Those who have lived in the countryside all know this sentence, "good year, sad spring", because in the past, there were too few vegetables available for consumption in the spring, so people had to pick some wild vegetables to make vegetables to eat. Although there is no shortage of fresh vegetables, people still have a fondness for some wild vegetables. Especially in the countryside, there is no shortage of restaurants that put some wild vegetables on the table under the guise of farmhouse dishes. Wild vegetables are naturally liked, but the only one who has never seen "poplar mango", in fact, this is also a kind of edible dish.
In the early days, there were many poplar trees planted in the countryside, and there were large poplar trees surrounded by a person everywhere on the roadside. The old man said that there is an old poplar tree in it, and the poplar trees and mandarins are all rice, which is a relatively rare thing. Even in traditional poplar varieties, edible poplar mangoes are very rare. There are few poplar trees in the whole village that can bear poplar trees, which naturally becomes a treasure in the eyes of rural children. In the spring, I walk around looking for this poplar mango.
Poplar mango is the flower of poplar trees, and in the spring the leaves of poplar trees have not yet appeared, but its flower spikes have gradually grown. From a distance, it looks like a caterpillar hanging from a tree, and when she was a child, she used it to scare her friends. This kind of thing was favored by people like grain in the countryside in the early days, and it was not eaten less when I was a child. When it comes to the long poplar mango, take a basket and set off, the older ones tie a hook with a bamboo pole, directly hook the poplar mango of the tree, and the younger ones will pick it up on the ground, and when they are almost finished, they will go home to cook and eat.
Picking poplar mangoes is to find unripe and rice grains, and other people rarely eat them, which is not only difficult to swallow, but also difficult to digest. To find those delicate and full, with a light pinch of the fingernails can pinch out the water, the taste is good, and there is not too much bitterness. In the past, this was rare, eating poplar mangoes should be early, and when it came to the poplars, the fallen poplar mangoes could not be eaten, but they were collected with rakes, packed into cloth bags, and dried when cooked on the fire.
There are many ways to eat poplar mango, because the conditions are limited, the most common is cold mixing. The poplar mango that is first picked up and eaten for cooking needs to be soaked in water for half a day to remove the bitter taste, and then washed several times in clean water. In the early days, pesticides were rarely used in the countryside, and such wild vegetables were very safe. Washed and waited for the poplar mango to be cooked in boiling water, and then put it in cold water for a stir, dried the water and mixed with garlic paste, salt, vinegar and other ingredients, if you can pour some sesame oil, it is a great delicacy.
Poplar mangoes eat first glutinous rice, then more powerful stems, in a little poplar unique bitterness and fragrance, the taste is very peculiar. Of course, the most luxurious way to eat is to clean and chop, and the pork piece to cook and eat, whether it is steamed buns or used for stir-frying, it is very delicious. In fact, this is also the past to the spring can eat too few vegetables, take poplar mango to make dishes are also turned over the pattern to do, otherwise eat a few days will be tired.
Now the conditions in the countryside are getting better and better, and few people will pick up poplar trees and eat them again. In fact, it is mainly because the old poplar varieties of the past have basically disappeared, the growth is relatively slow, there is no one in the village, and the poplar trees planted before have been sawn off. And now people prefer the rapid growth of poplar trees, a few years of kung fu can become talented, although there will also grow poplar mango, but this tree is long but can not eat, it will gradually make people forget this wild dish.