Excerpt from an essay by a famous writer about food

Gu Qingsheng is a writer I like very much, and I highly recommend it.

"Crisp Porridge"

In the early years, relatively primitive cooking utensils were used for cooking, among which iron pots and tripod pots were very likely to produce crispy rice. Crispy rice is attached to the bottom of the pot. When you eat it, it is extremely hard. People in Jiangnan like to mash the crispy rice, add water and cook it into crispy rice porridge. It is actually fragrant and tastes better than normal rice. The best kind of crispy rice is cooked in an iron pot with firewood stove. It is golden in color, crispy but not burnt. It is cooked with rice soup and only requires a few salty radish strips when eating. It is very appetizing. Nowadays, there are also special hotels that make crispy rice and cook it with rice soup. This is a kind of pop production, like Internet literature, but the taste is also good. Last year, in Huanggang Xiaoju, I made it with Huanggang literati Xiong Wenxiang, He Cunzhong, Chen Minggang, and Wang Haohong. An elder brother drank heavily at the edge of Red Cliff on Dongpo. After drinking, he drank crispy rice porridge. Chopped local vegetables (shepherd's purse) were also added to the crispy rice porridge. Not only was it fragrant, but also the bitter taste of the vegetables made it feel like drinking. In heaven.

However, the most profound memory of eating crispy rice porridge in Huanggang was the visit to the Laozu Temple in Huangmei the year before last. The famous temples in Huangmei include the Fourth Ancestor Temple, the Fifth Ancestor Temple and the Laozu Temple. The first two temples are hosted by Daoxin and Hongren respectively. I would like to say a few words about the Wuzu Temple. The Wuzu Temple is located in Dongfeng Maoshan, referred to as Dongshan Temple. The biography of the Sixth Patriarch Huineng in Buddhism says: Huineng’s surname was Lu, and he was from Zhuoxian County, Hebei Province. His father was demoted to Lingnan, and he relied on selling Chai's mother-in-law came to enlightenment after listening to the "Diamond Sutra" and found out that Hong Ren, a Zen sect from Dongfeng Maoshan, followed her from the Pearl River across the Yangtze River to the Wuzu Temple. She worked in the mortuary room of the temple for eight months, and there were 700 people in the Dongshan Zen sect. , the tiredness of Hui Neng can be seen in the Zen mind. One day, in order to test the Zen followers' understanding of his Zen teachings and to prepare for imparting the mantle, Hongren ordered everyone to submit a verse for examination. At that time, Shenxiu was recognized as the successor of the mantle, so he composed a verse: "The body is like a Bodhi tree, and the mind is like a mirror stand. I should brush it diligently at all times to avoid dust." After reading it, Hongren said to the Zen people: If future generations can practice according to this and achieve victory, please recite it. Huineng stayed in his dormitory room and heard more than seven hundred monks reciting a verse loudly. He felt that it was very general and had no Zen meaning, so he composed a verse. He was illiterate, so he asked someone to write it on the wall. The verse goes: "Bodhi has no tree." "The bright mirror is not a platform; there is nothing in it, so how can it cause dust?" This verse was so remarkable that Master Hongren immediately changed his mind and decided to pass the mantle to Huineng. There is a strange tree behind the Wuzu Temple. The lower end of each branch is curved and the upper end is straight. It is like the reflection of a bamboo pole cast in the water and the ends are distorted by the waves. I don’t know what it has to do with Zen.

After seeing the Wuzu Temple, I thought I would also go to the Laozu Temple. Laozu Temple is located on Ziyun Mountain in Huangmei Kuzhu Township. There are many huge rocks on Ziyun Mountain, bamboo forests grow on the rocks, and wild goats bray loudly. When we arrived at the Laozu Temple, it was already dusk, no one was coming and going, there was only the sound of insects, so we stayed in the temple and ate vegetarian food. The only host is Master Wei, a 69-year-old woman with one upper front tooth hanging alone and wearing a black monk's hat. She cooked the rice in an iron pot on a firewood stove. There was a pot buried beside the stove. She added some rice soup into the rice while cooking. After the rice was eaten, she soaked the rice in the hot rice soup. It was really fragrant. There are only two kinds of dishes, vegetarian fried tofu sticks and salted radish sticks. They are delicious. The lamp is a long candle, and there is a moon hanging on the top of the mountain outside the door.

The Laozu Temple was bombed by the Japanese air force. The temple on the ruins was rebuilt several years ago. The wind is like a scratching hand.

It is said that today’s cookware is undergoing innovation, and electric cookers controlled by chips can no longer cook rice cakes. Think about it, let’s talk about the cooking utensil of the tripod. The tripod can only be seen occasionally in remote countryside. Like the iron pot, it is made of cast iron. It looks like the tripod in the Forbidden City, but it does not have two ears and three legs. The pointed bottom gradually becomes larger in circles, and there is a circle of straight round edges on it. There are four symmetrical holes on both sides, and wires are threaded to make handles. Generally, tripod jars have wooden lids, and some have cast iron lids that are set with the tripod jar. The cauldron can be used to simmer soup or rice. Last year in a blacksmith shop in Majia Village, a cauldron was seen hanging on an iron stove with soybeans and pig's feet simmered in it.

According to historical records, Ding is a cooking utensil that existed in the Xia and Shang Dynasties. Many words that connote grandeur and power use the word Ding. To win the world is to "aspire to conquer the Central Plains", and the wealthy family is the home of "Ding Shi". Ding Shi It talks about eating with a row of tripods. There are many tripods arranged when eating, just like the buffet at Tongli Wine Bar in Sanlitun. The richness of the food can be imagined; the tripods also appear to be much more noble than the iron pots. The word "dingdang jade" is It is said that "the tripod is used as an iron pot and jade is used as a bad stone", which means that food is wasted in a mess. Speaking purely now, it is difficult to understand why an iron pot for cooking rice and simmering soup, with its clumsy shape and ugly appearance, was favored by the emperor and regarded it as a symbol of power. In the Forbidden City, the tripod was gold-plated. According to a report sent to the German emperor by Commander Waldersee of the Eight-Power Allied Forces, the Russian soldiers were specialized in the despicable act of scraping off the gold-plated tripod.

I have used tripod pots for cooking before, but they still tend to char the rice. If it didn’t have this shortcoming, tripod pots would be really good. The stewed pot contains the art of balance in life, or the idea of ????the golden mean. If the pot is simmered with less fire, it will not be fragrant, and if it is simmered with more fire, it will be scorched and miserable. However, if the fire is moderate, it will be crisp but not scorched, golden in color, and full of fragrance. , for cooking porridge, the elegant Suzhou people call crispy rice porridge "soup with a hundred spatulas", which reminds people of housewives picking up crispy rice with shovels. The fragrance comes from afar.