Eating in Vang Vieng - Draft

"Eat in" Wanrong

Lin Zhihong and Zhang Qingliang

? Born and raised in Wanrong, I have been accustomed to the taste of hometown food since I was a child. , especially I have a soft spot for the delicacies with local characteristics of Vang Vieng. Recently, in order to present a rich and simple local flavor food to the upcoming third National Farmers Harvest Festival, hosted by the Wanrong County People's Government, the Wanrong County Market Supervision Bureau and civil groups, the County Catering Association The famous food competitions hosted by the company are held one after another in the county. So, this once again brought back my memories of the special food in my hometown.

? Wanrong has no mountains, no mines, no underground resources, and relatively weak industrial enterprises. It is a traditional agricultural county. At the same time, there are places of interest and historical sites in Wanrong such as Houtu Temple, Qiufeng Tower, Dongyue Temple, Feiyun Tower, Jiwang Temple, and the Li Family Courtyard, and the cultural heritage is quite profound. The hard-working and intelligent Wanrong people, based on traditional farming culture, have attached great importance to and studied the food culture with its own advantages since ancient times. Make the food of the farming series complement the rich traditional culture, develop simultaneously, connect the past and the future, inherit and carry forward, and keep pace with the times in the continuation and inheritance, seize the opportunity, make the business prosperous, and the brand is bright.

? Pork mixed with vegetables, as a fine dish for rural people to entertain relatives and distinguished guests, has been passed down along the Yellow River. The selection of ingredients for pork dishes is very important. It requires fresh pork belly, pure sweet potato vermicelli made by farmers themselves, old black sauce dried in the hot weather, and fresh celery. The ingredients include green onions, garlic, pepper noodles, garlic chili, etc. The pork belly needs to be dyed with old black sauce, and then mixed with a little sweet potato starch. Dying with black sauce is not only for the color, but more importantly, it dilutes the greasy taste of the fat. The role of starch is to help the meat slices expand. The thickness of the steamed pork slices can be doubled compared to before being put into the pot, and the texture is crispy and lingering, so you won't get tired of eating it. I am from the west of the county, and I have often heard elders talk about the origin of mixed vegetables countless times since I was a child. The Ronghe, Guanghua, and Peizhuang areas in the west of the county are adjacent to the Yellow River tidal flats. On the endless banks of the Yellow River, an edible, slightly bitter wild vegetable called sweet endive often grows. Whenever there is a bad season, people go to the beach to dig up radishes, chop them clean and use alkaline noodles to remove the bitterness, mix them with flour, and steam them before eating. Chicory is a purely natural green food and is extremely anti-corrosive. Not only is it not bad for your stomach when eaten hot or cold, it will not rot no matter where it is left for five or six days in the summer. From the invention of stir-fried endive, people later extended the skill of stir-frying sweet endive to seasonal vegetables such as sophora japonica, leeks, eggplant, white radish, beans, pumpkin, cabbage, etc. Stir in green onions and more. Later it developed into high-end pork mixed with celery. Pork mixed with vegetables has become a signature dish for entertaining distinguished guests. People in western counties only entertain relatives who come to pay New Year's greetings in the first month, or deal with special guests. Since the reform and opening up, with the continuous improvement of people's living standards, pork mixed with vegetables has gradually entered people's daily dinner tables. Especially two days before weddings and weddings, pork mixed with vegetables is very common. Wanrong is also a county with a large labor force. There are as many as 50,000 to 60,000 people working outside every year. Some economically minded people have opened Wanrong vegetable restaurants in first- and second-tier cities where there are many outsiders in Wanrong. Those who are traveling abroad can often eat vegetables from their hometown even though they live in other places. Although mixed vegetables is a great invention in the west of the county, in recent years it has begun to make its way to Yuncheng and Wanrong County. Opposite the new bus station in the county, there is an authentic traditional mixed vegetable restaurant in the west of the county called Sister Li's Mixed Vegetable Restaurant. It sells old steamed buns and various mixed vegetables every day. Because the goods are genuine and reasonably priced, they are very popular among county residents, and business is booming every day. The boss, Guan Jianqiang, and his wife are very busy. The mixed vegetables in the west of the county have become popular throughout the county in recent years. Not only people in the west of the county, but also chefs in the east of the county have begun to imitate them, and they have also made scientific improvements while imitating them. There is a home-cooked restaurant in Peasant Street in the county. The owner is from Xicun and his name is Wang Baobin. He went to Ronghe many times to learn the technical essentials of mixing vegetables and improved them in the operation, which brought the quality of the vegetables to a higher level, achieving a complete color, fragrance and flavor, which was very popular among diners. In the recent county-wide vegetable mixing competition, Wang Baobin's vegetable mixing made the judges full of praise and won the first prize. The Wanrong County People's Government awarded him 3,000 yuan as an encouragement.

