China News Agency, Changchun, June 21, title: Snow-clothed bean paste: like clouds, like snow, and like poetry

　　Author Li Dan

　　At noon, in the three streets and alleys of Changchun, Jilin Province, the "hundred-year-old brand" Chunfahe Hotel was full of seats.

　　"I came here just for this bite." The 70-year-old Li Baochang and his old friends Zhao Mingchao and Zhang Yuqin met at the old place and ordered a "snow-clothed bean paste" that the three of them were fond of.

　　Dong Enli, the owner of the same age as Li Baochang, is still busy greeting guests.

Many regular customers don't even need to look at the menu, they call "Aunt Dong" and order directly.

"Xueyi Bean Paste" is the store's signature. "In the past, most of the middle-aged and elderly people ordered this dish, but now young people also like it," Dong Enli said.

　　Among the "rough and heroic" Northeastern dishes, "Xueyi Bean Paste" is one of the few "graceful and graceful" dishes.

　　According to legend, when Emperor Qianlong was the Supreme Emperor, he couldn't eat too hard food due to bad teeth and stomach discomfort, so the royal chef created a soft and sweet "Snow Bean Paste" with white skin and red heart. Qianlong was full of praise after eating it.

Later, when the Qing Dynasty was overthrown, this court dish also followed the former imperial chef back to his hometown of Jilin.

　　The ingredients to make "Snowy Bean Paste" are simple, just red bean paste, eggs, starch and soft white sugar; the process is not complicated, the red bean paste is kneaded into a ball, coated with starch and egg white paste, fried and sprinkled with sugar.

However, the seemingly easy-to-use "Xueyi Bean Paste" was once a beauty that many chefs "did not dare to touch".

　　There are two difficulties: stirring the egg white paste and controlling the oil temperature.

　　Chef Ji Changxi has been with "Xueyi Bean Paste" for 22 years.

I saw that he took 8 eggs and left only the egg whites, took 4 bamboo chopsticks, and whipped them in one direction for more than ten minutes, the foamy egg white paste could "stand up and not fall down".

　　Generally speaking, it takes about 10-20 minutes to beat the egg white into a foam with bare hands, and it must be done in one go without stopping, otherwise the bubbles will be difficult to form.

　　In the 1990s, "Xueyi Bean Paste" was once a grade-testing dish for chefs in Jilin.

Xia Jinlong, director of the Jilin Provincial Food Culture Research Institute of Jilin Business School, recalled that when he was an apprentice, he "loved and killed each other" with this dish. They were too stiff to lift."

　　Nowadays, the popularity of egg beaters liberates the sour arm, and also makes this "court dish" enter thousands of households.

However, the chefs still believe that the egg white paste whipped by hand has the "soul".

　　"The egg whites after being beaten are very fragile, so they should be wrapped in bean paste immediately before defoaming. The oil temperature should be well controlled. If the oil temperature is too high, the surface of the egg whites will change color and not white enough; "Xia Jinlong said that to make this dish, the precise control of the heat is particularly important.

　　When Ji Changxi was frying bean paste balls, he kept pouring oil on them, and the snow-white bean paste balls spun freely in the oil, round and plump.

After a few minutes, drain the oil and sprinkle with a handful of soft white sugar to add a little romance to this cotton peach-shaped dessert.

　　Diners bite open the soft and glutinous outer skin, as if biting into a "cloud", chewing carefully, the bean paste filling and white sugar slowly melt in their mouths like snowflakes, and the rich egg fragrance blooms.

　　"A full plate of white bean paste balls represent reunion." Li Yong, a Changchun native living in Hangzhou, said that when he was a child during the Chinese New Year, his father would make a "snow-clothed bean paste". Without the sprinkle of sugar, he couldn't wait to take a bite.

Now this "sweetness" on the tip of the tongue has become nostalgia.

　　As the inheritor of Ji Cuisine, Xia Jinlong once led a team to exchange in Macau, France, Spain and other places.

Xia Jinlong said that even if the years change, the traditional and memorable taste will never fade away.

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