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More than mooncakes in Hangzhou
By Xu Wenwen |
September 27, 2012, Thursday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
THE Mid-Autumn Festival arrives on Sunday and most people think about mooncakes or yuebing, which are round like the moon and represent togetherness and family reunions.
The festival, a harvest feast, originated in worship and appreciation of the moon. Mooncakes were not only snacks, but also offerings to the moon.
Mooncakes can be sweet or savory and filled with many ingredients, nuts, seeds, dates, lily root paste, meat, egg, yolk, which symbolizes unity. Varieties are endless.
But mooncakes are only part of a traditional Mid-Autumn Festival dinner.
In Hangzhou, which has a long history and rich food culture, traditional festival dishes included one very unusual mooncake not found elsewhere, as well as other specialties, many of them not familiar to people today.
Shanghai Daily describes five lesser-known traditional foods that used to be essential in Hangzhou for the Mid-Autumn Festival family dinner.
Pork and pickled vegetable mooncake
(榨菜鲜肉月饼)
One of the favorites in Hangzhou, as well as Shanghai, is mooncake stuffed with Chinese pickled vegetables and minced pork.
Every year, customers queue for the cake, which originated in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province.
The vegetable is zhacai (榨菜), a type of pickled mustard plant stem, which is crunchy, slightly spicy and salty and goes well with salty pork.
The mooncake itself is salty, flaky pastry stuffed with pork and pickles; it is essential that it is served hot.
The fragrance of baked pastry, hot, juicy pork and zhacai is hard to resist.
So despite the explosion of mooncake varieties, pickled vegetable and pork mooncake holds its own.
Where to buy
? Supermarkets
? September Life Cake Store
More than 50 outlets, check www.seplife.cn/zeasy/fendian/ to find out the nearest (Chinese only).
? Jiuzhizhai Cake Shop:
Address: 91 Jiefang Rd; 122 Zhongshan Rd N.; 228 Zhongshan Rd M; 20 Guangfu Rd, 442 Hushu Rd S.
Stewed perch with water shield
(莼菜鲈鱼烩)
Water shield, or chuncai (莼菜), is an aquatic plant with round, floating, coin-sized leaves that are slippery and gelatinous. Chuncai dishes are a West Lake specialty, and water shield soup is a classic. Since the leaves don't have a strong taste, soup is often made with chicken, ham or river shrimp.
Perch is a favorite, high-end fish this season because of its firm, tender flesh and few bones.
Perch stewed with water shield is a traditional dish in Hangzhou for the Mid-Autumn Festival; some say it's because there's a literary association between the leaves and missing one's hometown. A poet Bai Juyi (AD 772-846) once transferred to Hangzhou to be mayor, wrote about missing his hometown, while he was eating chuncai soup. Hence, the association.
During the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), the soup was made for the emperor. It was the favorite dish of Emperor Qianlong in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) when he visited Jiangnan, the area south of the lower reaches of Yangtze River.
Few restaurants prepare the dish nowadays, but some older families still make it at home. It's made by simply frying the perch, adding water (or chicken soup) and then adding chuncai and seasonings.
The perch can also be made into fish balls and boiled with the chuncai leaves.
Pumpkin
(老南瓜)
In the West, pumpkins are for Halloween, jack-o'-lanterns and pumpkin pie. But in China pumpkins, which are round and orange like the harvest moon, are a traditional dish for the Mid-Autumn Festival.
It is said that in the old times, people who could afford it ate mooncakes, while poor people ate pumpkins, which were cheap, symbolic and filling.
In some parts of Hangzhou, the tradition lasted to the 1980s, when the country's economy improved. Today, everyone can afford mooncakes, while pumpkins are still symbolic, sweet and very healthy.
The traditional way to prepare pumpkin for the festival is to chop the pumpkin into chunks and boil them, sometimes with rice. A more elegant way is to mince the pumpkin and mix it with rice powder to make pumpkin cakes that can be steamed or fried.
Osmanthus wine
(桂花酒)
This is the season to appreciate sweet osmanthus flowers, which grow in small clusters and bloom in the autumn, filling the air with fragrance.
Tiny, golden osmanthus flowers are used to make many kinds of sweet dishes, such as cakes and pastries, as well as tea and wine. Candied lotus root topped with osmanthus flowers is common.
But not many people are familiar with osmanthus wine, which used to be essential drinking during the Mid-Autumn Festival, as people appreciated the full round moon and ate mooncakes.
"Osmanthus wine was a must for the Mid-Autumn Festival family meal when I was young," says 68-year-old Chen Shizhong. "In my memory, sipping the wine and appreciating the moon are always connected."
The wine is fragrant and sweet, with a delicate taste and color of Champagne. It also has relatively low alcohol level. It's made by adding osmanthus flower and plant extract into a wine base and aging the infusion.
