Culinary delights of the spring season

When winter lifts and the e art h comes alive, Chinese gourmets search for nature's leafy green herbs and vegetables to get busy in the kitchen. Liu Zhihua reports.When spring hits, people pile into parks. The air is sweet and warm. Tender green shoots and colorful flowers are in bloom, and leafy plants thrive on the ground.But for Chinese, the bucolic scenery is not only for looking at.People take advantage of spring to feast on fresh green edibles that grow in the fields, parks and community gardens.For Zhao Tangwei, a Chinese student studying in the United States, spring is always associated with special food from trees."When I was young, my mother often picked buds and shoots from trees in our courtyard to cook," Zhao says."They tasted special, quite different from what we usually had."Zhao grew up in Beijing,and her mother would prepare xiangchun, or Chinese toon shoots, every spring.In spring, Chinese toon shoots are one of the most popular foods in China.The tree grows tall and straight, and can be seen almost everywhere in the country, from street corners to vast wildernesses to cultivated fields.Its deep maroon-tinged buds and tender leaves are rich in lipids and are strongly aromatic.Traditional Chinese medicine tea ches that the tree's buds, shoots and young leaves are warm and detoxifying, and thus are a nutritional, healthy gourmet vegetable.People usually fry xiangchun with eggs or tofu, or stuff them into dumplings, orsimply make a salad.Sugar beet, cultivated Beta vulgaris, is a plant whose root contains a high concentration of sucrose. It is grown commercially for sugar production. [Photo provided to China Daily]Celebrities share meatlessrecipes on InstagramSugar series by EmilyBlincoeSome people dry Chinese toon buds under the spring sun, and then save them for winter.Apart from Chinese toon shoots, Zhao's mother, who asked to be identified as Tang, sometimes cooks the leaves of other trees for the family, including willows and elms, and even the flowers of acacia trees.Tang, 54, says she is not good at cooking, and remembers her mother used to cook wild green vegetables that grow in spring along riversides or in the fields, when she was a little girl in Liaoning province.The most frequently used one was jicai, or shepherd's purse.Jicai can be eaten both raw and cooked, and its flavor is very pleasant - slightly bitter and sweet.It can be used to stuff dumplings and steamed buns, or cook in a soup.Fan Zhihong, a food-safety and nutrition expert at China Agricultural University, says there is apparent scientific rationale for people to have preferences for green vegetables in spring."Spring is the season when plants sprout and grow," Fan says."Vegetables thrive in spring, and it is the best time for them to have nutrients at the highest levels."Scientific study has proven that increased consumption of green vegetables is associated with lower risk of diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, some cancers and age-related cognitive decline. Because they are low in calories and have low glycemic and high satiety properties, green vegetables also contribute to weight-control, Fan says.Besides, green vegetables, especially dark green ones, are low on the glycemic index and rich in phytonutrient, dietary fibers and enzymes, which help people absorb vitamins, minerals and amino acids from other sources, experts say.Every place offers different choices of vegetables in spring, no matter wild or cultivated, and it is best to eat fresh and local when one can, Fan adds.In Southwest China's Yunnan,a province famous for producing wild flowers and herbs, spring provides locals with abundant choices for edible greens.Zhang Jianhui, 28, a chef with a Yunnan restaurant in Beijing, says there are dozens of vegetables in the markets in Dali throughout the spring, which are able to provide a variety of vitamins and fibers to enhance people's immunity and healthA traditional forest vegetable in China for more than 2,500 years, bamboo shoots are not only delicious but are also rich in nutrients, and rank among the five most popular healthcare foods in the world. [Photo provided to China Daily]Bamboo shoots, sugar beets, pseudo-ginseng and leaves Radix isatidis(banlangen in Chinese) are the most popular."They have nutrients which winter food is low in, such as vitamins," Zhangsays.Nowadays, both xiangchun and jicai are cultivated and are available invegetable markets throughout the year.Zhang Meimei, 27, from Hangzhou,Zhejiang province, is a Chinese student in the US. She becomes increasingly homesick in spring, thinking about all thewild plants her family usually uses in cooking.One dish she particularly misses is qingmingguo.The dish is made of glutinous rice and a special wild herb called qing, which is only available in early spring.After collecting the herb, fans wash and grind it, and then knead it with glutinous rice powder into small balls. These can be stuffed with sesame or radish, and steamed.When ready, the rice balls will turn a beautiful green color. The dish is amust-try in Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces around the recent Qingming Festival,otherwise known as Tomb-sweeping Day.In spring, many people go to the wilderness to dig for wild herbs.However, botanist Shi Jun says the belief that wild edible plants are more nutrient-rich than cultivated vegetables is wrong, and he suggests people only eat plants that are familiar to them and not eat plants that have grown in a polluted environment.Capsella bursa-pastoris herb, known by its common name shepherd's-purse because of its triangular, purse-like pods, has been used in the traditional Austrian medicine internally as tea or tincture, or externally as tincture, tea or ointments, for treatment of disorders of the skin, locomotor system, cardiovascular system, hemostasis, and gynaecologic problems. [Photo。