In China, April 4, 2017 is the day of Qingming Festival. The date of Qingming, dpending on the 15th day from the Spring Equinox, changes every year between April 4th to 6th. On that day people will go to sweep tombs to commemorate ancestors as the most important activity to show respect to our ancestors. Also, people will have 3-day holiday to go out for spring outing to celebrate the coming of spring, green and blossom. During Qingming, willow starts turning green, for a good meaning, people will put willow branches on gates for protection against evil, as well as for welcoming the spring and green. When people going out for spring outing, they will make a willow crown and put on head. To celebrate Qingming, different places in China has their own special food to celebrate. I am going to introduce several common food in China. One calls Qing Tuan, meaning green glutinous rice ball. Mixed glutinous rice and juice from green mugwort or barley grass makes it green, symbolizes the green of spring, and normally with red bean paste as fillings. There are many other food that people eat around Qingming time. For example, snails are getting fattest around Qingming, thus it is the best time to eat snails, which been called Qingming snails. Snails can be stir-fried with shell, and flavored with garlic, ginger, soy sauce, cooking wine, and chili, then eat with toothpick to pick out the meat. Also the flesh can be picked out first and cooked with other ingredients, for example, in my hometown, snail meat stir-fried with Chinese chives is the most common combination. Sanzi is made of wheat flour dough as noddles and deep fried, making it very crispy. Nowadays, it is not only eaten during Qingming, gradually it is eaten as snack in many places in China. Around Qingming, in many warm places the peach starts blossoming. In my hometown, the peach blossoms every year, and my family will go to botanic garden to visit the beautiful peach blossom. As a good ingredient to cooking, people will use peach blossom for congee. This custom can be traced back to Tang Dynasty. Thank you for reading about the new culture about Chinese Qingming Festival. Even though I am at Miami now where always is green, I still want you enjoy the coming of spring and try more Chinese food!
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Today is the 15th day at the first month of the Lunar Calendar, which is the end of the Spring Festival celebration. At this day, people will make glutinous rice ball to celebrate it, which also called Yuanxiao Festival or Lantern Festival. Yuan in Chinese "圆“, in English "circle", meaning happy ending and family reunion. Well, as you can see, the shape of Yuanxiao is a ball, which also match the meaning of "Yuan". Since the glutinous rice ball is sweet, we usually eat it as desert. We eat Yuanxiao or Tangyuan not only for the Yuanxiao Festival, but also for Dongzhi, the Winter Solstice Festival. You might be curious why I put two pictures here. It is not because of the different flavors, while actually they are two different types of rice ball. In the South of China, they call it Tangyuan, and in the North of China they call it Yuanxiao. Yuanxiao and Tangyuan look and taste very similar, even I cannot distinguish them well. But they do have differences, the biggest difference is the way they been made. Let's see what are the two different ways to make it. Basically Yuanxiao or Tangyuan is made from glutinous rice flour mixed with water so that can be formed as ball, usually it has fillings, commonly with black sesame or red beans. Then cooked in boiled water, and eat with the soup. Tangyuan—--the wrapped ball The way of making Tangyuan is similar to dumplings, wrapping fillings with flour wrappers, but the wrapper for Tangyuan is much more thicker than dumpling's wrapper. Mix the glutinous flour with water and make wrappers. Then put fillings at the center of the wrapper and roll it into a ball with both hands. Lastly just cook them in boiled water until them floating on the water. Yuanxiao—--the rolling ball The point of making Yuanxiao is to roll the filling, which is formed as a ball, in glutinous flour, so that the filling ball can be coated with flour. Then take out the balls and steep them into water for seconds. After this you need to put them back into the flour and roll them again. Take out and steep into water...Roll..., repeat the two steps at least 3 times. If you want thicker wrapper, you can repeat few more times. Then at the last time you did rolling, you finished making process, you just need to put the rice balls into boiled water until them floating on the water. Due to the different making ways, Tangyuan tastes much more soft and has more fluent fillings. But they both delicious. We also have different flavor for the wrapper. You can choose carrots, spinach, sweet potato, or many other ingredients. For example, press vegetables into juice then add into the flour, so that you can have colorful wrappers. Thank you for your time! Hope you like this traditional festival desert!
Happy Lunar New Year! January 28, 2017 is the first day of Lunar Calendar of the rooster year. In China, people start celebrating the most important festival-Spring Festival. Even I cannot celebrate it with my family, but I cannot miss one of the important cuisines during Chinese new year. That is dumpling! In Chinese we call it Jiao Zi "饺子“, which is a homonym for ”交子” meaning the moment of the transferring to new year. Thus, people always eat dumplings to celebrate the coming of new year. In addition, there is another explanation of eating dumplings: the shape of dumpling looks like gold ingots, thus it also symbolizes wealth. Nowadays, dumpling becomes a cuisine not only for festival, but a common daily dishes. Now, let's learn how make delicious dumplings! Depending on your taste, different fillings can be used to make dumplings. Today I am going to introduce you the dumpling with pork and cabbage I made with friends for the celebration of Chinese New Year. Ingredient: 1.5lb minced pork 6 leaves of cabbage,chopped dumpling wrappers minced ginger minced scallion, light soy sauce salt oil First Step: Make fillings: well mix pork, cabbage, ginger, and scallion all together (according to your taste, add appropriate ginger and scallion) Add 3 spoon of soy sauce Add half spoon salt Add half spoon oil Well mix the fillings again Second Step: Dampen the edges of the wrapper with water, scoop appropriate of filling on it. Then, click the following file to download a short video to learn how to wrap! Third Step: Put your beautiful dumplings on a large plate or container, remember to put powder as a base on the plate so that the dumplings will not stick on the plate, also do not put dumplings close to each other, avoiding them sticking on each other. Fourth Step: Put dumplings into boiled water and stir slowly with the back of a ladle. Once the dumplings float on the water, continue to boil about 1 minute using low heat. Then scoop out dumplings. Last Step! Enjoy it! Usually I like to eat it with vinegar, you also can make sauce depend on your taste. Thank you for your reading!
Visit my YouTube, click the playlist of "How to make dumplings", you will find the full video from CiCi Li to follow making dumplings. (The second video from Maggie Zhu will teach you how to make dumpling wrappers). |
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April 2017
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