Doba powder

Doba powder

　　The "Old Deep Mountain" pure natural Doba powder, also known as fern root starch, is made from the roots of a rare plant—wild bracken. It is hailed as a "black food," and ancient people praised it with the poetic lines: "Piled on a plate and gently warmed, it gleams like purple agate; chewed in the mouth, it shatters like clear glass." Not only is it sticky, soft, and refreshing, but it also offers therapeutic benefits such as clearing heat and detoxifying, strengthening the spleen and stimulating appetite, moistening the lungs and relieving cough, preventing cancer, and lowering blood pressure. It is a premium delicacy served to honored guests and given as a gift among family and friends in Tujia mountain villages.

　　　　The main ingredient of Doba is fern root starch. As the name suggests, it is starch extracted from the rhizomes of bracken. Bracken, also known as saw vegetable, dragon head vegetable, fist vegetable, or bianjiao, is a perennial herbaceous plant of the Pteridaceae family, often referred to as the "king of mountain vegetables" and celebrated by the Japanese as the "snow fruit mountain delicacy."

　　Mature bracken rhizomes are purple in color and contain special high-grade starch. This starch is rich in protein, vitamins, essential amino acids for the human body, as well as trace elements such as iron, zinc, calcium, flavonoids, selenium, strontium, magnesium, phosphorus, and germanium. It has long been widely enjoyed: fern root starch is slightly sweet and cool in nature, with effects such as lubricating the intestines and promoting bowel movements, clearing heat and detoxifying, reducing fat and blood pressure, improving circulation, and reducing qi and resolving phlegm. It provides excellent dietary therapy benefits for sore throat, periodontitis, diarrhea, and coronary heart disease, making it an ideal nutritional health product for the elderly, pregnant women, and children.

　　　　Tujia mountain dwellers have a long tradition of harvesting fern root starch (i.e., Doba powder). Legend has it that this tradition began with proletarian revolutionary He Long. In November 1933, He Long led the Red Third Army into the areas of Lengshui and Liziba (now around Lengshui Township and Shazi Town) within Shizhu County to mobilize the masses in fighting against the rich to aid the poor. Liziba was a small Tujia mountain village where the local people lived under severe political oppression and economic exploitation by local militias and wealthy landlords, leading to a life of utter hardship. That year, due to severe summer flooding, crops failed over large areas, and what little food there was was entirely requisitioned by the Nationalist army for rations and provisions, plunging the villagers into even greater poverty. By winter, many were forced to dig for wild vegetables or peel tree bark to stave off hunger. After arriving in the Liziba area, He Long personally led investigators to Heidongcao to understand the plight of the people. He found that out of 41 farming households in Heidongcao, 40 had completely run out of food. Anxiously searching for a solution to the people’s difficulties, on his way back to the base camp from Heidongcao, He Long unexpectedly discovered that bracken roots were rich in starch, which could be extracted to help solve the food problem. Upon returning to the base camp, he immediately organized a team to mobilize the villagers to dig up bracken roots and produce starch, turning it into Doba, thus safely surviving the winter famine. From then on, Doba became the best survival choice for Shizhu Tujia mountain dwellers during times of famine.

　　　　Every year from Lidong (the beginning of winter) to the Spring Equinox, roughly from October to February in the lunar calendar, people go up the mountains to dig for bracken roots because the starch content is highest at this time, the roots are less prone to mold, and the starch yield is relatively the highest.

　　　　"Root ah root, three feet deep, dig a bit, grunt a bit." This is the rhyme people often chant when digging for bracken roots. The roots are buried deep underground, so digging them up with traditional tools like hoes and shovels is quite laborious. After the roots are dug up, they are rinsed with clean water to remove mud and impurities, the skin is scraped off, and they are cut into small segments about 10 cm long. These are then placed in baskets, sealed tightly, and soaked in flowing water by the stream for two days before being taken out to remove any unpleasant odor.

　　　　The soaked bracken roots give off the unique fragrance of plant roots. People spread them out on concrete drying platforms or clean large rocks by the stream, then pound them with special wooden mallets or crush them in stone mortars. They are then placed in cloth bags and kneaded in water tanks filled with clean water to wash out the starch. The starch slurry in the tank is filtered through gauze to remove residue, and the mixture is repeatedly left to naturally settle. In modern mechanized operations, the soaked roots are placed in a pulping machine where they are crushed while water is added, then diluted and stirred evenly. The slurry is filtered twice using 80-mesh and 100-mesh screens. The filtered slurry is quickly transferred to a settling tank or water tank to allow natural sedimentation. Once settled, the clear water is drained to obtain wet bracken root starch. The wet starch is then taken out and dried into powder form or dehydrated at a high temperature of 50°C–60°C to produce bracken root starch, also known as Doba powder.

　　　　Doba powder can be consumed immediately. Take an appropriate amount of Doba powder, dilute it slightly with warm water (below 40°C), and then pour boiling water over it to make it ready to eat. You can also add white sugar, honey, or turn it into jelly, or mix it with flour to make other foods.

　　　　In Tujia mountain villages, people usually don’t consume Doba powder in instant form, but instead mix it with warm water to form dough, cut it into small pieces, and boil them in hot water until all the Doba pieces float to the surface before removing them. These pieces can then be stir-fried with cured meat, mixed with sugar, sesame, and peanut powder to create sweet Doba pieces, or made into candied Doba pieces or Doba rolls… No matter how it is prepared, Doba pieces are soft, chewy, and leave a lingering aroma in the mouth.