Cows chew peonies, just look at these four words, do not understand why they are used to describe a person who does not know goods. Later, I saw that the people in Guangzhou said that there was a second half of the sentence, "Cow chews peony - do not know flowers and grass". It turned out to be a taxonomical problem.
Cows chewing peonies are not knowledgeable, but what about people chewing peonies? Knowing that it is a flower and eating it is not a sin to add another. The most common method used by the Ming Dynasty people was frying. Peony petals are selected, fried in oil, and can also be made into preserves. If the taste is a little heavier, you can also wash the petals, knead them together with the noodles, fry them in oil, and order sesame oil after they come out of the pan, which is similar to the radish shredded noodles in Shiyan, Hubei Province.
In the Qing Dynasty, the practice was more diverse. In the Qing Dynasty, Gu Zhong wrote the "Yang XiaoLu", of which the exclusive name of "Meal Fang" is a dish that is eaten with flowers. Speaking of peonies, there are three methods, soup blanching, honey dipping, and gravy. Blanch the soup, which is boiled in a hot soup, soaked in cold water for half a minute, and eaten in a special sauce. Honey dip, make candied fruit to eat. Gravy, this trick, I'm afraid to let the Yunnan people learn it. Nowadays, Yunnan people stir-fry ham, which can be divided into different genres such as pomegranate flower, plantain flower, jade lotus flower, tang pear flower, and climbing branch flower.
Gu Zhong's way of eating is much more troublesome than fried ham. Remove dry, moth, worms, silk, then cook, sow, sear, pickle, fry, and most importantly, buy sauce. Vinegar should be a big clock, add three minutes of minced licorice, a dollar of sugar, half a cup of cooked sesame oil, mix well, add ginger juice, mustard, minced pepper, add soy sauce, wine lady, bad oil, but also add sand kernels to protect the stomach.
It takes so much effort to eat a few petals of flowers, and the form is greater than the content. Salt and sugar are indispensable to the flowers, and like Gu Zhong, vinegar is added. Sometimes in order to eat more "naturally", without vinegar, with plum brine, is the marinade of salted plums, can be substituted for vinegar, the taste is sour and salty.
Because the natural taste of the petals is not good. Take osmanthus for example. Osmanthus flowers are very useful, can be put into wine, tea, into medicine, but when it comes to eating, whether it is the so-called "water wood rhinoceros" of the Ming people, or the so-called "wood rhinoceros steaming" of the Qing people, they are pickled osmanthus flowers, and they rarely eat fresh. The original taste of peony flowers is also not good, the taste is bitter, hibiscus flowers, spicy, pomegranate flowers, sour taste. Looking around, only a few kinds such as Yu Meiren and Yue Ji can still be eaten raw, but the taste is not much better.
Because the petals are rich in tannins, bitter and astringent, this was originally the tannins of the plant, used for insect and ultraviolet protection, unexpectedly, but also to prevent the mouth of the old food. But denim can detoxify, can stop bleeding, so it is used as medicine, and the gourmets eat it very happily. What medicine is not bitter? Red and white single-petaled peony, can regulate menstruation, hydrangea flowers, can reduce swelling, spring flowers, diuretic. It is not delicious, use something else to adjust its taste, I can't tell whether it is medicine or food, it is a medicinal diet with ambiguous meanings.
This type of eating method is the favorite of some celebrities, who are very healthy. Some celebrities are not like this, Qu Yuan, "Towards the fall of drinking Mulan, the fall of Autumn Juju." "Drinking flower dew, eating falling flowers, is a pure naturalist. Lin Kui wanted to marry Plum Blossom as a wife, but he never thought of eating it. Yuan Ming, the most innovative, his choice is to get up in the morning to drink flower dew. Yuan Mei planted thirty bananas in the mountains, and every morning, he sucked the nectar in the flowers, fragrant and heartfelt, and cooled his heart and spleen. Li Yu took the magnolia to make a cake, which was not Originally Li Yu's invention, at least it could be counted on wu Zetian's head, Yuan Ming did not like it, and felt that it was too chiseled.
This type of celebrity and the previous type of celebrity have an essential difference in their love of flowers. The latter loves incense, loves the cleanliness of flowers, loves to compare flowers with flowers, the former is the use of flowers, to eat it into the stomach, love is not flowers, is yourself.
