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Vegetables

Appears in
top 1000Mrs. Chiang’s Szechwan Cookbook
Mrs. Chiang’s Szechwan Cookbook

By Ellen Schrecker

Published 1976

  • About

“When I was a child in Szechwan,” Mrs. Chiang recalls, “we used to greet the New Year by picking a few young leaves from our neighbors’ bean patch. They would also steal some new leaves from our garden. This was touqing, ‘stealing of the green,’ and it guaranteed a prosperous year. Vegetables were the mainstay of our diet, next to rice, and this ritual celebrated the first green vegetable of the year.

“We had fresh or preserved vegetables at every meal, and in between meals they were our favorite snacks. There was always a salted cabbage hanging outside the house to dry, and I remember snatching pieces of it to eat on the way to school. At harvest time we used to pull up the turnips the field hands missed and eat them raw.

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