The secret recipe of the talented woman Zhang Ailing in the Republic of China for cooking amaranth - Pink Memories

I believe most people in Jiangxi know about amaranth, a local dish of Jiangxi. Every household will make it during the Dragon Boat Festival, and it is very delicious. Amaranth is not a famous dish, but the national talented woman Eileen Chang has an indissoluble bond with it.

Eileen Chang and Amaranthus

Zhang Ailing recorded that when she lived with her mother in Shanghai, they often went to her uncle's house across the street for dinner, and her mother would always bring a portion of stir-fried fresh amaranth.

In Zhang's writing, this dish is colorful and sexy: "When amaranth is on the market, I always hold a bowl of greasy purple-red and dark green amaranth, with fat white garlic cloves dyed light pink. Walking across the street under the daylight, it feels like holding a pot of a common unknown Western potted plant, with small pink flowers, mottled dark red and moss-green saw-edge big pointed leaves, and red and green, but the flower is not fragrant, without the warm fragrance of amaranth."

Zhang Ailing's understanding of agarwood is definitely at the level of a gourmet. She said: "Stir-fried agarwood without garlic is not worth stir-frying at all." Garlic cloves play the role of a little honey in this Jiangnan delicacy.

Different from the name in Shanghai, in our hometown Youyang, we call amaranth "Shencai" or "Tianxianmi". The term "Shencai" is very old. "Compendium of Materia Medica" says: "Shencai grows in the south and is stir-fried in the fields."

Zhang's very vivid description of amaranth immediately brought back my memory. When I was a child, my mother cooked amaranth for us and fried it with a little vinegar, which made the rice very red and fragrant.

Dyeing rice red is fun for children and can increase their appetite.

Amaranthus is not only a delicacy, but also a good medicine. Chinese medicine believes that it can clear away heat and detoxify, and can stop bleeding. I remember when I had diarrhea as a child, my mother would stir-fry amaranth with vinegar and add more garlic than usual for me to eat. Usually, the diarrhea would go away after two meals.

Wang Shixiong, a famous doctor in the Qing Dynasty, wrote a book called "Sui Xi Ju Food Recipe", which is a famous food therapy book. He mentioned amaranth in it and said that it "replenishes qi, clears heat, improves eyesight, promotes abortion, and benefits the large and small intestines." He also mentioned a series of cooking methods, such as steaming amaranth, amaranth soup, and stewing amaranth. The method of stewing tender amaranth heads is to stew the amaranth heads with duck egg white and chicken soup. The taste is even more delicious.

How to cook Amaranthus

Amaranth is a common vegetable in the southwest of Jiangnan. Sichuan cuisine, Cantonese cuisine, and Huaiyang cuisine all have famous dishes of this dish. For example, there is a Sichuan dish called "Red Persimmon and Green Amaranth", which uses tomatoes stuffed with meat and amaranth to make soup; there is a Cantonese dish called "Braised Amaranth with Crab Paste", which is specifically prepared by washing the amaranth, blanching it in hot water, washing the crab meat, adding a little milk and egg white to make crab paste, cooking it in a pan with cooking wine, then adding pepper and salt, amaranth, crab paste, and starch, and adding milk at the same time. After serving, sprinkle with chopped ham to complete the dish.

Amaranthus was originally a wild vegetable, and later became a farm vegetable. Wild amaranth tastes better. Gu Zhong of the Qing Dynasty mentioned in his "Yang Xiao Lu" that "gray amaranth can be cooked, fried, or mixed. It is better than domestic amaranth and is suitable for people with fire syndrome." Amaranth is actually divided into two types: red and green. Xue Baocheng of the Qing Dynasty wrote in "Summary of Vegetarianism": "There are two types of amaranth, red and green. They are fried with sesame oil and then stewed in soup." This method is also very clever, because frying first and then stewing can make it more fragrant and highlight the deliciousness of amaranth.

All in all, it's a wonderful vegetable.