On the day I invited friends over to celebrate the Chinese New Year, I cooked a large table of Hunan dishes from my hometown.
It is my habit to entertain everyone with authentic hometown dishes, and it has been going on for several years.
That’s because I have never forgotten the taste of my hometown since I ate the authentic hometown food when I first returned home to visit relatives 20 years ago, and then I learned to cook all kinds of dishes that I used to eat on the family table.
In August 2002, I went back to China to visit relatives.
I feel very special when I return to China. After my parents are gone, I am a wanderer overseas, and I have no home in China.
The houses of the three older sisters are not big. My wife and I live in a hotel with our eldest daughter who is in junior high school and the youngest two-year-old daughter.
During the few days in my hometown, my wife and my family from both sides came to meet us at the hotel, and friends who grew up with me also visited.
Our hotel room was full of relatives and friends from morning to night every day, and all three meals a day were arranged by each family to host a banquet in the restaurant.
Although we ate all kinds of delicacies at the banquets that were lined up every day in my hometown, the authentic hometown dishes that I ate at the tables of my 3 sisters’ and parents-in-law’s homes are particularly memorable: fried bacon with peppers and fermented soybeans Steamed bacon and fish, steamed meat with five-spice powder, and fish ball soup.
When I left my hometown and returned to the United States, my sisters bought a lot of Hengyang local products for us to bring back to the United States, and gave us a lot of refined bed sheets and quilt covers.
My parents-in-law live in the countryside. In the past every year before the Spring Festival, the family would slaughter a pig, and the production team would divide a few fish. They marinated the pork and fish, dried them, smoked them on the stove at home, and hung them on the kitchen shelf. Eat under the roof beams for a whole year.
When we left our hometown, our parents-in-law brought us cured bacon, smoked fish, homemade fish balls, rice noodles with steamed meat, and chopped chili sauce.
After I returned to Los Angeles, I often went to Chinese supermarkets to buy bacon, dried fish, and rice noodles with steamed meat. After eating them for many years, I still couldn’t taste the taste that was on the table of my relatives in my hometown.
The beautiful packaging clearly states that Hunan bacon is locally produced in the United States and has not been smoked at all.
All kinds of dried fish sold are only dried after being salvaged and sprinkled with salt.
Although there are also rice noodles with five-spice steamed meat for sale, they are still not as good as the steamed rice noodles from my hometown.
Many years have passed, and I still can't forget the taste of my hometown that I miss so much.
One day, I saw someone selling their own cured Hunan bacon and smoked fish in the WeChat group of Hunan folks. Although it was more than twice as expensive as that sold in supermarkets, I immediately placed an order and bought a few catties back.
That day, I made a stir-fried bacon with chili and garlic sprouts, and had a delicious meal with my family.
Since people can pickle their own hometown bacon, why don't I make it myself?
In order to let my family and friends taste the taste of my hometown in the United States, I began to learn how to cook a large table of hometown dishes in a foreign land.
I asked my relatives in China for the method of marinating bacon and fish, making fish balls and the recipe for homemade steamed meat and rice noodles.
Winter is coming and the weather is cold, so I bought a dozen pounds of pork belly and grass carp from the supermarket, cut the meat into strips, cut the fish into pieces, put salt, cooking wine, soy sauce, pepper, star anise, dried chili, and marinated in the refrigerator Soak for 3 days, then string and hang from a long wooden stick to dry in the garage with a couple of electric fans.
Then use peanut shells, rice, and pine branches to mix and smoke slowly in a barbecue oven for several hours. After it is made, it is packed in food packaging bags and stored in the freezer.
I also bought an air fryer and a fruit beater, fried yellow glutinous rice in the air fryer, then added salt, five-spice powder, and dried chili powder, and used the fruit beater to make homemade five-spice steamed meat rice noodles.
I bought grass carp and fatty meat, beat them into pulp with a fruit pulper, put them in gorgon powder, egg whites, shallots, and salt, made fish balls with boiling water, and packed them separately for freezing.
In recent years, whenever a guest or relatives and friends come to my house for dinner, I will take out my own bacon and fish balls, five-spice steamed meat and rice noodles from the refrigerator, and serve them with chicken, duck and vegetables to make a dozen authentic dishes. hometown dishes.
When my two daughters came home, I also cooked a big table of hometown dishes as usual.
Although it has been more than 20 years since I first returned to China to visit relatives, the high-quality bedding given by my sisters was not willing to throw away after more than ten years of use in the United States.
I still hang custom-made cloth curtains in Hengyang on the windows of every room in my house.
On the walls of each room are still old photos taken when I returned to my hometown for the first time.
Seeing these old photos and old curtains every day, salting and roasting some bacon and fish every winter and freezing them in the refrigerator to taste slowly, I know very well that it is a wanderer in his wandering life journey, carrying a The spiritual sustenance and deep nostalgia for the hometown where I was born and raised is a deep love for the hometown that is rooted in my heart and will never disappear.
Huang Zongzhi, People's Daily Overseas Edition