arrived in the north are usually not able to receive the old Yanjing

The love of "civilian cuisine". Whether it's bean juice and noodle tea for breakfast, fried cakes and pork forks for snacks, or lamb scorpions, mutton shabu, and ubiquitous sesame sauce that serves as both stuffing and ingredients.

After the first bite, in addition to the feeling of fullness, there is usually no more advantage to eating. I always feel that this food, rough and rough, is the same as the station attendant who ate five words in one bite on the Yanjing bus in the early years, it is not fresh and refreshing at all, and it also comes with a pair

"I'm like this, I love it" temperament. For example, when Zhao Cui came to Yanjing this time, she couldn't accept bean juice and fried liver, but just watched Ma Xiaoliang eat it, and chose soy milk and steamed buns.

In the national hot pot pedigree, Yanjing shabu mutton looks extremely simple, and even outsiders will find it monotonous.

It does not have a hot pot base, the so-called soup base is to add some green onions and ginger slices to the water, and at most some wolfberries, dried shiitake mushrooms and sea rice.

In the past, Yanjing people didn't eat any fat beef rolls. Cattle are an important means of production, and it is only in the eighties and nineties of the last century that beef can grow marble-like fat patterns.

There are no southern ingredients such as fish balls and shrimp balls. Mutton, frozen tofu, Chinese cabbage, vermicelli and pancakes, that's all there is to the orthodox shabu-shabu.

After the water boils, first pour in a plate of white mutton fat to moisten the pot, and then come to shabu the mutton slices.

When the shabu is almost done, freeze the tofu and let every hole in it absorb the soup before putting it in your mouth; Then you can blanch some Chinese cabbage leaves to relieve greasyness, and then add a few wisps of water vermicelli to continue to moisturize; Finally, it ends with a crispy and warm sesame pancake and a bowl of fresh soup in the pot.

Compared with the gorgeous Chongqing hot pot with thick oil and heavy color, Yanjing shabu-shabu has an extremely simple appearance. Mutton is, of course, the well-deserved protagonist of the copper pot shabu-shabu.

This emphasis on a single ingredient also starts with the origin of copper pot shabu-shabu. Judging from the literature, there is a record of shabu shabu in the "Qing Offering of the Mountain Family" written by Lin Hong in the Southern Song Dynasty, but he was shabu with rabbit meat - once when he went to Wuyi Mountain to visit a hermit, he caught a rabbit in the wild.

The hermit told him that in the mountains and wilderness, it would be better to cook the rabbit meat in thin slices, marinate it, regenerate it from the stove rack, and cook the meat before eating.

Ma Xiaoliang is not partial to mutton shabu, but every autumn and winter, it is indeed a pleasant thing to make an appointment with three or five friends to enjoy mutton shabu, but this time Ma Xiaoliang can only shabu vegetables, potatoes, and flour skin, which is naturally sullen.

Many classmates and friends present had eaten mutton shabu with Ma Xiaoliang, and they couldn't help but laugh when they saw Ma Xiaoliang sullen but didn't dare to say it clearly, while Zhao Cui next to him kept picking up the mutton shabu and eating it.

Xiao Han patted Ma Xiaoliang's shoulder and said in his words: "What's the matter, don't you like to eat mutton?" Ma Xiaoliang explained that he asked knowingly, but he also knew that this was digging a pit: "It's okay, it's just that the anger has been relatively big recently, and it's easy to get angry when eating mutton." Zhao Cui was dissatisfied when she heard this, and thought that she had to give as much face in front of her classmates as a pony university, so as not to give everyone the impression of being a strict wife, so she picked up a few pieces of mutton and put them on a plate full of green vegetables and leaves in front of Ma Xiaoliang: "Just these few pieces, not a lot to eat." Ma Xiaoliang threw it back angrily: "I don't eat, I won't eat if I say I won't eat, a manly man stands between heaven and earth, how can he be untrustworthy!" Zhao Cui was surprised: "Oh, I can't see it, you are quite ambitious, I will give you another chance to eat, do you want to eat?" Ma Xiaoliang quickly picked up the mutton and threw it in his mouth: "But the ancients also said that those who know the times are Junjie, and they don't eat for nothing." ”