"You've been the first person to talk to me about cabbage in decades."
Author: Peng Liangjie
Source: Material Life Reference (ID: wzshck)
"I saw a saying, do you old Beijingers love to eat cabbage?" I confirmed to a friend in Beijing.
"You've been the first person to talk to me about cabbage in decades." He replied.
The question awakened memories that had been sealed for years.
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The reason for this question is that I was recently reading some famous books on food. Among them, Mr. Wang Zengqi's sentence in the article "Hutong Culture" aroused my strong interest, he said: The stack of cabbage that everyone in Beijing eats in their lifetime is about as high as the Beihai White Pagoda.
interesting. As a southerner, before that, I had only heard that the northeast had the habit of storing Chinese cabbage in winter, and I really didn't know that old Beijing also had this tradition.
The article also reads:
Shrimp rice peel boiled cabbage, hey! I know an old man who worked as an errand boy in guozijian and served Lu Runyu, Wang An, and other alcoholics, and he said, "Nowhere is it better than Beijing." Boiled cabbage in Beijing is also better than elsewhere – the god of five flavors is in Beijing. ”
In another article, "Five Tastes", Mr. Wang Lao once again mentioned the "Chinese cabbage culture" in Beijing:
In the past, Beijingers did not eat cabbage (hollow cabbage) and did not eat fungus vegetables, and this year some people also love to eat it. Beijingers are open in taste! Beijingers used to know how to eat Chinese cabbage.
Although Mr. Wang Lao is a "Beijing school" writer, he was born in Gaoyou, Jiangsu Province, so I tried to find verification in other works of "eating masters".
Sure enough, in Mr. Liang Shiqiu's "Yashe Talks About Eating", I found an article dedicated to Chinese cabbage. Liang Shiqiu was born in Beijing, and Chen Xiaoqing once said that he "really became interested in the food of the common people in Beijing by reading Mr. Liang Shiqiu's "Yashe Talks About Eating".
This article, featuring Chinese cabbage, titled "Vegetable Buns," affirms the supremacy of Chinese cabbage in old Beijing:
The Cabbage of North China is a must-see. In Beiping, cabbage is available all year round, and in early winter, there are vendors pushing carts, and carts of cabbage are sold along the street. Ordinary people buy the whole vehicle and stay in the winter.
"Vegetable buns" is the author's most appreciated dish with Chinese cabbage as the main ingredient, and the article describes in detail how to make and eat this dish:
Take a large cabbage, choose the fatter one, peel it layer by layer, half of each leaf is arced, and the lower half of the cabbage is cut off as appropriate. Wash the curved vegetable leaves and set aside.
Prepare a few things: a small bowl of garlic paste, a plate of sautéed sesame tofu, a plate of small belly cubes, sautéed tofu pine, sautéed cabbage shreds.
Spread the garlic paste inside the leaves and spread well. Take a bowl of hot rice, mix the tofu, small belly, tofu pine, and fried cabbage shreds together in the rice bowl, and mix well.
Here's the next best and most critical part:
Take out a part of the rice and put it in the leaves, wrap it up, and eat it with your hands holding the bite. After eating one and eating one, I ate it with a face full of vegetable juice rice grains, and I was very happy.
Probably this posture and eating method is the essence of this dish - you must "hold it with both hands" and eat "all the vegetable juice rice grains" to enjoy it. I'm going to drool when I think about it.
The attitude of Beijingers to swallow "vegetable bags" is probably their attitude towards life, free and casual. It's really written. It is no wonder that Mr. Wang Zengqi summed up the characteristics of Beijingers through the Chinese cabbage: it is easy to meet, and their material requirements for life are not high. This is not a pejorative meaning.
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Are old Beijingers really so fond of Cabbage? I entered "Beijing Cabbage" in the search engine, and I really found some articles that depicted the grand situation of the people of Beijing queuing up to buy Chinese cabbage in winter, which was for "winter storage of Chinese cabbage", as evidenced by historical photos. And as Mr. Liang Shiqiu said, many of them are brought home by car. Due to the lack of materials in that era, there were not many types of vegetables in winter, but Chinese cabbage was the most common and cheap.
To learn more about the situation, I interviewed several friends in Beijing, who unanimously affirmed this history.
Wu Ergang salvaged the part of the cabbage from the dusty memories of many years.
"In winter, my uncle and my uncle pulled the winter cabbage back from the grain store in three wheels, and my sisters and I, under the leadership of my brother and uncle, helped the adults to transport it to the courtyard." This is a vivid picture in his memories.
"On New Year's Day, the class organized dumplings, and the ingredients were prepared by the students. In the sixth year of elementary school, I never ate dumpling stuffing other than cabbage in my class. Cabbage is cheap, and other dishes who are willing to bring to school. He has also been obsessed with the cabbage dumplings that could not find meat.
