Catfish Juice and Wind Blowing Cake of Gin Ethnic Group
The staple food of Jing people is rice. On the New Year’ Day and other festivals, they like eating polished glutinous rice and candy porridge. The meat they have is mainly fishes and shrimps. They especially favor flavoring with catfish juice. The “Wind Blowing Cake” features another food Jing people like.
“Catfish Juice,” also named “Fish Dew,” is pickled with small fish. Generally, it is made in the fishing season from March to June of the lunar calendar. Its manufacturing method is simple and exquisite: first fill up some straw and sand bags on the bottom of a large tile jar to be the filtering layer. On the foot of the jar, there cuts a hole, set with a little bamboo tube or rubber tube to be the juice pipe. Then put in salt and small clean fish layer by layer, in a proportion of 3:2. After filling the jar up, put a big stone above to planish the surface. After that, cover the jar and seal it.
Five to seven days later, pull out the stopper of the juice pipe, from which the juice flows out continually. The juice that comes out at first is called “Initial Leaking Juice,” which is very fragrant and with golden color. The delicious juice is the most superior type within the catfish juice, and is used for receiving guests. After a while, add the refrigerant boiled salt water into the jar, continue to press and strain the catfish juice, called “Second-time Leaking Juice,” whose color, fragrance and taste are slightly inferior to the “Initial Leaking Juice.” But it is also the quality goods of fish dew, generally exported to other countries. At last, the juice pressed and strained for a third time is called “Third-time Leaking Juice,” a third-class product of fish dew, which is seldom sold in the market but used the individual families.
Because the catfish juice is yellow and clear, and tastes delicious, it has become the first-class flavoring Jing people can not leave even for a single day. It all sells well in the countries of Southeast Asia, such as Vietnam, Thailand, and Cambodia.
For Jing people, the income from selling the catfish juice is very considerable, because every jar can produce more than one hundred Jin of catfish juice. Among the three islands, Shanxin Village has the largest output, thus enjoying the reputation of “Hometown of Catfish Juice.”
“Wind Blowing Cake” is the food made of rice. Its making method is as follows: Soak rice with hot water at first, then grind it into thick liquid to be ladled into the aluminium tray with a diameter of 40-50 centimeters. Steam it into pieces of thin film, on which there spreads some sesame. Then put in onto the bamboo screen to be dried with charcoal fire. Because it is light and thin, nearly transparent, it seems that it will fly up when facing the wind. So it has got its name “Wind Blowing Cake.” Its flavor is fragrant and crisp. If cut the steamed film into threads, it will become “the bean vermicelli.” Mix it with spiral shell meat, crab meat, dried sipunculid worm and shrimp, boiling into the “cake-thread seafood soup.” It is tender, fragrant and sweet. Jing people make the delicacy to receive the guests.
