Mother's Qingming Tan Spring Taste

Due to the epidemic, I was unable to return to Yandang's hometown this Qingming Festival.

Suddenly I miss the Qingming Tan made by my mother.

In Yandang, Qingming Festival is not only about tomb sweeping and outing, but also a festival about eating. Every Qingming Festival, my mother will cook a table of seasonal dishes, including fresh bamboo shoots, bean pods, and seafood. The protagonist is Qingming Tan. My mother would call early and ask, "Come back early to eat Qingming."

"Eat Qingming", mainly eat the Qingming Tan made by mother. "Tan" is the name of Yandang people. In other places in Wenzhou, it is called Qingming cake, and some are called Miancai cake.

I don't know when the name "eat Qingming" started. I didn't think it before, but now I write it down and find it really strange grammar.

As strange as "eat Qingming", we call the process of preparing the Qingming family banquet "doing Qingming". The word "do" reflects the complexity of the production process of Qingming tan and also has a sense of festive ritual. There is really a rural "wisdom" usage.

In order to "do Qingming", my mother would take us to pick cotton vegetables in the fields of mountains and fields when we were young. Miancai is a Wenzhou dialect, also known as "Qingming grass", which is actually a Compositae plant.

Miancai is scattered in the mountains and fields. Every Qingming season, Miancai will sprout with white capillary leaves, yellow flowers, and a faint fragrance, swaying in the rice fields and ridges, like countless stars blinking on the green field. With bright eyes.

In the morning, the dew on the cotton leaves was crystal clear, as if to tell the people picking: Spring has awakened. My mother instructed to pick the unbloomed ones and pinch the top ones, not only because they are fresh and tasty, but most importantly, they will sprout and grow new leaves after a few rains, so multiple rounds of picking can be carried out.

After the cotton cabbage is picked and brought home, it is picked, washed, blanched, picked up, wringed out the water, chopped, put into a stone mortar and smashed.

Wait until the cotton cabbage is completely mashed, and use the glutinous rice flour, knead it into a ball, until the rice ball is green, tough and glutinous, and the shreds of the cotton cabbage are looming. This process is the most complicated and the most test of craftsmanship. The dough should not be too soft or too hard.

With the Miancai flour, you need to prepare the filling.

Chopping and frying is not easy. Cut the freshly dug spring bamboo shoots and fried dried tofu into cubes, chop the pork and shredded cabbage (dried white radish) into the end, add salt, home cooked rice wine, and shredded ginger, fry them in a large pot, sprinkle with Add chopped green onion, mix well and wait to cool.

Everything is ready, you can start wrapping Qingming Tan! Pick a piece of rice ball, knead it into a glutinous rice ball, then press it into a cake shape with the palm of your hand, shape it into a bowl shape, with a thick bottom and a thin edge, then wrap the prepared filling in, compact it, and put it in the palm of your hand little by little. Spin up and squeeze out the air in it bit by bit to close the mouth.

After wrapping the Qingming dumplings, the last step is to put them in a steamer and steam them.

The aroma slowly diffused from the steamer, and the house was fragrant. When I opened the steamer lid, I saw Qingming cakes one after another, green as jade, with an elegant aroma, very tempting.

Before serving it on the table, my mother would take out a few for us to taste as soon as possible, and bite down.

When I think about it now, my mother is like a magician. Once the green Miancai is in her skillful hands, it turns into a delicious Qingming Tan in an instant.

Hometown Qingming Tan is a delicacy in spring; picking cotton dishes to make cotton dishes is a beautiful thing in spring.

I opened the photo album, looking for a photo of my mother "doing Qingming", but unfortunately, I never made any image records.

It turned to a few years ago, and organized children to hold a nature exploration and make photos of Qingming Tan.

The photos also brought back my nostalgia for nature.