Beauty Kitchen - Fashion New Reading

Author: Benben Chen / Country: Mainland China
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-06-01
Features: If you love life, then, spin and dance to our spring culinary waltz. These natural foods, after being touched by our hands, become the best delicacies, and the taste of summer. Autumnal delicacies can warm one's heart, and that special sentiment will rise in the heart with the aroma of the food. If you are a connoisseur of food, if you believe that the essence of food is art, you must choose warm foods in winter.
A five-year-old little girl, still a chubby baby, always followed her mother's legs, coming and going from the kitchen. A ten-year-old girl, as soon as she came home, threw down her schoolbag and ran to the kitchen to cook, though she couldn’t light a fire or even cook. A fifteen-year-old girl, weighed down by heavy studies, her mother no longer allowed her to do anything unrelated to studying, and from then on, the girl no longer entered the kitchen, though her height was already enough to reach the stove. A twenty-year-old college student, who spent all her free time on grooming, believed that a slender figure and smooth skin were a woman’s capital. They learned from each other, “In these days, women should return to the kitchen. I’ve learned so much knowledge, I can’t go home and become a yellow-faced wife.”
At twenty-five, a woman becomes mature, and different people have different life insights. Some still live a delicate life, while others realize the essence of being a woman. They understand the significance of the kitchen for women.
“Turnip is better than pear—” As the old Beijing saying goes, on the day of Lichun (Start of Spring), early in the morning, one could hear people shouting in the alleys with baskets, “Buy turnips to bite the spring!” Even the poorest families would buy turnips for their children to enjoy the spring. Back then, Beijing sold a type of turnip called “Xinmei,” which often became woody after a long winter, but even so, it had to be bitten. Later, while researching historical materials, I learned that Lichun had already been recognized as a solar term as early as the Spring and Autumn Period. In the Eastern Han Dynasty, formal customs of welcoming spring and folk dietary traditions emerged. By the Ming and Qing dynasties, Lichun culture reached its peak. In the Manchu-Han Imperial Feast of the Qing Dynasty, which included 128 dishes, spring rolls were one of the nine pastries. The Qing people even had a special poem titled “Biting Spring” that read:
“Warm laws quietly urge the spring at the end of the twelfth lunar month,
At the banquet, lettuce marks the fragrant season;
The spiritual root, rooted in the earth, holds crisp ice,
Fine threads piled on the plate, cut jade evenly.
With wine, hidden fragrance rises from the spoon,
Adding meals, the sound of chewing moves the lips;
In the capital, festive items from hometown gardens,
Take turns, concern for the new white hair.”
One can imagine that “biting spring” was once a fashionable term. But now, “biting spring” no longer has such a strong flavor or grand scale. However, people still remember to eat spring pancakes on the day of Lichun to “bite the spring.”
Beijing people make spring pancakes by briefly scalding flour with boiling water, kneading it into thin pancakes (an old person once taught: grasp the dough with the right hand, hold a heated spoon with the left, spin the dough on the spoon’s bottom in a circle, and then tear off a thin sheet for a spring roll wrapper), and then pan-frying them. They then roll various cooked dishes into the pancakes to eat. The cooked dishes can be divided into meat and vegetarian categories. Meat dishes include stir-fried shredded leeks with meat, stir-fried shredded spinach with meat, or thinly sliced smoked pork belly, pine nut small intestines, donkey meat, light soy sauce meat, smoked hams, soy sauce hams, soy sauce tripe, smoked chicken, and soy sauce duck, etc., mixed with thin scallions and sesame oil or sweet bean sauce. Vegetarian dishes include stir-fried bean sprouts, stir-fried yellow garlic, stir-fried vermicelli, or a mixed stir-fry of the three.
When eating spring pancakes, the whole family sits together, places the cooked pancakes in a steamer, and takes them as they eat, for the sake of warmth. It is also customary to eat from beginning to end, which is called “having a head and a tail,” meaning good fortune. It may seem simple, but how many young people truly know how to make spring pancakes? Perhaps some would argue that folk customs are spread through the changes of history, becoming people’s imagination. But why not try to turn imagination into reality? Although there isn’t time to learn to make those thin-as-butterfly-wing pancakes, buying ready-made pancakes and cooking some meat and vegetable dishes shouldn’t be too difficult. With spring pancakes and fillings, making them at home becomes much easier—actually, the joy of eating spring pancakes lies in rolling up the pancakes, spreading sauce, preparing dishes, and rolling them, then biting into them with big mouthfuls, which has a taste of returning to simplicity. The meaning is more important than whether the pancakes are thin or the dishes are complete. Moreover, as long as they are homemade, even if they are not delicious, they are always more satisfying than those from restaurants.
P10-11