Food of the Year: Lankao Cuisine

From the first day of the first month to the seventh day of the first month, I enjoyed every meal. Although it is a home-cooked dish, the dishes cooked by her mother-in-law are delicious and nutritious. The food in rural Lankao is very different from that in the south, at least not from my family.

Let's start with the staple food. The staple food in the south is rice. Eat rice noodles once in a while, you can rank second, and eat less noodles. The staple food of Lankao is steamed bread, which is indispensable for three meals a day, followed by noodles, and rice is eaten very little or even very little. I like to eat rice. There is no doubt that this is a habit formed from childhood. Without rice, I always feel underfed. At home, I seldom eat steamed bread. Most steamed bread in the south has obvious sweetness and sugar, while steamed bread in the south is soft and white, and its shape is mostly square. Southerners, including me, generally eat steamed bread as a supplementary food. I like to eat northern steamed bread. The northern steamed bread is full of fermented flavor, chewy and tasteless, but the more you chew, the more delicious it is. Just a few side dishes taste better, but southern steamed bread is not delicious. I got into the habit of eating northern steamed bread when I was studying in Shaanxi Normal University. At that time, my living expenses were not much. Fifty cents bought two big steamed buns and two dollars bought a cold dish. I am full every day, and I have good nutrition. Being a guest in Lankao, no matter how many days you stay, you are used to it, and your diet can be perfectly integrated.

The staple food is great, and I like the food very much. Lankao's cold dishes have their own characteristics, from vegetables to meat, they will be made into delicious cold dishes, such as cucumber, tremella, beef and pig offal. Among all kinds of cold dishes, I like to eat knife-cut beef best. And hot dishes. Steamed fish has its own characteristics and tastes good. It is the same as my fish with salt and no sugar, while the fish in Guangdong and Fujian use sugar as seasoning. I don't like it. Maybe I don't eat much and I'm not used to it. To tell the truth, among all the fish I have eaten, I feel that the fish in Shangrao is the best. Dried freshwater fish is delicious, firm in meat, rich in nutrition and varied in practice. It's steamed, braised and boiled in water, plus a few chopped green onion and a few big red peppers. Smell the movement of the index finger, and have a good appetite. There are all kinds of fish, and basically all freshwater fish here have them. Crucian carp, grass carp, carp and mandarin fish are all available. Yugan is a typical land of plenty, located in Poyang Lake Plain, with beautiful scenery. High-quality water resources have cultivated high-quality and rich fish. But I also like steamed fish in Lankao.

Lankao's diet order is very particular. Six cold dishes are served first, then six hot dishes, and steamed bread is eaten as a meal. I have to pour a cup of tea while eating vegetables. At the end, serve a bowl of warm rice soup. I put a bowl of rice soup at the tip (we call it porridge, and porridge and porridge are indistinguishable in the remaining stems). I soak steamed bread in it and eat vegetables. It's hot and delicious. I like every meal.

Let's talk about the pasta in Lankao. I always think that pasta is the essence of China's food culture. I don't like noodles in my hometown very much, except handmade noodles. Lankao's specialty pasta has emblem noodles and big knife noodles, both handmade noodles and organic noodles. Lankao is full of noodle restaurants and delicious noodles everywhere. My wife and I have eaten it several times, and it feels different from Shaanxi pasta. I like Shaanxi noodles with minced meat and belt noodles best. Lankao has a lot of pasta oil. I can't get used to it for the first time, but I can kill a big bowl of pasta cooked by my mother-in-law. My mother-in-law likes to put all kinds of things in noodles, such as fish, mutton and vegetables. This is a typical mixed noodles, delicious and nutritious.

After living in Lankao for a week, I feel fat. Fortunately, I insist on running every day to avoid overnutrition.