Zhenjiang "Three Monsters" and "Three Mountains"?

There are three famous mountains in Zhenjiang, namely Jinshan, Jiaoshan and Beigushan, all of which are scenic spots.

There are three monsters in Zhenjiang, the vinegar is not bad, the meat is not a dish, and the lid is cooked in a noodle pot.

Three Monsters of Zhenjiang

Zhenjiang is a famous cultural city with a long history in the south of the Yangtze River, with many scenic spots and historical sites, beautiful natural scenery and magnificent landscapes, and is known as the "best mountain in the world". The most famous scenic spots are the three mountains along the Yangtze River-the steep and dominating Beigu Mountain, the beautiful Jinshan Mountain and the magnificent Jiao Shan, which are collectively called "Jingkou Three Mountains".

Since ancient times, the famous city has been famous for its food. The legend of "Three Monsters" in Zhenjiang is ancient and charming. There is a catchy ballad of "Three Monsters" circulating in Zhenjiang: "The vinegar is not bad, the meat is not cooked properly, and the lid is cooked in the noodle pot". Therefore, it is said that "it is a pity not to go to the Great Wall and not to taste the" Three Monsters ".

let's talk about the first strange: balsamic vinegar is not bad.

As the saying goes, there are seven things: oil, salt, firewood, rice, sauce, vinegar and tea. Vinegar is the first of the five flavors: sour, sweet, bitter, spicy and salty. Vinegar is a traditional acidic condiment in China. The ancients gave vinegar the reputation of "food manager". For thousands of years, people have to add some vinegar in cooking, such as frying, frying, mixing, frying, etc., to get rid of the fishy smell and enhance the flavor of dishes. If you taste crystal trotters and crab soup buns, you will feel fresh and fragrant when you dip them in balsamic vinegar and add shredded ginger. As for the vinegar-baked mandarin fish, sweet and sour pork ribs, etc., they are all famous dishes in Jiangsu, with unique flavor. When Su Dongpo, a poet and gourmet in the Song Dynasty, tasted shad in Jiao Shan, Zhenjiang, he once wrote a poem praising: "Braised whitebait with ginger and purple vinegar, the snow bowl is more than two feet high, and there is still spring in peach blossoms, among which the flavor is better than that of perch."

In China, wine-making has a long history. The ancient book "Book of Rites" recorded in "Tan Gong" that "Song Xianggong lost his wife. Sugar is meat sauce and acyl is vinegar. It is estimated that vinegar has been brewed in China for at least 26 years. Zhenjiang balsamic vinegar is famous at home and abroad for its "sour but not astringent, sweet but slightly sweet, strong in color and fresh in taste" and has won many awards at home and abroad.

When it comes to making vinegar, there is an old legend circulating in Zhenjiang. It is said that vinegar was created by Du Kang's son Heita. That year, after Du Kang invented brewing, he found that the water quality in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River in Zhenjiang was good, which was conducive to brewing. So he came to Xiaoyu Lane in Zhenjiang with his family and opened a small distillery, making wine and selling wine. Black tower is boundless in strength, simple and honest and hardworking, and all the heavy and rough work at home is covered. At first, I didn't know the use of distiller's grains, so Heita put distiller's grains into a vat and poured them into two loads of Longwo water in the Yangtze River. Tired, I took the jar and drank eight or nine kilograms of home-brewed rice wine, then fell asleep. In my dream, it seems that an old man said, Heita, on the 21st day, at sunset, you will make seasoning paste. After waking up, it turned out to be a dream and I didn't care. After more than 2 days, the house was full of fragrance, and Du Kang and his son were puzzled. Looking around, it turned out that the distiller's grains had become a delicious, sour and sweet seasoning paste. What did Du Kang say it was called? Heita said, "The distiller's grains have been soaked for twenty-one days, and it's only when it's unitary that the slurry is so delicious. Isn't it the word" vinegar "when it's added on twenty-one days? Let's call it vinegar!" Du Kang's story of making wine and vinegar was handed down. Until today, vinegar making is still 21 days.

Zhenjiang aromatic vinegar contains 17 kinds of amino acids through scientific determination. The main organic acids are acetic acid, lactic acid, pyruvic acid, formic acid, malic acid, citric acid, succinic acid, monooxodipropionic acid, etc. They are produced by fermentation of plant raw materials and are necessary for human metabolism, and organic acids can play a good role in promoting metabolism, diuresis and intracellular redox. Zhenjiang balsamic vinegar also contains a lot of carbohydrates and a little alcohol. Carbohydrate, as an energy source and carrier, as one of the elements of metabolic intermediates and as a regulator of protein hydrolysis, plays an important role in people's physiology.

