Engel auf Erden, Ein
The dispute over stuffing has been noisy.
During the Mid-Autumn Festival holiday, Zhu Guangquan wrote another poem when he broadcast the news: "When are the spring flowers and the autumn moon? The dispute over stuffing has been noisy. When Jiang Yue first shines on people, I will love Wuren. The moon shines in Kyushu, and the lotus seed yolk is served with rice porridge. The bright moon on the sea is full of tide, and the beef with rattan pepper is full. I like red bean paste &hellip best; …” Eating moon cakes and eating so many flowers makes netizens worry about whether the sign language teacher next to them can translate it. This year, Wuren moon cakes, which have been spit out every year, unexpectedly turned red in the moon cakes, which also triggered people from inheritors to manufacturers and cultural scholars to tell reporters.
Yangzi Evening News/Yangyan reporter Zhang Nan
When does Jiang Yue first shine on people?
When will I love Wuren?
Wuren moon cake is one of the traditional Chinese cakes. It is named "Wuren" because it contains almonds, walnuts, peanuts, sesame seeds and melon seeds. However, in recent years, every Mid-Autumn Festival, Wuren moon cakes have become the object of everyone’s vomit, calling them "dark dishes", and there is even a saying on the Internet that "if you hate anyone, give them to them".
Interestingly, this year, the "fan position" of moon cakes in the rivers and lakes has been updated. According to the data of an e-commerce platform, the sales volume of lotus seed yolk is 1.8 times that of last year, ranking first in the "national tongue tip". The performance of Wuren moon cakes, which are often vomited by netizens, is also unexpected, with sales ranking second. In the past two years, the voice of "letting Wuren get out of the mooncake world" triggered reflection, and netizens "shouted grievances" for Wuren mooncakes. In addition, the record of ham, bean paste, milk yellow and fresh meat moon cakes is also good, and many young people have tried new moon cakes such as mustard tuber, leek, mustard salmon, spicy strips and crayfish. In fact, different regions have different preferences. Consumers in the southeast coastal areas prefer "black sesame"; Moon cakes stuffed with "jujube paste" are more favored by consumers in the northern region; Chongqing, Yunnan and other provinces prefer the taste of "flowers".
The inheritor said "skill"
In fact, Wuren is innocent and has been hacked by cutting corners.
In 2016, "Traditional Pastry Making Techniques of Yangtze River" was selected into the list of the fifth batch of provincial-level intangible cultural heritage representative projects in Hubei Province, which means that its Wuren moon cakes produced by traditional techniques were labeled as "intangible heritage".
Zhou Hui, the producer of Wuren moon cakes and the fourth generation of the intangible heritage of the Yangtze River, told the Yangzi Evening News reporter, "Our best-selling moon cakes this year are milky yellow moon cakes, and Soviet-style moon cakes are also very popular. Adding meat floss to five kernels has a good taste, with many fans, and the output increases by 15%-20% every year. This kind of spit is not clear from the previous standard. Many merchants cut corners to save production costs, which leads to the damage of classic taste. In fact, Wuren itself is innocent and still has certain nutritional value in moon cakes. "
At the end of 2015, the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ) and the National Standardization Administration issued a new standard for mooncakes, which made a more detailed division of the categories and naming of mooncakes. For example, the China family of Wuren Moon Cake stipulated that only five kinds of raw materials, such as walnut kernel, almond, olive kernel, melon seed kernel and sesame seed, could be processed into stuffed moon cakes to become "Wuren Moon Cake". Prior to this, "because the prices of walnuts and almonds were relatively high, manufacturers used cheap nuts instead, such as peanuts and sunflower seeds in large quantities." Our Wuren moon cakes actually have ‘ Qiren ’ , including: walnut kernel, almond, watermelon kernel, sunflower kernel, sesame kernel, peanut kernel and cashew nut. "
When it comes to selecting materials, it is also very particular. Walnuts must be whole and cannot be broken; The moisture content of sesame is below 23%. As a result, Wuren moon cakes are more expensive than ordinary moon cakes, with one kilogram packed at 298 yuan and 160 grams packed near 20 yuan.
Zhou Hui said that the preparation cycle of Wuren moon cakes is very long. Starting from June every year, prepare the crust and syrup first, and add 6 to 7 fresh lemons to every 100 kg of carbonized sugar. After preparation, let it stand for one month, and then start to mix the crust after the impurities in the syrup are completely precipitated. For example, the frozen meat should be diced two months in advance and then pickled with sugar.
The stuffing must be stirred by hand. If the stuffing is too broken after being stir-fried by machine, the taste will be affected. In a 2-meter-diameter cauldron, the staff have to stir-fry with a 1.5-meter-long shovel. This technique tests the arm strength very much, and only experienced masters can be competent.
