Why is Quanzhou in Fujian more delicious than Xiamen?

Half city fireworks, half city fairy, prosperous and fresh life.

The food in Quanzhou is sweet and fragrant, and it jumps up after eating it.

When it comes to Fujian, the first reaction of most people is definitely Xiamen and Gulangyu; After a few seconds, they will think: Oh, Fuzhou is the provincial capital. They even say, Ah, Fujian cuisine is delicious, Ah, Xiamen is delicious. ...

Minnan people will only smile when they hear it. Tourists only go to Xiamen to eat, and real Minnan people go to Quanzhou to eat ancient breakfast.

"Ancient morning flavor" is a word that Minnan people especially like to use to describe the flavor they yearn for.

The more you rise and fall in the gourmet rivers and lakes, the more you know the mystery of the old taste. In the early years, the food industry was not developed, and cooking paid attention to ingredients and handwork, which was true and pure. When people label it as "ancient taste", it is already an implicit compliment.

Quanzhou, the core of Minnan culture, is a sacred place for Minnan people. The history here is very rich. The food here has a profound historical background, inside and outside, ancient and vivid.

The most impressive thing about a city is its taste.

The taste of Quanzhou is inseparable from the word "fresh". A bowl of batter can make Quanzhou people start a new day.

At first glance, the batter looks like a fine powder strip, but it is very different when you taste it gently. Delicate, tender, fresh and delicious, cooked until soft and rotten, perfectly blended with thick soup, and instantly melted in real mouth. In addition to the essential fried fritters, you must also add several ingredients: clam, vinegar meat, duck blood, braised eggs, braised large intestine, fist mother ... Finally, add some peppers and shallots to enhance the taste. I feel that even the oncoming sea breeze is fresh.

This bowl of batter is not only a business card with Quanzhou flavor, but also a hometown flavor that wanderers never forget. It looks simple, but it can't be done carelessly. First, cook pork bones and seafood for a long time to make a white soup, then add slightly broken noodles, and finally thicken with the prepared sweet potato paste, stir and stew until the noodles are completely soft and rotten, and a pot is fresh.

This bowl of hometown flavor, which is laborious and unpretentious, is destined to be hard to find in a foreign land.

Perfect match with batter, except fried dough sticks, is vinegar meat, the pillar of Quanzhou fried food industry. Marinate lean pork with mature vinegar and spices, hang sweet potato powder and stir-fry thoroughly in a pot. It tastes crisp outside and tender inside, with a faint vinegar taste, which makes people want to stop. It can be eaten not only as a snack menu, but also as an ingredient. From five-star restaurants to street shops, it is its stage.

The soul of vinegar meat is low-key Yongchun mature vinegar. It has been passed down for thousands of years since the Northern Song Dynasty. It has unique ingredients (mainly glutinous rice, red glutinous rice and sesame), special aroma and unique and sweet taste. It ranks among the four famous vinegars, but it has been quietly staying in southern Fujian, with an incredibly low profile; With it, vinegar meat will stand out in a pile of fried things and stand out in southern Fujian.

If you are a sweet party, Quanzhou won't let you down.

"Tangyuan is wrapped in the south and Yuanxiao is shaken in the north", which is universally applicable, but it is not applicable in Quanzhou. Here, guests in the north will be surprised to see the familiar bamboo sieve: it is said that eating glutinous rice balls in the south is the world of Quanzhou Yuanxiao.

Not only that, the filling of Quanzhou Yuanxiao is also very distinctive, and the sweet and salty tastes are fully integrated: fried peanuts and black sesame seeds are mixed and ground, then mixed with white sugar, chopped green onion and lard to make the filling, and finally rolled with fine glutinous rice flour. This kind of Yuanxiao is called "Shangyuan Pill" by Quanzhou people. With the shell of the northern Lantern Festival, it wraps the products of the south and the soul of all things.

Quanzhou, located in Fujian and Vietnam, is an ancient immigrant city, which has inherited the eating habits of many northern ancestors so far. At the end of the Western Jin Dynasty, the gentry in the Central Plains not only named this place "Jinjiang" as a token of their wishes, but also retained the custom of rocking the Lantern Festival, and finally became unique in the south, making passers-by marvel at the wonderful connection between history and humanity.

In addition to this Lantern Festival, Quanzhou also has moist cakes in the same strain as the northern spring cakes, the same gluten, the same lightness and light transmission, the same ingredients, the same feelings, but more ocean flavor.

Originally, the people used pasta to worship their ancestors, but Fujian lacked wheat, so the local people switched to glutinous rice products;

When you worship the ancestral temple, you must put a cake that symbolizes "making a fortune" and "children and grandchildren"; At the wedding ceremony, there must be a scarlet, beaming and sweet red turtle; In Chinese Valentine's Day, besides seven kinds of fruits and seven kinds of flowers, there are seven bowls of snow-white candied buns ... Even at ordinary times, Quanzhou people love to eat vegetable buns. It sounds like a pixel steamed stuffed bun, that is, the dough is replaced by glutinous rice, and the crisp Chinese cabbage is replaced by more crisp shredded radish, which changes the body, but the soul remains the same.

Throughout southern Fujian, the language sounds are different but the rhythm is the same, and the posture is changeable but very similar. Satay noodles in Xiamen food stalls, frozen bamboo shoots and fragrant noodles in Zhangzhou, oyster sauce, kway teow and kung fu tea commonly found in Chaoshan can all be traced back to their ancient hometown-Quanzhou.

Quanzhou itself is also a descendant of the adherents of the Central Plains. Just like the eldest son of the family, he cares about this family diligently, but he has nowhere to tell his history. He can only try to keep the background color, and can't forget his roots.

