Autumn is onset, the leaves are yellowing, and when people start to revel in for the "annual" hairy crabs, there is a small green fruit that is in the harvest period that successfully attracts my attention.
A few months ago in Chaoshan, I ate fresh green olives for the first time. Although its "green" appearance made me mentally prepared, the bitterness of being paralyzed by the tip of the tongue was still overwhelming when I bit it. Just as I was hesitating whether to give up the rest of the fruit, after two sips of water, it covered up what had just happened with a fresh sweetness.
▲ Olive, also known as green fruit. Photo/Panorama Network
Before I could express my feelings about this extreme gap in the senses, a question that had plagued me for a long time jumped into my mind: If we also have olives, why is olive oil the "liquid gold" of Mediterranean origin?
<h1> "Olive oil" and "olive oil" </h1>
The olives eaten in Chaoshan Province, also known as Qingguo, originated in the south of my country and are recorded in the Qi Min Zhi Shu during the Northern Wei Dynasty. Because of the limitations of climatic conditions, the distribution area is small, mainly concentrated in Fujian and the two Guangzhou areas. Just as the so-called "foreign monks will chant the scriptures", many Chinese people do not know as much about their own green olives as they do in the West.
▲ Green olives of origin from our own country
"Our country, as the birthplace of olives, does not produce olive oil", which is comparable to a brain teaser, also has a very simple answer: the "oil olives" used in European olive oil pressing are not even relatives in terms of botanical genus, the former is a wood rhinoceros family, the latter is olive family, and the use is of course very different. The reason why I took the "olive" bus was probably because the immature "olive" looked similar to our green olive and got its name.
▲ "Olive oil" from Asia Minor is easily confused with "green olive" because it appears blue when immature. Photo/Letter
The home of the "olive oil" is in Asia Minor, and later developed in the Mediterranean region. In addition to being used to squeeze oil, the rest has been pickled and become a "pickle" loved by the Mediterranean people. If you travel around the Mediterranean like Italy and Spain, even if you don't look for them, you're bound to see them in the hors d'oeuvres that come with your meal. However, for most Chinese, the taste is more difficult to accept.
The european and American love of heavy tastes also reached its peak when it came to pickling olives. Every time I see a "shiny" but salty pickled olive on the plate that makes people doubt life, I always have a thought of "do you really want to live with yourself for nutrition" thoughts.
▲ Mediterranean countries love all kinds of pickled olives. Photo/Visual China
<h1> How can I eat olives that are not pressed for oil? </h1>
After talking about "oil olives", we can finally say how the green olives of the "Eight Classics of Zheng'er" should be eaten.
Unlike olive oil, which is 90% used to press oil, green olives completely "refuse to be greasy" and have strong medicinal value. The "Compendium of Materia Medica" records that it "produces jin liquid, quenches thirst, cures sore throat, chews throat juice, and can solve all fish and crab poisons"; the Song Dynasty's "Kaibao Materia Medica" also says, "Olive raw food, boiling and drinking and eliminating alcohol poison, to solve the poison of puffer fish." People who mistakenly eat this fish liver are fans, and they can cook the juice to take it. ”
It is said that fishermen along the southern coast of China still boil puffer fish and often put a few olive fruits in the pot.
I don't know how much painstaking preparation nature has done in its creation. After eating several meals of raw pickled shrimp and crab in Chaoshan Province, I saw the attribute of olives "detoxifying fish and crabs", and even lowered my vigilance against its bitterness, and unconsciously threw another one into my mouth.
Eating olives into the food is mostly "small to see the big", raw eating, pickling, and boiling soup are the most important ways to eat. A simple sentence can be summarized as: in addition to not being able to squeeze into oil, you can eat as much as you want.
The same as pickling, chaoshan patterns are many. The most common way to eat it is to pickle it with the minced southern ginger and make it into a "miscellaneous salty" with porridge, and it most often appears on the table of the Chaoshan people's breakfast. The general meaning looks similar to the "olive pickle" of the Mediterranean, but the taste is much more relaxing.
▲ Licorice olives
For outsiders, a little more distinctive is the small snack of pickled fruit preserves, "licorice olives" is a must-have souvenir to visit Fujian and Chaoshan areas. The local people pay attention to the "medicine and food homology" diet concept, but also let the licorice olive not only pleasing in taste, but also cough, asthma, pharynx, the attributes of the two can be called the classic collocation of the food therapy industry.
Pickled olives are easy to eat, but because they inevitably contain additives and too much salt, they should not be eaten more. The healthiest way to open olives is, of course, "soup".
▲ Olive pork lung soup, autumn is just in time
In Guangdong, where "no soup and no rice", the supreme praise for an ingredient is probably to boil it into the soup. My Chaoshan friend praised the "olive pig lung soup" and claimed that even in Guangfu, he might not be able to drink such a beautiful soup. In the autumn, the olives are brewed together with the pig lungs, which is the best choice for clearing the lungs and moisturizing them.
In fact, there is a simpler way to taste the sweetness of olives, green olives can drink a light fragrance by soaking water, the longer the time, the stronger the taste; if you put some green tea, there is a feeling of spring. In the Jiangsu and Zhejiang areas, there is a "yuanbao tea" specially brewed with olives - take the meaning of green olives "two pointed ends, shaped like yuanbao".
▲ Olive green tea, do not put green tea with olives alone to soak water is also very delicious
The green olives used to boil soup or soak water are not so exquisite, as long as a few knives are thrown into the water on the surface, it is not long before you can harvest a kind of stealing joy that is similar to taking shortcuts - only enjoying sweetness, and perfectly avoiding the bitterness of green astringency.
When I left Chaoshan, I bought a bottle of olive vegetables with me, thinking that the "olive minced meat and beans" must be fried with local olive vegetables in Chaoshan to be authentic - of course, after reading this article, you must know that this thing is not made of olive branches on the head of the Olympic champion.
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Text | Western Xia