People in beginning of spring should eat some fresh vegetables on this day, not only to prevent diseases, but also to welcome the Spring Festival. Tang's "Four Seasons Baojing" records: "When I was in beginning of spring, I ate reeds, spring cakes and lettuce, hence the name' Cai'." It can be seen that people in the Tang Dynasty have begun to try spring vegetables and eat spring cakes. The so-called spring cake, also called lotus leaf cake, is actually a kind of hot flour cake-two small pieces of water, oiled in the middle, rolled into pancakes, and peeled into two pieces when cooked. Spring cakes are used to roll vegetables, including cooked vegetables and stir-fried dishes. In the past, when eating spring cakes, we paid attention to going to a box restaurant called "Pan Su" (also called box lunch). Box hotel is a sauce meat shop, and the store sends people to deliver food to your door. There are smoked pot belly, pine nut pot belly, oven meat (a kind of roast pork), sauce meat, smoked elbow, sauce elbow, sauce mouth strip, smoked chicken, sauce duck and so on in the box. Be put in a picture frame. When eating, you should change the knife and cut it into filaments, such as several home-cooked dishes (generally fried pork with leeks, fried pork with spinach, vinegar with mung bean sprouts, fried noodles with vegetarian ingredients, and spread eggs). ) Here we go.

Eat spring vegetables

Since the Tang Dynasty, the folk custom of eating spring vegetables in the early spring has been widely circulated. For example, at the end of the Southern Song Dynasty, Chen's Guang Ji at the Age of Years quoted the Four Seasons Baojing in the Tang Dynasty as saying: "On the day of beginning of spring, spring cakes and lettuce were made, which was called' spring vegetables'." The word "Spring Festival" also often appears in the poems of the Tang Dynasty. For example, the poet Cen Can wrote in the poem "Send Yang Qian to runan county to save the province and get married when he is old": "Runan looks far away, go early and have a Spring Festival." In the Song Dynasty, this custom became more common. Su Shi, a great poet in the Northern Song Dynasty, mentioned this custom many times in his poems, such as "foam milk flowers float in the afternoon light, the first bamboo shoots try the spring vegetables" and "I am worried about listening to the music and playing the flute, and I like watching the first buds of spring vegetables". Lu You, a great poet in the Southern Song Dynasty, also wrote poems such as "Fine Lettuce in Spring Vegetables" and "Good Spring Wine in Spring Vegetables Year after Year" in his Birthday "and" Daily Events in beginning of spring ". In the Qing Dynasty, Pan Rongbi wrote in "Jisheng, the first month of the Spring Festival when Jingdi was old": "New dishes are offered on the first day of the New Year. Although it is a scholar's home, it is bound to cut chickens and dolphins, cook noodles to make cakes, mix lettuce, leeks and croissants, and eat raw carrots, which is called' biting spring'. "

According to textual research, the Spring Festival couplets actually evolved from the five-heart disk in the Wei and Jin Dynasties. The Chronicle of Jingchu written by Zongba in the Southern Dynasty quoted the Chronicle of Local Conditions in the Western Jin Dynasty as saying: "The spiced dish was made in the Yuan Dynasty, and it was smoked and refined in the Yuan Dynasty." Yu Xin, a poet in the Southern Dynasties, also wrote a sentence similar to "Let's talk about cypress wine and try to make five parsley". According to Li Shizhen's Compendium of Materia Medica, "On New Year's Day, fresh and tender vegetables such as onion, garlic, leek, Polygonum hydropiper and mustard greens are mixed in beginning of spring to welcome the new year, which is called' five spicy dishes', and it is not too much to call it' spring lettuce' in Du Fu's poems." In fact, in ancient times, people ate five parsley not only to welcome the new, as Li Shizhen said, but also to spread the qi of the five internal organs, strengthen the body and prevent the epidemic. According to the modern scientific point of view, the Spring Festival cold has come to an end and it is easy to catch a cold. Using five spices to dredge dirty qi and disperse sweat will undoubtedly play a certain role in preventing influenza. In the Tang and Song Dynasties, people improved the five coriander by adding some seasonal vegetables, which changed from monotonous spicy to cuilu red silk with good color and fragrance, and called it "spring dish".

The custom of eating spring vegetables has been passed down to this day, but the content of spring vegetables has changed greatly, and it has become a Spring Festival seasonal dish dominated by leeks, bean sprouts, coriander, etc., with shredded pork and tofu, and raw materials such as sea cucumber, mushrooms and shredded chicken can be added as appropriate, which varies from person to person and can be matched at will.

