Daily food customs

1 Dai family banquet

Most Dai people have the habit of eating two meals a day, with rice and glutinous rice as their staple food. The Dai people in Dehong eat Japonica rice as their staple food, while the Dai people in Xishuangbanna eat glutinous rice as their staple food. People usually believe that japonica rice and glutinous rice can retain their original color and fragrance only if they are eaten freshly pounded. Therefore, they do not eat overnight rice or rarely eat overnight rice, and they are used to kneading the rice with their hands.

Migrant workers often eat outdoors, using banana leaves or other rice dishes to hold a ball of glutinous rice, along with salt, spicy seeds, sour pork, roasted chicken, Nanmi (meaning sauce in Dai language), Moss pine can be eaten. All side dishes and snacks are mainly sour, such as sour bamboo shoots, sour pea powder, sour meat and wild sour fruits. I like to eat dried sauerkraut. The method of making it is to dry the green vegetables, boil them in water, add papaya juice, and make them taste delicious. The taste becomes sour, then dried and stored. When eating, add a little to boiled vegetables or put it in soup. The Dai people who have a place for this pickled cabbage eat it almost every day. It is said that the reason why the Dai people often eat sour dishes is because they often eat glutinous rice food that is not easy to digest, and sour food helps digestion.

2 Using moss as a dish is a unique flavor of the Dai people. The moss that the Dai people eat is the moss on the rocks in the river in spring. Dark green is the best. After it is picked up, it is torn into thin slices, dried in the sun, and tied with bamboo strips for later use. When cooking, fry the thick ones in oil, roast the thin ones over fire, make them crispy and then mash them into a bowl. Pour boiling oil on them, then add salt and mix them. Use glutinous rice balls or bacon as a dip to enjoy the delicious taste.

Cooked fish is often made into sour fish or grilled into lemongrass grass carp. In addition, fish is also made into minced fish (that is, grilled fish, pounded into mud, and mixed with coriander and other seasonings), fish jelly , grilled fish, eel in white sauce, etc.

3 When eating crabs, the crabs with shells and meat are usually chopped into crab sauce and eaten with rice. The Dai people call this crab sauce "crab Nanmibu".

4 Bitter melon is the most produced and consumed daily vegetable. In addition to bitter melon, Xishuangbanna also has a kind of bitter bamboo shoots, so the Dai flavor also has a bitter flavor. The most representative bitter dish is the beef skin cold dish platter cooked with ox bile and other ingredients.

5 Religious Food and Customs

The Dai people generally believe in Theravada Buddhism, and many festivals are related to Buddhist activities. During the Buddha Bathing Festival (Water Splashing Festival), in addition to abundant wine and food, there are also many Dai-style snacks.

6 There are also crispy snacks made from fried glutinous rice paste. The more important festivals include the Summer Festival (September 15th in the Dai calendar) and the Summer Festival (December 15th in the Dai calendar), both of which are Theravada Buddhist festivals. The Dai people in Xinping, Yuanjiang, Jinggu and Jinping celebrate the Spring Festival, Dragon Boat Festival, Mid-Autumn Festival, etc. The contents and activities are generally the same as those of the local Han people. The more typical foods include dog meat soup pot, dried pork, pickled eggs, dried eels, etc.

7 Festival Food Customs

Among the Dai people in Xishuangbanna, when a family builds a house, the whole village will come to help. When the new house is completed, the young man goes upstairs first, carrying the cow's head. , singing blessing songs, the middle-aged men carried boxes, married women hugged quilts, and girls came up one by one carrying meals. Then a tripod was set up on the fire pit, tables were placed, wine was prepared, and songs to celebrate the new house were sung. The villagers also Give the host some auspicious gifts.

8 "Putting out braised chicken" is a rumored way for young men and women in Xishuangbanna to court love through food. That is, the girl takes the braised chicken to the market and sells it. If the buyer happens to be the girl's crush, the girl will The girl will take the initiative to take out a stool and let him sit next to her. Through conversation, if both parties like each other, they will carry the chicken and the stool to the woods to express their love to each other; if the buyer is not the girl's favorite, the girl will Double the asking price; another example is "drinking wine". When a man and a woman are engaged, the man goes to the woman's house to treat guests with wine and food. When the guests have dispersed, the man is accompanied by three male companions and the woman and her three female companions.** *Set a table*** for dinner. "Eating Xiaojiu" involves eating three dishes: the first dish should be hot; the second dish should have more salt; and the third dish should have sweets. It means hot, deep and sweet.

On the wedding day, the wedding must be held at the home of both parties, usually at the bride's home first. During the wedding banquet, the banquet table should be covered with green banana leaves, and the dishes include Xuewang (Baiwang), which symbolizes auspiciousness, rice cakes and various dishes. Before the banquet, the groom and the bride have to do a thread-tying ceremony. That is, the officiant wraps a white thread around the shoulders of both parties, and ties two white threads to the wrists of the groom and the bride respectively, symbolizing purity. Then the elderly man wraps the glutinous rice Shape the rice into a triangle, dip it in salt, place it on the top of the tripod on the fire pit, and let it fall off naturally after the fire burns, symbolizing that love is as solid as iron. After the bride in Daping Township, Yuanjiang, sits on a bench with the groom, eats glutinous rice mixed with four eggs, and drinks two glasses of wine; the bride of the Dai ethnic group by the Yuanjiang River has to give each bridegroom 4 slices of meat after the bride has passed the wedding. , 4 pork ribs, 4 meatballs, and 4 pieces of crispy pork, and then you can have dinner.

