Summer Cold Dishes (Chapter 4 of Food Essay) 1. Cold Amaranth There is a kind of wild vegetable in Tangshan. I didn’t know its scientific name before. A few days ago, I asked a professor from Tianjin University and he told me that the scientific name of this vegetable is amaranth.

.

After that, I looked at the dictionary. The dictionary said that the leaves of amaranth are oval or prismatic, and the leaves are green or purple. The stem fibers are generally thicker, and there will be residue when chewed.

Amaranth has a soft and smooth body and a strong flavor. It is sweet and fragrant in the mouth and has the effect of moistening the stomach and clearing away heat.

Amaranth is also known as "Kui", "Nymphatic" and "Litana".

Amaranth is an herbaceous plant and is an annual.

The stems are tall, and the leaves are like sesame leaves, with green leaves and a layer of white frost on the backs of the leaves.

The tall one is over one meter tall, and the short one is half a foot tall.

Every year in May, the fields, fields, and corners of the season are covered with amaranth.

Groups of housewives pick amaranth in the fields holding plastic bags or baskets.

Wash the collected amaranth and blanch it in hot water, cut some minced garlic, add some salt, MSG and sesame oil and eat it cold, it is very refreshing.

It is the best side dish to drink.

Of course, it is also very delicious when used to wrap vegetables and cakes.

However, you should put more lard when making the filling, because amaranth eats oil very much, and the filling will not be fragrant without the oil.

After boiling the cornmeal, wrap it into thin-skinned vegetable dumplings with large fillings. Place them on a large iron pot and steam them for twenty minutes. Uncover the pot and shovel the cornmeal dumplings from the side of the pot. One side will be browned and the other side will be browned.

It's yellow soft skin.

I'm greedy just looking at it.

During this season, there are women carrying shallow dumplings selling these stuffed vegetable dumplings in the market every day. They cost one yuan each and they sell very quickly.

There is a large peach forest below my office. The forest is overgrown with weeds, and there are many amaranths sticking out of the grass and waving to me.

When it was almost time for lunch, I carried a plastic bag downstairs and picked a few handfuls from the grass in the peach forest. I came back and washed them, scalded them in boiling water, soaked them in cold water, squeezed out the water, and chopped some minced garlic.

Add some salt, MSG, and fry some peppercorn oil. The amaranth mixed in this way is not only green, but also light and refreshing. It tastes very delicious.

Not to mention economical, but drinking wine is definitely a side dish to go with wine.

The painter Liu Quanzhong, who drinks with me every day, doesn't want any food. As long as he has cold amaranth, he can drink half a catty of wine.

He said he drank half a catty, but he drank more than six taels every day. Sometimes he would get drunk and drink another bottle, but he would eventually be knocked down by the wine.

After waking up and washing his face, he said that it was all your fault for the cold amaranth.

I remember that when I was a child, I started to eat this kind of dish every early summer. It has been forty years now.

And if you eat it every year, you never get tired of it.

However, the concept of eating now is different from that in the past. Now eating is purely to adjust your life and stimulate your appetite.

In the past, eating was purely to fill our stomachs.

When I was in elementary school, I would come home after school, throw down my schoolbag, and go to the fields with my neighbor’s classmates to pick amaranths.

In those days, every family did not have enough food to eat, so they all went to pick wild vegetables.

The nearby fields are all lighted, so we can only go to farther places to pick.

I can pick more than ten kilograms in one or two hours. In the evening, I return home and pour the wild vegetables into a basin. My mother washes the amaranth, blanchs it in boiling water, cuts the head of garlic, sprinkles some salt, and doesn’t even add oil.

Just eating it like this, I feel very delicious.

Sometimes, my mother chopped the amaranth she picked, sprinkled it with some salt and cornmeal, and steamed the vegetable dumplings, which were delicious to us.

Nowadays, eating amaranth doesn’t feel like it used to, nor does it taste like it used to.

Eating amaranth now is completely a kind of enjoyment of life, a kind of seasoning of life, and a kind of reminiscence of the past.

Amaranth, the most common wild vegetable given by nature to satisfy human hunger, not only adjusts people's lives, but also feeds a generation of hungry people.

I call this kind of amaranth a life-saving vegetable for the common people.

2. Cold noodles mixed with peppercorn oil. Last summer, a few friends and I went to Panshan in Jixian County.

This scenic tourist area, known as the No. 1 mountain in eastern Hebei, not only has high mountains and dense forests, but also has beautiful and charming scenery.

At eight o'clock in the morning, after our bus arrived at the gate of Panshan, there were already many tourists here.

After buying the tickets, we climbed along the winding path to the top of the mountain.

The stone path is slender and deep, and the rocks beside the road are rugged and beautiful. There are characters inscribed by various famous people on the huge rocks. The large characters on the rocks are painted with red paint to make them vigorous, powerful and eye-catching.

The ancient pines and cypresses on the mountain are tall and tall, and their dense branches and leaves almost cover the mountain.

I walked hard and strenuously up the mountain on the shady stone path, feeling cool and refreshed.

At noon, we had lunch at a snack bar halfway up the mountain.

I ordered a bottle of beer, two snacks and a plate of natural wild vegetables from the mountains.

The owner of the restaurant recommended Panshan’s specialty snack mixed with jelly to me.

I asked for a bowl to taste.

There are more than a dozen strips of jelly in the purple thick porcelain bowl. It tastes very good, similar to the jelly I ate when I was a child.

The difference in taste is between sesame oil and pepper oil.

I ate one bowl, but I didn't have enough and asked for another bowl.

Panshan's jelly is clear and transparent, and it tastes chewy and chewy. The strong garlic flavor and the sour aroma of old vinegar are very stimulating to people's appetite. I was eating Panshan's jelly alone and drinking snow beer, and suddenly I remembered

I had a bitter experience eating jelly when I was little.