[duck pot]

Old duck

Old duck stew is a popular dish in ancient and modern times.

Slowly evolving in the aroma of history.

There is "fu" in Chu Ci during the Warring States Period,

That is succulent duck meat soup.

The immortal duck invented by descendants of the Confucian Mansion,

Steaming winter bamboo shoots in soy sauce,

After the three incense sticks are burned out,

Crispy and rotten out of the pan.

In modern times, Nanjing people began to make old duck stew,

Sour radish, Jinhua ham, mushrooms and dried bamboo shoots are stuffed into your stomach,

Ducks should not be too crisp,

Otherwise, it will be exposed when you get to the table.

Hangzhou people smiled slightly and disappeared their grudges.

Ma ducks, ham, and dried bamboo shoots are all from Zhejiang.

Nowadays, the crisp and stylish Hangzhou Old Duck Pot is a household name.

Uncle Wu (Wu Guoping, founder of grandma's family) called me early a week ago,"Amy, my old duck collection is a success!" The rising tone is like a crisp golden thunder in the sky. This awakened my memory to the mountains and bamboo forests before New Year. That day, I accompanied him to find ingredients. It's really "three or two peach blossoms outside the bamboo, and Uncle's prophet of water heating in the spring river." The rhythm! For this taste of Hangzhou, he spent half a year walking along the entire map of Zhejiang, treating the road as the side of an old duck casserole.

I said: Isn't this too fast?

Uncle said: "Unfortunately, we have been thinking about cooking for years! I have been doing catering for 20 years, and I must be doing things that I am familiar with and have experience."

The pursuit of duck age has made the thin soup become a complete appearance that does not disperse, let alone the spirit. The selection of duck makes it possible to turn the dark thick mouth into clear soup, and the duck has the appearance of a duck. Nowadays, there is old duck stew in almost every place, but looking at it, only Hangzhou can support the need to adapt to local conditions. Take three-year-old Jinhua ham, Shaoxing duck over 400 days old, add dried bamboo shoots from Tianmu Mountain and Nongfu Spring water from Qiandao Lake, and stew for more than 3 hours... Let this soup have a unique soul.

Uncle emphasized: It's pot, not hot pot. The ingredients and soup are good. "Hangzhou is a gathering place for all the rich people in the surrounding area. Since Lin 'an, high-ranking officials and dignitaries have been here to get good ingredients to cook them. Therefore, Jinhua's ham and Tianmu Mountain's dried bamboo shoots can be combined, giving them a unique old duck pot."

Hangzhou's wall doors make the old duck stew famous

Uncle never forgets the taste of his childhood

In Uncle's memory, local restaurants in Hangzhou have a history of 35 years at most since they have live chicken and old duck stews. To trace the earliest old duck stew, we must start from his childhood. "At that time, there was a family opposite Zhang Tongtai. They had three daughters. The eldest daughter was on the badminton team, which was a little older than us. The second daughter was the same age as me, and the third daughter was a little younger than me. I don't know if the second daughter was the third daughter. She married a certain restaurant boss who is good at making poultry cuisine. Everyone envies the people who helped them pluck the hair of their contract workers. After all, it was a good business that made them rich quickly. I guess the boss of Zhang Shengji started helping this family kill ducks. The old shop is just a hundred meters ahead."

Old photos come from the Internet

The picture in Uncle's mind was a red basin inside the wall door, and a refreshing smell floated from under the eaves."The old duck pot is so fragrant!" At that time, in Hangzhou, neighbors 'big kitchens were kept in the open air. The old lady next door retired and went to buy ducks and a basin in the morning. She didn't have time to eat melon seeds, so she scalded hot water to pluck feathers. By the time Uncle came back from school, the seductive ducks were already placed on the coal stove. Looking at the ducks in the pot, they couldn't fly, and waited until evening before they could eat them. For gluttonous children, this was a hundred times more severe torture than a test duck egg.

Regarding finding ingredients, we have to start with Uncle's father. At best, it's Lao Glutton's improvement, but in fact, it's just his willingness to eat food.

"When we celebrate the New Year, my father doesn't sleep at night and goes to Xiangfu Bridge at 4 a.m. Earlier, it turned out that our family collected chickens and meat from farmers in Sanbao. When we went home, we cooked pork with soybeans and pork with bamboo shoots. Hangzhou people cooked chicken with shrimp oil. Hangzhou chicken pot is not available. We like Xian chicken with shrimp oil sauce to make white cut chicken. Hang it up, air dry, cook it, soak it in shrimp oil and gravy, and I can't wait to eat it directly when I get home. There is only old duck stew, which is bought in the morning to pluck feathers and stewed in a coal stove. Later, there were more people in Sanbao, so we went to Xiangfu Bridge, where all the waterways and ships from Huzhou went. Ducks are to make old duck stew." Uncle's father rode a bicycle from Fengqi Road. When he came back, he returned full of loads, even for an hour.

