As the top snack during Qingming Festival, how did Qingtuan become so “green”?

Qingming Festival is approaching. "A Hundred Questions on Sui Shi" says: "All things grow at this time, and they are all clean and bright, so it is called Qingming Festival." People have a tradition of paying homage to their ancestors and going outings. In these warm and rainy days, with grass growing and birds flying, spring is everywhere. Among them, the growth of a plant has attracted the attention of countless foodies, and that is mugwort .

Wormwood | Sue Sweeney / wikimedia

One herb for many uses

Artemisia argyi, commonly known as mugwort, mugwort, and mugwort leaves, is a plant of the genus Artemisia in the Asteraceae family. It is a common perennial weed in the fields. Its leaves are pinnately lobed, with silvery-white hairs on the back. The whole plant exudes a strong odor . Some people avoid it, while others love it.

For everyone, mugwort is common in daily life. It can be found everywhere, such as in aromatherapy, acupuncture, mosquito repellent, etc. Some people are even more weird and like to use it to soak their feet, which is said to remove athlete's foot. It is also hung on the door to ward off evil spirits during the Dragon Boat Festival. Well, with such a bad fate, it is better to be eaten. So don't step on it to death just because it is a member of the Asteraceae family. Obviously, it is delicious.

Hanging mugwort and calamus on Dragon Boat Festival | Oriental IC

Around the Qingming Festival, everything is ready to go, and it is a big step from spring to summer. At this time, the spring season is almost over. If you don't seize the last spring light, you will regret it in the endless hot summer. Therefore, Qingming's green dumplings - this excellent seasonal masterpiece, this delicious delicacy that is inextricably linked to mugwort - is your last chance to retain the good spring light.

Qingtuan is a popular snack during the Qingming Festival in Jiangsu and Zhejiang. It is said that it was first created to commemorate Jie Zitui, who did not seek fame and fortune despite his meritorious service. People spontaneously did not light fires to cook and only ate cold food during the Cold Food Festival. Yuan Mei, a senior food critic in the Qing Dynasty, once described Qingtuan in Suiyuan Food List as follows: "Mash green grass into juice, mix with flour to make a dough, the color is like jasper." Just think about it, it is really cute and delicious.

The delicious green rice dumpling | coolmanjackey / wikimedia

Nowadays, when searching for Qingtuan on the Internet, there is an anecdote that can be found everywhere, saying that the great Tang Dynasty poet Bai Juyi passed by a Qingtuan shop and was inspired to write a popular Qingtuan poem: "Qingtuan shop on Cold Food Day, spring is low on willow branches. The aroma of wine keeps guests, and the orioles sing and people write poems." In fact, this is a false rumor. The original name of the poem is "Poem of Passing by Zaotuan Shop on Cold Food Day", and the original sentence is: "Zaotuan Shop on Cold Food Day, spring is low on willow branches." What Bai Juyi ate was jujube cake, not Qingtuan. The two are too different, and Bai Juyi was falsely represented .

How is Qingtuan made?

In other words, from ancient times to the present, making Qingtuan requires three ingredients: Qing juice, wrapping the dough and stuffing. Among them, the production of Qing juice is particularly critical. Generally speaking, there are three kinds of ingredients for making Qing juice: mugwort, wheat straw and qū grass.

Gnaphalium affine is also a raw material for making green juice | KENPEI / wikimedia

The wormwood around Qingming Festival is the freshest, most seasonal and most suitable for making green juice. The perfect wormwood green rice dumpling is a real master of picking up girls or guys - it is cute in the eyes, soft and delicious on the taste buds, and the secondary metabolites of Asteraceae plants give wormwood a special fragrance (of course, some terpenoid secondary metabolites are liver toxic). When you bite it, the wormwood glutinous rice dumpling with a slightly cool herbal flavor, mixed with sweet bean paste filling, has layers of rich taste overflowing on the tip of your tongue. This is the way to eat spring!

Every year before the Qingming Festival, the wild mugwort can be given this glorious mission. The old roots and stems of fresh mugwort are removed, leaving the tender parts. After blanching, draining, adding alkali powder, boiling water and cooling water, the bitterness of the mugwort can be removed and its original fragrance can be restored. The extracted juice is mixed with glutinous rice flour, and the appearance of the mugwort green ball is initially formed.