Eat spring rolls

Spring rolls are also a holiday food that Japanese people often eat at the beginning of spring. This kind of food is fried in thin leather bags. The specific production method is as follows: mix some flour into paste, put it on a frying pan, slowly burn it with low fire, and turn the frying pan from time to time to make a spring roll skin as thin as cicada's wings, then wrap it with stuffing, roll it into a long tube about two inches long, stick batter on both ends, and fry it in oil slick until it is crisp outside and tender inside, with good color and fragrance. Wheat flour is generally used for spring roll skin, and egg skin and tofu skin are also useful. As for stuffing, there are two factions: North and South. Chinese chives, bean sprouts and shredded pork are used in the north, and Chinese cabbage, shredded pork, shredded shrimp, dried rice, celery, red bean paste and fruit are used in the south.

The name of spring rolls was first seen in the book Liang Lumeng written by Wu in the Southern Song Dynasty. It is mentioned in the book that spring rolls are divided into thin-skinned spring rolls and mother-child spring rolls. By the Ming and Qing Dynasties, spring rolls had become a popular flavor food. Nowadays, spring rolls with golden color, crispy skin and tender meat, and attractive aroma have become a unique and popular dish at many hotel banquets. Now people are no longer limited to eating spring rolls, but they can also eat them often. However, spring rolls will have different tastes when they are eaten at the beginning of spring.

As a traditional food culture, biting and tasting spring is an inseparable part of beginning of spring's holiday customs. However, this festival custom has faded a lot now, and even many young people don't know this custom. Nowadays, people eat noodles and jiaozi instead of spring plates, spring cakes and spring rolls to welcome the arrival of spring. Therefore, there is a saying among the people that "jiaozi welcomes the spring and plays spring noodles".

spring roll

Small carrot

On the day of spring, another food that China people "bite spring" is radish. Generally speaking, it can solve the spring sleep. It can also enhance women's reproductive function, and beginning of spring radish is also called "offspring radish".

In the past, "biting the spring" was to buy a radish to eat, because radish tastes spicy, which means that the ancients "bitten the grass roots and could do anything." In old Beijing, on this day, from the early morning, someone shouted in the alley with a burden: "Radish is better than pear ..." At that time, no matter how poor people were, they had to buy a radish for their children to bite the spring.

Li Shizhen is full of praise for radish, thinking that it "can be eaten raw, cooked, sauced, fermented, vinegar, sugar, wax and rice, which is the most beneficial among vegetables." You see, Li Shizhen has listed a radish recipe. Moreover, radish has great medicinal value, which can eliminate phlegm, ventilate, relieve cough, and even relieve alcoholism, detoxify, replenish spleen and stomach, and keep out the cold. It can be seen that eating radish is just a custom on the surface, but it is actually the experience of the ancients in nutrition, fitness and disease removal.

There is also a folk record that "radishes are on the market, but doctors are fine". Vitamin C in radish can help eliminate waste in the body and promote the metabolism of the body. Especially white radish or water radish, rich in enzymes, can promote digestion. Usually, enzymes can absorb starch in food, dissolve food accumulated in the stomach, have a good digestion effect and prevent stomach pain and gastric ulcer.

Why does beginning of spring eat spring cakes?

On this day in beginning of spring, people have the custom of eating spring cakes. For example, the Jin Dynasty's "Guanzhong Ji" records: "(Tang people) make spring cakes in spring and wrap them with Artemisia annua, leeks and Polygonum hydropiper buds." People in the Tang Dynasty also said in the Collection of Comments on Chen: "The spring cake that beginning of spring ate is called' Spring'."

In the past, the custom of eating spring cakes at the beginning of spring every day was not only popular among the people, but also often given to ministers as holiday food in the palace. For example, Chen Yuanliang's "Guang Ji at the Age of Years" also said: "The day before beginning of spring, Ouchi ate spring cakes, and his ministers drank alcohol. The lettuce in the dish is decorated with radish and placed in the middle. "

In fact, the custom of eating spring cakes in beginning of spring originated from the Tang Dynasty, which is also called "biting spring". At the beginning of spring, when spring returned to the earth, everything revived and all kinds of vegetables sprouted, people began to try very early. The ancients wrapped seasonal vegetables in dough, rolled them into rolls, steamed them or fried them, and named them spring cakes, symbolizing the bumper harvest of crops, symbolizing spring and giving them to each other to welcome spring.