Since the Southern Song Dynasty, Jiangsu and Zhejiang cargo ships basically passed through Xiangfu Bridge.

A mouthful of fresh soup that all old ducks and tians love to drink

The secrets are all in the ingredients that are better than MSG

"We rely on memory. We don't check the situation in history. We only learned about it a few years ago. We Hangzhou people have eaten pot since childhood, which is the pot from Zhejiang. Lin 'an, Jiande and Quzhou are all in this habit. Hot pot soup is usually not drinkable, but cooked soup is fine. We simmer the soup with our raw materials, and then add auxiliary ingredients to the soup. Pianerchuan, noodles, soup, and ingredients have the same taste, and it is also a system of transforming original soup into original food. Old duck stew is a soup that truly belongs to Hangzhou."

Uncle, whose age is a mystery, always jokingly calls himself an old duck from Hangzhou. As a veteran fan of old duck stew, he knows the eighteen martial arts of eating pot and drinking soup. "Hangzhou was the first to combine old duck pot with family portraits. Summer is old duck bamboo shoots and ham. In winter, we add egg dumplings and fish balls, and add river shrimp if the conditions are good. This will not mix the flavor, and shrimp and old duck will not rush."

"Remember. This is not hot pot, it is a pot. You can add anything to hot pot. For example, in winter, radish will immediately taste it. Hangzhou people drink soup." I like to eat the old duck rice cooked by him, which is what gods eat.

Uncle has always maintained the habit of drinking soup. He used to be a sports athlete, so he has maintained a body that makes people look at and envy for many years. His side profile is sharp and his body is lean. Of course, I care a lot about my daily food and drink. At least I am a person who can easily make a right-angle belly roll with any stable chair!

Uncle's Old Duck Team

Old duck gathering dinner

Photo from: bearded Lu Xiaohua

According to people's "spirit", Uncle has a super handsome old duck group, all of which are his food partners. They all understand the essence of "borrowing flavor" in the old Chinese flavor."Salt is the best taste, but MSG is not good. Salt and umami are the best taste. Our old chef who used to cook said, you didn't even add salt, so why add MSG? Moreover, our umami source is much more advanced than MSG!" This soup needs to be delicious, but it is not salty or greasy.

Seeing them, I realized what Uncle said was,"Old ducks, the key lies in the delicious flavor of the duck's bone marrow the next year."

As an old handsome pot, he also has high requirements for the pot. Recently, he replaced it with a more handsome hand-cast duck lid. Uncle's old duck pot is not afraid of long-term cooking or braising, because it uses "ham as MSG".

"Nowadays, the largest amount of ham is actually in Hong Kong and Macao. Ham must be used for the soup base of Yan's abalone fin. Old Hangzhou people will definitely add Jinhua ham to old duck stew. In fact, the stew of imported pigs is not as delicious as Jinhua ham more than three years old. Foreign pigs just don't have this aroma." he said.

Hangzhou people like to eat the taste overnight, so that the aroma of the overnight ham penetrates into the duck, and the fat of the ham seeps into the dried bamboo shoots. The taste is actually difficult to describe. It has a suitable hara taste after fermentation, but it just makes people want to stop. "In fact, in our childhood memories, the ingredients were dried bamboo shoots and green vegetables in winter. You can cook it how you cook it at home, and the taste of the soup goes into the vegetables."

I asked Uncle why he chose this bamboo shoot, and he said that the one he currently chose is actually the second best one on the market. There are more than fifty kinds of dried bamboo shoots. "The best ones are stalagmites. There are too few. This batch comes out as early bamboo shoots. It only lasts for 20 days in April. If we don't pick them, insects will grow later. It is the mountain near Yuquan on Tianmu Mountain in Lin 'an. I won't know if I don't go there." The reason why Tianmu dried bamboo shoots are famous is that the meat is thick, and the unique climate and growing environment determine the delicious flavor. There is no such thing as planting and breeding bamboo shoots. They are all wild. The value of the core producing areas is as precious as Longjing tea.

To make the perfect old duck pot, the dried bamboo shoots must undergo three pre-treatments: one cutting, two tearing, and three soaking, and the soaking time for the dried bamboo shoots is preferably one to two hours. If the soaking time is too long, the delicious flavor of the dried bamboo shoots will be diluted; if the time is too short, the salty taste will not be soaked, and the dried bamboo shoots will taste too salty! "We definitely don't add MSG, and we don't actually need to add salt. Our dried bamboo shoots are washed for a few minutes, but the flavor won't fade."