Prepared mugwort leaves | Oriental IC

After solving the green juice and the dumplings, the filling is much easier to deal with, which is nothing more than another battle between sweet and salty. I believe that both the red bean paste party and the egg yolk party have something to say here, and there are also fashionable combinations such as amaranth dried tofu, pickled mustard greens and shredded pork, and even rising heresies such as abalone, sea cucumber, and Jinhua ham. The traditional mugwort green dumplings slowly open their soft skin to accept all these delicacies.

Finally, add your favorite fillings to the glutinous rice ball with mugwort, then knead it into a ball, place it on bamboo leaves and steam it until cooked. Although the process is tedious and quite a test of the handwork, this delicacy is indeed worth the effort.

Do it yourself and have fun | Zhang Wenjing

The author's fans sent me a glutinous rice dumpling filled with green vegetables, dried tofu, egg yolk and pork floss. The glutinous rice dumpling has less wormwood juice, so the color is white | @lovebabyface5202

Perhaps you will notice a detail, that the color of the wormwood green rice dumpling is often not as bright green as the wheat straw green rice dumpling, the former is dull, slightly yellowish, not so bright and lovely. This is because the process of adding alkali powder is very particular, because chlorophyll will decompose when it encounters acid and heat, but it is stable when it encounters alkali solution , so if this process is slightly worse, the green rice dumpling will not be so green.

However, as long as you are not too much of a perfectionist, the quality of the mugwort rice dumplings made at home is very good. The aroma of mugwort is mellow but not pungent, the skin is soft and sticky, soft and glutinous but not sticky to your teeth, especially when it is fresh out of the oven, it is so delicious that you can't stop eating it.

Fresh handmade qingtuan | Cat's Diary/ wikimedia

The Qingtuan sold in general stores nowadays is basically made of green juice made from wheat straw instead of mugwort . Firstly, mugwort is not available every day and the production is not high, while wheat straw has a certain scale of planting and the supply is worry-free; secondly, if the green juice made from mugwort is not handled properly, it will taste very bitter, while the green juice made from wheat straw naturally has a slightly sweet taste, which is more acceptable to those who have never tasted Qingtuan; furthermore, in this age of appearance, wheat straw is green and lovely and exudes luster, while mugwort is not only slightly inferior in color, but may also have leaf residues, so it is naturally inferior.

Jiangmai Qingtuan| The attack of succulents

Therefore, at this time of year, those old-fashioned cake and pastry shops, which are crowded with people and have long queues, all regard their own mugwort green balls as their golden signboards, using seasonal wild and pollution-free mugwort and the hand-made products of experienced masters as their selling points. Although it is a marketing method, it is also a way to protect and inherit traditions under the "massive invasion" of modern wheat green balls.

One meal, many forms

The custom of eating mugwort dumplings during Qingming Festival is common throughout the country, but China is so vast that the definition and presentation of mugwort dumplings are all over the place, and they are very unique from the content to the appearance. In many places, mugwort dumplings are not as round and cute as the traditional ones. In some places, they are actually dumpling-shaped, called Qingming cakes , with salty spring bamboo shoots, mushrooms, salted meat and dried tofu stuffed in them, and it is said that the taste is surprisingly good.

The dumpling-shaped Qingtuan, I have checked it out and it is really not a dumpling, it is called Qingtuan in the local area | @姚沅姐姐

In some places, the wormwood dumplings are pressed by molds or intentionally made into cakes, which are called wormwood cakes. They are just a little flatter and have no essential difference from ordinary wormwood dumplings.

Ai Bing | @High classmate who explores nature

Nowadays, Qingtuan, like Zongzi, is no longer just an offering to ancestors, nor is it just a treat that can be enjoyed only during certain seasons. Instead, it has long been transformed into a common and delicious snack that can be consumed at any time. That is why the saying “Qingtuan is permanent, festivals come and go, and the ways people eat and drink change” is particularly appropriate.

But it is this mugwort dumpling, just like the freshest shepherd's purse wonton in spring, that exudes a kind of magic, making us "migrate" to a fixed place and time every year like migratory birds. Although the season is only a few days, the lingering taste lasts for several years . Its unique flavor reminds us of the joy of childhood and the figures of our parents working hard. On the table, there are all kinds of yellow and green, and when you eat it, you will feel full of spring.

This is the spring miracle brought by mugwort dumplings.

Author: @Attack of Succulents.

This article comes from GuokrNature (ID: GuokrNature)

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