Apenjie

Many people know about curry, but they may not know about turmeric. Turmeric is a common ingredient that every household in our village grows around their houses and it can be used as a medicinal material. Some veteran doctors of TCM use turmeric when giving a prescription. If someone is frightened or suffers from a chronic disease, they’ll eat stir-fried eggs or pork liver with turmeric. There is no scientific basis behind it. It’s just that since our childhood, we’ve always considered turmeric an ingredient with important medicinal values. It was only after a long time that I found out turmeric gives curry that bright yellow color and great flavor.

In Yunnan, Kudzu root is more like a "snack" cooked and sold at street food stalls. People cut a piece and put it directly in their mouths, and there's a bitter sweetness. Wild kudzu root is cooked and sold in the market, which can also be sliced, sun-dried, and soaked in water and it's said to have many special effects. While pueraria root can be ground, filtered to make the starch which can be made into paste after adding some water. In our hearts, it's way better than lotus root starch. There's a light fragrance and a bitter sweetness, and it tastes smoother than lotus root starch. Since I've made a lot of pueraria powder, I'll make a meal with it today... In this series, I'll show you the Yunnan people's love for roots. I hope you'll accompany me to gradually know Yunnan and our unique cuisine!

If you ask me what’s my family’s favourite food, it must be everything related to rice. Zongzi is one of them. During each Dragon Boat Festival, we make lots of zongzi: classic plain zongzi that go well with white sugar, salty zongzi filled with ham and mushrooms, fragrant and sticky sweet zongzi… Plus seasonal tender lotus leaves and must-have crawfish in summer, it’s so pleasant to celebrate the Dragon Boat Festival ahead of time.

In the depths of the jungle by the Lancang River live some ancient people: the Lahu people. Historically, they were known as the "Tiger Hunting People" and lived by hunting. The gourd is the "totem" of the Lahu people. There're gourd patterns on the street buildings of the village, on the decoration of homes, on the clothes, accessories and small handicrafts. The Lahu people are good at finding delicious food ingredients in the jungle, and they're also good at singing and dancing, and music is in their daily life. The song "Happy Lahu" shows the spirit of the Lahu people and a pot of Lahu chicken and a plate of chopped fresh meat with olive tree bark present the Lahu people's passion for food. Whenever the melody of "Happy Lahu" sounds, they feel the beauty of everything in this world. If you have a chance, please come to Laodabao to try their delicious food and feel their happiness!

The most popular crop in my hometown in the past few years must be purple garlic, which is exported to many countries and regions in Europe with good quality. With its large size, thin skin and thick flesh, and spicy taste, garlic is inseparable from every meal for my family. We add several cloves of garlic to any dish to make it taste good.

As soon as the rainy season in Yunnan comes, the reed leaves will grow wildly, and even the air is full of its fragrance. As soon as I smelled the fragrance of reed leaves when I was a child, I asked my mother to make zongzi. We usually eat zongzi before the Dragon Boat Festival, and this year I want to have zongzi early. After I came back with reed leaves, my grandma made fun of me, saying that I had even taken the reed leaves that had not grown up... After I came back in the rain, my grandma helped me with the leaves. When I grow up, the happiest thing for me is that I can make zongzi by myself, and I can put all the ingredients I like into the zongzi... Whether it's sweet or salty, it's the best thing to eat zongzi together with our family!

Aloe, Euphorbia neriifolia and cactus are popular plants in our village. They can protect crops from animals as natural fences and they don’t need much care. On top of that, they can be used as ingredients and served on dining tables. You must have few chances to know these dishes and may feel a little weird, but it’s true we make such dishes in daily life. The elders in our village always said that they’re of some special medicinal use. I’m rather in doubt about that, but whatever, as long as they taste good.

Before producing rapeseeds, rape is a beautiful flower. Every March and April, large areas of rape flower fields can be seen everywhere in Yunnan. In May, when rapeseeds get ripe, golden edible oil with a rich aroma can be extracted from them. People use rapeseed oil to fry meat or vegetables. Its rich aroma adds flavour to food. This time, with rapeseed oil, I cooked a few dishes my family members liked. We sit around to have ordinary food together, but this is a happy meal. I hope you can find happy things in your life too.

