For a long time, I had always thought that the "pork backbone and green radish soup" was the first delicious in the world. I seem to remember that I had always been very picky about food when I was young that I could list three pages of foods I didn't like. Only the "pork backbone and green radish soup" unshakable once every week since I was a child is my deepest mark. It had to be pork backbone and had to be the long green radish, seasoned by the only salt. Any other ingredients could not reproduce that flavor.
After the pressure cooker let out a long burst of gas, the soup was ready. In the first meal, we always had to use a spoon to catch a various round or oval oil droplets on the soup surface. Some cunning oil droplets would always hide around the bones that we could not get them. After the hunt was over, we just drank some soup. The refreshing and sweet taste of the green radish mixed with meat aroma. It was neither greasy nor bland that everything was just right. The second soup would be more delicious because the oil in the soup had condensed and been skimmed easily out a lot. There was a great sense of accomplishment when skimming the solidified oil, just like a kind of pride that "Fight to cross the Yangzi river to recover the areas occupied by the enemy (white terror)".
In fact, in my memory, our family di not eat much meat, even to the "pork backbone and green radish soup". The green radish was the clear stream involved in the unctuous meat that was winded up fastest that every time when we heated the soup we would add more radish. While eating up the meat bones was our challenge. When we ate lunch or dinner, parents always set quota: at least three pieces of pork backbone per person. We always bargained to catch the small piece bone or the bone with little meat. Sometimes the piece was only bone, or the piece was too small, parents would reject to count in. Then we had to pick another piece with a curled lip.
The only thing that could cause our scramble was the marrow in the bone. The fingernail-sized white marrow was supremely delicious in our minds. It was so delicate, thick and indescribable. This was a moment to test our eyesight. The marrows were the most cunning enemy flickering between flesh and bones. If no enemies were found in the picked bone, we were often a little discouraged. And the happiest thing was to find the "white terrorists" which had escaped from the cover of bone. My opponent and I were just like the silent fishers at this moment, started at lightning speed to grab the exposed enemy into our own bowl, never exclaimed.
When I grow up, I know that the pork backbone is not on the table. The restaurant's menu always has only ribs. And only then did I know that the bone marrow is basically fat that too greasy even just to know the ingredients. But the kind of aroma haunting in the memory is the one nothing can replace to.