9 Sacrificing food customs

The Dai people also worship the social god of their own village. The Dai people call it "Quelaman", also known as "Piman". Next time, to pray for a good harvest before planting rice seedlings and to express gratitude after the autumn harvest, a cow or pig is killed collectively. Each family prepares tributes and sends them to the room dedicated to the social god. After the sacrifice is recited, everyone eats. New members who join the community must offer chicken, wine and bacon strips to the community god.

The custom of slaughtering sacrificial animals in Menghai and other places still retains the custom of robbing cattle and eating fish and eating cowhide. In the Xishuang version, some of the sacrifices to tribal gods must be black cows and white pigs.

The Dai people in Yuanjiang and Xinping areas generally worship Nagarjuna and the Dragon God. When the Dai people on the Yuanjiang River offer sacrifices to Nagarjuna every year in the third month of the lunar calendar, the whole village will kill a red bull. Before killing it, they will paint patterns with white ash on the cow. The body is covered with red and green cloth. In the same month, pigs are also killed to offer sacrifices to "God of Heaven and Mother of Earth" in order to protect the safety of livestock.

Among the Dai people, especially in some remote areas, there are still some taboos on cooking, such as: when burning firewood, you must burn it from the root first; you are not allowed to step over the fire pit; you are not allowed to move the firewood at will. Tripods and more.

2 Special Foods

1 Sour Pork

A traditional dish of the Dai people, made of beef that is marinated and then fried. It is characterized by a strong sour flavor and can help digestion. The preparation method is to wash the fresh yellow beef with rice washing water, cut it into large pieces and put it in a basin. Add fresh pepper leaves, salt and rice, mix well, put it in an earthen pot, pour in white wine and compact it, cover it and use plant ash. Mix it with mud to seal the mouth of the jar and marinate for one month. Cut the marinated yellow beef into shreds and fry with green garlic sprouts until cooked.

2 Fire-roasted fish

A traditional home-style dish of the Dai people, characterized by softness, tenderness, sweetness and original flavor. The preparation method is to remove the gills and internal organs of fresh fish, wash them, add chopped green onion, minced ginger, minced garlic, minced green pepper, minced green ginger leaves, minced coriander, minced wild pepper leaves, mint, minced fennel leaves, minced lemongrass leaves, grass Mix fruit powder, monosodium glutamate, salt, and cooking wine to make a filling, put it into the fish belly, fold the head and tail, tie it into a cross with lemongrass, wrap it with banana leaves, and bury it in the charcoal or hot ashes of the firewood to cook. Remove the banana leaves and lemongrass and serve on a plate.

3 Pickled Beef Head

A traditional home-style dish of the Dai people. The preparation method is to remove the hair and hoof shells from the cow head and feet, chop them into pieces, boil them until they are cooked, remove the bones, and cut them into meat strips. Then put them into a basin and add rice water to soak them for 3-4 hours. Take them out and wash them with cold water. Put the wild pepper leaves, red pepper powder, ginger and garlic paste into the beef pot, add salt and white wine, mix well to taste, put it into a crock pot and compact it, cover it and seal it, and it will be ready after half a month. It can be steamed or fried when eaten. It is a cold dish with wine. It is crisp, tender, sour, spicy and cool.

4 Tamarind

In winter and spring, when the sky is high and the clouds are clear, the wind is refreshing. When you walk into the Dai villages in Xishuangbanna, you can easily see a kind of food that the local people particularly like. The famous fruit tree, Tamarindus tamarind, has a tall tree, a rough trunk, sparse branches and leaves, and bunches of brown hook-shaped pods hanging from the branches. Tamarind, also known as sour bean, tamarind, luohuangzi, sour plum (Hainan), "Muhan" (Dai language), Tianmukan, Tongxuetu, is a large tropical and subtropical evergreen tree of the Sumylaceae family. The genus contains only one species of tamarind, and there are two types: sweet type and sour type. Tamarindus tamarind prefers hot climates and can grow normally in areas with average annual temperatures of 18?C-24?C and annual rainfall of 500-1200 mm.

5 Insect Food

The Dai area is humid and hot, and there are many kinds of insects. Using insects as raw materials to make various flavor dishes and snacks is an important part of the Dai food. Commonly eaten insects include cicadas, bamboo insects, giant spiders, field turtles, ant eggs, etc.

Cicada hunting is done in the summer. Every evening, when the cicadas swarm in the grass, their wings are soaked with dew and cannot fly. The women quickly pick the cicadas into bamboo baskets and put them into the pot after returning. Dried to make sauce. Cicada sauce has the medical effects of clearing away heat, detoxifying, and reducing pain and swelling.