Yesterday was the Small Cold Festival, and the "Seventy-Two Waiting Solutions to the Moon Order" said that the little cold was the festival at the beginning of December, when the cold was not too big, so it was called Small Cold. The ancients believed that at this time, the yang qi rose from one yang on the winter solstice to two yangs. Migratory birds are more sensitive to natural climate change than humans, and geese that spend the winter in the south are ready to fly back to the north at this time, and can only reach the north on time in the spring.
During the period from small cold to big cold, the cold air continues to accumulate, which is the coldest season of the year. As soon as it was cold, I wanted to eat, and it just so happened that our first two articles talked about the Song people's plum blossom lyrics (winter solstice plum hunting | White stone plum blossom words (part 2)), this article will talk about how the Song people eat plum blossoms.
Ming Lu Fu Plum Blossom Diagram
Eating porridge in winter has the function of health care, in addition to the lapa porridge we mentioned in the previous article (lapa daily warmth is still far | In the history of the Wax Day), you can also eat plum porridge in winter. Lin Hong, a Southern Song Dynasty man, wrote a cookbook called "Mountain Family Offerings", which recorded the practice of plum blossom porridge: "Sweep down meiying, pick and wash it, and cook porridge with snow water and white rice." Wait for cooking, add english and cook. ”
The method is very simple, sweep the mature plum petals off, select a clean, complete cleaning and spare, boil the white rice with snow water, cook the porridge, and then add the plum petals and cook it slightly.
This kind of plum porridge is not Lin Hong's way of eating alone, and Yang Wanli, a great poet who was also a southern Song Dynasty, specially gave Mei Congee a poem "Cold Food Plum Porridge":
Only after seeing the spring dawn after seeing the wax, I saw the snow drifting before the wind.
The harvest will be boiled porridge to eat, and the fall is still good as a fragrant roast.
Yang Wanli looked forward to the arrival of spring during the Waxing Moon, but he saw the wind and snow and worried about the severe cold. So the plum blossom buds are collected to cook porridge, and the petals are prepared into incense powder to smoke. A kind of plum blossom, and made into porridge to eat, and made into incense to burn, it is really very good to live...
In addition to plum porridge, the "Mountain Family Offering" also records a small snack similar to candied fruit - honey-stained plum blossoms. The method is: "Peel a little white plum meat, soak in snow water, and brew it with plum blossoms." Sleep on the edge, take it out, honey stain it. "This snack requires a little bit of white plum meat (white plum meat is the plum meat of green plum salted), soaked in snow water with plum petals, placed in the open air for one night, and then marinated with honey.
This honey-stained plum blossom is said to taste good and is suitable for serving wine. This kind of plum blossom wine is elegant, not inferior to snow sweeping to make tea. This is Yang Wanli's favorite food, so he wrote the poem "Honey Stained Plum Blossom":
Urn Cheng snow water brews spring cold, honey point plum blossom with dew meal.
There is no smoke and fire in the sentence, and it teaches who goes to the Shaoling Altar.
Eating plum blossoms made of snow water and honey, Yang Wanli felt that he was particularly elegant, and the poems he wrote did not have fireworks, and the level of the poems was directly in line with the great poet Du Fu of the Tang Dynasty (Du Fu called himself "Shaoling Wild Old", Shaoling is a place name in Chang'an, where Du Fu once lived).
The Song people ate plum blossoms, probably not because plum blossoms tasted so good, Lao Wang once ate them raw... It is because of the high quality of plum blossoms that the Song people think that eating plum blossoms is a matter of elegance, and eating qingya into the stomach seems to become elegant.
As far back as the Warring States period, Qu Yuan's "Departure from sorrow" said that "the fall of autumn chrysanthemums at night", the chrysanthemums were used as dinner, the chrysanthemums greeted the frost and the snow, and the plum blossoms were symbols of the noble gentleman in the traditional Chinese imagery, Qu Yuan here may only be a metaphor for poetry, but it can also be seen that the pursuit of "elegance" of food is the tradition of Chinese literati diet.
Ming Tang Yin Plum Blossom Diagram
Therefore, it is not necessary to add plum blossoms, but also to make foods related to plum blossoms, such as plum blossom soup cakes in "Mountain Family Offering". The soup cakes mentioned by the Song people are not large cakes with soup juice in the middle, but a collective term for various types of boiled noodles. According to Lin Hong, this plum blossom soup cake was made by a high-ranking person in Quanzhou, Fujian Province. The method is: "The first dip of white plums, sandalwood perfume and noodles for ravioli skin, each stack is taken with five iron chisels, waiting to be cooked, but it is too chicken juice, each guest has more than two hundred flowers." ”
The Song people are particularly obsessed with spices, such as the Song people to add musk and ice chips to the tea leaves... It's really a heavy taste in terms of aroma. The same is true for eating pasta, soaking the white plum meat and agarwood, soaking the water and noodles, rolling the noodles into a skin, and pressing the skin into a plum blossom shape with an iron pressing mold, which is similar to the pressing method of chaotic skin that we see today. Cook the dough and serve in chicken broth.
White plum is sour and salty, agarwood is a spice, chicken soup is fragrant, we can probably speculate on its taste. This pasta dish takes the fruit of plums and the shape of plum blossoms. Lin Hong said that this noodle dish reminds people of plum blossoms when they eat it, and at that time, Liu Yuangang, a literati in Quanzhou, wrote a poem for this dish: "Trance like a lonely mountain, flying jade floating west lake", that is, it reminds people of the beautiful scenery of plum blossoms flying into the water in the lonely mountain of Hangzhou's West Lake.
The raw materials and preparation methods of these three dishes are relatively simple, as long as you can find plum blossoms, readers may wish to try.