Jade Soba Dumplings
Overview
Why do we eat dumplings during the Winter Solstice? Every year on the winter solstice of the lunar calendar, dumplings are an essential holiday meal for everyone, rich or poor. As the saying goes: On October 1st, when the winter solstice arrives, every household eats dumplings. This custom was left behind in commemoration of the medical sage Zhang Zhongjing giving away medicine during the winter solstice. Zhang Zhongjing was a native of Gengdong, Nanyang. He wrote Treatise on Febrile Diseases and Miscellaneous Diseases, which is a collection of medical works and is regarded as a classic by doctors of all generations. Zhang Zhongjing has a famous saying: If you advance, you will save the world; if you retreat, you will save the people; if you cannot be a good prime minister, you should also be a good doctor. During the Eastern Han Dynasty, he served as the prefect of Changsha, where he visited patients, administered medicine, and practiced medicine in the lobby. Later, he resolutely resigned and returned to his hometown to treat his neighbors. It was winter when he returned home. He saw that the villagers on both sides of the Baihe River were sallow and thin, hungry and cold, and many of them had their ears rotten by the cold. He asked his disciples to set up a medical shed and a large pot in Dongguan, Nanyang, and use Quhan Jiaoer Decoction to treat chilblains on the winter solstice. He put mutton, chili peppers and some cold-repelling herbs in a pot and boiled them. Then he took out the mutton and the herbs, chopped them into pieces, and used bread to make ear-shaped jiao ears. After cooking, he gave two jiao ears and a large bowl of broth to each person who came to ask for medicine. People ate Jiao Er and drank the cold dispelling soup. Their whole bodies became warm, their ears felt hot, and their frostbitten ears were cured. Later generations imitated Jiao Er's appearance and wrapped them into food, also called dumplings or flat food. Eating dumplings during the winter solstice is to remember the kindness of the medical sage Zhang Zhongjing in dispelling cold and Jiaoer Tang. To this day, there are still folk songs in Nanyang about people who don’t serve dumpling bowls during the winter solstice and whose ears are frozen and no one cares about it.
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Ingredients
Steps
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Mix buckwheat noodles and dumpling flour in a ratio of 4:1, divide it into two parts, mix one part with warm water and spinach juice to make a slightly harder dough, and mix the other part with warm water, let it rest for 20 minutes, and adjust the dumpling filling by yourself;
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Roll the woke spinach juice dough into a long shape, roll it out to a width of about 5cm, wrap it with another piece of dough, knead it smooth, cut it into small pieces with a knife, and roll it into a dumpling wrapper;
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Wrap the dumplings in the skin, wait for the water to boil, put the dumplings into the pot, cook for about 5 minutes, remove from the pot, and enjoy the fragrant and delicious dumplings!
