The cereals of Gaoshan nationality are millet, rice, taro, potato, fifty, millet and beans, and the miscellaneous grains and oil crops are peanuts, sesame seeds and coix seed. There are upland rice, rice and glutinous rice in rice. Beans include soybeans, red beans, flower beans, peas, tree beans and so on. And taro potatoes include water taro, black taro, sweet potato and yam. Their staple food is millet and rice, but also taro and potatoes, pasta, beans, and occasionally peanuts. However, due to the lack of rice noodles, Yamei people on Lan Yu Island live on taro and potatoes. They cook millet or rice into porridge and dry rice, and make cakes and bazin with glutinous rice, or dry food similar to zongzi. Potatoes used to make wine are also dry food often brought when going out hunting. This kind of food processing is similar to the food processing of people in mountainous areas of Han nationality. Common vegetables are pumpkin, bamboo shoots, leeks and ginger, as well as Chinese cabbage, radish and eggplant. The most fruits are bananas, longan, oranges, peaches, dates, persimmons and papayas.
What I said above is a common phenomenon, which is a common food for all ethnic groups in mountainous areas. However, it is necessary to introduce the characteristics of each nation because of its different natural environment and evolution, as well as different eating habits and customs in different places.
Xia Sai people like to mash glutinous rice or glutinous millet into rice cakes, or wrap glutinous rice with palm leaves, which is almost the same as jiaozi of Han nationality; Mix rice with potatoes, taro, beans or vegetables and cook it into salted rice or porridge. Usually vegetarian, with salt, ginger and honey as seasoning. Due to the small number of vegetables planted, some dishes are only served during festivals or festivals.
The non-staple food of Bunun people includes bacon or dried meat, dried wild vegetables and dried vegetables, but the quantity is small. If they catch game or fish, they will go to cook the meat and invite friends and relatives to get together.
There are many kinds of condiments in the north and south, such as salt, lard, brown sugar, honey and ginger. Pepper, etc. Bacon and salted fish are also added to non-staple food and pickles are also pickled with mustard.
In her spare time, Ah Mui often goes to the stream to catch shrimps, shellfish and crabs as delicacies on the table. They also like all kinds of fruits, besides common fruits, there are grapefruit, breadfruit, coconut and so on.
Yamei people live on taro and potatoes every day, and there are many varieties. According to statistics, there are 8 kinds of sweet potato 10, yam, black taro and water taro in China. Their fruit orchards are well developed, but few vegetables are planted, so women and children often have to take wild plants, fruits and shellfish as food supplements.
Pingpu people in Gaoshan nationality were influenced by Han people earlier. After the Han people arrived in Taiwan Province Province in the16th century, rice became their staple food. It has been recorded in history books that the rice of Pingpu people is full of fragrance, and the aroma of cooked rice will not decrease for two or three days. However, due to the small planting area and low yield, the crops planted each year are only enough for one year's consumption.
Whenever crops are ripe, Pingpu people will cut them off or pull them up directly from the ground, transport them back to their barns or hang them under the eaves. Don't pick ears of wheat from the barn or under the eaves before cooking. If the ears of wheat are not very dry, bake them on the fire to remove water, then put them in a wooden mortar or stone mortar and remove the shell with a long pestle. This kind of work is a collaboration between men and women. Generally speaking, the ears of wheat are harvested at night, dried on the fire, and mashed and peeled the next morning. Eat as much as you want the next day, and eat as much as you want at night, basically just a few strings. Moreover, this may be a measure for Pingpu people to use food in a planned way. It usually takes an hour or two to finish the mashing work, so that the food for one day is available. They work hard for three meals a day all year round.
The cooking methods of Pingpu people are divided into boiling and steaming. They first soak rice, millet or millet in water, and then put them in containers such as bamboo tubes, bamboo baskets and gourds to cook or steam them into rice. When steaming rice with a bamboo tube, you must first collect firewood and burn it into black and red charcoal, and then put the bamboo tube in the center of the charcoal. Soon, rice will become elegant. The method of steaming rice is to put glutinous rice in a rice cage made of bamboo skin, and steam the rice cage on an iron pot until it is foggy, and you're done. Boiling or steaming depends on whether the raw material is glutinous rice or glutinous rice. Glutinous rice is more suitable for cooking, while steamed glutinous rice is more fragrant, soft and delicious, and miscellaneous grains are also suitable for steaming. After the glutinous rice is steamed, it is pounded into powder balls or cakes by Chu Jiu, which Pingpu people call "DuDu".