Speaking of balsamic vinegar, let's talk about the second strange dish, improper meat.

when it comes to cooked pig's trotters, they can be found everywhere. Braised pig's trotters, spiced pig's trotters, sauced pig's trotters and clear soup pig's trotters have their own characteristics. However, with strict selection of materials, fine processing and delicious taste, Zhenjiang's crystal food hoof should be the first to be promoted. The meat color of crystal trotters is delicious, the skin is white, smooth and crystal clear, the brine is frozen and transparent, the meat is fragrant and crisp, fat but not greasy, and thin and toothless. Therefore, there is a poem in the neighborhood that says, "The scenery is infinitely golden coke, and I love the meat in Jingkou more, not greasy and crispy, and the crystal dishes are reddish and tender." Crystal dish hoof is a flavor dish developed on the basis of the ancient dish "boiled pig" and crystal cold pottery. "Boiled pig" and crystal dish hoof come down in one continuous line, with basically the same materials, hoof and pepper salt, and basically the same preparation method. They all use old bittern, alum to clarify the original soup and freeze it. The difference is that "cooking pigs" does not need saltwater, while crystal dishes and hoofs use saltwater. Therefore, some people call it "Yao hoof" and "Yao meat", while others call it "Nitrate meat" and "Frozen hoof". There is also a beautiful legend among the people. Zhang Guolao, one of the Eight Immortals, went to Yaochi to attend the flat peach meeting of the Queen Mother, passing through Zhenjiang, and smelled the fragrance of the dish hoof. He quickly got off the donkey and came down to eat the dish hoof, even forgetting the flat peach meeting, which shows that it was delicious. Eating trotters with shredded ginger and balsamic vinegar tastes better.

According to the records of Dantu County, Zhenjiang crystal food hoof has a history of more than 3 years. Wang Xiang, a folk literary artist in Zhenjiang, wrote an article about the earliest recorded meat in Zhenjiang. There is such a passage in the article: The words in the sixty chapters novels written by Ding Yaokang, a scholar in the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties can also be proved. The twenty-seventh chapter of the Golden House Dream (continued from Jin Ping Mei), a curtain flower shadow and the Third World newspaper, "Dong Yujiao has a bright moon and a sail wind. After a while, the bartender added a new seat and eight bowls of dishes; It's a plate of fresh white fish, a plate of roasted fat goose, a plate of tender steamed and crystal boiled hoof, and a plate of Jinhua ham smoked bacon, red and white and bright; A plate of lobster sauce fried gluten, spelled with silver silk cake fresh; Another plate of scaly shad steamed with red distiller's grains, and another plate of roasted turtle in Zhenjiang, peeled amber like an apron, soft and beautiful as fat; Another plate of Suzhou crispy snails, two large plates of crispy crystal corners, and a bowl in front of each person. This dish of crystal boiled hoof with Elsholtzia is the well-known crystal dish hoof. If we take the exam again, its history will be earlier. In the early 198s, curator Lu Jiumang of Zhenjiang Museum once told the author that if China had nitrate, it would have cured meat, but its preparation method gradually evolved into today's preparation method.

There are as many as 14 processing procedures for making crystal dish hoofs: mainly selecting hoofs (preferably pig's front hoofs), removing hair and bones, irregularly poking iron brazing on lean meat several times (in order not to puncture the skin), then evenly sprinkling nitrate water (with low concentration), kneading with coarse salt, stacking them in a curing tank layer by layer, and curing for 7 days (with the change of climate, using. Start adding water, spices, onion and ginger, cooking wine and a little salt, keep it at about 95℃ for 4 hours after cooking with strong fire, take it out of the pot, put it in a basin, fold it and flatten it, rinse the oil and brine with the original juice, pour the clear soup brine into the hoof basin, and freeze it after cooling.

