Fine amaranth, a wild vegetable, commonly known as wild amaranth. Su Song, a Tang Dynasty writer, said, "Fine amaranth is commonly called wild amaranth, which is good for pigs to eat, and is also known as pig amaranth." It grows around June like white amaranth and red amaranth. The leaves are similar to white amaranth, but less textured and flatter. Wild amaranth easy to grow branches, let it grow, the height can be fifty or sixty centimeters, like a small tree with dense branches and leaves. If you cut off the main trunk and leave only the roots, many branches will still grow at the cut-off point.
"The wild amaranth is lost to you, and Zongsheng is here." These are two lines from Du Fu's poem "Planting Lettuce", which spells out the fascination of green wild amaranth, and also shows the poet's favor for it.
When I read these two lines of Dufu's poem, I was quite proud of myself that I was actually the same as the poet saint, and I was also fond of wild amaranth. However, what I like to eat is not its leaves, but its stem, which we call wild amaranth stalk.
When I was a kid, every summer, my family table is often a dish is steamed wild amaranth stalks. Because it is wild and a kind of hogweed, often cut by the hogweed cutters. Therefore, it is more difficult to find a clump of wild amaranth than it is to dig chestnuts and pick marjoram. Wild amaranth, like other amaranth, is seed-bearing, so the birth of the place, the next year will inevitably grow more seedlings, so as long as to go to the side of the vegetable field, the river bank, the field beach side of the "old place" search can be.
The wild amaranth has small thorns like the wild rose, and when harvesting it, you have to pinch the top few leaves with one hand, and carefully reach into the branches and leaves with the other hand to cut the main stem. Clean up the wild amaranth, is also a delicate work, the thumb index finger pinch the root, will branch one by one from the bottom cut off, and then cut off all the leaves and thorns on the branch. If the stem is old, the skin should be torn off in strands. Then cut into small sections of one inch long, put in a pot, drizzle with vegetable oil, sprinkle with salt and dot with chicken essence, and steam under water until crispy. In addition to steaming, can also be fried to eat, stir-fry until the color, put a spoonful of bean paste, cover the pot to burn until soft and crispy. This dish is not only rice, but also fragrant and soft, I think it is much better than the white amaranth red amaranth, and not inferior to cowpeas, beans and lentils at the same time of the festival and other vegetables.
An even better way to prepare it is to make a stinking stalk. The thick old wild amaranth stalks cut into inch segments, soaked in water until the white foam, fished out of the wash drained, loaded into the Beng, sealed Beng mouth, every one or two dozen days, open the seal, a stench from the Beng out of the direct drill nasal cavity. Fish out the pinch of the soft wild amaranth stalks, steamed, smelled extremely stinky, eat the fragrance. The brine is used to make the famous stinky dried tofu marinade, as long as there are no flies and insects into the long term storage will not be bad. People usually use white amaranth stalks to do stinky brine, I always think that the smell is far less than the wild amaranth stalks of the fresh more appetizing.
This should not be my own opinion. The first time I saw this was when I was a student at the University of California, Berkeley, and I was a student at the University of California, Berkeley, and I was a student at the University of California, Berkeley, and I was a student at the University of California, Berkeley, and I was a student at the University of California, Berkeley, and I was a student at the University of California, Berkeley! The first thing you need to do is to get your hands on some of the most popular products and services in the world," he said.
There is a legend about the origin of the stinking amaranth stalks: it is said that when Goujian was lying on his back, the people did not have enough to live on, and many of them took wild vegetables for food. There is an old man in Shaoxing's Houttuynia mountain picked wild amaranth stalks, cooking feel those old and hard stalks are difficult to cook, will be hidden in the pot to wait for the future to cook, many days later, the pot is floating out of a burst of odor, the old man to take the steaming, found that not only very easy to steam and eat the taste far better than the tender stems and leaves. The news spread among the neighbors, and people followed suit. Since then, the stinking amaranth stalks are circulating in Jiangsu and Zhejiang. Today, traveling to Shaoxing, if you go to the Xianheng Hotel, that one amaranth stalks steamed stinky tofu is about a must.
My grandmother was from Shaoxing, and naturally, she was a good cook. Grandma's stinky brine Beng, in addition to amaranth stalks, radish, lettuce, daikon, hairy bean knots, cabbage clappers, bok choy clappers ...... table stinks almost all seasons. I think my preference for smelly amaranth stalks must be related to my grandmother. Regrettably after the death of grandmother, no one in the family can no longer make a stinky brine as delicious as the one made by grandmother, and now there is no one to make it, and I have not eaten it for many years. A few days ago, at the restaurant to eat, surprised like seeing fifty years ago the first day of school with that flower cloth schoolbag.
However, wild amaranth stalks are still often eaten. When it was in its growing season, my mother would always forage around for me, tie them into bundles with firewood, put them in large Ziploc bags, and bring them to me. I put them in the refrigerator freezer, a small bundle per meal, can last for several days to eat. Last fall, my mother collected a lot of wild amaranth seeds and sowed them in my own field in March this year, and she told me, "This year, you can eat all the wild amaranth stalks you want, until you get tired of them." But it's strange, I eat every other day for a summer, and I don't get tired of eating!
These days, my mother is collecting wild amaranth seeds again ......