In Yunnan, China, you will find that poetry is not far away, and poetic life is living in the present.
There is rainbow-like five-color rice in Yunnan, also known as five-color glutinous rice. It is a traditional snack in the Miao, Buyi, and Zhuang areas.
Every family in Yunnan makes their five-color glutinous rice. The white glutinous rice will turn peach red, orange, bright yellow under the mastery of the mother, packaged separately in containers and divided into a circle. It looks like a palette in the hands of a painter, allowing unlimited imagination and bringing color to life. In Kunming, after eating a bowl of colorful rice, you will feel the taste of spring and hope to return at the same time.
If all kinds of rice are mixed, the grains are plump, clear in color, like stars shining on one’s appetite. At the beginning of the meal, it was soft and light. When you chew it, it’s light and fragrant. This pure natural material and production method contains the harmonious ecological and natural view of Yunnan people.
The black in the five-color glutinous rice is the skin of the maple leaf and its young stems, which are mashed and slightly dried before being dipped into a certain amount of water. After one day and one night, remove the leaves and filter, that is, to get the dye solution, the dye juice should also be poured into the pot and boiled with water to 50 or 60 degrees, and then the glutinous rice should be immersed in it.
The glutinous rice is dyed pure enough to extract the yellow dye from the fruit and tubers of the leaves with yellow flower juice. When making, boil the yellow flower juice, or mash the leaves and soak them in water to get yellow and orange dyes. Or mix the yellow leaves with glutinous rice, smash them, and rub hard to get colored glutinous rice.
It can be cooked directly without soaking. Red and purple dyes are made by boiling red and blue grasses of the same variety. The leaves have different shapes, the bluegrass is slightly longer and darker, the boiled color is darker, and the soaked rice is purple. The leaves are round and light, the color is light when cooked, and the soaked rice is bright red.
The dyed sticky rice can be steamed in a steamer for about an hour. Five colors of glutinous rice (black, red, yellow, purple, and white) can be steamed. The five-colored glutinous rice made with this method is bright, colorful, and transparent.
In addition, the unique moisture and softness of glutinous rice make it delicious, fragrant, mellow, and peaceful. It’s slightly sweet and has a great aftertaste. Five-color glutinous rice dyed with natural plants is not only beautiful and delicious but also has certain medicinal value. It’s healthy for the body.
In Compendium of Materia Medica, written by Ming Dynasty medical scientist Li Shizhen, “Maple leaves can stop excretion, benefit sleep, strengthen muscles and strength, and lighten the body for a long time.” He also said that rice cooked with maple leaves can “strengthen muscles and bones. , good for the stomach, function and nourishes the bone marrow”.
In the debate in the Lushan Auditorium in the Qing Dynasty, “safflower is juicy, can produce blood, and activate blood.” The yellow flowers or leaves have the function of clearing heat and cooling blood.
Traditional five-color glutinous rice, innovative seven-color Yunnan. In the traditional Yunnan New Year, the five-color glutinous rice is paired with the beef liver dam, which becomes the most ethnic delicacy on the table.
Beef jerky is a beef food that selects high-quality beef from the hind legs of fatty beef every autumn and winter and adds appropriate seasonings such as salt and pepper. And processed and produced by kneading, pickling, drying, air-drying, frying, and other techniques. Every family has a different approach, but every family has its flavor.
In Europe, there is a famous seafood feast called “Colorful Yunnan”. This dish makes full use of the flavors of colorful glutinous rice and Spanish ham, as well as the freshness of wild bacteria, to highlight the characteristics of Yunnan. The traditional five-color glutinous rice makes people feel the breath of spring, and the innovative “Colorful Yunnan” also spreads the beautiful Chinese culture to all parts of the world.
