The diversity of ingredients can best be reflected in the vegetable market. When it comes to vegetable markets, we can't ignore the colorful Yunnan.
Wild vegetables are the main force in Yunnan spring vegetable market. Yunnan people like to eat hot and sour, and some hot and sour foods are very popular; At the same time, some local ethnic minorities especially like "bitterness", so some bitter foods are common in Yunnan vegetable markets.
Although Yunnan's wild mushrooms are well-known, the richness of spring dishes is no less than that of rainy season. Whether it is full of fruits, flowers or buds, Yunnan people want to bring the breath of spring to the vegetable market.
Rich and sweet, this is most people's impression of mature fruits, and the fruits in Yunnan vegetable market are sour and bitter, with five flavors. Let's look at the fruit that bloomed the year before and matured after a winter.
Cody is a fruit from Yunnan and Du Ying, Tibet. Its flesh can be eaten raw, slightly bitter and sour in the mouth, and then sweet and cold. Soak in wine, cold salad or make preserved fruit.
Sour flat fruit is the fruit of Caryophyllum japonicum, a plant of Apocynaceae. It tastes sour and can be sliced and dipped in hot water, fried food or cook the meat.
Goat milk is mainly the mature fruit of goat milk fruit, which is especially sour. The "Detian" variety cultivated by Dehong 20 12 has low acidity and almost no astringency, and has gradually occupied the market.
Pistachio nuts are the fruits of annona, relatives of Sakyamuni, which are very sweet and greasy. Egg yolk is also very sweet and greasy, choking my throat. It is better to put it in milk tea.
Milk is actually the fruit of Eupatorium adenophorum. The pulp is as white as milk, but it smells a little heather.
There were relatively many kinds of fruits that blossomed and bore fruit in the market that year.
"Xiahei" grapes have appeared in the market since the beginning of the year. Compared with other grapes stored in cold storage, because they are just picked from trees, the value is twice as high and the price is slightly more expensive.
Every year in late March, cherries and bayberry always appear one after another, and soon mulberries will form the three treasures of the market with them, and they are often put together in a small basket.
As soon as Tomb-Sweeping Day passes, there will be green plums and many flowers in the vegetable market. Both are sour and can be chopped and dipped in hot water or used for cooking and stewing. Plums can also be used to make carved plum wine, plum dew and so on.
Many flowers are young fruits of Yunnan (YYι)Docynia delavayi, and often have just withered flowers.
There are also raspberry fruits represented by yellow bubbles in the market. Yellow bubbles can be eaten directly.
There will be some strange-looking little eggplants on the market, mainly eggplant and eggplant. They are all bitter, and it is easy to be poisoned if you eat too much. It is not recommended to try them easily.
Litsea litsea litsea tender fruit, often used to stir-fry meat.
There is also a kind of fruit called "Galilo", which is actually called "Betel nut green". Locals often use it to cook fish, chicken and leeks. Few people in Yunnan chew betel nut, but the local people in Xishuangbanna chew the fruit of a pepper plant called "Luzi", which tastes like betel nut.
Yunnan vegetable market will also have a lot of pickled fruits, which have diverse tastes and challenge the taste buds.
People in Yunnan love flowers and eat them. Some flowers, such as kapok, burnt flower, white flower, big white flower, brown bud flower, pomegranate flower and pear flower, need special treatment before they can be eaten because of their bitterness or toxicity.
Kapok Kapok, also known as Panzhihua, mainly feeds on its stamens, which can be fried and stewed.
The flowers of the evergreen tree Mayodendron igneum of Osmundaceae need complicated treatment before eating.
White flowers refer to bauhinia, which is white in color. Boil the flowers in boiling water and wash them several times before eating. Treated white flowers are common in the market.
Large white flowers refer to rhododendrons, mainly rhododendrons. Many azaleas are poisonous, so people should choose big white flowers when eating azaleas. There is a yellow rhododendron called "hickory", which is very toxic. Sheep often wander around and die after being fed. Remember, the collected azaleas must be treated repeatedly before they can be eaten.
Brown bract flower is the tender inflorescence of palm palm, which is very bitter and is usually used to stir-fry meat after treatment.
Pomegranate flower is also very bitter, and it is also very common to treat pomegranate flower in the market. Pomegranate flowers can be roughly divided into two types: ovary enlargement, pistil development, ovary thinness and pistil degeneration. The latter can only provide pollen, not fruit.
Li Tanghua is the flower of Xiyang pear, which is a kind of Sichuan pear. After processing, it is fried and delicious, and can also be used to make Li Tanghua Baba.
Some flowers can be directly processed and eaten without complicated treatment. For example, leguminous flowers, such as broom (Caragana), crowflower (Chrysanthemum morifolium) and Sophora japonica (Nitraria tangutorum), are usually wrapped in eggs and flour and fried, or fried with meat and fermented beans.
In Tomb-Sweeping Day, sage will appear in the market one after another, and people in Yunnan often use it instead of Artemisia argyi to make dumplings or to celebrate the festival.
