Today is the first day of June, first of all, I wish you all a happy Children's Day!
In June, the "Yellow Plum Season" has arrived. In the continuous rain brought by the monsoon, the plums turn from green to yellow, so summer also comes.
plum
Plums are sour, and eating them directly is not so salty for young and old.
But because of this, it has been developed into endless possibilities – to make sauces, preserves, drinks. The production process itself is also full of seasonal interest.
Plums, the scale of time
Nowadays, "plum" is a little strange to many people.
However, the plum in the poem still knows something: "There are several plums in the corner of the wall, and Ling Han opens alone." Haruka is not snow, for there is dark incense to come. ”
Well, who hasn't taken a language class yet?
In South Park, plum trees are common, and in the early spring of the year, they bloom like clouds and steaming clouds, and after the flowers are gone, they return to the plain and quiet green. Nowadays, the plum blossoms used for ornamentation are mostly hybrid heavy-petal varieties, and rarely produce delicious fruits that can be eaten, so don't beat it.
Ornamental plum blossoms
Image courtesy of Picfair
And fresh plums, even in major production areas such as Jiangnan, the seasonal time is also very short, and it is difficult to see in general supermarkets. For most people, the most common plum is actually a plum or dried plum. And the fresh plums that grow on the branches are a rare thing.
Initially, plum trees attracted fruit.
When the plums were first born, it was still the cold food season of the Qingming Dynasty; when the green circle was edible, it was almost late spring and early summer; until it was completely yellow, it was already the "yellow plum day" with continuous rain in Jiangnan. In ancient times, when plum tree cultivation was very common, plums were everywhere, together with other seasonal objects, which together constituted a reference and scale for seasonal travel.
Ancient sour seasoning
I have seen a lot of poetry and songs, and I am already emotionally familiar with plums. But the reality is that there are no plum trees in the township, and I have never seen plums when I was a child.
Until after going to college, I went to Dongshan, a famous plum production area in Suzhou, and bought some sugar-stained crisp plums along the way to eat, shocked by the beauty and eternity of its taste, and had a real understanding of this thing for the first time.
Sugar stained crisp plums
Image courtesy of greenbox.tw
Plum is very sour, the ancients mainly used it as a seasoning, before the invention of vinegar, played an important role.
People often quote from the Shang Shu Shu However, new archaeological research has proved that the "Sayings of Fate" passage passed down from generation to generation is a forgery of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, not the original appearance of the "Book of Shang", so it cannot be proved that the Shang Dynasty was seasoned with plums. More definitive evidence comes from early Western Zhou tombs, where remnants of plum nuclei and animal bones were found in tongding. In the Book of Rites, written in the Western Han Dynasty and documenting the etiquette system of the Zhou Dynasty, it is also mentioned that "the beast uses plums" (the meat of the beast is seasoned with plums).
It seems that plums, as an important condiment for cooking meat, have indeed been around for a long time, and even after the invention of vinegar, this use has not been completely cut off.
Nowadays, plums still have a seasoning purpose, and dishes such as Cantonese roasted pork and spring rolls are often served with sweet and sour plum sauce.
Pickled plums
Plums are easy to eat raw, but if you are delicate and delicious, of course, you still have to process them. The processing of plums is roughly divided into two categories: salt or sugar (honey stain), on the basis of which various preparation methods have evolved.
The white plums and salt plums that existed in the pre-Qin period were all salted and dried in the sun for long-term preservation. Hubei Baoshan Chu Tomb once unearthed a clay pot containing 271 plum cores, along with the tomb dispatch strategy (list) recorded "honey plum a thread". It can be seen that at that time, there was a practice of making plums into preserves.
Green plum with salt is the most common way to eat plums in ancient times
Photography: Shen Shuzhi
Later, the practice of plums became more and more abundant, and in the Southern Song Dynasty's elaborate "Wulin Past", various flavors of plum snacks were recorded: "carved plum balls", "green plum lotus leaves", "pepper plums", "ginger plums", "plum meat cakes", "miscellaneous plum cakes". In the Ming "Yongle Canon", there are salt plum, wumei, white plum, yunmei, golden plum, ten fragrant plum, perilla plum, lychee plum, honey fried plum, substitute core brewed plum, sugar pine plum and other plum making methods, some of which have long been lost, which is regrettable.
