Nowadays, traditional crafts in many cities have gradually faded away, but in my hometown, fried cakes shops can always support half of the night market.
Kueh is a unique seal left by Chinese food culture in Chaoshan region. People refer to rice noodles, flour and other foods made by baking, steaming and stir-frying as kueh. It does not require people to have the professional skills of a Michelin chef. Ordinary people can cook it well. Therefore, the roots of Kueh culture are rooted in the vastest land. The hard-working people spend 360 days making it. It writes different lines of poetry and rhymes with colors, flavors, and colors.
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In the night market in my hometown, fried cakes are the most popular. Cut the steamed cake into pieces, add the ingredients, add fish sauce, soy sauce and chili sauce, etc., and fry in the pot until golden brown, it is ready. Because it looks like pastry, it is called fried cake. Different stalls use different ingredients, most of which are minced green onion and ginger, eggs, oysters, pork liver, fresh shrimps, lean pork, etc., which make the fried cakes delicious and salty.
And my favorite is sweet fried cakes. In addition to the above-mentioned ingredients, it is also sprinkled with white sugar in the last step, so that the salty, fragrant and spicy are all combined, but they do not fight with each other, and the tongue is so excited that the words of praise standing on it are trembling. There is a shop on the corner of my hometown that makes sweet fried cakes. The shopkeeper is a big-shouldered young man. He pours a little lard in one hand and uses a spatula in the other to fry the rice cakes, "sizzling", as domineering as a martial arts master. After a while, the aroma wafted in one after another. I sat on the back seat of the bicycle and couldn't help but poke my head out and watch the cakes turn golden little by little, which greatly increased my appetite.
I have also made cakes with my own hands. I was living at my uncle's house at that time. At around four o'clock in the morning, before the rooster crowed, he called me up to help prepare the raw materials. Choose high-quality white rice, wash it and soak it for two hours, then pour it into a stone mill and beat it into a pulp. Then, lay a layer of white cloth in the steamer, pour rice milk into it, steam the first layer, then pour in rice milk, and then steam the second layer... repeat this seven or eight times, steaming layer by layer until it is ten centimeters. Thick is considered complete. After it cools down, cut it into small pieces to make cakes. At this time, the cake looks like a piece of milk, as white as jade, moist and translucent.
"The attitude you take when making cakes is also your attitude towards life." The uncle said. After making cakes, he would give me a bag and let my mother fry them for me. The freshly baked cakes taste chewy and delicious, and I have endless aftertaste every time I think about them.
Later, I went to study abroad and often had to do some mechanical things over and over again. Whenever I get bored, I always think of the scene when my uncle was making cakes. I think of him steaming a layer of rice milk, then pouring rice milk and steaming it again; I think of his attentive eyes and the feeling in the rice milk. The silence that was steamed together. I suddenly understood what he said to me. Everything in life is actually a process of spiritual practice. The process of making cakes is also a work project; the process of innovation is also a boring repetitive process. For example, if it were steamed rice milk, I wouldn't be able to make it as white as my uncle. What is superimposed layer by layer is tenacity, patience and care, and what shines out is the sense of responsibility that gradually changes from fast to slow, from ordinary to extraordinary after settling down impatience. Be responsible for yourself and those who eat cakes. This is my uncle’s insistence. It is also his warning to me hidden in the cakes.
Nowadays, I have entered the society, and the shop that makes sweet fried cakes has also entered middle age from youth, but the taste of fried cakes has never changed. Because the sauce is my own creation and the taste is different from other restaurants, I am worried that one day the store will stop doing this business, and my tongue will inevitably be lonely. He said with a smile: "I will do it as long as I can, and all the neighbors will recognize this fried cake!" It turned out that I was worrying about gains and losses, so I couldn't help laughing. People who make fried cakes have golden smiles and are crispy on the outside and tender on the inside.
Nowadays, traditional crafts in many cities have gradually faded away, but in my hometown, fried cake shops can still support half of the night market.Come to think of it, it is because of the steamed white layers in the fried cakes and the nostalgia of the three-pronged salty, fragrant and spicy that it never loses its promise to the world. (Original text published in the fourth page of the Grain and Oil Market News on July 14, 2022)
Source丨Grain and Oil Market News
General duty丨Liu Xinhuan Coordinator丨Liu Chao Editor丨Congshen