There is only one manufacturer in Hangzhou. Wine can be purchased at some supermarkets and from online stores.
The festival, a harvest feast, originated in worship and appreciation of the moon. Mooncakes were not only snacks, but also offerings to the moon.
Mooncakes can be sweet or savory and filled with many ingredients, nuts, seeds, dates, lily root paste, meat, egg, yolk, which symbolizes unity. Varieties are endless.
But mooncakes are only part of a traditional Mid-Autumn Festival dinner.
In Hangzhou, which has a long history and rich food culture, traditional festival dishes included one very unusual mooncake not found elsewhere, as well as other specialties, many of them not familiar to people today.
Shanghai Daily describes five lesser-known traditional foods that used to be essential in Hangzhou for the Mid-Autumn Festival family dinner.
Pork and pickled vegetable mooncake
(榨菜鲜肉月饼)
One of the favorites in Hangzhou, as well as Shanghai, is mooncake stuffed with Chinese pickled vegetables and minced pork.
Every year, customers queue for the cake, which originated in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province.
The vegetable is zhacai (榨菜), a type of pickled mustard plant stem, which is crunchy, slightly spicy and salty and goes well with salty pork.
The mooncake itself is salty, flaky pastry stuffed with pork and pickles; it is essential that it is served hot.
The fragrance of baked pastry, hot, juicy pork and zhacai is hard to resist.
So despite the explosion of mooncake varieties, pickled vegetable and pork mooncake holds its own.
Where to buy
? Supermarkets
? September Life Cake Store
More than 50 outlets, check www.seplife.cn/zeasy/fendian/ to find out the nearest (Chinese only).
? Jiuzhizhai Cake Shop:
Address: 91 Jiefang Rd; 122 Zhongshan Rd N.; 228 Zhongshan Rd M; 20 Guangfu Rd, 442 Hushu Rd S.
Stewed perch with water shield
(莼菜鲈鱼烩)
Water shield, or chuncai (莼菜), is an aquatic plant with round, floating, coin-sized leaves that are slippery and gelatinous. Chuncai dishes are a West Lake specialty, and water shield soup is a classic. Since the leaves don't have a strong taste, soup is often made with chicken, ham or river shrimp.
Perch is a favorite, high-end fish this season because of its firm, tender flesh and few bones.
Perch stewed with water shield is a traditional dish in Hangzhou for the Mid-Autumn Festival; some say it's because there's a literary association between the leaves and missing one's hometown. A poet Bai Juyi (AD 772-846) once transferred to Hangzhou to be mayor, wrote about missing his hometown, while he was eating chuncai soup. Hence, the association.
During the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), the soup was made for the emperor. It was the favorite dish of Emperor Qianlong in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) when he visited Jiangnan, the area south of the lower reaches of Yangtze River.
Few restaurants prepare the dish nowadays, but some older families still make it at home. It's made by simply frying the perch, adding water (or chicken soup) and then adding chuncai and seasonings.
The perch can also be made into fish balls and boiled with the chuncai leaves.
Pumpkin
(老南瓜)
In the West, pumpkins are for Halloween, jack-o'-lanterns and pumpkin pie. But in China pumpkins, which are round and orange like the harvest moon, are a traditional dish for the Mid-Autumn Festival.
It is said that in the old times, people who could afford it ate mooncakes, while poor people ate pumpkins, which were cheap, symbolic and filling.
In some parts of Hangzhou, the tradition lasted to the 1980s, when the country's economy improved. Today, everyone can afford mooncakes, while pumpkins are still symbolic, sweet and very healthy.
The traditional way to prepare pumpkin for the festival is to chop the pumpkin into chunks and boil them, sometimes with rice. A more elegant way is to mince the pumpkin and mix it with rice powder to make pumpkin cakes that can be steamed or fried.
Osmanthus wine
(桂花酒)
This is the season to appreciate sweet osmanthus flowers, which grow in small clusters and bloom in the autumn, filling the air with fragrance.
Tiny, golden osmanthus flowers are used to make many kinds of sweet dishes, such as cakes and pastries, as well as tea and wine. Candied lotus root topped with osmanthus flowers is common.
But not many people are familiar with osmanthus wine, which used to be essential drinking during the Mid-Autumn Festival, as people appreciated the full round moon and ate mooncakes.
"Osmanthus wine was a must for the Mid-Autumn Festival family meal when I was young," says 68-year-old Chen Shizhong. "In my memory, sipping the wine and appreciating the moon are always connected."
The wine is fragrant and sweet, with a delicate taste and color of Champagne. It also has relatively low alcohol level. It's made by adding osmanthus flower and plant extract into a wine base and aging the infusion.
There is only one manufacturer in Hangzhou. Wine can be purchased at some supermarkets and from online stores.
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