Mixed vegetables, as a traditional agricultural cultural food, has entered a new era of vigorous development in Vang Vieng, a land of ancient civilization, with the support of the party and the government.

As the second most famous specialty food in Wanrong, the glutinous rice jelly has a long history and has developed from Ronghe, Guanghua and Peizhuang in the west of the county to Tonghua and Nan Zhang also came to the county seat in the early 20th century. . The main ingredients of glutinous rice are buckwheat and mugwort seed powder. I also ate sorghum noodles when I was a kid. Speaking of 饸鹹, Wanrong is not its "ancestor". It originated in Hancheng County, Shaanxi Province, across the river from Wanrong. From the Ming and Qing Dynasties, Wanrong businessmen who opened shops in Hancheng introduced the making technology of glutinous rice dumplings to their hometown and ate them with the jelly made from sweet potatoes and mung bean starch in their hometown. The reason why Zhejiang has become better than his master after moving from Hancheng to Wanrong is mainly because Wanrong's seasoning is good. The people in the western part of the county are very particular about the preparation of seasonings. They ground more than a dozen spices such as five-spice powder, Dahongpao pepper, aniseed, tangerine peel, cinnamon, and cumin into the red pepper powder, added some white wine and honey, and first used a small amount of hot oil to stir the pepper noodles into shreds. shape, then smother it with a large amount of hot oil, and finally add white sesame seeds. White wine is added to enhance the flavor and color of the chili peppers, and honey is added to provide a certain viscosity so that the red chili oil can stick evenly to the glutinous rice noodles and jelly. Other soup seasonings include sesame oil, mustard oil, soy sauce and persimmon vinegar. In difficult times, when buckwheat was scarce, people used local materials and used sorghum flour and some wheat flour to press it into the dough. As long as the seasoning is good, the glutinous rice tastes good. At that time, the glutinous rice jelly was mainly eaten around the Qingming Festival. Almost every household makes sorghum noodles and sweet potato noodles on Qingming Festival. After the reform and opening up, there were often small businessmen selling glutinous rice jelly in the lanes. At this time, the glutinous rice noodles were already buckwheat noodles and wheat noodles. At the gatherings in the towns and villages in the west of the county, the most popular food stalls are the jelly and pancake stalls. Many people are full with just one pancake and a bowl of glutinous rice jelly. When I go back, if there are elderly people at home, I will bring a bowl and buy a pancake. The biggest feature of the glutinous rice jelly is that in addition to its unique flavor, it is economical and not wasteful. Even if you can’t finish it, you can take it away and eat it again when you get home. On Haiou Street in Ronghe Town, there is a 饸饹jelly noodle stall all year round. The stall owner is Pan Peiquan, a husband and wife team. His father-in-law took over the load of glutinous rice jelly from his father and walked through the villages and alleys, or set up stalls at fairs. Later, he passed on the secret recipe of seasoning to his daughter and son-in-law. This is the famous local Pan Ji’s jelly stall. The couple supported a 15-square-meter stall tent in this palm-sized area, and they worked there for 12 years. People come and go at the jelly noodle stall from morning to night every day, and the three long benches are always full of people. In many towns in the western part of the county, a cold noodle dish is now served as a banquet dish for weddings and weddings. As soon as this dish was served, people rushed to rinse it with their chopsticks, fearing that they would eat less and be greedy. The glutinous rice jelly has also been upgraded in Tonghua, Wanrong. These are cap jelly, cap vermicelli, and sesame seed cakes stuffed with beef. In the mid-to-late 1980s, I worked in the Tonghua Town Government. There is a cap jelly and vermicelli stall right in front of the credit union on the street all year round. The stall owner is a middle-aged woman named Su Gaidi. Su Gaidi is the daughter of Su Jingyu, the famous local inheritor of jelly noodles. Su Jingyu’s name is Liuwo. Liuwo's ??father, Su Mengfa, created the cap jelly brand in his early years. This "hat" is beef braised in-house, and the beef is fresh and crispy. When Su Gaidi got older, she passed on this production technique to her daughter-in-law Wang Shurong. While inheriting and carrying forward the secret recipe passed down from her ancestors, Wang Shurong also made new improvements in food hygiene science, which made the jelly caps and powder skin caps stalls she opened in the street facade become more and more famous, and she can sell three jelly caps every day. About a thousand yuan. Wang Shurong won a prize in the jelly powder competition at Houtu Temple. Not long ago, an old educated youth from Shanghai who was nearly eighty years old came to her store. This educated youth had eaten Liuwo's ??cap jelly when he was working in the Gucheng Commune. This time he visited his old place again, and he went to Tonghua Street to find the successor of Liuwo. Lucky for him, he was once again in for a treat. Before leaving, he also took away five pancakes stuffed with beef. In the 1970s and 1980s, jelly noodles were still limited to five or six towns in the west of the county, but now they are blooming all over Vang Vieng like bamboo shoots after the rain.

