#我来唠家常#
Feng Wujun just wrote about toon not long ago
In fact, there is much more to this kind of delicious wild vegetables in spring
Let's bite out the taste of spring together today
In the childhood of every Chinese, there is the fragrance of wild vegetables
I still remember an episode in the TV series "Family with Children": Grandpa asked the children to eat wild vegetables in order to make the children remember the bittersweet memories. I thought that the children could be educated, but the grandmother who was in charge of cooking used wild vegetables and ham to shredd, mixed eggs, and baked them into a fragrant high-end version of wild vegetable cakes.
I don't know what the parents who accompanied me to watch TV at the time thought, anyway, I was so hungry for this wild vegetable cake that I couldn't do it.
▲ Spring is coming, do you have this celery field?
Are wild plants far from the lives of our generation of young people? At least not in my house.
Yungui has the eating habit of eating "vegetarian vegetables". This "vegetarian greens" does not refer to vegetarian fried vegetables, but directly washes the fresh green vegetable leaves and puts them in clean water, without adding salt or oil, and boils them into the "most vegetarian" pot of soup. "Green vegetables" is also a general term for green vegetables, which can be vegetarian boiled cucumbers in autumn, vegetarian cabbage in winter, and in spring, it is mostly boiled in a pot of wild vegetables. By the beginning of spring in March and April, Yungui is already very warm, a bowl of fragrant and slightly bitter vegetarian dishes, even the soup is under the stomach, it is really refreshing and pleasant.
▲ In 2019, fresh wild vegetables such as toon, gorse, and walnut flowers were sold in the market in Kunming, Yunnan. Photo/Visual China
Since I was a child, my mother would take me to the vegetable market to buy wolfberry sprouts to cook "vegetarian vegetables" at the beginning of spring. When I was a child, I liked to visit the vegetable market, of course, I didn't go to the meat shop that killed chickens and sold meat, so I just circled around the stall selling vegetables, and each vegetable had to be carefully identified, just like visiting a botanical garden.
The vendors will bundle the freshly picked wild vegetables one by one and stack them neatly in baskets, with water droplets and tenderness. The most common of these is the goji bud.
▲ Goji sprouts. Photo/Visual China
Pick two handfuls to take home, on the basis of the sprouts to "pick" again, only select the front part, finely chop, mix two eggs, add a little salt and pepper, while the oil is hot, put it in the pot, spread out a golden and tender egg and vegetable cake. For heavier flavors, add some chopped green onions and green peppers.
The magic of wild vegetables is here, it is obviously the simplest way to make egg cakes, but when you bite into it, the unique sweet fragrance will rush to you without reservation.
▲ Among the wheat fragrance, egg fragrance, and fat fragrance, the fragrance of wild vegetables is revealed, and this taste is always difficult to refuse. The picture shows the acacia cake. Photo/Visual China
Wild vegetables are also classmates with stories
If you want to say that fried eggs are delicious wild vegetables, in addition to wolfberry buds, there is also a small golden flower called gorse. I don't know if the little protein contained in the flower has a Maillard reaction in the high temperature, it is obviously a vegetarian flower, but it tastes meaty, but the fragrance of the plant itself is retained, and the taste is crispy and refreshing.
▲ Gorse. Photo/Visual China
There is one wild vegetable, although common, but rarely found in vegetable fields, and that is dandelions.
At the beginning of spring, many people will go to the outskirts of the city to dig dandelions - children are busy "blowing snow", and adults are naturally waving shovels up and down, and then bring out some dirt - firewood, rice, oil, salt and romantic childlike fun exist in the same picture. But to be honest, dandelion as a wild vegetable is really not delicious, the bitterness is too strong, but it can't stand the superstition of many adults about its legendary "heat clearing and detoxification" effect.
▲ Dandelion is also called mother-in-law in some places. The picture shows a salad of dandelions and small sprigs of garlic. Diagram / Diagram Worm Creative
Also regarded as the "integration of medicine and food" is the root of the folded ear, that is, Houttuynia cordata. The Houttuynia cordata in the early spring season can be called "fat", white and tender, crisp and raw, and can make a crisp sound when pinched. Take a bowl of sauce vinegar, chili, garlic paste, coriander and other cold salad, in the eyes of people who are not used to eating, it can be said to be the culmination of "dark cuisine", but in the hands of those who love to eat, it is the best choice for spring rice to relieve greasy.
▲ Cold salad folded ear root. Photo/Visual China
There is also a wild vegetable that is particularly interesting, called chicken yafu, also known as "chicken shit vine". When I was a child, I was still fooled by this name, and I never wanted to touch this dish, who knew that I couldn't escape the law of "true fragrance", and after only tasting a mouthful of rattan poop, I was completely impressed by this wild vegetable.
