? The Sanming wild food flavor guide?
Kinds: There are more than 500 kinds of wild vegetables in Sanming, and 150 kinds of wild vegetables are currently being promoted for planting. On this basis, it can guarantee that the local wild vegetable museums will have no less than 5 kinds of wild vegetables supplied every day.
Local popular wild vegetables: water chestnut, nasturtium, watercress, duck celery, white bush artemisia, marjoram, fern, broad-leafed leek, small root garlic, fish grass, toon, aralia buds, tree ginseng, etc.
Wild vegetables in Sanming are more than 500 kinds of wild vegetables.
Wild vegetables cooking method: Cooking wild vegetables is similar to home cooking, but in order to detoxify or have a better taste, there will be an additional treatment, such as blanching, soaking, salting, dry stirring and so on.
Wild vegetables, that is, wild edible plants, and then strictly speaking, from the seed and breeding are dependent on natural rather than artificial edible plants. Wild vegetables are rich in flavor, with a strong herbal pungent aroma, really recognized by the local people in Sanming and integrated into the life of the wild varieties of vegetables is not much, but enough to make the days of living in the mountains is full of dripping wild mountain atmosphere.
Commonly found in Sanming are mugwort, sage, water chestnuts, bitter greens, and ferns, which are enjoyed by locals in much the same way as in other mountainous regions of China. In Datian County, for example, where we visited, it was just after the Qingming Festival, when everything was new and wild vegetables were fresh and tender, and wild vegetables could be seen on the table at almost every meal. The fresh shoots of bitter greens are blanched to remove astringency, and then put into a soup with small intestines for a refreshing flavor. This is the bitter greens and small intestines soup that can be found in snack bars, and is often paired with the local snack, Kau Lay Kuey Teow. Ferns are the main character of the local people's spring table, picking a handful of fresh ferns during the day, and then frying them with red lees that night to eat the freshness of the mountains and fields.
Qingming Festival Kuey Teow is also only available at this time of the year, picking sage pounded into the juice and into the glutinous rice flour, wrapped in local bamboo shoots or bean paste filling, biting down on the same full of grass aroma. In some places, it is also popular to make pork dumplings with water chestnuts, and local friends can't help but gulp when they mention it - it's a fresh bite unique to spring.
Snowgrass, mugwort
Most of the rural dwellings in Sanming are backed by mountains and fields, wrapped relatively independently in the embrace of the mountains, so that the good ecology is a hotbed for the growth of all kinds of wild vegetables. Villagers do not need to go far, in front of the house, the river, the ridge can be picked anywhere common wild vegetables, food, some of the herbs are "natural medicine" for them.
For example, mugwort can treat colds and flu, plantain diuretic, fritillary to fire, sage to lower blood pressure, amaranth to lower blood sugar, etc., are all generations of "countryside recipe". Local people have been living in the mountains for generations, with nature as a neighbor, they are based on experience, or eating wild vegetables, or medicinal herbs, but if you ask a little deeper, but few people can tell a reason.
A path to the name of wild vegetables
Wu Songjian is a researcher and popularizer of the local knowledge of wild vegetables in Sanming, in his words, the local people on the knowledge of wild vegetables is only "unveiled the tip of the iceberg". Many wild vegetables are treated as weeds in the mountains before they are known. Wu Songjian is now compiling a book on the list of wild vegetables in Sanming and its medicinal value, edible methods.
Because of his work at the TV station, he met Song Weiwen, a famous local herbalist, many years ago, and since then he has been following Song Weiwen to do fieldwork in various parts of Sanming, identifying local herbs and supplementing his professional knowledge with extensive reading of literature and history. Today, he has been recognized as a teacher in the field of wild vegetables in Sanming.
Since the contact with wild vegetables, Wu Songjian keen outdoor tours have become interesting, he began to step in advance, to understand which place is rich in wild vegetables, take friends to identify wild vegetables there. Recognize the wildlife more, we began to explore the wildlife eating method, just wild camping also need to make a fire to cook, wildlife has become the main ingredient.