In some parts of Yunnan today, many traditional methods of making plums are still preserved. One is plum vinegar, which is called "stewed plum". Fresh plums are incorporated into large clay pots, soaked in a little water, poured tile pots in the mouth, placed in the fire pit, buried in the tank with sawdust, pine hair, stove ash and other fuels, and continued to heat for three or four months on a low heat, until the plums became dark and the skin was soft and wrinkled. The juice in the jar becomes a sour plum vinegar.
Stewed plums are widely used, and can be used to make dishes, mix drinks, and make dipping water
Photo: Tang Zhiyuan
More famous is the "carved plum", a large fresh plum that has just been yellowed, picked and soaked in salt water, carved a pattern on the plum meat with a carving knife, and then dug out the plum core, pressed into a chrysanthemum-shaped plum cake, marinated with sugar for a month or two, and the golden carved plum is ready.
Carved plum is a candied fruit eaten directly, and Yunnan people also use it as a dish, the most famous of which is carved plum button meat. To make sour and spicy fish, you will also add sweet and sour carved plum and carved plum juice to add layers of flavor.
Carved plums
A few years ago, a friend in Yunnan also sent me a local perilla plum cake, the size and thickness of the baked cake, which was made by crushing the plum with the core of the meat, adding sugar and marinating, and wrapping a layer of perilla leaves on the outside, dyeing the plum meat color purple red.
This plum cake tastes sweet and sour, and the tip of the tongue touches the crushed plum core sandwiched in the cake, which is particularly rustic and interesting.
Perilla plum cake
Plums are home-brewed
In recent years, every early summer, I always have to buy a few pounds of plums and make plum wine and plum dew. Plum wine is very simple, after the plum is processed, it is placed in a jar with layers of rock sugar, and the wine can be sealed and soaked.
In the past two years, it is popular to use low-grade double steamed wine and foreign wine to brew, and it only takes a few months to drink. I like to use liquor of about forty degrees Celsius and seal it for a year or two.
I like to use the reddish color of the earth rock sugar to make plum wine, after two years of sealing, the wine is red and deep, and the taste is thicker and thicker. Photography: Shen Shuzhi
Plum dew is similar to plum wine, a layer of plum and a layer of rock sugar, put into a clean bottle and sealed, but without adding wine, young and old.
It should be drunk with water like honey, and in the hot summer, scooping a few spoonfuls into the cup, adding ice cubes and water, is a wonderful drink. After making the wine and dew, the remaining excess and broken plums can be boiled with sugar to make plum sauce.
A few spoonfuls of plum dew mixed with ice cubes and water is a wonderful summer drink. Photography: Shen Shuzhi
Making plum sauce, plum wine, and plum dew, in addition to the usual appetite, also has another meaning, which is to have a real connection with it through experience. When washing the plum, you smell its strong aroma and hear the sound of "grunting" when you turn it over. When drinking plum wine or plum dew, you feel its strong sour taste, how it gradually becomes tortuous and moving in the neutralization of sugar and the action of time.
It is in these "realities" that my understanding of plums is enriched. This small round fruit has finally become a collection of history and culture, life and emotion.
Green plums or ripe yellow plums, which turn black after being roasted over a low flame, are for "ume". The sour plum soup that relieves the summer heat is boiled with raw materials such as ume, hawthorn, tangerine peel, and jujube.
Tasteful at four o'clock
Without eating a few bites of green food, Qingming can be white
In the matter of eating wild vegetables in the spring, the northerners did not lose!
Written by | Shen Shuzhi
Photography | Shen Shuzhi and Tang Zhiyuan
WeChat Editor | glad
Some of the images are from | Figureworm creative
This article was originally published in the June 2020 issue of The Naturalist