That year, after the Battle of Zhenbao Island, the political atmosphere in the northland was somewhat abnormal.
It's the Spring Festival, and my grandfather is afraid that the educated youth will have an accident, so he makes an appointment with the educated youth to spend the New Year's Eve with them. The educated youth immediately boiled.
despite my request, grandpa took me to the educated youth point.
The vast majority of educated youth have gone home, leaving behind those who have no home, whose parents have entered the cowshed (cadre school), or whose families are more miserable than those of educated youth.
Educated youths all grew up eating Coptis chinensis. We should give them something sweet and fragrant for the Spring Festival. Grandpa took the bean bag wrapped by grandma.
The process of making bean curd is as follows: first, make noodles. The flour is corn flour mixed with rhubarb rice flour. Dahuang rice is a kind of sticky rice, similar to glutinous rice in the south, except that it has yellow skin.
then make bean stuffing. Leave the adzuki bean to the fire and time. When the adzuki bean paste is boiled in the iron pot and bubbling, it will be peeled and ground into bean paste, mixed with red sugar, made into stuffing, wrapped in dough, and then steamed in the pot.
it's cold in winter in northeast China, so steam some curtains and put them in the yard-that's a natural big refrigerator.
I also brought "Su jiaozi". This is the custom in the north-jiaozi, which uses vegetables and bean products as stuffing, is a metaphor for a year of "plain and clean", and there is nothing evil. Usually eat "Su jiaozi" on the morning of the first day.
In fact, when people couldn't afford to eat meat in those days, people took pains to have fun, replaced meat with tofu, and then attached an auspicious joke, just like Zhao Benshan's sketches, which were all picked up from life and teased you during the Spring Festival.
I also brought a cigarette, which is a kind of "toad smoke" planted by the production team. It is said to be very spicy. I thought, just smoke Chili, which is cheaper than any kind of cigarette.
I brought two kinds of wine, one is tonghua wine. At that time, tonghua wine was only a few cents a bottle, and the thick grape juice was genuine, like the luxury of Datang-"grape wine".
the other is white wine. At that time, rural people couldn't afford to drink bottled white wine, which was all white wine-the so-called white wine was brewed by the production brigade itself and could not enter the market without a formal trademark.
The name of liquor is "Sweet Potato Meng". As the name implies, it is a wine made from dried sweet potatoes, and it is drunk to the top. At that time, food was expensive, and it was not allowed to make wine with food.
In the youth spot, we usually cook by turns, one person for a week, regardless of gender. Life forces them to stand on their own feet and grow up. Today, they started work together and the food piled up into a mountain, which is hard to imagine at ordinary times.
At ordinary times, the educated youth eat sorghum rice, water and rice, paste big cakes, and have no oil and water in their bellies. No matter how much they eat, they feel full. They have been seen to dig potatoes directly from the ground and eat them in pants, just like eating apples.
During the winter break, the days are short, and they only eat two meals a day. When they are hungry, they grab a few handfuls of corn kernels and fry them in a large iron pan, just like Lin Biao eats fried soybeans in the movie.
Grandpa's house is planted with earth crops, and there is no paddy field, so rice is rarely eaten, and so is the youth spot. Only during the Chinese New Year holiday, the superiors distribute a few kilograms of flour and rice to each educated youth.
Most of the usual flour and rice stays for the Spring Festival. Usually, educated youth eat vermicelli as noodles. In the eyes of educated youth, vermicelli is flour and rice.
when white flour comes, they are reluctant to bake pancakes and steam steamed buns, which is too wasteful. They all eat noodles. Because when rolling noodles, "face flapping" can be replaced by Bao (jade) rice noodles, which is said to be a secret book stolen from Korean cold noodles.
This Chinese New Year is different. The educated youth killed the pigs that they had raised for a year, ground buckwheat noodles, and ground yellow rice buns to make sticky bean buns. The chaff left after grinding is not sold, and all of it is taken to the villagers and replaced with eggs. They also brought fish and ducks.
What I remember most is their fat fish in brown sauce. Up to now, the smell still lingers on my tongue-the educated youth point hides the chef! It is inconceivable for a chef to cook fat fish in brown sauce. Usually, no matter what fish, he can only make soup, and everyone can have a sip. Only after the Chinese New Year can he dare to be so extravagant.
The materials are actually very simple, which are nothing more than chubby fish, onion, ginger and garlic, and the auxiliary materials are yellow wine, salt, soy sauce and rock sugar. This is not the practice in the north, when yellow wine was rarely used in the north.
The method is also extremely simple, that is, frying first and then boiling, but it tastes like a sacred thing in my mouth, and I have never tasted that taste again.
Another is jar meat, which looks simple now, just like Dongpo meat. Add seasonings such as onion, ginger and garlic, put the meat into a magnetic jar, and simmer slowly for more than three hours. For educated youth, this is too extravagant, and it is simply a crime.
There is no meat at ordinary times. Even if there is, it is stewed with many dishes, and there is no meat at all. In addition, the educated youth found cinnamon from nowhere and put it in jar meat, which has a unique flavor.
at that time, cinnamon could only be found in pharmacies, and I didn't want to buy it or sell it to you.
the best thing for educated youth is versatility. Everyone shouted: "floret, come!" Without mince, the stage is Li Tiemei. Everyone shouted again: "Tiger, Wolf, a cross talk in the vernacular?" The appearance of both tigers and wolves is a cross talk. Everyone shouted again: "Poet, come for a while!" Three poets stood up, guessed fists across the table, and then came out in turn to recite their own poems-that's the real poem, and every word smelled of mud.
it's almost fifty years, and whenever I think of them, I can't hold my heartbeat. No wonder so many romantic figures have been born among them.