there are still many things to pay attention to when eating dishes and hoofs. In order to meet the needs of customers with different tastes, it fully embodies the characteristics and flavor of the color, aroma, taste and shape of the dishes. Different parts of the hoof can be cut into various pieces: the two pieces of meat above the front hoof claw are cut into pieces, which are shaped like eyes, and the tendons are soft and delicious, which is called eye dish; The meat next to the front paws is cut and bent like a jade belt, and its meat is extremely tender, which is called jade belt groove dish; On the front paws, there are both fat and thin parts, which are really delicious and fragrant, and they are called triangular rib dishes; A piece of clean lean meat with a thin bone on the upper part of the hind hoof is called Tim Deng Bang Yao, which is fragrant, tender and tender, and is welcomed by people who like to eat lean meat most. The trotters can be used as the main dish at the banquet; It can also be used for cooking hoof noodles when eating morning tea; It can also be cut into pieces and put on a plate for breakfast, so there is a saying that "the hoof is not a dish". Crystal trotters are not only a delicacy on the table, but also a good gift for relatives and friends. Put a banquet vinegar (Zhenjiang Hengshun balsamic vinegar) in the crystal hoof gift box, which is convenient to carry, prolong the storage period and facilitate tasting.

Let's talk about cooking meat, and then talk about the third monster: cooking the lid in the noodle pot.

"Cooking the lid inside the noodle pot" is a creation in Zhenjiang's culinary skills. Pot cover noodles, the noodles used are "jumping noodles". The so-called "jumping noodles" means putting the kneaded noodles on the chopping board, with the operator sitting at one end of the bamboo pole and the other end fixed on the chopping board, jumping up and down, dancing and acrobatics, repeatedly squeezing them into thin dough, and cutting them into noodles with a knife. This noodle has pores, marinade is easy to taste, chewy and strong in the mouth, and has a unique taste.

as for the name of noodle soup, there are many varieties, and if saury comes into the market in early spring, the new noodle soup is "saury noodles". In summer, there are "long fish noodles"; There are all kinds of "covered noodles" in autumn and winter. Usually, the noodle soup that is often eaten is red noodle soup. It is said that in the past, people in Zhenjiang didn't need a pot cover below, but Zhang Sister-in-law of a small noodle shop accidentally covered the pot cover and put the soup pot cover into the noodle pot by mistake, which had an unexpected effect. Later, this method was used. When the noodles are put into the boiling water pot, a small pot cover is used to cover the noodle soup, which can achieve the following benefits: first, the raw noodles are put in part by part, and the cooked noodles are not sticky and scattered, and the specifications are accurate; Second, when the noodle soup is boiling, it is easy to remove floating foam and keep the noodle soup from turbidity; Third, noodles are easy to ripen, not raw or rotten. According to the local tradition, when customers come to the store to eat noodles, they usually bring all kinds of vegetarian dishes, such as pork tenderloin, pork liver, beef, eggs, fresh bamboo shoots, green peppers, Chuanxiong, small vegetables, etc., which are cooked in a noodle pot and then mixed with noodles to eat. Some stores have prepared "Qingtou" for customers' convenience. The so-called green head is a kind of noodle sauce made of various vegetables, which can be divided into raw and cooked. Raw garlic flowers, garlic paste, and pickled vegetables (pickled vegetables in spring); Cooked vegetables include small green vegetables, Ligusticum chuanxiong and green peppers (after washing them, they are cooked with boiling water and cut into shreds or segments). In a word, different vegetables are selected with the change of seasons to make green heads. Because a variety of meat and vegetable flavors are dissolved in noodle soup, the taste of noodles is more delicious, which is very popular among diners. No wonder when Emperor Qianlong went down to the south of the Yangtze River, he tasted this noodle in Zhenjiang and was full of praise for its delicacy.

in the late Qing dynasty, Zhou Boyi, a scholar in Zhenjiang, wrote in his book Yangzhou Dream: "We cherish the expense, sit in the teahouse in the teaching field early, and dozens of waiters buy good sauce, vinegar and sesame oil to dry mix under the surface, which means we love cleanliness." The so-called "dry mixing" means that the cooking method is special: first, the noodles are cooked in a noodle pot, then the noodles are picked into clear water for soup with a bamboo scoop, dried with a bamboo scoop, poured into a bowl and mixed with sesame oil, soy sauce, dried shrimps, garlic and other condiments. Eating in the mouth is tough, refreshing and delicious. This kind of noodles is quite popular in summer. It can be eaten alone or as a side dish when eating porridge.

When we read the Three Strange Tales and taste the Three Strange Tales, we will have a better understanding of the charm of the Three Strange Tales.