The so-called vine is fried glutinous rice with eggs, chopped green onions, and chopped vines, and then a thin crust fried to a crispy crisp on the fried glutinous rice. Stir-fried glutinous rice is made of lard, but the strong aroma of lard and green onion can't cover the fragrance of the vine itself, but it seems that the vine uses its own flavor to frame the oil fragrance and green onion fragrance, making it its own vassal. My hometown is close to Guangxi, and Guangxi is also very fond of eating vines.
▲ Not only Guangxi and Guizhou, but Hainan's rattan baba is also famous. Photo/Visual China
After leaving my hometown and childhood, I often found wild vegetables in other places, such as in books. A good foodie always has to be able to do it when he deserts in class: "The night gave me black eyes, but I used them to find food in black and white". "The Book of Songs" is a relatively delicious book that I found in the text.
There are many plants described in the Book of Songs, covering many categories of grains, melons, fruits and wild vegetables. For example, "picking pea seedlings", in the eyes of foodies, it has to be translated as "picking pea seedlings, picking pea seedlings, thin and tender pea seedlings are really delicious".
▲ Shepherd's cabbage wrapped in Xitang, Jiaxing, Zhejiang. Photo/Visual China
And the "Book of Songs" naturally mentions the most famous wild vegetable - shepherd's cabbage, praising it as "sweet as camelina". "Wukang County Chronicle" also said: "Shepherd's cabbage is wild, and there is no way to plant it." When cooking, the smell is also fragrant. ”
Capsule, eaten in both the north and the south. Jiangnan people love to eat shepherd's cabbage wontons, and my Shandong friends will shout "I miss the shepherd's cabbage dumplings at home" every spring. In addition to wonton dumplings, shepherd's cabbage can also be used to make spring rolls, mixed with fragrant dried spring bamboo shoots and tender tofu, although it is a wild vegetable, it can also be a feasting dish. However, you should eat the shepherd's cabbage as soon as possible, and it will be old after flowering.
▲ Fresh meat wontons with shepherd's cabbage. Diagram / Diagram Worm Creative
In addition to shepherd's cabbage, the "Book of Songs" also mentions a particularly beautiful-sounding dish, "daylily".
"Sayings" said: Xuan, forget the worries of the grass. Many ancient books record that daylilies can "make people forget their worries", which sounds extremely beautiful, but it is actually daylily. Daylily is recorded in the local chronicles of Guizhou and can be used to treat "miasma". I don't know if the treatment is effective, but it tastes very good when used to cook soup.
▲ Yellow cauliflower is mostly dried and eaten in the way Chinese eat. Although fresh daylily can also be eaten, it can easily lead to poisoning if not handled properly, so it is not recommended that you try it yourself. Photo/Visual China
In addition to the wild vegetables that can be found in the Book of Songs, when it comes to wild vegetables, there will always be many legends among the folk, some have eaten by the emperor, and some have eaten immortality, as if there are not enough stories, it is not enough to reflect the mystery of wild vegetables.
But in fact, the origin of wild vegetables often has nothing to do with celebrity anecdotes, nor does it have anything to do with panacea, and what is bound to it is people's out-and-out memory of famine.
▲ Yu Qian'er. Nowadays, people choose to eat elm money mostly to try it, but in the past, eating elm money was a last resort choice for people to save their lives during famine. Photo/Visual China
For example, whether it is elm money or Ma Lantou, in fact, most of the wild grasses we see now are plants that appear in "Saving the Famine Materia Medica". In recent times, because of poverty, wild vegetables have never left people's tables. In the 1960s and 70s, wild vegetables also became an important export material to earn foreign exchange.
▲ Fried pepper sprouts. Nowadays, eating wild vegetables is not just for the sake of satisfying the stomach, and people have already begun to use various cooking methods to make them more palatable. Photo/Visual China
After the 70s, there was a wave of "remembering the bitter and sweet" across the country, and wild vegetables became more popular, and a large number of books on wild vegetables were published at that time, and a large number of enterprises dealing in wild vegetables were established and closed down. So don't be surprised if your elders are particularly obsessed with wild vegetables, because "wild vegetables" have too obvious marks of the times, and have been artificially given too many meanings beyond "food" itself.
From south to north, how can you not eat wild vegetables in spring?
What is the greatest significance of wild vegetables as food?
Of course, this delicacy is not abstract at all, counting the various wild vegetables that are loved in the north and south, they are all particularly "concrete" home-style tastes, filling the local terroir and human feelings.
▲ Purslane. Figure/Marketchart.com
For example, purslane, which people in the Northeast love to eat, can be used to make wild vegetable boxes. Stir-fry purslane and tofu, then mix with chopped vermicelli, add some ginger and garlic, and the filling is ready. Then roll out the dough one by one, wrap it with the filling, and fry it slowly in the oil pan.
▲ Stir-fried bacon with quinoa. Photo/"A Bite of China II."
