Spring Festival, everyone pays attention to a New Year's taste, each place has different folk customs, how to have a New Year's flavor?
Nanjing people can not have salted fish bacon, rice cake dumplings, and can not do without "assorted dishes" for the New Year. What you eat is good food, and what you get is a strong sense of Spring Festival ceremony.
Pan Hong is the head chef of The Green Willow Restaurant, and has been making vegetarian assortment for decades, "Cabbage, fungus, mushrooms, bamboo shoots, mushrooms, lotus..." The recipe of vegetarian assortment, he can say it without thinking about it.
△ Pan Hong. Purple Mountain reporter Gu Wenjun photographed
There are more than a dozen side dishes, each of which means a good color head
With the increasing abundance of vegetable baskets, the vegetarian assortment recipes of Nanjing people have been limited to more than ten kinds, yam, bean skin, shiitake mushroom... But Pan Hong still sticks to the old recipe, because he knows that there are many people's "New Year's taste" here.
"Cabbage, fungus, mushrooms, bamboo shoots, mushrooms, soybean sprouts, spinach, shiitake mushrooms... Each ingredient here has a special meaning. Pan Hong said: "Cabbage means to gather wealth, carrot means red and hot, lotus is hollow, so it represents the road, dried bamboo shoots are the meaning of high, celery is diligent, Nanjing people call pea head read as an bean, so it is the meaning of peace." ”
△ Chinese New Year's Eve taste of Nanjing in the rice - vegetarian assortment. Purple Mountain reporter Zhai Yu cartographed
Vegetarian assorted food is a good omen, and Nanjing people also pay attention to the order of stir-frying assorted dishes. "The first pot is fried with soybean sprouts, because the shape of the bean sprouts seems to be as desired, and frying the bean sprouts first means 'everything is as expected'. After the various dishes are fried, the last pot is the turn to fry the shredded carrots, which means that the new year is 'full of red, red to the end'. ”
After all the dishes are fried in the same way, red, yellow, white and green, colorful, and served in porcelain bowls, emitting a seductive fragrance, just looking at it is enough to make people drool.
△ Green willow jusu assortment. Purple Mountain reporter Gu Wenjun photographed
The next process is simple, one word: mix, but also cold mix. Pan Hong told the reporter the "secret" of the delicious vegetarian assortment: it must be cold before it can be mixed. "Stir them evenly, drizzle them with a little sesame oil along the edge of the bowl, and you're done." If you add a little more pickled ginger and cucumber sauce, the taste will be even better. ”
This is the most popular dish during the Spring Festival, so the amount can not be less, the Nanjing people's assorted rice bowl is as big as a washbasin, piled up with a full pot.
This top dish originated from the ancient "Five Spices Plate"
"Chinese New Year's Eve people," with sauce ginger melon, carrots, goldenrods, fungus, winter shoots and white parsley, dried soy sauce, 100 pages, gluten ten colors, finely cut into shreds, fried in oil, called 'ten scenes'. There are also so-called comforters, dried purslane also. Ruyi dish, soybean sprouts also. Gai Yoshiyoshi auspicious. This is Pan Zongding's description of "Su Shijin" in the "Chronicle of Jinling".
What is the custom of eating vegetarian assortment in the New Year is now difficult to verify. Purple Mountain News once reported that according to experts, the vegetarian assortment eaten by Nanjing people before the New Year was evolved from the ancient "five-spice plate".
The so-called "five spicy plates" refer to five kinds of spicy lettuce. According to the "Record of Customs" written by the Zhou Dynasty of the Jin Dynasty, "On the day of the First Yuan, the layman worships Shou, the Shangwu XinPan, the Song of Pine Cypress, the Pepper Tea Wine, and the Five Smoke Refining Forms." Five xin people, so send five visceral qi also. "It can be seen that there was this custom at that time.
Assorted dishes are not only loved by Nanjing people, but also by Nanjing daughters-in-law. There is such a story, Lin Haiyin, the author of "Old Things in seongnam", especially loves to eat Nanjing assorted vegetables.
Lin Haiyin has no origin with the ancient capital of the Six Dynasties, Nanjing, she is originally from Taiwan, and the reason why she loves Nanjing is closely related to her husband, the well-known literary scholar Xia Chengyao and her grandfather Xia Renhu. Xia Renhu, whose family lived on the banks of the Fucheng Bridge in the east of the city, moved to Beijing in the early years of the Republic of China.
While in Beijing, he and his children often made home cooked ducks and vegetarian assortments. Influenced by her father-in-law, Lin Haiyin also fell in love with Nanjing Sushijin.
"I also want to make a vegetarian assortment for my family"
Pan Hong, who has been guarding the Chinese New Year's Eve meals of the people of Nanjing for decades, but his own Chinese New Year's Eve meals, he is always absent, and he has never made vegetarian delicacies for his family. "In previous years, Chinese New Year's Eve, I left work at ninety o'clock, but this year I have to work overtime, and it is estimated that I will have to go home at eleven o'clock."
The sales of Chinese New Year's Eve rice in Luliuju are very hot, and they have been sold out in October. In order to let more people eat Chinese New Year's Eve meal, Chinese New Year's Eve set off from his home in Dongshan, Jiangning, at 6:30 this morning, and commuted for an hour, which was his sleep time. Because the next thing that greeted him was the cooking of dozens of tables Chinese New Year's Eve rice.
The first round of Chinese New Year's Eve meals in Green Willow House ended before 7:30 p.m., and the second round of Chinese New Year's Eve meals ran from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. "Some guests can't leave at ten o'clock, and we have to wait." Pan Hong said: "Only when the guests leave can they have time to take care of the Chinese New Year's Eve meals of their families." ”
After a while, Pan Hong's eyes were filled with tears: "In the past few decades, my family's Chinese New Year's Eve dinner table has only my parents, wife and son, but no me, they have never complained, and have been silently supporting my career." ”
Today, Pan Hong has received a notice of suspension, "Until the seventh day of the first year, we will not take a holiday." "He said that after the eighth year of junior high school, the unit would give him a day off, and he thought that he would accompany his family when the time came." I also want to make a vegetarian assortment for my family. ”
Source: Purple Mountain