Picking Xiangchun: A May Holiday Tradition
Every Labour Day holiday, my wife and I travel up to her family’s mountain house in Miyun district, far from the city of Beijing. In their garden are hawthorn, peach and persimmon trees, all six months away from being ripe. Taller than these are huge, swaying Chinese Toon trees with spring shoots bursting out of the branches. A few years ago her grandpa pointed to the tender shoots and told me they were, in fact, edible. Using a long pruner tool, we could stand on the balcony of the second floor and snip off the small tips, collecting them up later from the lawn.
In Chinese the leaves are called xiangchun, meaning ‘fragrant tree’. As we snip the shoots and they float to the floor, the fragrance fills the air - a kind of savoury, oniony hint with a strong herbal kick. It’s bitter like dandelion greens with an earthy beetroot flavour. It’s unlike any vegetable I’ve ever tasted, and I understand why so many don’t like it; it’s not a subtle flavour, but one I’ve come to quite enjoy. Indeed, some refer to it as the ‘beef and onion tree’.
The youngest shoots are the colour of an old leather-bound book: a faded red, almost brown. But most of the leaves are a few weeks older and greener. After we snip as many as we can, we collect them off the grass, stuff them into bags and carry them to the kitchen.
As has been our tradition for three years, we scramble eggs with sautéed toon, or stuff xianbing breads with the same filling and cook up a big lunch. In restaurants they make a cold salad of soft tofu mashed with blanched toon and seasoned with sesame oil, salt and sometimes fresh walnuts.
I’ve heard it repeated to me a few times that xiangchun is the only native tree in Northern Asian that has edible leaves. I haven’t looked into whether that’s true or not, but off the top of my head, I can’t think of another tree we eat around Beijing. During more frugal times in the city, the first shoots of xiangchun would have been cause for delight: nature’s first gift after a hostile winter of rock-hard soil and frozen lakes. Finally something green and nutritious. The older generations of China are militant about preserving food. Not so long ago in China, every morsel of food was precious. It’s a mark of respect for that time to use those shoots today, and celebrate the first few weeks of spring; late April/early May is the only opportunity to taste xiangchun until next year when we’ll do it all over again.
Recipe for Xiangchun (Chinese Toon) with Fried Egg (香椿炒蛋）
50g of tender (young) Chinese toon leaves
4 eggs
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon sesame oil
Oil - for cooking
Serves 2.
Prepare the leaves. If there are any woody stalks, remove these first. Rinse the leaves, and then add the slightly damp leaves to a pan on a medium heat. Place the lid on and let the leaves steam in the water for 30 seconds. Remove the lid, give them a stir, then put the lid on for another 30 seconds. You might need to do this in batches. The leaves will have lost their reddish colour at this point and will now be green. That is normal.
When cool enough to handle, squeeze out any excess water, then finely chop the leaves.
Crack the eggs into a bowl, add the salt and sesame oil and whisk.
Add the leaves and stir.
Heat a drizzle of oil in a frying pan on a medium heat, then pour in the egg mix. Let it cook for 30 seconds to 1 minute without moving. You want the egg to colour a bit. Then as the egg starts to solidify, you can start to flip parts of the egg with a spatula - this is somewhere between an omelette and scrambled eggs. You want large chunks of fully-cooked egg.
When all the egg is cooked, serve.