There is a group of pure black pigs called Iberia, which grows in the village of Habuguo in southern Spain. They eat grass, flowers, insects and acorns, and they are alive and kicking on the De 'aisha prairie, building a body-building muscle.

Piglets 15 months old and weighing up to 170 kg will be selected, end their lives humanely and then slaughtered.

Marinate the legs with sea salt at low temperature, coat them with sunflower oil to prevent salt and water loss, and then hang them dry. It takes at least 12 months after ripening, and the longest ripening period is 60 months.

After becoming delicious, they have a name called 5J Cinco Jotas, which is regarded as the guarantee of pure blood and quality. On the dining table, beautiful legs are mainly divided into four parts: Maza (main body), Babilla (rear knee joint), Punta (leg root) and Codillo (calf).

Professional ham slicers have the ability to cut these different parts, even the most delicate parts, into the same thickness, which can not only transmit light but also fully release the oil, meat, salty and cooked flavor when chewing. A piece of ham, melted on the tip of the tongue, is fragrant and sweet. Every time it is concentrated, it concentrates the customs of southern Spain.

There is a kind of mackerel produced in Tsugaru Strait, Japan, which is the most choppy sea area in Honshu Island. Mackerel is a migratory fish, and it is exercised here by striving for the upper reaches of the Long March. The fish is compact, elastic and chewy. The big tuna in this sea area is also famous, which is the source of many top sushi restaurants.

Toomabu Tanamoto, a famous sushi restaurant in Tokyo, has a salty and sour vinegar rice, which satisfies the rich fishy smell of mackerel, and turns the attack into defense, making the taste of fish maw more layered.

There is also a similar mackerel, named Dream, called "Lost bonito", which comes from Nagasaki. The life course of this lost bonito was supposed to be "striving for the upper reaches" from Kyushu to Hokkaido and back again, but it was captured by fishermen because of its lust for the beauty (taste) of Na Pianhai squid, and it became the designated ingredient of top sushi restaurants because of eating too many squid.

There is a kind of abalone called wild abalone, which is one of the best ingredients in Cantonese cuisine after being made into dried abalone. Why is the quality of wild abalone produced in Iwate Prefecture, Japan particularly high? Because kelp, the specialty of the sea area here, is the food of abalone, which makes the meat of abalone tender and sweet.

Climate is also a factor of dried abalone. It is sunny and cool in the morning and evening, especially around 10, with long sunshine time and less rainfall, and the finished product is particularly good.

There is a traditional guangdong snacks called Taishi Gezha. For a time, the food media in Hong Kong were very keen on reporting Geza, and they spent a lot of time trying to understand its origin and development. After all, the word "Geza" and its name are too ugly in Cantonese.

Finally, we all believe that it was the famous Guangzhou gourmet Jiang Taishi of the previous generation who got inspiration from the "pan-fried" street snacks in northern China, injected his own ideas and Cantonese eating habits, improved them and made them classic.

On the menu of Beijing Lijiacai, there is also the real name of "Ge Zha", which is written as "Ge Zha", which sounds exactly the same as "Pan Zha" and "Ge Zha". I believe this is an ancient word. Bean jelly is filled with bean paste, cut into flat pieces and fried. It looks like dried bean curd. It tastes like sugar or soy sauce with garlic, which is completely the product of the two worlds of Tashi residue.

The production method of Taishi Ge residue is: first, boil a pot of soup, then add corn flour, eggs and yolk and stir to make a slurry to make a green embryo. The slurry should be boiled into cake paste, then seasoned, cooled, and then put in the refrigerator for about six hours to make it into a hard cake.

Before eating, cut the hard cake-shaped green embryo into diamonds, sweep a thin layer of corn flour on the outer layer, add hot oil, and fry it until golden brown with civil and military fire. When entering the mouth, this Tarhi residue will dissolve and disperse in the mouth, and the umami flavor will beat on the tip of the tongue like waves, making it a "decoction". Taste and senses are first-class enjoyment.

The dining table is the shortest distance for human beings, but it is the farthest journey.

When we chew the sweetness and beauty of 5J ham, we also chew the sunshine, grassland and air in southern Spain. At a sushi feast in Omakasai, fresh fish jumped into the taste buds and told you that you had swam from Tsugaru Strait to Nagasaki several times.

The best abalone, the more you bite, the more delicious it is, just because the soil and water there are aging and air-drying, which brings many turning flavors. Geza, on the surface, ate fried sauce soup, but secretly it was the change from north to south, which became the colonial history of Geza's folk eating.

Tell me, how many times have we traveled at the dinner table?

Author/Xie food writer