Do you still remember the text of “Drawing the Star Fruit” we learned in primary school? Its unique shape is really impressive. The star fruit growing on the plateau of Yunnan has enough moisture and is juicy and sweet. The fine flesh without dregs is super refreshing. Generally we use it to make salad. We can also use its sour juice to make some delicious dishes.

The first time I went to Jingmai Mountain with friends, I felt as if I was in a fairyland. The entire village was shrouded in thick fog, so beautiful that I couldn't takes my eyes off it. The fragrance of tea and flowers permeated the air. Since then, I fell in love with Jingmai Mountain. April is the busiest month on Jingmai Mountain because this is when tea trees sprout, attracting many people to visit. Before picking tea, the Bulang people will hold a ceremony to worship their tea ancestor "Pa-ai-leng ", and read out his last words, to express their gratitude for the thousands of acres of tea plantations he left and the gift of nature. Due to the unique natural environment and the abundance of centuries-old tea trees, the air on Jingmai Mountain smells of tea fragrance. Each year, my happiest and most unforgettable experience is to visit Jingmai Mountain, pick tea leaves, stir-fry them, and return home with a fragrant tea cake.

In every spring when the wind blows, branches start to sprout and bloom all over the mountains. Generations of Yunnan people live off the mountains. Tender sprouts and wildflowers in the mountains are made into delicious dishes we usually eat. Because of the short blooming period and fast growth of sprouts, there’s only a time window of less than half a month when you get to have such fresh wild food from the mountains. It takes a lot of effort to come all the way here on this high mountain. We might as well pick as many as possible and binge-eat them back home.

People in Yunnan always say "Let's go to my house to chat and have a cup of tea." Yunnan people's love for tea is a profound culture that goes deep into the people and actually affects our view of the world. Especially in the village, when we meet friends or relatives on the road, we'll invite them to our home for tea and chat. After saying goodbye to the spring rain, summer comes, and many lovely green sprouts appear in the tea fields, which is the harvest season for tea. So, my uncles and aunties and I went to the tea fields to pick the tableland tea leaves. Today we not only had tea, but I also prepared a few dishes with tea leaves, which are refreshing, delicious and not greasy. Let's go to my house for tea, dinner, and chat!

Every girl has a “strawberry dream” and always dreams of owning unlimited strawberries. When I was little, I didn’t get to realize my “strawberry dream”. Today I’ll help my little girls realize it! Axia has found a strawberry farm that grows many strawberries of different colours and varieties. It’s my first time tasting so many strawberry varieties. I find each one of them so sweet!! I made a bunch of desserts out of strawberries and my little nieces just love it!

Yunnan is always colourful. Fertile red soil, colourful flowers, diverse ethnic costumes, evergreen trees and rippling lakes, and even the local vegetables are colourful. I made a trip to Bali Village, Lancang and picked up some lovely vegetables. In summer, my family members' appetites are generally not good. These colourful vegetables can whet their appetites. We invited some friends and had a table of colourful delicacies. Let's enjoy the gorgeous colours of summer together!

In Yunnan Dai cuisine, the most impressive and irreplaceable flavouring is lemongrass. It has an aroma of lemon and citrus that is fresh and strong. Lemongrass is frequently used in barbecue and stir-fries in Dai cuisine because it can reduce and relieve internal heat. In the hot summer, it's often used in cooling tea to relieve summer heat. Smelling this unique aroma of lemon, I feel refreshed and then I get a craving for Dai cuisine.

I'm very familiar with Shidian's pickled spicy foods because I grew up eating them. Every year, I make a variety of pickled spicy foods and store them in jars. During my first trip to Ximeng, I realized how hot their spicy foods can be. The peppers I ate in Wa Mountain were so hot that I cried and it was the first time in my life, that their pickled fish and meat can be eaten raw! The pickled spicy foods in different places are the epitomes of the food cultures of different places, and the hotness of the Wa people is vividly expressed in their pickled spicy dishes. This time, I brought home some pickled spicy foods for my family, not only to let them enjoy the food but also to show them the charm and culture of the Wa people.

Orah mandarins have been very popular in our village in recent years. We planted Torah mandarins in the land where the crops were originally grown. Now is the fourth year of large-scale harvesting, and the land in the distance is covered with yellow fruits. Its pulp is fine, sweet, sour, and juicy, with almost no shortcomings except for the seeds. I used this sweet and sour fruit to make a delicious meal with meat, dessert and snacks.