Some flowers often enter dishes with original flavor, which directly brings bitterness to people. For example, Ardisia crenata root and Ardisia crenata root, which are common in southeastern Yunnan, belong to Asclepiaceae, and are often used for cooking. They are bitter and often have fresh buds for sale in the market.
Some flowers without bitterness are naturally popular. For example, the male flowers and mulberry flowers of Broussonetia papyrifera are edible in many places in Yunnan and are generally used for frying meat. Some people say that among the wild flowers eaten by Yunnan cuisine, fried mulberry flowers are the best.
In addition, there is a special kind of dyed rice flower fragrance, and its dried flowers are generally available in the market. Rice-dyed flowers are actually Buddleja flowers, which bloom in early spring and can be used to dye beige after the inflorescence is dried in the shade.
In some areas, there will be pine pollen in the market, mostly from Yunnan pine and masson pine, which is often used to soak in water or make muffins.
I especially want to mention the plantain flower, which is the inflorescence of many plants in the genus Plantago. Generally, sterile flowers that fall under banana bunches are selected, and the inflorescences are often covered with bracts. Banana flowers are widely used in Yunnan. Generally, it is chopped and pickled 15 minutes. After washing, it can be fried or stewed. That's how the ground lotus eats. In addition, the fake stems (tender leaves in the heart) of plantain and Trollius chinensis often appear in the market as "banana hearts", which are delicious.
In spring, many plants begin to sprout, and Yunnan people will seize the time to pick those edible buds, which are naturally indispensable in the food market.
In addition to bracken, Aralia elata buds (known as "spiny old bags" in Yunnan) and Toona sinensis buds that can be seen everywhere in China, the buds that people most easily think of are like mushrooms after rain. There are many kinds of bamboo shoots in Yunnan market, which are composed of many kinds of bamboo shoots. Generally, it can be divided into sweet bamboo shoots and bitter bamboo shoots. The former is bitter and fresh, while the latter is bitter and needs to be processed in advance before eating.
Yunnan vegetable market will also have various unique "buds". Among them, the most species are Ficus microcarpa (also known as Ficus microcarpa) and Ficus microcarpa (Ficus), both bitter and sour.
Sour tip is actually fig, a tree of pueraria lobata, which germinates in spring. The translucent stipules about 10 cm long are very sour, and the young leaves are slightly bitter. The common buds on the market are sold, which can be eaten raw in hot water, or fried after blanching or cook the meat.
Some crops have not yet reached the harvest season, but Yunnan people have developed ways to eat their by-products, and these "by-products" will also appear in seasonal markets, such as pepper tips, lotus leaf tips, grass fruit buds, sugarcane tips and so on.
Pepper tip is a bit bitter and hemp, which can be fried or soup; The bitter taste of lotus leaf tip is mellow, but the fried food has fragrance; Amomum tsao-ko buds can be fried and pickled, which has a unique spicy taste; Sugarcane tip is the terminal bud of sugarcane, and fried food is fresh and sweet.
There are also some wild plant buds that often appear in the market, such as: Gleditsia sinensis, Wangliang tea (boiled cold, bitter, with pungent volatile smell), pine tip/sand pine tip (Yunnan Taxodium), green thorn tip (pickled and edible), stinky vegetables, bamboo leaf vegetables (deer medicine) and Smilax China (Smilax China). These tender tips are a little bitter and need to be blanched before cooking.
There are two kinds of smelly vegetables in the market. One is Acacia pinnata, which tastes bitter and has been planted and sold locally. The other is Isatis indigotica, a plant mainly composed of Isatis indigotica, which is said to be fresh and sweet after cooking.
Here, I want to introduce the seasonal fresh products of "grass bud". Grass bud is actually the underground tender stem of cattail, mainly produced in Jianshui County, Yunnan Province, and eaten in various ways. But it is not resistant to storage and should be eaten while it is hot. Generally, only in the country of origin can you taste the most authentic taste of grass buds.
There will also be an algae plant that doesn't look like a plant on the market: Spirogyra. Locals call it "moss", which can be fried or made into soup.
In spring, there will be some special dishes in Yunnan vegetable market, such as boletus. In dry season, there are only a few wild fungi such as white ginseng (Schizophyllum commune) in Yunnan market.
In some areas such as Wenshan and Baoshan in Yunnan, it is always hot and humid, and a batch of wild boletus will emerge around Qingming. Things are rare, but at this time, boletus on the market is hard to find and the price is outrageous. In addition to boletus, there will be small insects such as ant eggs and gourd bees on the market.
The ingredients introduced here only cover a small part of Yunnan vegetable fields, and most of them are collected in the wild. If you encounter endangered plants, you may be at risk of extinction. While satisfying your appetite, you must not eat some plants to extinction. In addition, even if there are wild vegetables in the market, don't buy them for early adopters. Only when you have enough experience can you buy them for cooking. It is not recommended to pick similar plants directly in the wild according to this article.
Friendly reminder: you only have one life, so you need to be careful when eating vegetables. If you don't pay attention, you will break the law and lose your life.
This article is a special contribution of "Species Calendar", from the author of "Species Calendar" @ Wei Wei Wei.