Have a taste of "Leguo Cake" and go to Tonglu
In order to find the best tortillas in Tonglu, I went all the way to Hecun Township. When I got to the village, I asked: Where can I get delicious corn tortillas? They pointed toward the river, Caiping's house.
Caiping's Farm Restaurant has been open by the river for more than ten years. Caiping is good at cooking and easy-going. When regular customers see her, they like to call her "beauty" from a distance. She giggled, she is 48 years old, how can she be called a beauty?
Caiping likes to laugh. She said that in doing business, harmony makes money.
The corn cakes made by Caiping are famous far and wide. One year, Caiping was invited to make corn cakes during the "Mountain Flower Festival" in March in Yangshanfan, Hengcun Town. The corn tortillas she fried in rapeseed oil were golden, clear, and fragrant. The aroma burst into the air, blatantly teasing people's appetite.
In the food court, tourists watching the peach blossoms crowded in front of Caiping's tortilla stall. The charred corn tortilla is crispy on the outside and tender on the inside, full of fragrance. When you bite into it, you will find shredded radish, pickles, tofu, pork, chili, garlic leaves and bamboo shoots wrapped in the tortilla.
Caiping likes spring. There are many delicious foods in spring. Garlic, wild onions, leeks, Chinese toon, fern, and malantou. These wild vegetables emerge from the soil in a steady stream, looking silly and showing a sense of stubbornness. The most important thing is that there are bamboo shoots all over the mountains and plains. These spring bamboo shoots were dug up by sharp-eyed bamboo shoot diggers before they even emerged from the ground. Stir-fry spring bamboo shoots with shredded radish, pickled vegetables and pork to create the most spring flavor.
Caiping believes that bamboo shoots are essential. In order to be able to eat delicious corn tortillas all year round, Caiping will stock up on bamboo shoots for the whole year in spring.
I want to try Caiping's tortillas. "Oh, you're late, there's only one left." She said, "Tortillas are served for breakfast in Hecun Township."
I couldn't wait to taste the last tortilla, it was crispy and thick. The smooth taste of the spring bamboo shoots, the sweetness of the radish, the whiteness and tenderness of the tofu, the freshness and saltiness of the pickled cabbage, and just the right amount of oily pork, leaving an endless aftertaste.
Caiping said that a corn tortilla and a bowl of porridge are the standard breakfast for Hecun villagers. The villagers do farm work during the day, and eating porridge alone is not enough. At this time, a corn tortilla is the best partner. The coarseness of the corn and the freshness and softness of the filling are just like the background of Hecun Township, which has both the simplicity of the land and the agility of the mountains and forests.
In order to prepare such a breakfast, Caiping had to get up at 4 o'clock in the morning. She first put the coal cakes into the coal stove, lit a fire, and then started mixing the corn flour. When the coal stove gradually heats up, the dough is ready. Place a frying pan, pour rapeseed oil, and wrap the stuffing fried the day before into corn husks. When the hot oil starts to smoke, put in the tortillas and make a "sizzling" sound.
Countless identical operations on the same day have already made this series of operations flow smoothly.
At this time, when I looked outside the door, the sky was as clear as water, and the morning glow was draped on the top of the mountain.
More than ten years ago, Caiping worked in a woolen mill. Later, because her father-in-law was in poor health and her children were left behind without anyone to take care of them, she quit her job and returned home, where she opened a restaurant and took care of her children.
Hecun Township has many local folk arts, such as embroidered shoes, tile carvings, folk songs, three-legged opera, bamboo horses... After Hecun embroidered shoe making skills were included in the provincial intangible cultural heritage list, more and more urbanites came to Hecun Township. Vacation. City people pay attention to health and like whole grains. Caiping recalled that when she was a child, every household in Hecun Township made a living by growing corn, which accounted for more than 80% of the villagers' annual rations. Corn is a specialty of Hecun Township and is also a high-quality coarse grain. It’s better to let friends from the city try the corn cakes from Hecunxiang, Caiping thought.
The biggest problem with corn tortillas is that the corn flour has poor viscosity, which not only makes them easy to crack, but also tends to harden after frying. Many people have tried making tortillas before, but they all failed.
what to do? I just kept thinking about how much water to add, how long to knead the dough, and kept trying, and suddenly I found the trick. As for the secret, "it's just that practice makes perfect. You can't tell the exact proportions of each recipe like a textbook. It's just something you can pick up at your fingertips after you become proficient."
Caiping's corn tortillas are handmade. “The technique must be gentle,” she emphasized. Add an appropriate amount of cold water during the kneading process, and knead repeatedly until the dough is smooth without any bubbles or lumps. Knead out a uniformly thick dough, wrap it in the filling like a glutinous rice ball, seal it, and then use a rotating technique to shape the dough into a flat round. shape.
The corn tortillas made by Caiping are not cracked or hard, look good, have thin skin and fragrant fillings, and have an excellent taste. They spread all over the country. Corn tortillas are not only a local specialty of Tonglu, but have also become the flagship snack of Caiping Farm Restaurant.
In Tonglu, corn cakes are also called six-grain cakes. Tonglu people call it Liugu Cake, which does not mean that six kinds of grains are added to the cake. "Six grains" are compared to China's "five grains". The term "five grains" was first seen in "The Analects of Confucius: Wei Zi" during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period: "If the four bodies are not diligent, the five grains cannot be distinguished." Nearly 2,000 years later, corn was introduced to China. The earliest record of corn was found in "Yingzhou Chronicles", in the sixth year of Zhengde in the Ming Dynasty.
Corn, which is not among the “five grains”, is an important food crop in Tonglu. Therefore, Tonglu people directly listed corn as the sixth grain. But Caiping prefers to call Tonglu corn cake "Le Guo Pancake".
The word "Le Guo" is interesting. The corn tortillas are fried in the pan, eyes are staring at the golden color in the pan, and the taste buds are looking forward to the crispy and fragrant food in the pan. Isn't it a kind of "fun pot"?
"Leguo" is also a kind of life wisdom, a declaration of life that is close to the origin of life, natural, self-sufficient and self-pleasant.
Caiping's little daughter Duoduo clamored for corn cakes when she came home on weekends. Duoduo's favorite thing is to stand in front of the frying pan and watch her fry tortillas.
Caiping flipped the tortillas up and down with a spatula while talking to Duoduo about the past. "My mother didn't like eating corn when she was a child, because she ate it every day until she felt repulsed by it. In the past, she lived in poverty and planted little rice, so she didn't often eat rice. Corn was everyone's staple food. Grandma would grind corn into flour, and corn flour can be made by adding water. Mix the cornstarch, pick some wild vegetables in the wild, stir-fry, and mix it into the cornstarch, and you have a meal. The cornmeal can also be used to make corn buns, but the corn buns in my childhood were hard and dry, and they were not as fluffy as they are now. Soft and tender, the tortillas at that time were different from those of today. They didn’t have the saltiness of spring bamboo shoots, the sweetness of pickles, and the fatness of lard.”
Caiping went on to say that in Hecun Township, there is a saying that "living in a deep mountain dock, stepping on a white charcoal fire, holding corn tortillas, and stewed tofu with green vegetables, I am the only god" - especially in winter, people gather around the stove to make corn pancakes. It's hot, and the green vegetables and tofu are fresh. Living in the deep mountains, far away from the hustle and bustle of the city, living half a day in peace and contentment, isn't that the way to live like a fairy?
Duoduo was small but had a good appetite. She ate two or three corn cakes while listening to her mother talking.
Caiping was very happy about her daughter's love for corn cakes. She looked at her daughter's oily little mouth and felt that this kind of life was called life and that it was truly lived.
