The five ancient poems trace the origin of okra: cooking rice cooked okra, green and slippery and fat
Okra is now a seasonal autumn vegetable, the fruit looks like a pepper, when you think it will be as spicy as a pepper, after cooking, the entrance is another kind of smooth, sweet.
Many people think that this is a foreign variety, because after the Tang and Song Dynasties, the variety of vegetables increased, and okra was marginalized in the diet of vegetables. But before the Tang and Song dynasties, tracing back to the pre-Qin, sunflower was an important and home-cooked vegetable.
But at that time, it was to eat its leaves.
"July Hen Kwai and Shu." Poetry "National Style"
Autumn in ancient times, starting with the seventh month of the lunar calendar, is the hot summer of the day, many herbs are withered, but okra has a unique vitality, in the morning and evening a little dew and watering, brewing vitality.
Fresh sunflower vegetables are picked in the morning when the dew is dry. Sunflower leaves with a little early autumn dew stretch out in the sun, which is the best time to pick. It is cold and smooth, and can relieve a certain amount of heat in the body.
Although sunflower is an autumn herb and not a large tree, its leaves and flowers are phototropic. Sunflowers are not the varieties that people see now that can bear sunflower seeds, but they are really an ancient Chinese herb, yellow flowers, single petals, and another kind of pastoral beauty.
In ancient times, sunflower vegetables were the first of the five dishes, because they were common and easy to take care of, and were the main daily vegetables of people.
"Planted in the North Garden of Aoi. Aoi is depressed.
Toward the north-east. Xiying Southwest Xi.
Zero dew hanging fresh. The moon shines brightly.
The passage of time is gentle. Twilight Business Fly. "Excerpt from Wei Jin Lu Ji's "Garden Aoi Poems"
In the Luji era, sunflowers were planted in vegetable gardens, in the dew water of early autumn, vigorous and fresh, and the growth and consumption of okra could continue until early winter, which was an important vegetable to solve the vegetable basket.
When a vegetable becomes a daily necessity, it will also have a sense of affection for it.
After all, there are sunflowers to eat, and it is fresh, and in the season of few vegetables, when there are not many options, it naturally highlights its deliciousness. Tao Yuanming can not always take chrysanthemums as rice to eat it, wild chrysanthemums are fragrant, it is out of the wild, its medicinal health value is greater than the value of eating, and sunflower vegetables are good, smooth, no special fragrance, only a little of the sweetness of the vegetables themselves, accompanied by rice to eat, the sense of satisfaction for a long time, so Tao Yuanming said, "Good taste stop garden sunflower, big joy stop childish." ”
Of course, this is the joy of life in the poor house, because there is no meat, but fortunately, there are sunflowers in the garden.
Therefore, in the Wei and Jin dynasties, people planted more sunflower vegetables, and in the era of many wars and instability, people relied on land and distinguishable vegetables to continue their lives and pass on civilization.
After the Sui and Tang dynasties, sunflower vegetables rarely appeared in poetry, not because they disappeared, but because of social progress, agricultural civilization has been greatly improved, and it has entered a period of relative peace and stability, and after the great integration of the north and the south, it is a great exchange of agriculture. For Chinese who love to try fresh varieties, as long as they can walk where they can walk, they will bring excellent vegetable seeds to wherever they are, not to mention the developed transportation, logistics is more convenient than before, and people can eat more vegetables in the autumn.
Then as a poet, often the middle and upper class of society, and the mobility is large, the ingredients that often appear in the poems are very chic and distinctive, such as autumn chicken head rice, lotus root, lettuce, sunflower vegetables are rarely included in poetry.
Except in special cases.
"The autumn wild day is sparse, and the cold river is moving and blue.
Tie the boat barbarian well network, Bu Zhai Chu village ruins.
The jujube is ripe from the people to beat, and the sunflower is desolate and wants to hoe itself.
Plate meal old man food, points and subtraction and brook fish. "Tang Dynasty Du Fu's "Five Songs of Autumn Wild"
Du Fu was really unfortunate, drifting in Chang'an for more than ten years, and only in his 44s did he find a small position in charge of the quartermaster warehouse, with a meager salary. If you suffer for two years, maybe life will be better, and the Anshi Rebellion will break out. After starving his son, he decided to serve the country and went retrograde to defect to Tang Suzong, so that he could easily meet Tang Suzong, and within a few months, he was demoted to Huazhou. The turmoil of the Anshi Rebellion had already spread to several provinces, and he finally went to Sichuan like a refugee.
Although Du Fu lived a good life for at least twenty years in the first half of his life, he now had to work hard for survival. In Sichuan Caotang, he personally opened up land to cultivate land and planted jujube tree sunflower vegetables to ensure the survival of his family. Rao was his hard work, still facing hunger.
Sunflower vegetables appear here and should be a common vegetable in the countryside of the Tang Dynasty. It's just that Du Fu had to cook it himself.
I think his sadness is that he is not the same as Bai Juyi, who really came into contact with the land like a farmer when he was a child, and Du Fu was middle-aged and learned to garden in order to survive. Du Fu's youth and youth spent their time on horseback riding.
