The Juicy Bun

Liang Shiqiu

Speaking of Yuhuatai, this restaurant is not small in origin, and is run by the chef of the Yang family from Dongtangzi Hutong. He is a master of his craft and has many masterpieces, and the soup buns he makes are unique to the old capital.

What is a bun, there is no such place? But the flavor varies. Shanghai Shen Dacheng, North Wanxin, Wu Fang Zhai served breakfast soup buns, is an unforgettable.

The buns are small, so small that they can only be eaten one by one, but each is wrapped in a pretty style, with pine needles in the small steamer (unfortunately, pine needles are often used for too long), and they have a good look. The name is soup bun, but in fact there is not much soup inside the bun, but a bowl of clear soup is attached, and seven or eight shreds of egg skin are floating on the surface, so some people throw the bun in the soup and then eat it, becoming a veritable soup bun. This small soup bun filling is certainly not evil, but the beauty of the bun skin, half hair half not hair, thin and moderate thickness, the production of quite a skill, Taipei, there are also people imitating the Shanghai-style soup bun, to its imitation, has been very rare.

Tianjin buns are also famous far and wide, especially Gouli's name is very loud. In fact, you don't have to go to Gouli, once you take the Pingjin train to Tianjin West Station, there is a group of bun sellers holding up the cage drawer in front of the train window, and you can buy a few buns by stretching your arm. The buns are flat, but they do have more soup than normal, with a few pieces of chopped meat and green onion in the soup. Some people go to the store to eat buns, only out of the cage, the soup in the bun had a story of hot back, because the bun bite through, the soup spilled out, flowing to the palm of the hand, a hand is raised along the arm flow to the spine. I don't know if it's true, but Tianjin buns are really juicy soup, eat carefully, not to burn their own spine, at least to splash the face of diners at the table. A legendary joke: two people do not know each other according to a table to eat buns, one of them a bite down, a bun of soup straight past, the opposite guests sprayed a face full of flowers. The one who caused the trouble did not notice, head down and eat. The one across the street is very calm and does not make a sound. The tending clerk in a side can not stand, quickly wring a hot hand towel to send over, the customer Xu said: "not busy, he still has two buns did not finish eating miles."

Yuhuatai's soup buns are really containing a wangzi soup. A cage drawer put seven or eight buns, even the cage drawer on the table, steaming, buns under the pad of a steamer cloth, buns flat collapse in the steamer cloth. When you take food, you have to be quick, grab the folds of the bun and lift it up, the skin of the bun suddenly fell, like a baby sucking on a deflated breast, while the bun did not break quickly into their own plate, gently bite through the skin of the bun, the soup sucked down, and then eat the empty skin of the bun. Inexperienced people, looking at the cage of buns, and afraid of hot hands, and afraid of breaking the bun skin, hesitant, the result is probably broken skin soup flow, a mess. Sometimes the diner grabs it for you.

In fact, a large part of the fun of eating this kind of bun is in that between the grasp and suck. The skin of the bun is hot, a little harder than the hot dumplings, otherwise the soup can not be wrapped. The soup is originally a meat juice jelly, which is cooked into the meat skin together, so that it can be condensed into the bun filling. Inside the soup you can see some scraps of meat. Such soup will not taste too good. I don't quite understand why the soup must be poured in the bun and then drink it.