The tastes of Hainan islanders are as inclusive as the sea that raised them. But for foreign tourists, if you want to eat the most authentic Hainan flavor, finding the authentic Qiongcai Restaurant may be the slowest way.
Eating seafood is a necessary step for tourists to punch in when they come to Hainan. Every city on the island has a famous seafood street. But after the neon lights of seafood stalls go out, you may be surprised to find that the signboard behind the stalls may be "Chongqing Restaurant" or "Sichuan Style". There are far more northeast restaurants and Sichuan restaurants on the street than Qiong restaurants, so many Hainanese will jokingly call Sanya "Sanya City, Heilongjiang Province".
If you want to really taste Hainan, you need to wear slippers and ride a small electric donkey at eight or nine in the evening, just like the islanders. At this time, the night market slowly began to open.
In the Nanyang-style arcade, red lanterns are hung high, and a bowl of fried conch is held in the crowd. The smell of the sea is fierce.
In Tailong City, where wine is not afraid of deep alleys, the longest queues are always mung bean cakes and braised chicken feet. Avoid the crowd and go inside, and then you can eat cool chicken manure and rattan. After putting down the food, put your hands together and walk to the golden four-faced Buddha in the alley. Perhaps this is the love and respect for food.
In Nanmen Snack Street, the stalls for clearing, replenishing and cooling are next to each other, "Haida is the first", "Haikou is the first" and "Hainan is the first". They don't want to lose to anyone from the imposing manner of their names, and the taste is naturally not bad. Each cleaning, replenishment and cooling has its own winning tricks.
When you first taste Hainan food, most northerners who are used to heavy tastes will doubt their own taste with a blank face. Just like Wenchang chicken, the most famous of the four famous dishes in Hainan, the chicken itself has no taste except dipping it in it, and it also has a semi-cooked and unfamiliar taste.
What words can be used to sum up such Hainan cuisine?
Once, I thought it was synonymous with Hainan cuisine-bland and tasteless. But after living in Hainan for several years, I realized that the taste of Hainan is not dull, but the unique geographical conditions give the island a natural taste.
The taste that best represents Hainan should be sweet.
2. Sweet honey, ice sweet honey
Eleven and a half months out of twelve months in Hainan are extremely hot, and you will sweat like rain when you move. Every time it's so hot that I don't think about tea and rice, I pray: if only I could continue my life by inhaling fairy dust and not eating.
In addition to the ultimate killer-chilled watermelon, I think there are only various chilled sweet soups unique to Hainan.
(1) Qing Bu Liangkou "Night Market Overlord"
It is no exaggeration to say that coolness is the most representative snack in Hainan. But people who come to Hainan for the first time will ask strangely when they hear this name: huh? What is cool? What is cool? Make up for what?
The name Qingbuliang is found in Guangdong, Guangxi, Hong Kong and Macao. In some places, Qingbuliang is cooked with old fire soup, and Hainan Qingbuliang is a dessert.
Hainan Qingbuliang is based on miscellaneous grains such as red beans, mung beans, coix seed, tortoise shell, red dates, watermelons and pineapples. The finishing touch is to have a quail egg, then add sugar water, coconut milk or smoothies, and finally sprinkle a handful of peanuts, raisins or shredded coconut.
In Nanmen Snack Street of Haida University, every shopkeeper likes to say that he is the "first family", but in fact, no matter who is the "first family", every foodie has his favorite family.
It's been a long time since I left the island, and I can't remember which one has the freshest quail eggs, which one has more diced watermelons and which one has the strongest coconut juice. But I always remember those days when I bragged at the south gate after class, ordered a bowl of smoothies to cool off the heat, and asked my boss to "keep the ice indefinitely" as long as I didn't finish eating the bottom material. Even if I have to shake my legs anxiously to catch mosquitoes, I am willing to sit in front of the stall for one night.
What every wanderer who leaves the island misses most is refreshing and refreshing, and it is also a time when he can't go back with his legs shaking.
(2) Sweet potato milk is earned when you eat it.
The name sweet potato milk sounds a little strange to outsiders, but it is definitely the top player who has occupied the top few Hainan snacks for a long time.
I remember when I lived in Haikou, I always liked to go to the old lady selling desserts to drink a bowl of sugar water in the evening to eliminate the fatigue of the day with sweetness. However, every time my grandmother would tell me that the sweet potato milk is sold out and the sweet potato powder is also very sweet. Want a bowl?
I have listened to this sentence for many years, but I can't catch up with the last bowl of sweet potato milk after class every time, and I didn't eat a few mouthfuls at last. It can be seen how popular sweet potato milk is in Hainan.
Sweet potato milk is amazing. Although there is a word "milk" in the name, there is only sweet potato without milk, and the milky white actually comes from rice. Stir the sweet potato paste and rice paste evenly, then put them into a pot and cook a pot of fat balls as white as jade. Finally, add ancient brown sugar and spicy ginger to taste the wonderful taste of sweet and spicy mixture.
Vendors who sell sweet potato milk really live up to "work at sunrise and rest at sunset", grinding pulp in the morning and selling it in the afternoon. They sell so much in one day and never do much.
Islanders prefer sweet potato milk. In order to have a bowl, they can find old streets like Ximiao from all over Haikou. But if you miss the last bowl, you will feel that it doesn't matter. You can eat whatever you want and come back another day.
(3) talinum in Hainan is made of chicken manure vine.
See the word "shit", most people will flinch. Food that dares to call itself "shit" must be delicious enough not to be suspected. This dessert is really called "shit" or "chicken shit", which is extremely lethal.
