"The taste of spring" written by a famous prose writer In late February and early March, shepherd's purse bloomed in Beijing.

Wang Zengqi said that in his hometown, shepherd's purse can be served on the banquet. It is chopped into fine pieces and mixed with dried fragrant vegetables. It is a very popular seasonal side dish in spring.

The status of shepherd's purse among wild vegetables is evident.

Shepherd's purse grows one crop every spring and one crop in late autumn. The ones in autumn can survive the winter and revive in spring.

What's blooming now is overwintering shepherd's purse, with rust-colored leaves and skinny appearance, and snow-white flowers as big as rice grains.

In the community where I live now, shepherd's purse grows in the green space under the windows of every house in spring.

Auntie and grandma began to search everywhere.

The green space is allocated to the people on the first floor, but the shepherd's purse occurs naturally. Is this considered stealing? No one understands.

Shepherd's purse cannot be harvested. It must be dug or picked. Use a knife and shovel to dig out some of the white roots and pick up the whole plant.

The root is the part with the strongest flavor of shepherd's purse, with a slightly earthy fragrance.

Shepherd's purse can be used to make scrambled eggs, fried rice cakes, and soup. The most common way to eat it is to make stuffing, wrap wontons, and dumplings. Chop it into thin pieces and fry it with shredded pork to make spring roll fillings. It has a unique aroma.

That piece of purple in spring in Jiangsu and Zhejiang? Milkvetch Zhou Zuoren wrote an article "Wild Vegetables in My Hometown", which mentioned shepherd's purse and milkvetch.

A large area of ??purple milkvetch is blooming with pink and purple flowers, which is a spring scenery in Jiangsu and Zhejiang.

Zhou Zuoren used an old-fashioned metaphor, saying that it is like a "gorgeous carpet" that children pick and play with during the Qingming Festival.

Mu Xin has a poem "Spring Boat" about the Tomb-Sweeping Boats during the Qingming Festival, which is very beautiful.

The hometowns of these two people are Zhejiang.

The flower field of milkvetch. Milkvetch belongs to the family Papilionaceae (which used to be classified as Fabaceae). This family produces various beans and leafy vegetables.

The most common characteristics are that the aroma is clear and soft, and the tenderness is slightly plump. It is delicious when blanched in water and mixed with food, or stir-fried with a sprinkle of white wine.

The most common ones are pea tips, as well as wild vegetables, vetch, grasshead, alfalfa and so on.

Alfalfa weeds in the backyard of Peter Meier's house Wine vanilla head Picture source: Douguo Food Netizen Coco's Gourmet Life I have never eaten milkvetch, but I have eaten milkvetch at a relative's house in Shanghai.

I picked this one dish to eat, and I felt very embarrassed when someone saw it, so I was deeply impressed.

The flower color of the grass head is yellow and belongs to the genus Alfalfa (the milkvetch belongs to the genus Astragalus). The alfalfa belonging to the same genus is popular among northerners.

Once, I went to the vegetable market with my father. There were only cabbages and pork in the market that day. I couldn't find anything fresh. I was going home when I met an old lady at the gate of the market, carrying a basket of alfalfa.

My father was overjoyed. This was something new.

Alfalfa is slightly thicker and harder than pea tips, and has a more gamey flavor.

The most famous use of alfalfa is not for eating, but for making feed.

Peter Meyer, a travel writer who became famous for writing about Provence. When he first moved to France, his yard was full of alfalfa. He thought it was a weed and wanted to get rid of it. A neighbor farmer said it was the best way to feed rabbits, so he took a bunch of asparagus and a handful of lavender seedlings.

Changed.

Neither of them probably knew that alfalfa was edible.

Otherwise the rabbit will have no share.

Memories from primary school textbooks: Sun Xiao Hong said in "Reminiscences of Mr. Lu Xun" that the dishes commonly eaten at Lu Xun's home were a yellow croaker, a stir-fried bamboo shoot with pickles, and a stir-fried pea shoot. There was often a very loud bamboo cutting machine in the kitchen.

The sound made me hungry.

Zhou Zuoren said that the bamboo shoots from his hometown (of course the hometown of his brother Lu Xun) have a "fresh and sweet" taste when boiled in plain water and dipped in soy sauce.

Lu Xun probably also maintained the hobby he developed in his hometown and liked to eat bamboo shoots.

In "The True Story of Ah Q", he jokingly wrote that Ah Q was looking for something to eat in the vegetable garden and found a lot of bamboo shoots, but unfortunately they were all undercooked.

Hand-peeled bamboo shoots that retain their natural aroma.

Bamboo shoots are of course a good thing, but I didn’t know how to cook them at home when I was a child, and I was afraid that blanching them would destroy the flavor. Winter bamboo shoots contain oxalic acid, which would pierce my tongue when cooked, so I only knew that canned oil-braised bamboo shoots were delicious.

Later, my father received a bag of spring bamboo shoots from someone else. They were slender and slender and were called morning garden bamboo shoots.

Only then did I understand what fresh bamboo shoots taste like.

Spring bamboo shoots grow rapidly, and oxalic acid does not have time to accumulate and is diluted.

But precisely because it is a vital part, the flavor is lost very quickly after being picked.

Hong Kong people don’t seem to eat bamboo shoots very much. When I was studying in Hong Kong, I wanted to eat spring bamboo shoots, but I couldn’t find them in the market. I finally found them in a small shop selling Shanghai food.

Apart from being crispy, it had no texture or flavor of bamboo shoots, which was a huge disappointment.

What attracts praise? Stinky broad beans and Kong Yiji’s fennel beans.

Su Qing is also from Zhejiang. In her prose, she talks about the beans in her hometown many times. When she gets old, the green jade-like beans are peeled off and can be cooked in rice.

These should be broad beans, which are the famous "luohan beans" in Lu Xun's "She Opera". They were stolen from the fields of the father-in-law on June 1st and cooked.

Broad beans have a slightly turbid, animalistic smell, but it is not as obvious as onion, garlic and durian, and it does not become "stinky".

The texture of broad beans is "whey". After the tender small broad beans are fried, they are as soft as egg yolks, not greasy, and the color is green and cute. It is a very seasonal dish.

Wang Zengqi had dinner with a delegation of writers. He ordered a pea and a broad bean. Everyone praised him, "Wang really knows how to order!", and Wang was very proud.

A pinch of water? Peas. Fresh peas, green and shiny.