Dongjian is one of the specialties of my hometown, also known as bean sprouts and salt vegetables.
The raw material of Dongjian is loquat leaf greens (also called winter vegetables or green vegetables), which is a very common vegetable in winter here. It looks a bit like lettuce, the main stem is their edible part, but it is much bigger. The main trunk of Chinese cabbage is very popular in winter. After a winter, it grows under the ground. At this time, it has sufficient water content, is strong, thick, crispy, sweet and delicious. The skin of the meat is hard and thick. When peeling the skin, you need skill and strength. Follow the texture of the skin and use balanced force to shave off all the skin and bones, leaving only the crystal clear flesh. Wash it and cut it into slices, strips or hob shapes, mix it with home-grown sweet potato vermicelli, garlic sprouts freshly picked from the vegetable garden, and red hot peppers, cook it in a big pot, and eat it hot. After eating it, it is really hot, spicy, numb and fragrant. It can be regarded as a beautiful thing in winter.
Loquat leaf greens, as the name suggests, have leaves shaped like loquat leaves, fan-shaped and oblong, with numerous twigs branching from a main stem, but the stem is thicker than lettuce leaves and the leaves are much thicker. After being broken, there is a long-lasting and strong smell of green vegetables, which makes people dizzy when smelling it for a long time. Therefore, it is neither suitable for frying nor boiling. Most of the time, it can only be discarded or used as feed for chickens, ducks, pigs and rabbits. . It was probably through countless explorations that our ancestors discovered an excellent way to eat its leaves - making them into winter tips.
There is a beautiful story circulating in my hometown about the emergence of Dongjian. On the outskirts of the city, there lived a peasant couple on the banks of the Tuojiang River. There is a vegetable patch in front of the house, surrounded by more than a dozen loquat trees. During the slack season, my husband returned from digging a large load of herbs from Baiyun Mountain. When he was not far from home, he looked up and saw that none of the golden loquats that had once been full of trees were gone. Why is this? I was shocked when the load of herbs on my shoulders suddenly slipped into the river, and the herbs were washed away by the water. When I got home, I saw that all the loquat trees had been blown to the ground by the strong wind and rotted. The wife comforted the depressed husband and said that although the loquats had fallen, their sweet juice permeated the soil of the vegetable garden. After that, the couple planted vegetables in the garden. Strangely, the leaves of green vegetables look like loquat leaves. When the loquat leaf greens matured, they tasted sweet and fragrant. The couple couldn't eat them all, so they added salt to make pickles and put them in jars and buried them in the garden. The husband went to the mountains to collect herbs again. Spring turned to winter, and another year passed in the blink of an eye. When the husband returned home with a full load and the wife killed chickens and cooked wine to catch the wind, she remembered the vegetable garden buried underground. When you dig the earth and open the altar, the fragrance immediately fills your nostrils and lingers for a long time.
The production process of Dongjian is simple, but it requires the right time, place and people to make authentic and delicious Dongjian - you need to choose a sunny day in late winter to cook the newly matured green vegetables. Pick it back, cut off the main stem and leave only the leaves. Wash it and cut it into three or four quarters. Place them in rows and hang them up. It is best to have direct sunlight. The green vegetables will gradually wilt, in three to five days. Collect them one by one, wash them again, apply them thickly with salt and marinate them for a few hours, then remove the salt water, and then hang them in rows outside to dry. During the entire drying period, winter wind, winter frost, and winter sun alternately cycle, and they must not be exposed to rain, otherwise the taste of the made Dongjian will be greatly reduced and the color will be ugly and difficult to eat. After a few days, it gradually dries, and is collected one by one, placed in a sealed cellar for fermentation, and left to wait for several months before it is ready.
Similar to the principle of cellared wine, the longer Dongjian is sealed and cellared, the more fragrant and delicious the taste will be. Therefore, in my hometown, the fresh Dongjian made in the same year is not the best, but the old and beautiful ones are the best. My mother once told me that Dongjian that has been stored for more than ten years can be eaten directly because it is "already fermented and ripe." I once had a jar of Dongjian that had been stored in the cellar for ten years. Every time I opened the jar to get food, the whole house was filled with the aroma of Dongjian and tempeh. When I was a child, I secretly ate raw Dongjian while my mother was opening cans. It was really delicious, but it was too salty and I couldn’t eat more of it.
There have been historical records about the fragrance and beauty of Dongjian. In the 27th year of Guangxu (1901), after Luo Chengxiang (the last number one scholar in Sichuan in the Qing Dynasty) won the first prize, he asked people to bring two loads of winter spikes to Beijing from his hometown and distributed them to his colleagues. After eating the meal, Sun Jiading, a great scholar, was full of praise and wrote a poem in praise of it. Said: "The tips of loquat greens are picked, and there is a secret secret about how to make and pickle them carefully. The seasoning is the best in cooking, and the Zizhou winter tips are well-deserved." As a result, its reputation increased even more, and even Li Lianying came to ask for it, saying that "Lafayette has smelled the fragrance."
In my hometown, almost every household must have a jar of Dongjian. The weather is cold in winter, and there are few vegetables. Most farmers cannot afford the expensive greenhouse vegetables. When there is no vegetables, they will take out the winter noodles that have been prepared the previous winter, cut them into fine pieces, and fry a plate of winter noodles. Stir-fried minced meat.
The minced meat absorbs the fragrance of the winter tip, and the winter tip absorbs the deliciousness of the minced meat. The whole dish is fragrant but not greasy. It goes well with rice and can be stored for a long time. When I was in high school, I left home and lived on campus in the county. My roommates liked to bring it from home the most. When we went home during the monthly vacation, my family was afraid that we would starve in school, so we would stir-fry a pot of minced winter meat. A lot of it, fry it into dry stuffing, fill it with a large glass jar and press it firmly. After returning to school, everyone packed the meals from the canteen and took them back to the dormitory at noon. You tasted our food and I tasted yours. The taste was different. Mixing different kinds of Dongjian minced pork and rice, everyone gossiped and chatted, and three years passed in a flash. A can of Dongjian Minced Pork can be eaten for many days, and the taste of home can stay with you for a long time. After eating a large can, it is almost time for the next month's vacation.
As early as the Daoguang period of the Qing Dynasty, Dongjian in my hometown has been famous throughout the country, and now it is sold at home and abroad. There are also various ways to eat it. It can be used as steamed meat, salty and braised as a base dish; made into soup; chopped into pieces for stir-fry; made into stuffing for dumplings and steamed buns... After I left my hometown, I ate Dongjian many times, but I always... Not satisfied either. Once upon a time, it was difficult to find water in the sea, and I really looked down on the winter in a foreign country. My college classmates always like to eat steamed buns stuffed with bean sprouts. I always like to say to them, "The bean sprouts here are not really bean sprouts. They have thin leaves, are light in color, and are ugly. When you eat them, they are old and have not been dried in the sun. They are not good at all." It’s authentic, the one at our place is the best.”