Spring is a good time to eat bamboo shoots. Chinese has a long history of eating bamboo shoots, and there is a sentence in the Book of Poetry "its wei wei he, wei bamboo shoots and pu", which tells the story of drinking wine with tender bamboo shoots.
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Bai Juyi and Su Dongpo love to eat spring shoots
The Tang Dynasty poet Bai Juyi loved to eat spring shoots, and as for how to eat them, he had quite a good idea: put the bamboo shoots in a pot where the rice was steamed and steamed with the rice, so that the fragrance of the spring shoots was integrated with the rice. After eating the bamboo shoots, Bai Juyi also advised his friends: "And don't hesitate to eat, the south wind blows bamboo." "Such a good delicacy in the world, don't hesitate to eat it, you can't eat it when it's late."
The "New Book of Tang" also records that in the Tang Dynasty, there was an official office called "Sizhujian", which was responsible for the planting and maintenance of bamboo and reeds in the imperial palace and the supply of bamboo items such as curtains. However, they also have the responsibility of providing fresh bamboo shoots to the back kitchen of the palace during the annual bamboo shoot production season for the royal family and nobles to enjoy. It seems that in the Tang Dynasty, people who liked to eat bamboo shoots were far more than Bai Juyi.
In order to be able to eat fresh bamboo shoots from time to time, the ancients also tried their best. In the Song Dynasty, a monk named Zanning specially compiled a "Bamboo Shoots Spectrum", which recorded a "method of birth and storage": that is, the new bamboo shoots were held in a large clay jar, and the gaps along the cylinder were sealed with wet mud, which could delay the growth period of the bamboo shoots by isolating sunlight and warm air. When the season of fresh bamboo shoots has passed, people can still enjoy delicious fresh bamboo shoots.
Su Shi, a great writer of the Song Dynasty, was a famous "foodie", and when he was degraded to Huangzhou, he wrote an "Ode to Pork", which recorded the cooking method of pork. It is believed that when stewing meat in spring, Su Shi will definitely add spring shoots. Su Shi originally felt that eating spring shoots was a joy in life, and one year during a spring trip, he saw that people ploughing spring were using celery and spring shoots for rice, and he couldn't help but sigh: "The people of Xiluan should be the happiest, boiling celery and roasting bamboo shoots for spring plowing." When Su Shi, who was demoted to deputy envoy of the Huangzhou regiment, first arrived in Huangzhou, he recorded the environment around the apartment where he lived, and also mentioned optimistically: "The Yangtze River goes around Guo to know the beauty of fish, and good bamboo is connected to the mountains and jue the fragrance of bamboo shoots." "The Yangtze River surrounds the city, and you know that this place is rich in fresh fish, and the surrounding mountains are full of bamboo forests, as if you can smell the fragrance of bamboo shoots while standing.
Huang Tingjian and Lu You like to eat bitter shoots
Among the many bamboo shoots, Su Shi will definitely like bitter bamboo shoots. Bitter shoots will make people feel bitter when they first taste it, but when they taste it after eating, they make the body feel a thick sweetness. Su Shi's hometown of Sichuan produced bitter shoots is very famous, poet Huang Tingjian was once demoted to Sichuan, he fell in love with bitter shoots, and wrote a special article "Bitter Shoots Fu", and opened the chapter with a straight self-note: "Yu Ku loves bitter shoots." He also praised the crisp and delicious bitter shoots, slightly bitter but delicious, warm and delicate, and eating more is harmless to the body.
Bitter bamboo shoots paired with anchovy are also a delicacy in the world. The Northern Song Dynasty lyricist He Zhu once lived in Suzhou and later went to the capital to seek employment, and he missed the bitter bamboo shad in Jiangnan very much: "The bitter bamboo shad is delicious in the countryside, and dreams of Jiangnan." He recalled that when he was in Jiangnan, he visited the beautiful scenery by the Jiuqu Pond in March, when the delicate willow fluttered in the wind and people ate delicious bitter bamboo shad shad What an unforgettable dream in Jiangnan!
Lu You also loves to eat bitter shoots, and specially wrote a poem for bitter shoots: "The eyes of the quinoa plate are suddenly clear, and the head of the skull is taken off as a white jade baby." "Quinoa and weed are both wild vegetables in spring, and the ancients often used to refer to coarse tea and light rice, Lu You said, the eyes suddenly lit up in the plate of coarse vegetables and light rice, it turned out to be the bamboo shoots that were as white as a baby.
