People often see spinach in the market, but did you know that spinach also has a poetic nickname called "red-billed green parrot"?
spinach
Zhejiang Tongxiang special sweet and spicy sauce, legend has it that one year when the Qianlong Emperor went to Jiangnan, he went to a family's house, and when it was noon, the family invited the Qianlong Emperor to eat, one of the dishes was spinach roasted tofu, the Qianlong Emperor ate it and felt delicious, he inquired about the name of this dish, the housewife saw that the people were extraordinary, and they intended to make a joke, saying that this was an ancestral dish, called "red-billed green parrot, gold inlaid with white jade." Qianlong looked at the red root and green leaves of spinach, fried tofu yellow and white, the name was very appropriate, and the emperor asked: "Why is this dish so delicious?" The housewife told him, "This is because the dish is poured with red pulp, and the red pulp is called agate red pulp cover." The Qianlong Emperor even called this dish poetic.
Red-billed green parrot, gold inlaid with white jade
Back to the imperial palace to let the imperial chef also make this dish, although the imperial chef knows that it is spinach roasted tofu, but it is not delicious and delicious, and later Fang fang knows that there is less sweet and spicy sauce, so he immediately let Zhejiang Tongxiang pay tribute to the sweet and spicy sauce. Thus the poetic alias of spinach's "red-billed green parrot" was passed down.
Zhejiang sweet and spicy sauce
When the Eight-Power Alliance invaded Beijing, Empress Dowager Cixi and the Guangxu Emperor were forced to flee west with their attendants. When passing through Huailai County in western Jingxi, because the crowd was tired of running and thirsty, they had to turn into a civilian's home on the side of the road to rest. The hospitable civilian couple saw that the oldest old lady among the visitors looked panicked and gray-headed, and suddenly felt compassion, busied themselves with fetching water for everyone to wash and go into the house to rest.
Just when the husband was warmly entertaining the guests and the wife was preparing meals, the couple encountered difficulties: in the years of war and chaos, the living standards of the poor people were naturally not high. The dish is ready, it is spinach, tofu; rice has become "smart women are difficult to cook without rice", millet is there, simply not enough to make so many people eat a meal, white noodles are also there, only enough to make a pot of batter. How to make this meal? Go buy it? No silver. Although the guests said when they entered the door that they would leave money for the meal when they left, that was an afterthought. Don't let the guests pay before eating!
The clever wife had a clever idea and came up with such a method: she boiled the millet into eight ripe and fished it out, mixed with a small amount of white noodles, and then the golden millet became a uniform and round noodle particle, and then poured into the flavorful spinach and tofu soup, and after a few minutes, a large pot of steaming and fragrant noodle soup was displayed in front of everyone.
The husband smiled and greeted the guests with soup while marveling at his wife's cleverness. Inside the pot, the white and uniform dough grains are scattered like pearls between the white jade box of square tofu and the emerald green spinach, especially the part where the spinach rhizome is combined, the emerald green with a little light red and pink spinach root, more like a red-billed and blue-headed parrot. The husband casually chanted: Pearl white jade box, emerald green parrot. Just when I was about to say more, I happened to be overheard by Mrs. Cixi.
Empress Dowager Cixi asked, "Do you understand poetry?" ”
The husband replied, "I don't understand." ”
Empress Dowager Cixi asked again, "What do you mean by what you just said?" ”
The husband replied, "I'm talking about soup, just this soup we eat." ”
Empress Dowager Cixi said, "This soup? Tastes good. What is the name of this soup? ”
The husband replied: "This soup is one of our local must-haves, called 'Pearl Emerald White Jade Soup'."
Empress Dowager Cixi was so happy that she didn't even raise her eyelids, so she pulled a long voice and said a word: "Reward!" ”
After the meal, the crowd rested. In the early hours of the morning, Empress Dowager Cixi and her party set off to continue fleeing west. Later, the practice of this soup became popular in the local area, almost household names, but the common people called this soup "ant egg soup" in popular image. The elegant name "pearl emerald white jade soup" was only used for court banquets, because after Empress Dowager Cixi returned to the palace, she always felt that the delicious soup she ate when she fled west always felt unfinished, and specially sent the imperial cook to learn to make this soup, and when she ate it again, she could not eat the fragrance of the civilian family in the deserted village.
Pearl emerald white jade soup
Humans have a long history of eating spinach. Liu Yuxi's "Jia ShuLu" of the Tang Dynasty Yun: "In the western kingdom where pineapples are born, there are sons from him, such as alfalfa and grapes, and Zhang Qian came to the same place." Originally from the Kingdom of Porling, the language is black, and I don't know much about it. "Spinach is native to Iran and passed through North Africa, from the Moors to countries such as Western Europe and Spain. It is clearly recorded in the Tang Huijiao that spinach seeds were introduced to China from Nepal as a tribute during the reign of Emperor Taizong of Tang. Because it is rich in vitamins and iron, phosphorus and other ingredients and delicious taste, now china's provinces have cultivated a lot, has become an indispensable dish on the daily table.
Spinach, also known as pineapple, Persian grass, red root grass, parrot vegetable, parrot vegetable, etc., belongs to the plant kingdom, angiosperm phylum, dicotyledonous plants, caryophyllaceae, quinoa family, spinach genus, annual herbaceous plants. The plant is up to 1 m tall and has conical roots, reddish tinge, and less white. The stem is erect, hollow, fragile and juicy, unbranched or with a few branches. The leaves are halberd to ovate, bright green, tender and juicy, slightly shiny, fully margined or with a few tooth-like lobes. Male flowers are inflorescences with spherical umbels, and then arranged in the upper parts of branches and stems into intermittent spike-like conical inflorescences; the flower discs are usually 4, filament-shaped, flattened, and no appendages; female flowers are gathered in the leaf axils; small bracts are slightly flattened on both sides, with 2 small teeth remaining at the apex, and usually have 1 spiny appendage on the back; ovary spherical, stigma 4 or 5, extended outwards. The fruit is ovate or nearly round, about 2.5 mm in diameter, flattened on both sides; the peel is brown.
Image from Baidu Encyclopedia
It turns out that everyone's daily cuisine is actually royal treatment, ah, you also know what interesting stories about plants, welcome to share Oh!