In the past, Pingpu people did not pay much attention to the cooking of non-staple food, and even there were many phenomena of "eating raw". In Yu Yonghe's Going to Sea in Qing Dynasty, there is a historical fact that there are many elk on the mountain where Pingpu people live. After shooting deer, they drank their blood raw. As for venison, they cut it and ate it just to fill their stomachs. The hair of wild animals is usually removed by barbecue, and then it can be eaten with a little salt. Most internal organs, lungs and intestines should be cooked before eating. If you touch crabs and mullets in Shanghai, you can chew them alive and swallow them raw with a little salt. It can be seen that in the past days, the cooking methods of Pingpu people were primitive, and the habit of eating raw was still very strong. This is not only related to their backward production technology, but also a long-standing habit. They are used to the delicacies of wild animals and fish and shrimp. Because in modern civilized countries, there are still some habits of eating raw, such as sashimi that Japanese people like to eat.
The stove used by Pingpu people to drink and cook is a cooker with three legs standing on the ground and clay buckled on a wooden stick. This kind of cooker can still be seen in some mountainous areas. In some areas, people just moved three stones to make a fire. Containers for cooking food, such as bamboo tubes, retort, bamboo baskets and gourds, are all made of bamboo and wood, which makes it easier to transfer heat. The lower part of the container has a wooden buckle made of clay. The function of this wooden buckle is to prevent the wooden or bamboo rice "pot" from burning together. Nothing can be done without a wooden buckle. /kloc-at the beginning of the 0 th and 7 th centuries, the number of Pingpu people using iron pots gradually increased. This is mainly bought from Han businessmen. Iron pots have shallow pots and vertical pots of different sizes. There are shallow copper pots and ear pots. Kitchen utensils include kitchen knife, anvil and barbecue grill, wooden bucket and steaming bucket, wooden shovel and wooden spoon. The upper ends of wooden shovels and spoons are often engraved with small heads like other household appliances, which is probably caused by their worship and strong impression on people in primitive life and labor.
Pingpu people are reluctant to grow vegetables, preferring to feed a large group of chickens. Whenever VIPs come, they will kill chickens and set the table at any time. It was not until the Chief Executive came that he took out the wax gourd from the garden and respectfully presented it to the Chief Executive. It can be seen that vegetables are rarer than chickens. Therefore, the cooking method of vegetables is simpler.
With the development of social life, the quality of life of Pingpu people has also been greatly improved. They learned many cooking skills from the Han people, from eating fur and drinking blood to roasting, boiling, steaming, frying and frying.
For domestic animals, people of all ethnic groups in the mountains also raise many pigs, chickens and dogs, but they never kill them easily as food. Unless it is a sacrificial festival, you can't kill pigs. Chickens will only be served when VIPs arrive. Dogs are specially used for hunting and never kill animals. Whenever they come back from hunting or fishing, the pork and catch they get will also be shared with the same family. These pork and fish are not daily non-staple food, but delicious food of fish, which is a gift from God to respect people. Because the cooking technology is not developed, the way they eat meat and fish is very simple. They first boil them in water, then soak them in salt water, or mix them with ginger or pepper to remove the fishy smell. Cao people and Bunun people also bake to eat meat and fish.
Due to the underdeveloped production technology, Gaoshan people usually live a simple diet, and they have no more energy and ability to study the quality of diet except the basic life of a family. However, when it comes to festive festivals and sacrificial gifts, they will give everything they have, kill pigs and chickens, make wine and make cakes, and get together and get drunk. There are many such festivals, and the folk life rituals are even more colorful, such as marriage, childbirth, building houses, raising houses, farming and so on. All these require worship, banquets, singing and dancing. In the following chapters, we will introduce their festivals respectively.
The tableware of Gaoshan nationality is extremely simple. They use local materials, use bamboo or rattan to hold rice, use bamboo tubes to hold soup, and use bamboo spoons, wooden spoons and cups as tableware. When eating, everyone squats next to the iron pot, holding coconut shells and snail shells of rice in their hands and grabbing rice with their hands, which is somewhat similar to the practice of some countries in Southeast Asia. In recent years, they have gradually become accustomed to using chopsticks.