Moreover, with the exchange of catering industry, it has entered the city, which not only satisfies people's taste, but also provides jobs for a large number of people in Vang Vieng.

Wanrong is rich in wheat. Due to geographical environment factors, it has two major characteristics. First, there is no pollution from industry and mining, and the wheat is of high quality. Second, with long sunshine and large temperature differences, food crops are exposed to long periods of ultraviolet radiation and taste good. For thousands of years, the diligent and intelligent Wanrong people have adapted to local conditions and played various roles suitable for their own survival and development around the drama of farming culture. Noodles are one of Vang Vieng’s specialty staple foods. When I was a kid, I loved eating meatballs. Now call it Liangpi. Its approach is more troublesome. First, ferment the white flour with yeast, then add water and start rubbing your hands in the basin repeatedly. Wash the thick and gooey batter into what is called gluten. After the gluten has weakened, spread it out thinly in the steamed buns, float the buns on the surface of the boiling water pot, and steam them while swinging them up and down. After steaming, soak in cold water, remove and cut into lasagna shapes, add chopped green onion, sesame paste, sesame oil, mustard, soy sauce and persimmon vinegar. Since the skin is made of gluten, it is very chewy, cool and refreshing, making it one of the most delicious foods in summer. But at that time, people had very little white flour, and they didn’t make much dough. After the land was decentralized, farmers had the right to operate independently, and every household had a full warehouse of wheat. There is no shortage of resources for making flesh skin. However, due to high work pressure and tight time, most people rarely have free time to do this time-consuming and energy-consuming task of eating. People basically eat cold skin by buying it. As a result, some rural sisters-in-law and aunts began to do this small business. There is a young lady in her thirties named Chai Hongdang in Beihuoshang Village, Guanghua Township. She is a well-known Liangpi King for dozens of miles around. Her Liangpi has a unique seasoning. The bright red chili oil almost reaches the edge of the bowl. Before the Liangpi bowl is even held in your hand, the aroma hits your nostrils, which is particularly stimulating to your appetite. Although the surface of this cold skin looks full of bright red spicy seeds, it is not too spicy and is easy to swallow. Chai Hongdang’s natal family is in Nanbaixiang Village, which is close to the Fen River. She has been accustomed to eating wild vegetables such as sweetroot and purslane since she was a child, and she is well aware of the benefits of these original, pure green wild vegetables to the human body. After dozens of repeated trials, she wasted seven or eight belts of flour, and finally succeeded in making a green, pollution-free cold noodle soup with sweet endive pulp, purslane pulp, and other wild vegetable pulp. Guanghua borders Ronghe, Peizhuang, Jiacun and other towns. Chaihongdang holds more than 20 gatherings every month. Her specialty Liangpi has become the most popular food at the gathering, and every bowl is always sold out early. I often receive calls from customers to order cold skin. Noodles have always been the favorite of Wanreng people. When I was a child, my favorites were knife noodles, boiled pumpkin noodles, and hand-rolled noodles. When we were thirteen years old, we primary school students were invited to pick cotton for the production team. At noon, the production team gave us boiled pumpkin noodles. We foodies all ate the food up to our throats, unable to bend down and burping until we almost vomited it out. After the 1990s, pasta moved from home cookers to the market. Noodle restaurants and dumpling restaurants can be found on the streets of large and small cities. However, to take a step back, there are really not many real hand-made noodles. Not long ago, in the Wanrong Special Handmade Noodle Competition held in the county seat, a Niu Tomato Sauce Noodle House from the west gate of Ronghe won the first prize. The owner of this restaurant is Zhang Guobin. He used to sell Malatang, but later he felt that Malatang was still not affordable. He had worked in reception for other hotels for many years. Proficient in making various kinds of pasta. So he expanded and transformed the Malatang shop into a noodle restaurant. Specializing in various juice ingredients and various types of noodles. Business quickly boomed. Zhang Guobin said, after all, Wanrong people still like our local food!