It is precisely because of this that Du Fu's idyllic poems in his later years have a different sense of grinding and realism.
"Yesterday there was no food, and from now on it is hunger."
Poor cook He all, cooking rice cooked okra.
The red grains are soft and green, smooth and fat.
Hunger ends with fullness, and after fullness, there is no return to thoughts.
Remembering the glory of the past, the present is a time of poverty.
There is no frost today, and there is no surplus in the past.
Neither food nor clothing is lost in the mouth.
Ask yourself what is the glory or decline.
Don't learn from ordinary people, there is a right and wrong in between. "Tang Dynasty Bai Juyi "Cooking Sunflower"
Bai Juyi was later than Du Fu, and the Anshi Rebellion had not been experienced. He grew up in the countryside and has a sensitive and low-key personality. If it weren't for his mother's efforts to fool him into making progress, I think it is very likely that he would have married a neighbor's village girl in his teens and found a teaching career.
Therefore, he passed the entrance examination, and after becoming a court official, he did not think about greed. Even the emperor knew that he was poor, and he changed his methods to reward him with this and that, filling in the economic hole in the family because his mother was always ill.
However, because he was too upright, he finally offended the emperor and demoted him to Jiujiang as a sima at first, first he was depressed for a year, because he simply fell from the sky, fortunately, he had the background of poverty and security, and he turned quickly.
Start formally into life.
Yesterday I slept early, didn't have dinner, got up hungry, and had nothing at home, just a little rice and okra.
Because of hunger, this yellow rice also feels soft, and this sunflower vegetable is tender and green.
I feel like I'm full after eating a little, and then I think about life.
Once upon a time, I was blessed with luck, but now I am poor and depressed, and I can't freeze anyway, and I didn't seem to have any money before.
I now have food and clothing, and I think about what is glory and what is decline.
I don't seem to be so bad. I myself should not attach too much importance to honor and disgrace as ordinary people, and I should distinguish between right and wrong in life.
Anyway, I admire Bai Juyi, and the low valley can really write the composition of the three good students.
The actual undertone lies in his simplicity.
Sunflower vegetables were not noble dishes at all in the Tang Dynasty, and the beauty of being able to eat sunflowers was that he did not forget the land, the peasants, and his own origins.
Gangnam has nothing, talk about giving a branch of spring.
The Song Dynasty seldom ate sunflower vegetables, because the agriculture of the Song Dynasty was so prosperous that the flower industry was booming.
Sunflower vegetables are rarely eaten, but are used as ornamental sunflowers.
Why?
The Tang Dynasty had a noble color system of the dynasty, it was red and purple, and since the Song Dynasty became the emperor of Zhao Kuangyin's yellow robe, yellow became the mainstream noble color.
Peony to yellow the most beautiful, elegant called Yao Huang, plum blossoms developed a new variety of plum, clothes, court yellow can not wear, goose yellow apricot yellow is always a kind of noble and delicate, then sunflower has become an ornamental flower, planted in the garden, when the fence, when the landscape herb.
"The peanut is just around the corner, and the meaning has been found."
Day after day, look at the flowers. "Wu Ziliang's Sunflower"
This is a small poem that I picked at random, and Wrote the beauty of sunflowers to the sun.
Sunflowers brought an auspicious and upward feeling to the Song Dynasty people.
For example, in autumn, there are many dews, but only yellow sunflowers are high.
Looking at it, it grows tall and big, like the king of autumn flowers, high above.
The sunflowers here are okra, the flowers are light and elegant, the atmosphere is beautiful, some people like the yellow that looms in the court, and some people attach them to the fairy Daogu who is dressed in yellow.
But is the sunflower gone? No.
At least in the countryside.
Li Shizhen of the Ming Dynasty wrote okra in the Compendium of Materia Medica
"Sunflower vegetables were commonly eaten by the ancients, and those who grow them today are quite fresh. There are two kinds of purple stems and white stems. ”
"Its youngest name is Duck Foot Sunflower. In fact, it is as big as a finger top, the skin is thin and flat, and the real inner child is as light as an elm pod. Those who plant in April and May can keep their children. In June and July, the planter is okra. ”
"Its vegetables are easy to grow, and there are many suburbs, regardless of fertile land. For the master of a hundred dishes, prepare four hours of food. Abundant and drought-tolerant, sweet and non-toxic. It can prevent desolation and frugality, it can be curtailed, its dryness can be a cluster, and the roots are seedless. "
Among them, the flowers are purple and yellow, called duck-foot sunflowers, the fruit is as large as a finger, the skin is thin, and the seeds inside are very light, like elm pods. This is the precursor to the okra fruit we eat now.
Okra has always existed on the land of China, the sunflower in the poetry, the okra in the Tang poem, from the pre-Qin to the present.
It is only the cultivation of contemporary agriculture that has shifted to the deliciousness of cultivated fruits.
When eating okra, don't forget that it is one of the oldest vegetables in Chinese.
Hatsuyoshi Katsuyuki interprets the love and beauty in the poems for you.