Cover news reporter Liu Kexin
In mid-March, the first spring thunder was sounded across Sichuan. With the heat wave, the momentum of the summer brakes, the rising temperature presses the pause button, and the footsteps of spring can stop.
"Spring thunder, all things are born." Along with the buds and leaf buds, there is also a "taste" of stubble spring. "Ten miles in the spring wind, it is not as good as a pound of wild vegetables." Netizens quipped. Yes, isn't it just looking forward to this every spring?
Every spring, the wild vegetable player who can always break through himself is toon. From a few tens of yuan a catty to hundreds of yuan a catty, toon buds always "self-breakthrough" in price. This plant with a special aroma is the taste of spring that belongs to most parts of the country.
Scrambled eggs with toon (source network)
"Before the rain, the tsubaki buds are tender as silk, and after the rain, the tsubaki buds are woody." The cost of toon buds makes sense. Usually the edible time of toon buds is only before the valley rain, and once the valley rain passes, not only the aroma is greatly reduced, but its taste is also old and chewy wax, and there is no tenderness of the mouth full of fragrance. The head stubble toon buds are particularly fat and tender, the fragrance is strong, and it bears the responsibility of the first stubble toon bud "primrose", and the natural price is higher. After the time of the first stubble of toon buds, the price slowly fell. Buy two or two sprouts on the way home, blanch them with boiling water when you get home, and the original pink-green shoots turn dark green. Finely chop into small pieces, squeeze to remove excess water, either beat two or three eggs, make a plate of scrambled eggs with tsubaki sprouts, or mix with lettuce shreds and tender broad beans, which is how Sichuanese eat.
Toon trees are also known as sweet trees, Tsubaki trees, but don't be fooled by this name, the power of toon is no less than the folded ear root. Those who love it love it so much that they regard this mouth as a ceremony of spring every year, and those who do not love it avoid it, even if the price is expensive into gold, it has nothing to do with me. The special smell of toon comes from the special volatiles in it. Shi Jun, ph.D. of the Institute of Botany of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and curator of popular science books, once explained that these special fragrances include terpenes, sesquiterpenes and other substances, and are a chowder of caryophyllene, sucene, camphor and other odor components. In particular, caryophyllene has a mix of citrus, camphor and clove aromas. This constitutes the fragrance of toon that some people love and some people hate.
Most of the toon buds we eat now are cultivated artificially. However, there is no artificially introduced and cultivated gray cabbage, but it is an authentic "wild vegetable".
Gray cabbage, also known as gray stripe vegetable, scientific name quinoa, is an annual herb that spreads throughout the continent. It has yellow-green leaves, green or fuchsia stems, re-extraction buds are mostly purple-red, and gray ash grass grows on the roadside and in the field, and is regarded as a weed that is difficult to remove. The seedlings and young stems and leaves of gray cabbage are edible, and stir-frying or cold mixing is the most common way to eat.
Cold gray cabbage (source network)
Although everyone now regards gray cabbage as a seasonal wild vegetable to mediate the appetite of being heavily greasy and smoked, in ancient times, gray gray cabbage was regarded as a rescue dish. In the "Wasteland" of the "Complete Book of Agricultural Administration" written by the Ming Dynasty scientist Xu Guangqi, gray ash vegetables are listed as wild vegetables that can be eaten when people are hungry: "In addition to the stems and seedlings that can be eaten, when the ears are ripe, the seeds are pounded into rice, and the flour is ground to make cakes and steamed." ”
In the pen of the literati, gray cabbage is also the spokesperson for "poverty". Lu You once wrote that "the bottom of the eaves of the broken qiu negative sun, a bowl of quinoa soup is like honey and sweetness", Tao Yuanming wrote that it "we do not cover our elbows, and the quinoa soup is often lacking", and Han Yu also wrote "Three years of guozi master, intestinal stomach habit quinoa". Poets have used gray cabbage to refer to a poor and simple life, which shows that gray gray cabbage is in the "food pyramid" and not in the upper layer.
Quinoa (Source Network)
This life-saving food of the poor people, the rich and noble people also think about this taste from time to time. In the forty-second episode of "Dream of the Red Chamber", "Junlan Yan Explains Doubts, Xiao Xiangzi Yayu Makes Up for The Afterscent", Ping'er instructed Grandma Liu who entered the Grand View Garden: "You can rest assured that you will receive it, and I will still ask you for something." At the end of the year, you only bring some dried gray vegetables and cowpeas, lentils, eggplant, gourd strips, etc. that we love to eat up and down here. "When Grandma Liu came to the Grand View Garden to visit relatives, she was not allowed to bring back some rice, silver, and other things." Ping'er sympathized with the old man's mood, gave away valuable things, and had to ask for some things to come back. Not to mention whether Jia Mu, Madame Wang and other people want to eat this "dried gray vegetables", Ping'er's kindness is self-evident.
Liu Grandma entered the Grand View Garden (source "Dream of the Red Chamber" stills)
The poor are in a hurry, the rich are seasoned, but the gray gray cabbage that seems to be "versatile" also has bad places. As a weed, it is difficult to control, hindering the growth of normal crops, and becoming a "big problem" for farmers, which may be the reason why it has not been artificially cultivated so far.