Of course, the cabbage itself also has a high and low point, for example, the heart of the cabbage is the most "noble" part of the whole cabbage, and it is a symbol of "status". This is also Wu Ergang's beautiful memory: "My second aunt, behind my sister's back, secretly gave me fresh vegetables to eat, and only the most favored children in the family have this treatment." He recalled the heart of the dish, "the color is pale yellow, the moisture is large, the taste is crisp, and the taste is sweet."
Regarding how to store Chinese cabbage, Wang Xiaotian had the impression, "It turned out that everyone was in the corner of the building, blocking it with wooden boards and covering them with plastic sheets. In winter, Beijing is also cold, and it is better to be outdoor than a refrigerator. "Now that it's common to move into buildings, there's no such thing anymore.
But we quickly had some differences between us.
They all said that Chinese cabbage is only available in winter, which is completely different from what I saw Mr. Liang Shiqiu mention in his article, "Peking cabbage is flawless all year round, and summer is the best season for cabbage". What's going on?
I checked the growth cycle of Chinese cabbage online: the planting period of Chinese cabbage is in early August and the market is in early November. This time is indeed in line with the "winter storage cabbage". In order to prove his point, Wu Ergang asked most of the old people and peers he knew, and said that he did not remember eating Cabbage in the summer.
So what does Mr. Liang Shiqiu say about the lack of four seasons? I'm a little confused.
Wu Ergang speculated that perhaps Mr. Liang Shiqiu, who was born in the first few years of the 20th century, did supply Chinese cabbage all year round, but later, in addition to the winter when only Cabbage could be grown, there were vegetable varieties with better economic benefits than Chinese cabbage in other seasons, which made Chinese cabbage lose its competitiveness in the price market, and Chinese cabbage gradually became a winter "special supply".
This statement seems to be true.
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Chinese cabbage was a "home dish" on the Beijing table at that time, and there were many ways to do it.
Cabbage boiled (a sound) tofu, vinegar slip cabbage is the most common style, we also eat in Hubei. My mother also created a vinegar slip cabbage gang, remove the cabbage leaves, cut the cabbage gang into strips, use the vinegar slip method to make, sour and spicy, very flavorful, summer eating is very appetizing.
But compared to the rough cabbage, I still love the small family jasper-like cabbage, with shredded meat to make a cabbage soup, which is my favorite.
In addition to these nationally accepted cooking methods, Chinese cabbage also has a Beijing-specific approach. For example, the vegetable bun written by Mr. Liang Shiqiu, also known as "rice bun" and "vegetable bun rice", is said to be the food of the Manchu people. There are also other places where it is eaten, but as he writes, Beijing is characterized by the things wrapped in it — hemp tofu, small belly, all of which are Beijing flavors.
Another friend, Dayunzi, recommended to me a more Beijing-style dish, Qianlong cabbage, "white is a cabbage mixed with sesame sauce."
Judging from the name of the dish, this dish must have a lot of relationship with the Qianlong Emperor. It is said that Qianlong Weifu ate it in a humble small restaurant during a private visit, and it was full of praise, and after a long time, it was named after Qianlong.
"Sesame sauce mixed with cabbage" sounds simple but it is also exquisite, such as sesame sauce, old vinegar, honey, sugar, salt and other spices should be appropriately proportioned, the step should first be diluted with vinegar before other spices, and then it must be put in the refrigerator for half an hour and then add cabbage to stir.
The reason why this dish is the most Beijing special is because it combines the old Beijingers' favorite Cabbage and tahini sauce.
"A lot of Beijingers have a good bite of tahini. If you go to Longfu Temple for snacks, you will find that there are many foods with sesame sauce, such as sesame sauce baked cakes, sesame sauce noodles in summer, and sesame sauce in noodle tea. Eating hot pot is also different from the southern way of eating, and the most important difference is the sesame sauce. Some state-run shops used to be freshly ground sesame paste. Da Yunzi said.
Indeed, The way Beijingers eat with sesame sauce with hot pot, I also learned about it after coming to Beijing, it was really unheard of before, but after so many years, I still didn't get used to it.
I searched for "Qianlong cabbage" on the takeaway App and was pleasantly surprised to find that, hey, many Beijing flavor restaurants really have it, and it is indeed an old Beijing feature.
Nowadays, there are more and more choices of green leafy vegetables, and Chinese cabbage has long ceased to be the protagonist of The Beijing people's winter table, but the saying that "a hundred vegetables are not as good as cabbage" is still widely circulated.
They are rich in nutrients, seemingly the most ordinary but can conjure up the most tricks, the most inconspicuous but always arouse people's memories. These friends all believe that although they do not like to eat Cabbage, there are some "Cabbage complexes", after all, "eating long-term love". "I don't have to buy cabbage in winter." Wang Xiaotian said.
Wu Ergang even remembered that a very famous talk show in that year also did a cabbage topic. Unfortunately I didn't find this episode online.
"You've been the first person to talk to me about cabbage in decades." He was filled with emotion.
*Images purchased from Visual China