When the spring tide is in full swing, the buds and leaves are still intact, and the toon trees are sprouting their wine red tips. Wang Zengqi wrote about toon, “One chop in the mouth, three springs are not forgotten. If there are two trees in the courtyard of an old Beijing house, one is a pomegranate, and the other is a toon, which is planted to taste the freshness of spring and winter. The toon is a gift for “spring socializing” in Beijing in the old days, when neighbors, left and right, would give a handful to show their friendship.
I remember when I was a child, my grandfather’s Family lived in a distillery dormitory, and before the end of winter vacation, we would go to the distillery where he worked and look forward to the spring sprouts of the toon trees in the factory yard. A long bamboo pole with a hook made of bent wire was held up to the top of the tree and gently hooked at the root of the branch. I stood under the tree and caught the delicious Food that fell from the sky. Just a small handful was enough, and no one seemed to want to monopolize the springtime on the treetops, a tacit agreement reached by the workers in the factory about sharing.
In the early 1990s, when eggs were still available by ticket, my grandmother would just crack two eggs into a bowl and mix the chopped toon with the egg mixture, which was wrapped in the egg mixture and dug into the hot oil, gradually spreading into a bubbling, tender cake with a tantalizing aroma. I can’t forget this dish because every Time I ate scrambled eggs with toon, school would start.
The freshly picked toon is cut into small pieces, blanched in boiling water, and mixed into the noodles, then sprinkled with chopped spring onions and a few drops of rice vinegar. Beijingers can’t seem to get enough of fried noodles all year round, but only this bowl is the most popular in spring.
Beijingers love toon, and there are many clues from the names of places. There is also a north-south hutong that was named Tsubaki Hutong in 1965 because of the large area of Tsubaki trees planted there. When I was in junior high school, I ate pork and toon stuffed buns and cornmeal dumplings at his house, which was very impressive.
Eating toon is certainly not exclusive to Beijing. The best toon I’ve ever had was in Yuanling, Hunan province, where the red toon trees grow tall, their gray bark contrasting sharply with the dark red shoots, and the toon in Yuanling is delicious because of its delicate fibers and prominent oil.
In Anhui, you can also eat pickled toon and toon paste, where salt and sesame oil make the flavor of toon less pure and replace it with a rich flavor, which can be used to stir-fry bacon and mix with tofu; in Yunnan, toon can be served cold, stuffed into baked pocket tofu, or with some chili dipping water if you have a heavy taste; in Sichuan, whenever toon appears, wild vegetables like shepherd’s purse, ruanqi, peanut, fern and ashwagandha give way to it. In Sichuan, as soon as the toon appears, wild vegetables such as chestnut, ruanqi, peanut, fern, and ashwagandha give way to it, and the toon sprouts and beans, white meat, and pepper sprouts are put on the table.
But not everyone loves it. I did a small survey on toon in WeChat, and 7 out of 30 people were very resistant to the taste of toon, and one of them had never eaten it, and many of them said they had eaten toon only after they arrived in northern China. A few years ago, I also saw toon on the “list of the most unpalatable vegetables”, ranking before fishy grass and after cilantro. When I asked people who don’t eat toon what they hate about it, the responses were “astringent”, “bitter”, and “bitter”. “bitter”, “spicy ” and “stinky”. Astringent”, “bitter” and “pungent” are the common characteristics of most herbs A chef who was cooking overseas once couldn’t remember the English name of the toon, so he blurted out “Chinese rosemary” (Chinese Rosemary.
China is probably the only country in the world that eats toon, which is native to China and widely distributed, and has undergone an evolution from a therapeutic to a food. The first record of toon was probably in the Shanhaijing, which said, “The mountain of Chenghou is full of roses”, which is the toon; Su Wu wrote in “Spring Vegetables” that Su Wu wrote in his “Spring Vegetables”, “Is it not as rich as our winter vegetables, which thrive on frosty leaves and dewy buds”, which shows The long history of “eating Tsubaki” is evident from the fact that Liu Dong recorded in “A Brief History of the Imperial Capital” that “on New Year’s Day, the new year’s day, a sprout of Tsubaki and a cucumber would cost a few and a half thousand dollars. “; “Ben Cao Tu Jing” also said, “Tsubaki wood solid and leaf fragrant, can eat “; “Yanqi people pick toon buds and eat them as vegetables”, written by Xie Zhaozhuang in Five Miscellaneous Chopping Boards; during the Jiajing period, Xu Guangqi used toon to save In the Jiajing period, Xu Guangqi used toon to save the grain shortage.
In the Ming Dynasty, Gao Lian recorded in Zunsheng Bajian that the first sprouts of toon were picked, blanched in Soup with little salt, and dried in the sun, and could be kept for more than a year. Many years later, Yuan Mei also proved that tofu was the most delicious way to eat tofu in his “Suiyuan Eating List”; Wang Zengqi said that tofu and tofu, one green and one white, were the most fresh and tasty way to eat.
Tofu with toon is the most common dish in my family, because my mother’s cooking is very concise, so this dish is commonly served at my family’s spring table, and over time, it has become a customary taste. For me, this toon flavor is really a kind of nostalgia. I remember when I was at school in Australia, my roommate and I saw a suspected toon tree in our neighbor’s yard, so we salivated for a long time on our way to school, and a few days later, my roommate got permission from our neighbor to ask for a few sticks and fried me a small plate. I quickly added a chopstick and suddenly a bitter taste filled my mouth, realizing that it was probably not a toon. When I met the neighbor again, she asked us if the leaves were good, and we nodded reluctantly, and she acted surprised, so she must have tasted the “toon” too. The taste.
I like toon, to a large extent because of its homemade properties. Because of the season, there are few restaurants that are willing to cook fresh toon, and as far as I can remember, I only had fried toon fish at Tokwasa, and once tempura, I can’t remember where I ate it, probably Rin Shikoku or Kiichiro. Nowadays, we can eat toon throughout the year thanks to the toon seedlings, which are seedling sprouts from the seeds of the toon tree, with delicate leaves and a fresh, slightly pungent taste.
It is like the blossom of vegetables, which only appears for half a month in a year, and if it is out of season, you have to wait for another year, which makes it precious. I bought a box of green toon from Linqu the other day and was so excited to open it that the leaves fell all over the table, so I leaned over to pick them up, washed them, wrapped them in batter and fried them.
In the north, whenever you eat toon, you know the heat is going to stop. Spring is coming.
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