I think that teacher Wu Chengen who came to the Ming Dynasty must also like to eat bamboo shoots, because in "Journey to the West", there are many times when bamboo shoots appear. The ancients, like modern people, also liked to eat pickled spicy bamboo shoots. When chili peppers had not yet been introduced to the mainland, the ancients used ginger to soak spicy shoots. The Tang monks and apprentices returned from taking the scriptures, and at the banquet held by Emperor Taizong of Tang, there was a "ginger and spicy shoot". In addition, bamboo shoots are also good ingredients for soup because of their delicious taste, for example, "Dream of Red Mansions" mentioned "sour shoot chicken skin soup" and "ham fresh bamboo shoot soup".
Li Yu, Zhang Dai, and Yuan Zhen each have their own way of eating
For eating bamboo shoots, Li Yu, a literary scholar in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, has a lot of experience, he mentioned in "Idle Encounters": "On the beauty of vegetable food, it is clear, clean, fragrant, and crunchy." "There are not many vegetarian dishes that can meet such conditions, and bamboo shoots are one of them. And he unabashedly praised: "The first product in this vegetable food, fat sheep and tender pigs, how to compare." ”
Shaoxing's bamboo shoots are also famous. Zhang Dai, a literary scholar in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, had a "Tianjing Garden" in the south of Shaoxing, where the lake was connected to the outer waterway, and every spring, ships digging broken pond shoots would pass through here. Zhang Dai allowed the bamboo shoots to come and go freely, so every time the bamboo shoots who returned with a full load returned the favor, they would always choose the best bamboo shoots to give to Zhang Dai. The way the bamboo shoots are given by the bamboo shoots is quite novel: when passing by the Tianjing Garden, they do not stop much, but throw the large bamboo shoots towards the water, shout "bamboo shoots" and then paddle lightly. When the gardener heard the greeting, he rowed out in a small boat, and most of the bamboo shoots were gone, and the gardener had to retrieve the large bamboo shoots floating on the lake.
Zhang Dai described the bamboo shoots as ivory, white as snow, tender as lotus root, and sweet as cane sugar. He believes that good bamboo shoots only need to use the simplest cooking method, and they are cooked directly to the point of "beyond words". However, every time he ate bamboo shoots, Zhang Dai still felt guilty in his heart: he didn't put in any labor, but he ate such delicious spring shoots, which was really ashamed.
Unlike Zhang Dai's white boiled bamboo shoots, the well-known "foodie" teacher Yuan Zhen of the Qing Dynasty paid a lot of attention to eating bamboo shoots. Teacher Yuan probably doesn't like to eat white boiled bamboo shoots very much, he feels that bamboo shoots can be paired with both meat dishes and vegetarian dishes, and also put forward a precaution: "The knife of cutting green onions, you can't cut bamboo shoots." "Otherwise, the umami of the bamboo shoots will be destroyed. Bamboo shoots can be used as an ingredient, such as when making diced chicken or segment eel, you can add diced bamboo shoots or fresh bamboo shoots. Eating bamboo shoots alone has many varies, for example, you can "take fresh bamboo shoots and cook them with salt, and bake them for a basket" to make bamboo shoots. In addition, Yuan also mentioned a kind of "ginseng shoots", that is, the thin bamboo shoots are made into the shape of ginseng, and the honey water is eaten. This way of eating was quite popular in Yangzhou at that time, and the price was not cheap.
Du Fu probably doesn't like bamboo shoots
But then again, bamboo is warm and grows happily in southern China, but when it comes to the north of the Huai River in the Qinling Mountains, its growth is greatly reduced. In the "Laughing Forest" of the Three Kingdoms period, there is a passage of "Han people cooking qi", which says that a person from the Hanzhong region went to Wudi, and the Wu people used bamboo shoots to entertain him. He didn't know, and the Wu man vaguely explained: "This is bamboo." ”
The Han people thought that the bamboo shoots tasted delicious, and when they returned home, they took the bamboo mats at home to cook them, but they couldn't cook them badly. So he complained to his wife: "Wu people are so cunning, they deceived me like this." Of course, this is just an exaggerated story, but it also shows that in ancient times, when science and technology were not developed, there was no extensive bamboo forest distribution in some parts of the north, and many people really could not eat bamboo shoots from time to time.
Of course, there are some people who do not like to eat bamboo shoots, such as Du Fu, a senior bamboo lover, who also wrote a song "Wing Chun Shoots": "Countless spring shoots are full of forest life, and the firewood gate is tightly covered by pedestrians." The meeting must be seen as bamboo, and the guest is never disgusted. "The bamboo shoots are full of bamboo forests, and the firewood gate and the path are blocked. Even so, Du Fu angrily did not welcome those who stepped on the new bamboo shoots to see the bamboo forest. Du Fu, who loves the bamboo forest so much, must be unwilling to eat bamboo shoots. (End) (Original title: Don't hesitate to eat bamboo shoots, the south wind blows as bamboo)
Author/Qiu Junlin