Is Daodu vegetable the same as snow vegetable?
Many people may not know what Daodu vegetable is, but it is actually a traditional farm dish passed down for several hundred years in the rural areas of Jiande City, Zhejiang. So, is Daodu vegetable snow vegetable?
1. Is Daodu vegetable snow vegetable?
The raw material of Daodu vegetable is snow vegetable, but the pickling method is different from ordinary snow vegetable. After a series of steps including washing, sun-drying, piling until yellowed, cutting, rubbing with salt, turning upside down, and fermenting and pickling, it is processed into Daodu vegetable.
2. Historical allusion
Legend has it that in the late Eastern Han Dynasty, when warlords fought for supremacy and war raged everywhere, the common people lived in poverty. In Muzhou (Fuchun Commandery, present-day Jiande), every household had the custom of pickling nine-head mustard in large earthenware jars as an everyday dish. But at that time, when people pickled it, they could not avoid the vegetable rotting in the jar, and often after painstakingly pickling a whole jar of vegetables, more than half had to be thrown away.
Sun Quan's mother, Lady Wu, was from Muzhou. She was intelligent, dignified, and deft-handed. Although she lived in the city at that time, she also pickled nine-head mustard herself. To prevent the vegetable from rotting during pickling, she placed the pickling jar upside down so that the waste liquid produced during pickling would drain out naturally. In this way, the vegetables pickled in her home never rotted again. This method was vividly called “daodu” by the local people, and “Daodu vegetable” was thus born under Lady Wu's skillful hands. This method spread in Jiangnan for nearly a thousand years and is still used by the common people today.
Daodu vegetable is not winter-pickled vegetable. The raw material of Daodu vegetable is snow vegetable, and its pickling method is different from the general pickling method for snow vegetable. It does not need to be washed clean during production.