But eating wild vegetables is not a light matter, and requires a long and scientific process of understanding. Recognize the wild vegetables is not just tumbling in the wild to recognize, to try the grass is extremely risky practice. The seedlings of many plants are morphologically very close to each other and can be easily misidentified if not carefully distinguished. For example, Artemisia alba and the highly poisonous buttercup look very similar. Some plants are not poisonous, but are vastly different in taste, such as patchouli thistle and hyssop.
Patchouli artichoke
In the process of recognizing wild vegetables, Wu Songjian is a professional guide, and he takes nature as a classroom to share his knowledge of herbs in a rigorous and detailed way, and he often cautions against taking risks without accumulating a certain level of expertise. In addition, the first taste of wild vegetables should also be moderate, "usually the first time to eat a little less, pay attention to leave a specimen, the second time you can eat a little more, to be sure to eat safe and then rest assured that boldly eat.
In addition, cooking methods are also very important, one is to remove the toxic substances contained in the wild vegetables, and the second is to show the flavor through cooking. "Wu Songjian said. Wild vegetables are edible plants that have not been domesticated by human beings, and it exudes the raw and coarse strength of the mountains and the wild, attracting these people who love nature by nature, and they live as "mountain people" and step into the hinterland of the deep mountains to know the herbs and eat the wild vegetables is not only a way for them to get along with the nature but also a process of visualizing the "mountains" to the outside world and putting it in their hands. The process of visualizing the "mountain" - if not consciously exploring, even if the generations survive here, many people do not know how many treasures hidden behind the mountain in the end.
Over time, the original outdoor club has become a "wild vegetables knowledge and cultural exchange group", get together to play outdoor in these people, there is no lack of chefs, restaurant owners, food enthusiasts, they love to study the cuisine of wild vegetables, cooking methods, and even set up a boiler between this world and a fire, organized by the The "Wild Vegetable Cooking Competition".
Since 2009, the "Wild Vegetable Cooking Contest" has been held almost annually, and has long been a local feature in Sanming. Participants are mostly outdoor teams who love wild vegetables, and they are organized in different outdoor clubs. Every year, they will select a location rich in wild vegetables as the competition site, pick and make them on the spot, and invite experts in traditional Chinese medicine, scholars, and gourmets to comment on the event. Over the past ten years, the cooking competition has fused the local grassroots and medicinal culture into a larger scale local cultural activity, which has a certain influence in the country. A group of outdoor players have successfully made many outsiders understand Sanming through "wild food". Many people in the activities of the rich and diverse wild vegetables, but also recognize the cradle of these herbs - the natural environment of Sanming.
? Enjoying wild vegetables, mountain people have their own plans
Under the influence of Wusongjian, many people started a wild vegetable business, Shanbao and his wife Huang Xiaohua is one of them. They originally operated a farmhouse in Dada, because they always follow the Wu Songjian to the outdoor identification of wild vegetables, study the practice of cutting wild vegetables, the couple has accumulated a lot of knowledge of wild vegetables.
"Every back to the outdoors to go, the most exciting is to recognize different wild vegetables, we will pick some back, with different ways of cooking to do to friends to eat, we judge together to exchange, sometimes make a particularly stunning dishes, we will add it to the store's menu. Try more, dishes are also rich, the original farmhouse unconsciously turned into a wild food hall." Huang Xiaohua said, at present, they have developed no less than a hundred kinds of wild vegetables dishes, of which there are several in the competition won the laurels. In recent years, from the field to find them a taste of the fresh Zaikou quite a lot.
We arranged with Shanbao to go to the countryside to pick wild vegetables, and then went to his restaurant to taste the wild vegetable dishes. We were driving in the direction of Dashi Village with our friend Chen Hong, who is also a wild vegetable expert, and we thought we would have to go to the middle of nowhere to find wild vegetables, but the car stopped at a farm in the countryside.