After all, Quanzhou is doomed to keep a low profile because of loneliness.

Facing the ancestral homeland thousands of miles away, Quanzhou is lonely, silently turning the ancient homesickness into a gourmet custom. Facing all kinds of tastes in the world, Quanzhou is lonely, silently guarding its unique flavor surrounded by mountains and seas. Facing the chaos in the world, Quanzhou is even more lonely. It is as low-key as a hermit and never makes public.

Fortunately, although it is lonely, it is extremely vivid.

A land, a city, the smell can leave a first impression. What deeply depicts this impression is its vivid style.

Quanzhou, facing the sea, has gathered merchants since ancient times, and now it is the hometown of overseas Chinese, with a magical inclusive temperament. Visiting the ancient city of Quanzhou, you will find that the temples and snacks here live next to each other, and history and reality are in harmony with each other.

For example, Quanzhou's most authentic flavor dessert, Quan Fried Cake, is hidden in Peixiang, next to Kaiyuan Temple, a thousand-year-old temple.

The basic version of the full-fried cake only needs to mix flour, sugar and water evenly, pour it on a hot iron plate and bake it, so that the batter expands slowly and honeycomb holes appear, then sprinkle brown sugar, peanuts and black sesame seeds, and fold it in half before taking it out. It will be soft when it is hot, sweet and elastic when it is cold, with caramel flavor and nut flavor. More advanced, sugar melon, add a layer of taste and taste.

A few steps south from Kaiyuan Temple is the Tianhou Palace in Quanzhou, where Mazu believers from all over the world gather. After shopping, I was hot and thirsty, next to Bingzhengtang, an old shop in four fruit soup, the most famous summer dessert in Quanzhou.

In the earliest four fruit soup, there were really only four kinds of ingredients: red beans, mung beans, tremella and fairy grass. It is made by filing half a bowl of ice with a file and pouring a spoonful of rock sugar water. Now that the situation is good, people can feed four fruit soups to their heart's content. Don't forget to add stone flower paste. It's fresh, cold and Q-shaped. When swallowed, sweet and cold collide with each other, and heat will run out.

Fireworks eaten by secular customs, incense in religious places and two different flavors are closely intertwined and go hand in hand in this city. They are like two ropes, winding up a period of history, and finally turning into a table of tea for Quanzhou people-garlic sticks.

It looks like a snack twist, but it is covered with a white sugar coating. Break off a small piece, take a bite, the icing melts in your mouth, and there is a spicy smell of garlic and chopped green onion, which is salty and sweet and fascinating.

Street and religion, ocean and inland, life and history, foreign land and hometown, and other wonderful blends can be seen everywhere in Quanzhou.

Walking around, you will find steakhouses everywhere in the streets. The steak of Quanzhou people is not a fried western-style steak, but a beef rib carefully stewed with spices, Chinese herbal medicines and Nanyang curry. Not worthy of red wine, no class, no face, go home and leave the temple. With fragrant Minnan salty rice or sour and appetizing beef soup, it is fragrant and full.

People in Quanzhou love to eat beef, which is attributed to the integration of Central Asian culture in Song and Yuan Dynasties. At that time, Arab and Persian merchants came to Quanzhou by sea, bringing not only exotic treasures, but also the custom of eating beef. Over time, in the constant cultural blending, beef diet has taken root, and steak, beef soup and beef offal soup's "beef set meal" have become symbols of all rivers in Quanzhou.

Take a closer look at this steak. This is cooked in Chinese style. In addition to traditional spices such as star anise, angelica, ginger and fragrant leaves, curry, sand tea and some Chinese herbal medicines popular in Nanyang are also added. Beef itself is made of ribs, which are inexpensive, rich and thrifty, and can also take care of the dietary needs of different ethnic groups.

Dietary customs from a foreign land eventually became a part of Quanzhou flavor. A thousand years ago, merchants unloaded pepper at the dock, and now it has become an indispensable seasoning for batter; Three hundred years ago, tourists returning from Nanyang brought back to Satay, which was improved into sand tea sauce by Quanzhou people and became a unique flavor of southern Fujian. In modern times, overseas Chinese have brought chocolate, chocolate oatmeal has become a daily breakfast, and every fresh egg has to be beaten. ...

This is the magic of Quanzhou. It is an island of food, but it shines brightly. Welcome delicious food from all corners of the country to make a pilgrimage.

Here, the Lantern Festival comes from the land and oyster omelet comes from the ocean, saving a lane; Jiaozi, the local barbecue, and the satay noodles are introduced from overseas and piled up; The red rice cake comes from the temple, and the batter comes from the alley, * * * into a table; Long live the warm ginger duck and the summer four fruit soup.

Among the eight major cuisines, Fujian cuisine has the least sense of existence. This is related to the geographical environment of Fujian, which enjoys a unique natural endowment and has developed the habit of pursuing original flavor and eating fresh food. The dining table of Fujian people is fresh from the beginning of the year to the end of the year; Because Fujian cuisine pursues freshness, it attaches great importance to raw materials, but it has no complicated techniques and its influence is weak, which determines the regional independence of Fujian cuisine.

At the same time, Fujian cuisine itself has obvious barriers. Eastern Fujian, represented by Fuzhou, southern Fujian, represented by Quanzhou, and western Fujian, represented by Hakka culture, are "three flavors", which makes it difficult to integrate Fujian cuisine and everyone can only be beautiful.

Why don't you make arrangements for such a delicious city?

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Wenshan shuishui

Cover map | Ouyang Honglve