travel with yoga

Chapter 76: It’s not the mutton that’s cooked, it’s the face that’s cooked
Ma Xiaoliang, who was chewing potato slices carefully, watched the others chatting and laughing while picking up the mutton-boiled meat. He was so greedy!After all, for Yanjing, mutton-shabu-shabu is the most popular time every autumn.In restaurants that are a little bit famous, the mutton is often cooked in full swing inside, and the queues outside are busy.If you ask the boss how many tables are left, even the boss will hint to you: Don't wait, go eat somewhere else, I'm afraid you won't be able to wait for more than three to two hours.The restaurant I chose this time is also a time-honored restaurant. Although it was noon on a Sunday, the customer flow was still very large.

Indeed, southerners who first come to the north are usually not able to appreciate the "common people's delicacies" of old Yanjing.Whether it’s bean juice and noodle tea for breakfast, fried cakes and pork chops as snacks, lamb scorpions, mutton-shabu-shabu, and the ubiquitous sesame paste, both as stuffing and topping.After the first bite, apart from the feeling of fullness, there is usually no other benefit.I always feel that this food is rough and rough, just like the station clerk 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 "I just like this, love it" The earthy and generous temperament.For example, when Zhao Cui came to Yanjing this time, he couldn't accept soy milk and fried liver. He just watched Ma Xiaoliang eat it and chose soy milk and steamed buns himself.

Among the national hot pot pedigrees, Yanjing Shabu-Shabu Mutton seems to be extremely simple, and even outsiders may find it monotonous.It does not have hot pot base. The so-called soup base is to add some scallions and ginger slices to water, and at most wolfberry, dried mushrooms and dried shrimps.In the past, people in Yanjing did not eat fat beef rolls.Cattle are an important means of production. Making beef have marble-like fat patterns is a breeding method that only existed in the 90s and [-]s.There are no southern ingredients such as fish balls and shrimp balls.

Mutton, frozen tofu, Chinese cabbage, vermicelli and sesame seed cakes, this is the complete configuration of orthodox shabu-shabu.After the water boils, first pour in a plate of white sheep oil to moisten the pot, and then boil the lamb slices.When it's almost cooked, let's plate the frozen tofu and let every hole in it soak up the soup juice before putting it in your mouth; then you can boil some Chinese cabbage leaves to relieve the greasiness, and add a few strands of watery vermicelli to continue moistening; finally, Finish off with a crispy and warm sesame seed cake, and a bowl of fresh soup in a pot.Compared with Chongqing hot pot, which is rich in oil and color, Yanjing shabu-shabu has an extremely simple appearance.

Mutton is of course the well-deserved protagonist in copper pot shabu-shabu.This emphasis on a single ingredient starts with the origin of copper pot shabu-shabu.Judging from the literature, "Shanjia Qinggong" written by Lin Hong in the Southern Song Dynasty contains records about meat-shabu-shabu, but what he cooked was rabbit meat. Once when he went to visit a hermit in Wuyi Mountain, he caught a rabbit in the wild. .The hermit told him that he might as well use a simple method to cook in the mountains and wilderness, cut the rabbit meat into thin slices and marinate it, put water on the stove, rinse the meat and eat it.Ma Xiaoliang doesn't have a preference for mutton-boiled meat, but every autumn and winter, it is indeed a pleasant thing to meet up with three or five friends to enjoy mutton-boiled meat. However, this time Ma Xiaoliang could only cook vegetables, potatoes, and vermicelli, so he was naturally unhappy.Many classmates and friends present had eaten boiled mutton with Ma Xiaoliang, and they couldn't help but laugh when they saw Ma Xiaoliang's unhappy expression but did not dare to say it openly, while Zhao Cui next to him kept picking up the boiled mutton and eating it.Xiao Han patted Ma Xiaoliang's shoulder and said meaningfully: "What's wrong, you don't like eating mutton anymore?" Ma Xiaoliang said that he knew what he was asking, but he also knew that he was digging a trap: "It's okay, it's just that I've been very angry recently, and eating mutton makes it easy to get sick. Fire." Zhao Cui felt dissatisfied when he heard these words, and thought about how much face he had to give in front of his classmates from Xiaoma University, so as not to leave everyone with the impression of a strict henpeck, so he picked up a few pieces of mutton, Put it on a plate full of green leaves in front of Ma Xiaoliang: "Just these few pieces, don't eat too much." Ma Xiaoliang threw it back angrily: "I won't eat it, and I won't eat it if I say no. How can a man stand between heaven and earth? You can talk but you can't keep your word!" Zhao Cui was surprised: "Oh, I can't tell, you are quite ambitious. If I give you another chance, will you eat it?" Ma Xiaoliang quickly picked up the mutton and threw it into his mouth: "But The ancients also said that those who know the current affairs are heroes, and they will not eat for nothing."

(End of this chapter)