And Jiangxi people love to eat quinoa and fried bacon. Jiangxi people love spicy, and it is a particularly straightforward dry and spicy one. But Jiangxi people use the domineering of chili peppers in front of the quinoa to restrain themselves, as if they can't bear to use external forces to destroy this hazy spring, a successful bowl of quinoa fried bacon, the seasoning must be relatively light, and finally retain the freshness of the wild vegetables themselves, so that people can feel as if they have retained a wisp of spring breeze after eating.
▲ Stir-fried bacon with bracken. Figure/Marketchart.com
Also often paired with bacon is bracken. Compared with the delicate nature of quinoa, bracken is much more "toss-resistant". Because of its heavy flavor, bracken can adapt to heavy seasoning, a plate of salty and spicy bracken fried bacon, can become an artifact for rice. However, in recent years, there has been a lot of controversy about the safety of eating bracken, and it is still not necessary to eat more fried bacon with bracken.
▲ Fragrant dried Ma Lantou, a typical cold dish from Jiangsu and Zhejiang. Photo/Visual China
How can you eat wild vegetables without mentioning the people of Nanjing.
As the seed contestant of the Wild Vegetable Eating Competition, Nanjing people have more ways to eat wild vegetables. In addition to the common ones such as shepherd's cabbage, water celery, and toon head, there are also maran head and alfalfa head. Nanjing people eat wild vegetables, pay attention to simple and fresh, chop the slightly reddened Malan head, and fragrant dried shrimp together, put sesame oil and mix, it is the "little luck" of spring.
▲ Stir-fry the water celery and dry it. Diagram / Diagram Worm Creative
Alfalfa head, in fact, is what we often call "clover", which is called "grass head" by Shanghainese, and is also one of the "eight heads" of Nanjing people in spring, and both Nanjing and Shanghainese love to eat. The leaves of alfalfa are very sour when eaten raw, and Nanjing people like to add liquor when stir-frying alfalfa, which is also strange, after high temperature heating and the stimulation of liquor, alfalfa no longer has the sour and astringent "grass taste" when eaten raw, but can show a fresh and sweet side.
▲ Grass head circle. Figure/Marketchart.com
In addition to Nanjing and Shanghai, other places in Jiangsu and Zhejiang also have their favorite wild vegetables, such as Wenzhou, which likes to eat cotton vegetables, that is, rattle. The Hakka people will add mashed cotton cabbage and juice to the rice dough whipped with glutinous rice to make soft and glutinous cotton vegetable baba. If you replace the cotton vegetables in the glutinous rice dumplings with mugwort, the same method can be used to make Qingtuan.
Mugwort is actually the wormwood that we often use to incense during the Dragon Boat Festival, with a fresh smell and is usually considered to have healing effects. In addition to making Qingtuan, wormwood leaves can also be dried to make tea and soup.
▲ Whether it is Qingtuan, wormwood baba, or Qingming cake, it is made of glutinous rice flour dyed with green grass juice. Diagram / Diagram Worm Creative
Not only the Hakka people, but also ethnic minorities such as the Dong people in Guizhou's Qiandongnan will also use cotton vegetables to make cotton vegetable cakes, which have fillings and no fillings, and have meat fillings and sugar fillings. Because the crushed cotton cabbage and the juice of the cotton cabbage are fully locked in the rice ball, when eating the cotton cabbage, the unique botanical flavor of the wild vegetables is well preserved, and it has a unique fragrance. In Guangdong, which loves to make soup, Cantonese people usually use cotton vegetables to cook soup.
▲ Cotton cabbage, that is, rattle. Photo/Visual China
When they arrived in North China, they had to mention the noodle dish, which usually grew in wheat fields, and was used as a weed to be uprooted and fed to livestock, but later it also became part of the human ration. Eating noodle dishes in North China is generally wrapped in flour and steamed in a pot to make steamed noodle dishes, and after steaming, dipped in garlic juice to eat.
▲ Steamed noodle dish. Figure/Marketchart.com
In addition, there is Ququ Cai, some ancient books will think that Ququ Cai is the common name of bitter vegetables, but they are not actually the same dish, but they both belong to the Asteraceae family, and they are also close relatives. The scientific name of Ququ cabbage is lettuce, and the taste is also bitter, so it seems that there is nothing wrong with being collectively called "bitter vegetables", according to the arbitrariness of people naming wild vegetables in the past, each place actually has its own unique "bitter vegetables".
▲ Cold salad koji dish. Figure/Marketchart.com
The so-called eating wild vegetables is actually eating the freshest, most homely, and closest to local side dishes in various places. This will be particularly interesting in today's developed logistics, because when the vegetable markets are all converged, the small novelty of eating local wild vegetables suddenly seems rare.
▲ Artemisia reeds. Photo/Visual China
It is on the occasion of spring, pick a small handful of young buds on the roadside river and bring them back, and you can taste the most authentic spring taste by simply processing. This is to add a little different spice to ordinary life.
Eat it to have a spring.