Paederia is the "talinum" of Hainan people, and its effect of clearing away heat and toxic materials is a good medicine for Hainan people living in "hot water".
In many places in Hainan, postpartum women will eat chicken manure to nourish their bodies and clear away the summer heat.
Qionghai's food is definitely not as rich as Haikou's. It has one of the four famous dishes in Hainan, namely Jiaji duck, shredded coconut white roll and Tayang white stir-fried dishes. However, the chicken manure vine is still the protagonist of Qionghai people's supper. Every year from the first day of July to the Mid-Autumn Festival, Qionghai people deliberately eat more chicken manure and rattan, not only to relieve summer heat, but also to understand bad luck.
3. Hainan rice, have a taste of natural fragrance
How to eat a bowl of ordinary rice? The answer from Hainan people may be-countless kinds.
Hainan has the most unique natural resources. Coconuts can be seen everywhere in Haikou. Only after crossing the Qiongzhou Strait to Guangdong, there was no coconut juice in the coconut trees. The streets are full of pineapples, mangoes, papayas and durians ... which are really beyond the envy of other places.
Rich products give Hainan people an imagination. With a little ingenuity from Hainan people, rice is no longer a bowl of white rice to fill the stomach. If you eat it in one bite, it will be full of tropical charm.
(1) The first satiety of the coconut boat.
Coconut is synonymous with Hainan. Hainan is called "Coconut Island", Haikou is not called "Coconut City", and there is also a saying that "Hainan Coconut is half Wenchang". Throughout Hainan, coconuts are planted on roads of all sizes, and coconut fragrance is everywhere. Hainan people who love natural flavor will certainly not waste the gift of coconut grove.
Put the soaked glutinous rice into a coconut cup, add sugar, fresh coconut juice and fresh milk, and finally seal it with a coconut lid and simmer it slowly, and it will become a pearl-like coconut boat.
Both glutinous rice and coconut are nourishing products, and their tastes are sweet and moist. The sweetness of coconut boat comes not only from the satisfaction of taste, but also from the satiety of being moistened.
(2) pineapple rice is the most popular "dark dish"
It is said that the university canteen is the ninth largest cuisine, and the canteen master especially likes to stir-fry everything with fruits, creating wonderful dishes such as baked tofu with peaches, fried meat with strawberries, fried apples with watermelons and so on. Pineapple fried rice has become a network celebrity dish of Wuhan University with the face of "dark cuisine", and almost all it wants is fate.
However, in Haikou, which is rich in pineapple, pineapple fried rice is a street snack. If you want to eat sweet fruits and fresh aquatic products, coming to Hainan is your best choice.
The rich nutrition of diced meat, green beans and shrimps, and the sweet and sour pineapple diced as an appetizer, make my mother no longer worry about my picky eaters.
(3) The rice bowl locks the mountain fragrance.
Bamboo rice is very popular in many mountainous areas with dense forests. Bamboo tube is both a pot and a bowl, which should be regarded as the simplest and most satisfying food in the period of material shortage.
Bamboo rice in Alishan, Taiwan Province, will be sealed with cabbage or crispy, and then baked. Bamboo rice in Guangxi will be stuffed with bamboo leaves, and Sichuanese love to lock incense with tea.
In Sanya, it is essential to have a bite of bamboo rice to experience the customs of the Li nationality.
Different from other places, the bamboo-tube rice of Li nationality in Hainan is sealed with banana leaves, and game such as partridge meat, chicken and pork is added, so that the rice is mixed with the fragrance of bamboo and game.
(4) Li weaves good luck into the rice.
Limi is a specialty of Wenchang. Just like northerners make zongzi, Wenchang people weave square or duck-shaped "rice tube" with pandanus leaves (also known as coconut leaves), and then pour brown rice mixed with salt and garlic into the "rice tube" to cook. Brown rice will have the fragrance of garlic and pandanus leaves at the same time.
In Hainan, Li Mi represents the friendship between relatives, and sending Li Mi to each other means sending good luck to each other.
I used to be very particular about eating Dai rice. When eating Dai Li rice, I dare not cut it or cut it open, so I can only untie it slowly with my hands, which means I have to relieve myself one by one.
Ordinary red envelopes are full of money. Wenchang's "green red envelope" is full of blessings and thoughts for relatives. Rub them into rice grains by hand and weave each complete hat. Perhaps the process of unlocking rice is also the process of understanding the feelings of relatives.
After leaving the island for many years, the memory of the past has long been as vague as a fog. But the island flavor left between lips and teeth is always hard to erase: the salty taste of sea breeze, the cool sweetness and the fragrance of coconut rice. ...
Hainan's "clear" and "sweet" are not only the taste of Hainan, but also the personality of Hainan people is integrated into the food, forming a unique taste memory of Hainan.
The market atmosphere in Hainan is always the same, always so dull, but it has deep attraction.
In Hainan, no matter what you wear to the streets, as long as it is not a formal occasion, islanders always wear slippers on their feet, and random mixing is the real fashion on the streets of Hainan. When I have nothing to do, I will go to my father's teahouse to order a pot of tea, chat, give directions, and hit the square dome. The islanders live a quiet life. When the typhoon came, they squatted at home and fought for the landlord. As soon as the typhoon left, they went shopping casually. The existence of strong winds seems to be just a hairstyle for islanders.
The taste of Hainan, like life on this island, seems dull but always sweet. No matter how many years have passed, vagrants who leave this island will never forget it.