Although the wild vegetables, but not isolated, before the mountains, behind the house, the ridge river can be found in the figure of many wild vegetables. The mountain treasure and friends stepped on the point in advance, this area can see a variety of wild vegetables at once, the ridge on the Malan head of the whole piece spread, under the vineyard of the dragon flower grows vigorously, the edge can see a few sporadic knot with red flower bunches of motherwort, in addition to the purple Yunying, golden cherry, and even mulberry tree leaves. These plants are not rare, but few people know that they are wild vegetables that can be used in cuisine. For example, Longquan, Shanbao told us, it has been a common household dish for people in Guangxi, but in Sanming, it is still little known.
When we were picking the anemone, the owner of the farm came over and asked about the cooking method of anemone, the original weeds by the insiders point suddenly became a nutritious wild vegetables, the owner of the farm as if he had found a treasure like the face of joy. In a short while, five or six kinds of fresh wild vegetables have been loaded on the bag, there are Malan head, longan, wild Chrysanthemum, hyssop chrysanthemum, young mulberry leaves. Shanbao has already calculated the evening's food list in his heart.
Figures 1-4 show the earth ginseng, hyssop chrysanthemum, dragonflower, and wild chrysanthemum
Shanbao's way of cooking about the wild vegetables seems quite pioneering. This has to do with the local food culture of Sanming, a new city established after the founding of the People's Republic of China. Although it is located in the mountainous area of central Fujian, it has a mixed population of outsiders, and there is no fixed style of food. Wild vegetables is the gift of the mountains, "mountain people" love to toss, a dish of wild vegetables in their hands was given ingenuity, into a creative dish.
I've seen a lot of people picking young mulberry leaves and decocting them as summer herbal tea, but it's the first time I've known that mulberry leaves are also a dish, and Shanbao used the way of dragging the batter to deep-fry it, and it was unexpectedly fragrant and delicious.
In the field to see the tiger cane like a small tree, tree stems peeled in the Shanbao cooking, it becomes a hot and sour crispy bamboo shoots.
For example, young mulberry leaves, Shanbao and his wife's favorite practice is to drag the batter deep-fried, with a little bit of foreign language is "tempura", such a complete preservation of the form of mulberry leaves, a whole piece of clamped up emerald bright, the taste is very wonderful, not only to retain the mulberry leaves of the aroma, but also through the frying of the mulberry leaves of the coarse fiber become Crispy. Tender hyssop, longan is used to shabu-shabu soup, with the simplest way of eating to highlight the rare sweetness of the spring buds.
Picked back to the wild Chrysanthemum appeared to be a little old, they added the eggs made of pot stewed soft, melt in the mouth, the rich aroma of a person a good time aftertaste. Shanbao told us, wild vegetables most people like is completely out of the nature of this overbearing grass and trees original flavor, no matter what way to cook, the pursuit of their "forced" out of the original flavor, but also to show the delicious.
As a wild vegetable enthusiasts, whether it is Wu Songjian such a leader, or Shanbao such a practitioner, are interested in promoting the culture of wild vegetables in Sanming. Shanbao restaurant operates a sound and colorful, but in addition to the taste of wild vegetables enthusiasts, is some of the curiosity of the patron, the locals did not come to much. Shanbao skillfully picking wild vegetables to the local farmers, teaching them to identify the skills of wild vegetables and some cooking methods, farmers picking wild vegetables to supply the restaurant outside, over time it will also be integrated into the life.
In Wu Songjian's lead, there are some local organic eco-farms and the Academy of Agricultural Sciences is carrying out the seedling work of wild vegetables. They all take "wild vegetables" as a guide, step by step in-depth understanding of the mountains, and try to better "taste of the mountains" to nourish the lives of local people.
By Zhang Xiaofei
Photographs by Wu Yuchen