For the villagers, seeking mushrooms has always been a recreational activity where we get up in the early mornings and return as darkness falls. It doesn’t matter how many mushrooms we get to pick. We just enjoy the process of looking for them around the mountains. Nevertheless, the joy of the harvest is always irreplaceable. For me and my family, our summer is only complete when we have had such a pot of fresh and sweet mushroom soup.

At the foot of Cangshan Mountain in Dali, there are fields of dried ballonflower. It looks like lettuce and we eat it after it's dried. Fresh dried ballonflower has bitter pulp, cut it into long strips, and dry it in the sun to retain its crisp taste and light sweetness. It's a must-have dish when we eat hot pot!

Yunnan people's love for mint is unique. We generally collect medicinal mint for its medicinal effects, and what we eat every day is actually mint leaves. For Yunnan people, the aroma of mint leaves is always mixed with the aroma of beef and mutton, and aroma of fried potato and pork ribs. In spring, it refreshes the mind and relieves fatigue; in summer, it cools and relieves heat; in autumn, it relieves sore throat, promotes skin eruption and relieves fatigue; in winter, it disperses wind-heat and resists wind-cold. With meat, mint leaves relieve greasily; with vegetables, mint leaves enhance the flavour. Therefore, mint leaves have become one of the favourite foods of the Yunnan people. There are so many ways to cook mint leaves, so they’re on our table all year round, and they’ve also become a refreshing dish on the dining table in Yunnan.

Yunnan people are very fond of different foods. As long as it's edible, Yunnan people try different ways to cook it, including beautiful flowers. In March, Yunnan is filled with the fragrance of flowers. Make a flower feast with these edible flowers, which are both beautiful and delicious! I want to share with you the delicacy of spring in Yunnan!

Wax apples always stand out in fruit stands with their lovely pink colour and cute shape. In Yunnan, there are two varieties of wax apples, namely red and pink, with slightly different shapes and tastes. Tree-ripened wax apples are juicy and fleshy. In terms of sweetness, they taste like pears, but with a hint of their own unique fragrance. Wax apples are usually made into salads and juice. When used as fillings in Chinese meat pies, its crisp texture makes the filling juicier and less greasy. Meat pies with wax apple fillings are not greasy at all. You must give them a try.

Speaking of sweet potatoes, they must be the warmest desserts among the snacks we’d have in our childhood. When I barely woke up, my mom would take some baked sweet potatoes from the stove and wake me up. As long as we started a fire and cooked at home, there would always be baked sweet potatoes for breakfast in the morning. Such sweet potatoes growing in the plateau’s red soil taste soft, sticky, and sweet; they’re glutinous, tender, and easy to swallow. We’ve dried some sweet potatoes in the sun, cooked steamed pork ribs and sweet potatoes with rice flour, and made sweet potato starch vermicelli and sweet potato vermicelli I like eating when I’m in Sichuan. I’m really a big fan of vermicelli, just like my grandma. She says this bowl of vermicelli is the best food I’ve ever made for the past few years!

In Yunnan, where there is a fire pit, there are friends. Almost all homes in villages have fire pits, some are made of bricks, some are made of stones, and some are directly made of large pots. The pot that we've been using has broken down. After returning from Pu'er, I made a fire pit at home based on the fire pits in the homes of the Lahu and Wa people. During the day, it's used for making food; at night, it's used for heating. All year round, day and night, it's useful and the fire never goes out. It's getting cooler and the greeting among us has changed to "Let's go to my home to get warm". Do you have fire pits at home?

In Changning, which is about more than an hour's drive away from my home, there’re several forest bases dedicated to growing herbs. I took the car that went down from the base to shop for groceries to the top of the mountain. In the mountains in June, it started to rain, and I shivered with cold. The dendrobiums that live on the pine trees produce flowers of various colors. In the field, there’re paris and polygonatum that have grown for six or seven years, and also the incredible glossy ganoderma that looks like a fake. I picked some of them. Since herbs and food are of the same source, people in rural areas often stew soup or make wine with herbs. I'm not sure if they're actually medicinal, but we eat some all year round!