There is a good example of the difference between the two. Lin Kui's grandson Lin Hong, a gourmet, wrote a volume of "Mountain Family Confessions", all about how the mountain forest hermits used local materials to fill their stomachs, which had a plum porridge, plum flowers, boiled in snow water, and so on, cooked with white porridge, and cooked together. Elegant? But it is just porridge, porridge cooked in this way, will not be better than the white porridge cooked out of the pulp under the bucket of rice, but it has lost his grandfather's demeanor. It was Gu Zhong who was lower than Lin Hong. There is also plum porridge in the "Yang XiaoLu", after the white porridge is cooked, it is thrown into the plum blossom, which is called "dark fragrant porridge", which clearly uses the sentence of Lin Hong's grandfather "dark incense floating moon dusk", which is vulgar.
Some people know that flowers are very good, quietly look, smell carefully, forget themselves in the picture, rather than seeing the flowers are good, pick them, wash them, make them into dishes, dip in sauce, and clip them into their own bowls. "I always feel that the former is more suitable for being a friend."
Speaking of incense, the best way to use floral fragrance is probably to enter the wine. Qu Yuan's "Nine Songs: Eastern Emperor Taiyi": "Hui cuisine steamed Wulan, Dian Gui wine Xi pepper paste." ”
"Hanshu Li Lezhi": "Zun Gui wine, Bin Baxiang." ”
The Song Dynasty Kong Pingzhong's "Tan Yuan" said: "Cinnamon pulp, the osmanthus brewing method of the present, Wei, there are people from the Que Si people who come to the dynasty, there is a pulp in the pot such as fat, it is cinnamon pulp, and the drinking life is thousand years old." ”
In addition to osmanthus flowers, there are many flowers that can be used to add wine flavor. June chrysanthemums, white phoenixes, acacia flowers, orchids, roses, can be. Osmanthus flowers are the best in wine, so they are often described as heavenly fragrance. The poet Song Zhi asked the "Lingyin Temple": "The moon of Guizi falls in the middle of the moon, and the heavenly incense clouds drift outside." ”
There is a hundred flowers wine in the "Suiyuan Food List", which belongs to the yellow wine category, which is made of glutinous rice, fine wheat qu and nearly 100 kinds of wildflowers, and was also called "Jingkou Hundred Flowers" during the Qing Dynasty. Hundred Flowers Wine is a specialty of Zhenjiang, which belongs to the top of the wine, and was selected as the imperial tribute wine of the court at the end of the Qing Dynasty. Yuan Ming does not like to drink alcohol, but only uses it to cook vegetables to add aroma.
For girls, perhaps the best way to do this is to make a perfume. The thirty-fourth time in "Dream of the Red Chamber" appears in the wood clear dew and rose clear dew, which are available and edible.
The Song Dynasty people did not know how to distill, wanted to retain the aroma, put a piece of red-hot tile on the ground, put the spice on it, buckled it with a bottle, and when the aroma filled the bottle, immediately injected boiling water and sealed. In doing so, of course, there is not much aroma, so the Song people are very strange, why the rose water of the great food country is so fragrant, through the sealed wax, it can be incense for dozens of steps.
This was the result of the Persian Abu Musa Jaber ibn Hayan's refinement of distillation techniques. Rose water should be rose dew. This fragrant condiment, like sugar, is an Arabian specialty that has conquered the Western world and is full of sweet exoticism. Pink Turkish fudge, refreshing Moroccan salad, all without it. Contemporaries of The Europeans did not have such good distillation techniques, and they added carnations to wine.
The Qing people knew how to distill, and the method in the "Yang Xiaolu" was also very simple: "Imitate shochu tin koshiki and wooden barrels, reduce the sample to make a body, and steam the incense sauce." "It's similar to making distilled spirits. Li Yu's craftsmanship in making flower dew is also good, the most like to eat flower dew rice, the flower dew poured on the white rice, covered, mixed well and eaten, it is best to be rose, rafters, osmanthus three kinds, do not use roses, because the aroma is too strong, easy to identify.
Zhang Ailing hates begonias the most without fragrance, but Dong Xiaowan can make begonia dew, as for the technique, it is unknown.
As for the two bottles in "Dream of the Red Chamber", they are "rouge-like juices", and some scholars have examined that it must not be distilled, but should be boiled, filtered over and over again, and then obtained through a complex fermentation process, and the method is similar to that of making rouge. Cao Xueqin's grandfather Cao Yin once presented eight jars of rose dew to the Kangxi Emperor in the summer of 1697, and what Cao Xueqin wrote was probably based on this, how fragrant is it? I'm afraid it's not necessarily, it's just a matter of kung fu. Some people are like this, for their own little benefit, they do not hesitate to work.