"Let's talk about ducks, which duck can guarantee more than one year? Only we old ducks are old ducks that are stewed for three hours without falling apart. No matter how much ducks, muscovy ducks or crammed ducks, this is the truth. Only after enough time can they have delicious flavor. Tender ducks smell like mutton, and so does ducks eaten in Wenzhou.", Hangzhou Old Duck Pot finally evolved into this, not overnight.

The new Chinese catering "tradition returns to contemporary times, experience becomes the standard!"

Uncle said to have faith

While saying this, Uncle was wearing an exquisite duck embroidered suit at the entrance of the old duck market, drinking tea leisurely. Watching the crowd pouring into the store like endless music. "Usually there is no queue and there is something to eat when you come in, because we have solved the problem of slow serving of traditional old duck pot."

Uncle said: "Products like this, our generation has faith."

Faith 1: Waiting for customers is not a good thing.

"I really don't want customers to line up. I think we must have customers in mind when making catering nowadays. So we let guests in, you eat as soon as you come to the table, don't sit and wait for food. It took three hours to cook it, and the kitchen kept circulating it, and half of the queuing problem was solved."

At present, the old duck market also provides convenient stewed flavors such as duck gizzards and duck wings.

"Why is it called the Lao Duck Market? I am online and offline. This market comes home and store. Takeout is the main thing, and cooked ducks fly home. I'll solve the problem of adding a dish to the family. A guest comes and has a pot. Just stir-fry two small dishes."

Faith 2: Quality upgrading is not about raising prices, but about providing better quality at lower prices.

Uncle said that the reason why milk tea is so good now is that the cost of milk tea is high. When 20% becomes 50%, profits will be given to customers. "In terms of methods, even something worth 100 yuan requires standards. Nowadays, advanced models must allow traditional products to be standardized and make craftsmanship something that can be quantified. In fact, the more standardized the products, the better they are. You don't need to say hello, it's just delicious. After I did this, the labor cost in the kitchen was reduced, and of course I gave it back to the customers.

"I have said for at least ten years that chefs have become engineers, not technicians. When I deal with pharmaceutical companies, I go crazy when I say 'a little'. The unit price of catering customers in the United States and Japan is cheaper than ours, which is inseparable from their advanced standardized management. The ingredients are more precise, the kitchen consumes less, and the products are still stable. I want to learn from them."

In fact, Western food has also experienced the current era of "little" Chinese food before. Victoria recipes also did not have accurate measurements, no measuring cups and spoons, and no unit of measurement such as "grams."

It wasn't until the end of the 19th century that American cooking expert Fannie Merritt Farmer began editing the Boston Culinary School Recipe Book that standards were established.

Salt meter for old duck collection kitchen

Soup concentration measuring instrument for old duck collection kitchen

Faith 3: Three people must believe, I must believe, employees must believe, and the third is that suppliers must believe, not customers must believe.

"I can get the best raw materials in the supply chain, because I want 100,000 kilograms of ham. The supplier told me not to buy it piece by piece, but in one piece, so I can't mix fake goods. It shows that even suppliers believe in what we are doing well. Old ham is to make soup, and ham is to eat meat for a year. The system standard SOP is to be responsible to the customers, and the customers will definitely believe it in the end."

"It's more convenient now. Grandma's family makes five ducks a day, and the errands fee must be high. There are at least 150 to 200 old ducks in the collection, and if they are taken out, the sales will be even more impressive. This is also what I understand, part of returning tradition to the present."

Looking at the food at his American son's house, Uncle smiled and said: Appetite is important. Because Chinese children's "salad" also needs to be secretly stir-fried. "Dried bamboo shoots, edamame, and pork slices are just ugly, delicious and not tired of eating them. In Italy and Canada, spring bamboo shoots could not be found, so they came back to complain. Our culture is the culture of Chinese food."

"My grandma's house used to do European decoration, but now it's all done in Chinese style, heading towards China. Everything has a process, and now young people are increasingly recognizing the concept of 'fresh'."

There is something in our family heirloom called "Chinese stomach". It is a great happiness to be able to appreciate Chinese food in life. Returning is something that cannot be helped.

The goddess asked

What did you like to eat when you were a child?

Feelings are something more important than wisdom,

Emotions can enrich wisdom,

Just as it enriches the heart.

--Rousseau

Food Bless You!

Consultant for China International Food Expo

Producer of "God's Table"