In the Ganjia Courtyard in Nanjing, there is a collection of wooden molds of chess cakes for making moon cakes in old Nanjing. Liu Yuanzhi, deputy director of the Folk Museum, told the reporter, "Using this mold to make moon cakes into red and green, eating moon cakes while playing chess, eating your car when it goes down, eating horses and eating guns, is particularly interesting."
Zhou Hui told reporters that, unlike common plastic molds for making moon cakes, it is still necessary to use pear wood as molds for making large five-kernel moon cakes. Such a mold needs to be soaked in peanut oil for one month before it can be made.
Manufacturers say "doorways"
The northern market loves Wuren, and Nanjing people love spicy beef.
Zhou Hui said that now people think that moon cakes are too sweet and easy to get fat because of high calories, so the production of moon cakes has also been improved. For example, the amount of sugar is reduced in the production of cake crust, and the frosting sugar is replaced by trehalose, but the cost is also increased. "We have also developed crayfish moon cakes. The smell of lobster is heavy, and many people can’t accept it. This kind of moon cake with special taste is only suitable for some consumers, so we gave up mass production."
So, what flavor do Nanjing people like best this year? Li Guozhong, vice president of Jiangsu Xinhaiying Food Co., Ltd., who is responsible for supplying many Nanjing hotels, told the reporter, "This year, spicy beef moon cakes with a little spicy taste, as well as moon cakes with bean paste and egg yolk lotus seed paste are more popular. But five benevolence is less in Nanjing. However, it is very popular in the northern market, and many northern customers have designated ‘ Laowuren ’ Moon cakes, like Jinan, the highest-selling category of moon cakes this year is Wuren. " As for the new moon cakes, Li Guozhong thinks, "We have also developed the moon cakes of Artemisia selengensis before, but it is also a gust of wind, or the classic taste lasts longer." In addition, we should also pay attention to how to eat. Like crayfish moon cakes and fresh meat moon cakes, they are suitable for baking and eating now, and only when they are hot can they taste delicious. When they are cold, they are not suitable for producing gift boxes.
Cultural scholars say "classic"
Yuan Mei wrote it in Suiyuan Food List, and Jia Mu in A Dream of Red Mansions also loved it.
Yin-Guo Hou, a cultural scholar, told reporters that the Mid-Autumn Festival has a very long history, but eating moon cakes in the Mid-Autumn Festival was only after the Ming Dynasty. Moon cakes, which symbolize reunion, were also called "reunion cakes" at that time. They were the standard gifts for relatives and friends in the Mid-Autumn Festival and the main offerings for the moon at night. The difference between the moon cakes at that time and today is that they are so big that they can even reach "two feet in diameter", which is as big as bicycle tires, so they are also called "too cakes". The whole family shares this big moon cake, which means "reunion". After the Qing Dynasty, small moon cakes which are convenient to eat became popular.
What are the tastes of ancient moon cakes? The simplest one is just a solid cake. Of course, there are also some moon cakes with slightly exquisite tastes. Professor Yin-Guo Hou said that the "five-kernel moon cake" highly praised by Yuan Mei, a great genius in Qing Dynasty, was hard to accept.
Yuan Mei recorded a kind of "Liu Fangbo’s moon cake" in his famous food book "Menu with the Garden" completed in Nanjing. This kind of moon cake is "made of Shandong flying noodles, crispy skin, pine nuts, walnuts and melon seeds as fine powder, and slightly added with rock sugar and lard as stuffing." The food is not very sweet, but the fragrance is soft and greasy, which is very unusual. " This kind of moon cake with crispy skin and various nuts as fillings is just like today’s five-kernel moon cake.
The 76th Dream of Red Mansions also recorded the mooncakes eaten by Jia’s family. Only Jia Mu, the head of the family, can eat the "moon cake with inner melon kernel and Chinese pine pulp", which refers to the dim sum made by the imperial dining room in Daichi. The "moon cake with melon kernel and Chinese pine pulp" is a kind of five-kernel moon cake, which is made of nuts such as pine nuts, walnuts and melon seeds mixed with crystal sugar and lard.
Most ordinary people eat five kernels, but the taste in the palace is a little richer. As far as the taste of fillings is concerned, there are candied fruit stuffing, orange sand stuffing, jujube paste stuffing and sesame salt and pepper stuffing. And many moon cake flavors that we are familiar with today appear very late. For example, the classic lotus seed cake, there is a saying that "there is lotus seed cake in Lianxianglou", which is only a hundred years ago.