Hakka Pickles, Renewed Over Time: Salt Koji-Cured Pork Rolls with General Pear, Rice Miso with Cordia dichotoma's Sweet Finish

Pickling preserves the taste of the season, refining a masterful "pickling canon"

"Pickled foods" were originally a way for humans to race against the speed at which ingredients spoil, a tug-of-war with decay, seeking a method to hold off time and preserve the flavor of ingredients; "salt" was the earliest medium; only after sugar became widespread in human dietary history did sugar pickling emerge; once honey was no longer a privilege of the nobility, honey pickling appeared; sealing the taste of the season with salt / sugar / oil / vinegar / honey and so on, and after mellowing through time, once the pickles are opened, the wondrous flavors brought by that terroir, variety, and cultivation method are almost impossible to replicate elsewhere. And so, every ethnic group developed all kinds of ways to take local produce to extend the life of ingredients.

During the peak season for all kinds of vegetables, melons, and fruits, farming families would pickle the surplus produce for consumption the following year, a tradition of cherishing and storing things that has lasted for hundreds and thousands of years, especially among the Hakka people, who, over the long course of migration through history, pickled their produce to make it easy to move; it could almost be said that whenever there was any surplus, they would apply pickling craft, and in every household, jars and bottles of all sizes sealed the taste of the season; year after year, every household had its own "pickling canon" that moved with the solar terms, and the "pickling craft" was tempered over the long river of time and space.

Yet even though we have had such long-enduring and exquisite pickling craft, to this day most of it can only "pickle" in one corner, while pickles mass-produced industrially by the market occupy the shelves; a food preservation method passed down from generation to generation has instead, in modern times, due to the fast pace of life and the migration of young people out of rural areas, left the elders' skills on the verge of being lost. Pickling craft is gradually disappearing from the countryside, but some artisans who understand food have gradually come to value pickling art, and have innovatively integrated traditional pickles with modern cuisine, developing their own distinctive dietary approach.