Almond-seasoned Bitter Greens

Almond-seasoned Bitter Greens

　　As the saying goes: “Season bitter greens with clear oil, and everyone picks their favorite.” During spring and summer, people in the areas of Zizhou, Hengshan, and Suide especially love to eat this uniquely flavored cold dish.

　　This dish is easy and simple to prepare. First, remove the roots from the bitter greens picked from the mountain, wash them, and blanch them in boiling water for about 2 minutes. Then take them out and soak them in a basin of cold water for 3 to 5 hours. Squeeze out the water, cut them into sections, and soak the almonds for over 10 hours before removing their skins. After that, you can start preparing the dish. Stir everything together with seasonings such as hot oil, salt, vinegar, ground Sichuan pepper, and ground ginger, and it’s ready to eat.

　　This dish has high medicinal value and a wide range of dietary therapy benefits. In summer, having it with mung bean congee can help prevent heatstroke, avoid catching a cold or getting overheated, and offers functions such as clearing heat and detoxifying, cooling blood and stopping dysentery, relieving cough, and reducing inflammation. It tastes slightly bitter, but also cool, fragrant, and delicious, growing more flavorful the more you eat. According to relevant medical experts, regularly eating bitter greens can have certain therapeutic and preventive effects on diseases such as enteritis, anemia, diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol, high blood sugar, and cancer.