Black rice, a snack of Jiangnan people, has a tradition of eating black rice. You can buy a bag of black rice in a corner shop and put it in a straw bag. Black and bright, decorated with sugar melon and red dates, soft and waxy. You can eat while walking, which is the taste of relieving greed in the street.

This "black rice" itself is not black. Soak and cook with glutinous rice and the juice of natural dyeing raw materials, such as the leaves of Nanzhuang, and turn from white to black. Fujian and Zhejiang often use southern candles to make black rice, and Guangxi's "flower rice" is dyed with maple leaves, which has the same effect.

In ancient times, black rice was often called polished rice, but the literati in the Tang Dynasty especially liked it. "There is no polished rice, which makes my color good." Du Shaoling said in To Li Bai that black rice is a good medicine for Taoism to prolong life.

Speaking of this recipe. For example, Chen Zangqi, a collector in the Tang Dynasty, said in Materia Medica: Take the stems and leaves of Nanzhuang, mash them, soak them in marinade, steam them for nine times and expose them for nine times. The rice grains are tight and small, black as jade beads, and can fill the bag from a distance.

This process is delicate and changeable, with nine bubbles, nine steams and nine exposures, which was a delicious food that people gave to distant relatives and friends at that time.

Black rice pays attention to: black, fragrant, crystal and bright. In Mindong, she lives with Han people, and most of them are good at making black rice. For this kind of black rice, which has been circulated for thousands of years, a traditional production process has been formed. She people often cook black rice, sing folk songs and worship their ancestors on March 3.

Cooking black rice takes time and effort to make a pot of black rice. The key is to use the fresh leaves of Nanzhuang, pick the tender stems and leaves, wash them along the grain, and pound them on the stone mortar with a wooden stick. The more broken the better, you can add a small amount of alum to add color and let the green and yellow juice flow out.

Then you have to filter out the excess leaf residue with gauze, leaving only the juice in the bowl for later use. This is the process of removing radish and keeping radish. Then use this stain to soak the soaked glutinous rice for about six hours, neither long nor short. The time is too short, and the steamed rice is too sticky and elastic; If the coloring time is too short, the color will not be black enough.

It's best to cook with a large pot of firewood, and it will be full of fragrance in half an hour. Mix with sweet-scented osmanthus and sugar wax gourd, it looks good and delicious. This is made by sweet people.

What children like to eat is sweet black rice with eight treasures. If you want to eat eight-treasure rice and black rice, you must first soak the big red dates and coix seed and put them in when the rice is half cooked.

The so-called eight treasures are mostly honey beans, coix seed, red dates, raisins, ginkgo, sugar wax gourd, sweet-scented osmanthus, red bean paste and white sugar, which are mixed with black rice while it is hot. The black rice is soft and fragrant. This level of rich eight treasures is suitable for all ages, and it is difficult to eat bad. There is only a small bowl of eight-treasure black rice, which tastes endless.

In the past, at the end of a banquet, there was often a piece of black rice, which was loved by both children and adults. It is not evil to have a big plate with black rice and a spoon for people to share.

Now use straw bags, one for each person, which smells like straw bags and southern candles, elegant and beautiful, and easy to take away. Cooked black rice can be stored naturally for two days without special storage.

Now, it is not difficult to cook black rice with the help of wall-breaking filtration technology. The tradition of making black rice is gradually decreasing. You can buy fresh frozen ingredients and cook them in water, which is not bad. I just sometimes miss the time when my family cooked black rice.

My mother once gave me dried black rice, and the taste of my hometown was on the tip of my tongue. The fragrance is not diminished, but the taste is slightly worse than that of the black rice cooked now, but it is better than nothing. Seasonal winter bamboo shoots, Pleurotus ostreatus, peas, bacon (ham) or fried or steamed are all delicious.

When spring goes and summer comes, a bowl of black rice and kitchen smoke are the best greetings from taste buds.

Fireworks show their true colors in one peck and one drink.