What food does Shanghainese Tomb-Sweeping Day eat?
Shanghai Tomb-Sweeping Day Cuisine 1, Youth League
Tomb-Sweeping Day has the custom of eating dumplings. Traditional green meatballs are made by mixing glutinous rice flour and japonica rice flour in proportion, mixing with boiling water, steaming, beating into dough, adding the green juice beaten by Ai Qing or wheat seedlings, beating again, adding an appropriate amount of alkaline water to protect the color, and wrapping with bean paste or other sweet fillings to make meatballs and cakes.
But not everyone can eat this kind of green ball casually, especially those with weak gastrointestinal function. It is best to eat less or even not. Patients with pancreatitis and gastritis should not eat green balls, because glutinous rice in green balls will lead to recurrence of inflammation or deterioration of the condition; Patients with cholecystitis and gallstones are not suitable for eating, which may aggravate their condition due to indigestion. In addition, diabetics fast sweet green balls such as bean paste stuffing. In addition, the elderly and children have poor digestive function, so don't be greedy and eat less.
Shanghai Tomb-Sweeping Day Cuisine 2, Zizhu Tea
In Shanghai, Tomb-Sweeping Day used to eat peach porridge and purple bamboo shoots tea, and there was a sacrificial platform to welcome the city gods to patrol the city. Purple bamboo shoot tea, also known as Huzhou purple bamboo shoot and Changxing purple bamboo shoot, is a traditional famous tea in China, produced in Changxing County, Zhejiang Province. It was famous as early as 1200 years ago. Because of the exquisite tea-making technology, the tea buds are tender, the color is purple, and it looks like bamboo shoots, so it is named purple bamboo shoot tea.
Picking one bud and one leaf or one bud and two leaves from Qingming to Grain Rain every year, and its production goes through the processes of spreading, deactivating enzymes, sorting, spreading, cooling, primary sun drying and secondary sun drying. The best tea buds and leaves are like bamboo shoots; The superior tea buds are tender and the leaves are slightly spread, which looks like orchids. After brewing, the tea soup is clear and bright, with blue color, fresh taste and faint orchid fragrance.
Shanghai Tomb-Sweeping Day Cuisine 3, _ Fish
Jiangnan is known as the custom of eating seafood before Qingming. Speaking of the most beautiful umami flavor in spring, I'm afraid there are many controversies about vegetarian dishes, but the title of "the first freshness in spring" in meat products deserves to belong to _ fish, one of the three great delicacies in the Yangtze River. Southerners, especially Shanghainese, are very particular about eating fish. Eating fish, with Qingming as the dividing line, is the best season before Qingming, and Qingming is already the "tail season" for eating fish, and the time is very short.
_ Fish can be eaten in many ways, such as steaming and carving. _ Fish tastes delicious, but the method is simple. Shredded onion and ginger, with soy sauce and salt, can be stewed, and there is nothing particular about big dishes. Steamed fish, fresh and tender, is contained in the mouth, and the delicious taste echoes between the teeth for a long time.
In addition, according to the old custom in Shanghai, the steamed cake dough used for sacrifice should be soaked with wicker, dried and stored. On the day of long summer, it will be fried and given to children. It is said that you won't get sick in summer after eating it.
Shanghai Tomb-Sweeping Day Cuisine 4, Lotus Root
Residents in Tomb-Sweeping Day, Jiangsu and Zhejiang have the habit of eating lotus root, which is to wish silkworm babies always good at spinning silk. Lotus root, which means to break the silk, expresses the memory of ancestors and deceased relatives, and is also one of the dishes for ancestor worship.
"According to legend, kitchen smoking is prohibited by the First Five-Year Plan, and the Red Lotus Youth League first recommended it." During the Qingming Festival, glutinous rice lotus root is also a kind of fresh food besides the Youth League. "Rock sugar, lotus leaf, Toona sinensis leaf, Artemisia argyi leaf and hazelnut are boiled in steam for 2 hours, stewed at the remaining temperature for 7 hours, and then cooled", which retains the original nutrition of lotus root and the fragrance of glutinous rice and sugar. Even after vacuum packaging, readers still feel soft, sweet and fragrant.
Shanghai Tomb-Sweeping Day Cuisine 5, Peach Blossom Porridge
Some Shanghainese, Tomb-Sweeping Day, like to eat peach blossom porridge. Qingming is the most prosperous time for peach blossoms, and it is also a time to mourn the past. There is a kind of "Peach Blossom Porridge" in the popular Qingming custom. There is such a lyric in Confucius' Peach Blossom Fan Sending Fan in Qing Dynasty: "On March 3, Liulang arrived, hand in hand to build the building, and the peach blossom porridge was full." This was originally the food of the Han nationality's "Cold Food Festival" in Tang Dynasty. Because the dates of Tomb-Sweeping Day and Cold Food Festival are similar, eating "Peach Blossom Porridge" has become a custom in Tomb-Sweeping Day.
Peach blossom porridge is the most popular among all the special foods in the Cold Food Festival, which is inseparable from the beautiful meaning represented by peach blossom. The raw materials and methods of peach blossom porridge are very simple. The raw materials are peach blossom, japonica rice and brown sugar, and can also be replaced by rock sugar. Boil japonica rice into porridge first, then add a few grams of peach petals, and finally add rock sugar until it dissolves. Authentic peach porridge uses fresh peach petals.
The custom of Shanghainese Tomb-Sweeping Day
The main activities in Tomb-Sweeping Day are grave sweeping and hiking.
There are nearly ten million people traveling around Tomb-Sweeping Day every year. Due to the reform and opening up, cemeteries have flourished, and related sites are mainly distributed in Suzhou and Jiaxing in other provinces. Therefore, the number of people going to the above areas is more than one million, which often causes traffic congestion in the province for several days before and after Qingming.
The custom of eating dumplings in Tomb-Sweeping Day.
Mix Bromus inermis juice with glutinous rice to make the green juice and rice flour blend with each other, then wrap it with stuffing such as bean paste and jujube paste, and put it in a steamer with reed leaves as the bottom. Steamed balls are green in color and fragrant, which is the most distinctive seasonal food in Tomb-Sweeping Day. Some people, Tomb-Sweeping Day, like to eat peach blossom porridge, sweep graves, and use knife fish for family banquets. In Huzhou, Zhejiang, every family in Tomb-Sweeping Day makes zongzi, which can be used as a grave-sweeping sacrifice or as dry food for hiking. As the saying goes: "Qingming Zongzi is real."