? The specialty food in Wanrong can be said to be diverse and diverse, just like the vast sky, where stars gather and each leads the way. Pan-fried pastry, mutton soaking, large knife noodles, and the old clay hot pot are also some of its highlights. Oil cake is a highlight and brand. I have been to many places, and either they don’t have fried cakes, or they don’t fry them well. Wanrong's oil cakes used to be a rarity. The younger generation would go to gatherings to buy a few and take them home to honor the elderly, but they were generally reluctant to eat them themselves. Nowadays, 90% of households celebrate weddings and weddings. In the first day or two, they set up a pan of fried cakes and deep-fry them for everyone to enjoy. The making of oil cakes is also very technical. On Haiou Street in Ronghe Town, there is a 60-year-old couple. The husband’s name is Fan Sanyuan. I have been selling oil cakes here for more than ten years. I come early in the morning and boil a bag of noodles. One pound of noodles can make twenty oil cakes.

By noon, one thousand or ten oil cakes were sold out one after another, and the old couple packed up and went home. Master Fan said that hot noodles are the key. If they are not cooked properly, the fried cake will pop out of the pan, or it will taste sticky, neither crispy nor crispy, and not delicious. In Wanreng, oil cakes are more popular than glutinous rice cakes and mixed vegetables. According to common people’s words, the fried cakes in our county can be found anywhere! Even in Yuncheng and Linfen, the Wanrong Oil Cake brand is very bright.

Wanrong is a famous cultural county and also a famous snack county.

As the saying goes: a sheep will have a pile of grass. Although the land in my hometown lacks resources and is relatively barren, it is still a treasure land of Feng Shui. You can rely on mountains to eat, and you can eat water if you rely on water. Relying on agriculture will find a way out and make a fuss around the overall pattern of agriculture. Wanrong people with Wanrong spirit believe that since God gave us birth on this land, it will give us a share of resources for survival and development! Specialty snacks are a way for us to increase production and income. Especially in the current situation where the Party Central Committee and the State Council have recently put forward the "medium and long-term" and "protracted war" of opposing waste, practicing economy, staying away from big meals and economic recovery, and encouraging the development of the street stall economy, the prospects of our specialty snacks are bound to grow. The better come.