Winter vegetables are green and snowy

Pickled sherry is a delicious winter dish commonly found on the table.

Inadvertently, winter is here again, and the family dinner table is always full of a plate of hóng that my mother has pickled. It was my parents' favorite winter dish.

Snow red, snow vegetable, cruciferous family, is a variant of mustard greens in the middle leaf of mustard vegetables, which can be planted in all parts of the north and south of China. There is also a saying about its name, because in the autumn and winter seasons of the north, the leaves of the snow are purple-red, so the people there call it "snow red", while in the south it is rare to see it turn purple. When ripe, sherry is salted and is the most common winter vegetable in the north. The popularity of greenhouse dishes has made it possible to eat sauerkraut fish, stir-fried minced meat, snow stewed tofu, and snow buns all year round.

In the Qing Dynasty's "Guangqun Fang Spectrum and Vegetable Recipe Five", it is said: "Siming has a dish named Xueli Hong, the snow is deep, and the vegetables are frozen, and this dish is uniquely green." "It means that after the snow is deep, when the winter vegetables are damaged by frost, only the snow is still green and fresh." The Qing Dynasty poet Li Yisi also wrote a poem praising the sherry in his hometown of Yin [yín] County (present-day Yinzhou District, Ningbo, Zhejiang Province), saying that it was "emerald green and new [jī] dripping vinegar red, smelling the aroma and chewing the pine, even though the golden vegetables are good, it is not as good as the Snow Lihong in my hometown." In his eyes, the snow is not only beautiful in color and good taste, but more importantly, it is also integrated into a strong sense of nostalgia.

Every year in early July, in the vegetable field at the bottom of the ditch in front of the door, my father would always set aside half of the seeds to sprinkle the seeds of the snow, and then use a small iron rake to rake the ground back and forth. Worried about the sun's exposure, he folded some branches to shade the snow. After half a month, the young shoots of the snow gradually grow into small seedlings the size of small thumbs. The father removed the branches, and the small seedlings nodded and smiled at the father in the summer breeze. When there was a drought, the sound of "rushing" water sounded in the courtyard before dawn, and it turned out that my father was worried that the vegetables at the bottom of the ditch would die of drought, and he did not listen to the family's dissuasion, hunched over his waist, and carried water into the ditch one by one. The thirsty seedlings waited for the life-saving water and miraculously survived. In autumn, under the careful care of her father, the snow lihong grows to more than a foot tall, and its jagged leaves are green and shining.

Before the beginning of winter, every household in the village began to pickle various types of pickles. The family's pickle urns, jars, and pressed vegetable stones had long been washed clean by their mothers and hung in the yard. In the morning, my father first retrieved the amaranth [piě liè], radish, kale, and pepper; after lunch, he put it in the cage, and then collected the snow at the bottom of the ditch. He took a small shovel, crouched in the ground, grabbed the leaves of the snow in his left hand, and shoveled it at the root of his right hand, and a handful of snow was in his hand. After an hour, half a minute of snow brushed down at my father's feet. The father wiped the sweat from his head with his sleeve, bent down to load the snow into the cage, and carried it home along the sheep's intestine path. Half a cent of the land can produce about a carton of snow lily, and the family has enough to pickle, and the rest is distributed to relatives.

The mother boils the seasoning water in the kitchen, and the wife picks and washes the dishes that need to be pickled. The snow leaves are plucked and washed twice, one by one hanging on a long clothes drying pole to drain the water. Waiting for the gap between the snow and the water, the wife put the amaranth, radish, kale in half, along with the half-red and half-green peppers into the pickle urn, the mother poured the boiled and cooled seasoning water into the urn, did not pass the top of the dish, called the father to hold the pressure stone on it, and buckled the lid.

To control the moisture, the mother first cuts it into small pieces the size of fingernails, then pours a large spoonful of oil into the pot, and when the oil is hot, add ginger, peppercorns, and spicy horns, pour into the cut snow lily, sprinkle with spices and fry, and put into the vegetable pot to cool. The last step is that the mother uses a spoon to put the snow into the jar layer by layer, and does not forget to sprinkle a small spoon of salt between each layer, and when it is all done, it is pressed onto the jar with a pressed vegetable stone. In fact, the most common sherry is raw pickling. Without chopping, after controlling the water, put it directly into the jar, a layer of snow, a layer of salt, filled with the jar; if the method is right, when eating, it is still green and green.

Salted raw snow lilies, the Qing Dynasty "Suiju Diet Recipe" has a record: "A snow red, sunny day river, dry until dry, washed, every hundred catties of dry salt 5 pounds, compacted and pickled." A few days later, when the pine cylinder is one volt, the brine is impregnated, the brine is added less, the salt soup is added coldly, and it is still compacted... The better the aging, the incense can appetize, the most beneficial to the patient. "Although raw pickled snow lily is more common, but since I can remember, my mother used to fry the snow every year and then pickle, Gaiyin's father lost his teeth when he was young, and in the winter he could not bite other pickles, and the fried sherry was softer than raw pickles and easier to chew.

After about a week, the mother's pickled sherry was ready to eat. When eating, dig a plate with a spoon, pour a small spoonful of hot oil, mix well, and eat crisp and refreshing, cheeks and teeth. I remember when I was a child, in the winter, I couldn't eat any vegetables and meat, so I had to eat snow and pickles until the spring. Corn grits mixed with snow and black steamed buns with snow; occasionally mothers would scramble them with eggs, and the choking taste was unforgettable.

The years flew by, and time flew by. Nowadays, there is everything on the table in the four seasons, but every summer, my father will still plant snow lily, and before the arrival of winter, my mother will continue to pickle xue li li hao, which is not only their eating habits formed over the years, but also a warm and thrifty family style with a winter dish.