It turns out that white radishes can really "load" shark fins

As the saying goes, "eat turnips in winter and ginger in summer"
.
Radish taste sweet and cold, eating turnips in autumn and winter is in line with the principle
of "autumn and winter yin" according to the time and conditions of health preservation.

Chinese has a long
history of eating turnips.
The ancients ate the most white radish, whose ancient name was also called Lai Li and Luo Fu
.
Li Shizhen explained in the "Compendium of Materia Medica": "Lai Li is the root name, called reed in ancient times, changed to Lai Li in the Middle Ages, and called radish
in later generations.
" ”

In ancient times, radishes were also a common and cheap vegetable
.
The Ming Dynasty's "History of Ancient and Modern Laughter" includes a paragraph about Zhao Tingzhi, a minister of the Song Dynasty, who once showed off to people around him: "In the township, people value the pen the most, and every time they help someone edit an article, people have to load a cart of gifts
.
" After hearing this, Huang Tingjian laughed loudly: "I think it's a radish and melon ear!" "I guess it's
all radish vegetables.
" Zhao Tingzhi felt that Huang Tingjian was very disrespectful, so he held a grudge, and later constantly excluded Huang Tingjian
.
This paragraph has exaggerated ingredients, but it shows that radishes were indeed a very cheap vegetable
in ancient times.

In addition to the traditional white radish, there are also carrots
.
It is also mentioned in the "Compendium of Materia Medica": "The Yuan time began from Hudi, and the smell was slightly like a radish, hence the name
.
" Digging roots in the winter moon, raw and cooked, and also for
fruits and vegetables.
"Although carrots are good, what people eat relatively more is still local white radish
.

Because radishes are cheap and common, eating turnips has become a manifestation
of the poverty and happiness of the ancients.
For example, Su Shi left a story of "rice bowls", which was recorded in Zeng Huan's "Gao Zhai Manlu" in the Song Dynasty
.
It is said that one day, Su Shi's friend Qian Xun invited him to eat " (xiǎo) rice"
.
Su Shi came to Qian Xun's house and found a bowl of white rice, a dish of white radish, and a white soup
on the table.
Su Shi was very strange: Why is it so cold to invite guests to dinner
.
Qian Xun said, didn't he say to eat "rice bowl", that is, "three white rice"
? Zheng Banqiao in the Qing Dynasty also pasted a pair in his kitchen: green vegetables and radish brown rice, and tile pot Tianshui chrysanthemum tea
.

Although radishes are cheap and close to the people, it is not good to eat them raw, and Li Yu, a literary scholar in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, has a
deep understanding.
He has some dislike for turnips in "Idle Couple"
.
He said that "raw radishes are shredded as side dishes, accompanied by vinegar and other substances, and porridge is most appropriate", but what troubles him is that eating too many raw radishes will cause gas and burps, which is easy to cause disgust among others, so he is not very willing to eat turnips
.
But he also found that radishes are better than scallions and garlic, because radishes are only eaten raw and flavored, but after cooking, they are not flushed, so it is better to spare the radish and eat it
.

As for how to eat turnips, the ancients must have loved to eat pickled turnips
.
For example, the night market of Fuzhouqiao in Kaifeng, the capital of the Northern Song Dynasty, recorded in "Tokyo Menghualu", has ginger spicy radish
.
In "Journey to the West", Sun Wukong pushed the ginseng fruit tree in Wuzhuang Guan, and the children in the temple prepared fasting rice for them in order to lock up the master and apprentices, and served them with soy melon, sauce eggplant, radish and vinegar bean carob.

Many ancient foodie treasures have also recorded the way to pickle turnips, such as the recipe for salting bad radishes
in the "Eight Notes of Zunsheng" written by Gao Lian in the Ming Dynasty.
In addition, there is a turnip porridge inside: that is, the large radish is marinated in salt, cooked and chopped, and then added to the porridge and rolled
.

There is also a method of "pickled dried turnips" in the Qing Dynasty's "Awakening Garden Record": the tender radish is washed whole, dried for five or six minutes, and each kilogram of radish is salted with one or two, mixed until the water is soft, and put into the altar and covered
tightly.
On the next day and the third day, the radishes had to be taken out half-sunbathed and half-winded to remove the moisture
.
After that, it is divided into small cans, and the mouth of the can is tightly plugged with straw so that air cannot leak.

Marinate in a cool place for a month and taste crispy and delicious
.

There is also a "radish cake" in "Awakening Garden Record": stir-fry shredded radish in lard oil, pepper noodles, green onion and salt until half cooked, take it out and let it cool, stir it into rice noodles, add water to adjust evenly, and steam it in a cage
.
Of course, there is another way, that is, instead of primary processing of shredded radish, it can be directly mixed with lard and pepper into rice flour and steamed, which is simpler
.

But when it comes to the person who eats radishes the most, Yuan Miao of the Qing Dynasty must be one
.
First of all, Teacher Yuan also likes to eat sauce radish: "The radish is fattened, and the sauce is eaten in one or two days, which is sweet and crunchy
.
" "The sauce radish can be eaten in a day or two, and it tastes sweet and crunchy
.

But the sauce radish is at best an appetizer
for Teacher Yuan.
He eats radishes in many ways, such as using turnips as a condiment for shark fin: cooking shark fins with chicken broth skewers of thin radish shredded so that diners can't tell whether it is shredded radish or shark fin in the bowl, which is very interesting
.
At that time, there was a Daoist Wu who was especially good at cooking shark fin, which left a deep impression
on Teacher Yuan.
Daoist Wu is to cook shark fin with shredded radish, and the shredded radish must be out of the water twice to remove
the flavor of the radish.

In addition, even if it is an ordinary boiled radish, Teacher Yuan has to fry the radish in cooked lard, add dried shrimp to simmer, and finally "take extreme ripeness as the degree
.
" Add green onion flowers, the color is like amber"
.
Yuan also recorded a "radish rice ball": the radish is shaved and boiled, slightly dried, mixed with onion sauce, put in the dough as filling, and then blanched with sesame oil
.
Boiling in soup is also acceptable
.
He also mentioned that turnip cakes
can be made in a similar way.

It is said that high-end ingredients often only need the simplest way to
cook.
But after watching Teacher Yuan eat turnips, I still have to sigh: first-class foodies can always make the simplest ingredients into high-end taste
.