Dai Banquet
The Dai mostly have the habit of eating two meals a day, with rice and glutinous rice as the main food. The Dai in Dehong mainly eat round-grained rice, while the Dai in Xishuangbanna mainly eat glutinous rice. Usually is now pounded now eat, folk think: round-grained rice and glutinous rice only now eat now pounded, not to lose its original color and flavor, and therefore do not eat or rarely eat overnight rice, used to eat with a hand pinch rice.
Outdoor laborers often eat in the field, with banana leaves or a crowd of rice together with a ball of glutinous rice, with salt, chili, sour meat, roast chicken, mumble (Dai, meaning sauce), moss pine can eat. All the accompanying dishes and snacks are mainly sour, such as sour bamboo shoots, sour pea flour, sour meat and wild sour fruit; like to eat dry sauerkraut, the method is to dry the green vegetables, and then boiled in water, adding papaya juice, so that the flavor becomes sour, and then dried and stored. When eating, put a little boiled vegetables or put in the soup. This kind of sauerkraut has a place in the Dai people eat almost every day. It is said that the reason why the Dai people often eat sour dishes, is because often eat indigestible glutinous rice food, and sour food helps digestion.
The moss is a unique flavor of the Dai people. The moss consumed by the Dai people is selected from the moss on the rocks in the river water in the spring, with dark green color as the best, and then torn into thin slices after fishing, dried in the sun, and worn with bamboo gimlets to be used. Cooking, thick fried in oil, thin roasted with fire, crispy rubbed into the bowl, and then pour boiling oil, then add salt and stir, with glutinous rice balls or bacon for dipping, the flavor is incomparable.
Cooking fish, more into sour fish or roasted lemongrass fish, but also made into fish chopped grits (i.e., fish roasted and whacked into a mud, and large coriander and other seasonings centralized), fish jelly, fire-roasted fish, eel in white sauce, and so on.
When eating crab, generally will be crab even shell with meat chopped into crab sauce with rice to eat, the Dai called this crab sauce for "crab mumble".
Bitter gourd is the most abundant and most consumed daily vegetable. In addition to bitter melon, Xishuangbanna also has a kind of bitter bamboo shoots, so there is also a bitter flavor in the Dai flavor, more representative of the bitter dishes are cooked with cow bile and other ingredients of the cow sapi gazpacho platter.
Religious Food Customs
The Dai people generally believe in Theravada Buddhism, and many festivals are related to Buddhist activities. During the Buddha Bathing Festival (Water Splashing Festival), there are a lot of various Dai snacks in addition to wine and dishes.
There is also the sticky rice mud deep-fried into the hemp crispy and so on. More important festivals are the Summer Festival (September 15 on the Dai calendar), out of the Summer Festival (December 15 on the Dai calendar), both for the Southern Theravada Buddhist festival. Xinping, Yuanjiang, Jinggu, Jinping and other places Dai Spring Festival, Dragon Boat Festival, Mid-Autumn Festival, etc., the content and activities are largely the same as the local Han Chinese, the more typical foods are dog meat soup pots, pork jerky, pickled eggs, dried eels and so on.
Festival food customs
In the Dai society, a house, the whole village to help, the completion of the new house to congratulate the new house, the first to go up the stairs is a young man, carrying a bull's head, singing the blessing song, the strong men to lift the box, the married women to hold the bedding, the girls with the meal in turn, and then in the fire on the support of the tripod, set up the table, wine and food, singing congratulations on the new house song, the folks also want to the hosts! The people also have to give some gifts to the host to symbolize good luck.
"Catch pendulum cassoulet" is the Xishuangbanna young men and women to food rumors of love, that is, the girl to cassoulet chicken to the market to sell, if the buyer is precisely the girl's man of interest, the girl will take the initiative to take out a stool, so that it sits beside them, through conversation, such as both sides of the love affair, two people on the end of the chicken, carrying a stool to the woods to spit each other out. Stool to the woods to spit out each other's feelings; such as the buyer is not the girl's person of interest, the girl will double the price; and then "eat small wine", in the engagement of men and women, the male side picking food and wine to the female side of the house to invite guests when the guests dispersed, the male side of the three male companions accompanied by the female side of the female side of the female side and the female side of the three female companions, * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * table. "Eat small wine" is said to eat three dishes: the first is hot; the second should be more salt; the third should have sweets. It means hot, deep and sweet.
The wedding day is held in both homes, mostly in the woman's home first. At the wedding banquet, the table should be covered with green banana leaves, and the dishes include Blood Want (White Want), which symbolizes good luck, rice cake and various dishes. Banquet before the bride and groom to do the tethering ceremony, that is, by the bridegroom with a white line around the shoulders of the two sides, and with two white lines were tethered to the bride and groom's wrists, symbolizing purity, and then by the elderly will be pinched into triangles of glutinous rice dipped in salt, placed on the fire on the tripod on the apex of the fire, let the fire naturally come off, to symbolize the love of the iron as solid. Yuanjiang Daping Township bride after crossing the door to sit on the bench with the groom, eat four eggs mixed with glutinous rice, and drink two cups of wine; Yuanjiang river Dai brides crossing the door, by the male party to each sender of meat 4 slices, 4 ribs, 4 meatballs, 4 crispy meat 4 pieces, and then you can eat the main meal.
Sacrifices and food customs
The Dai people also enshrine their own village community God, the Dai people called "go to Raman", also known as "Phi Man", is the protection of the God, to be sacrificed twice a year, before planting rice seedlings to pray for a bumper harvest, after the fall harvest for the Thanksgiving, to collectively kill a cow or a pig, each family to prepare tribute. After the fall harvest, in order to give thanks, a cow or a pig will be killed collectively, and each family will prepare tributes to be sent to the room dedicated to the God of the community, and after the rituals are recited, everyone will **** eat. The new members of the community should make offerings of chickens, wine and strips of bacon to the God of the community.
In Menghai and other places slaughtered sacrificial animals still retained plagiarized cattle and fish eating cowhide custom. Xishuangbanna once tribal gods, some offerings must be black cattle, white pigs. Yuanjiang, Xinping and other places of the Dai, generally worship the Dragon Tree, the Dragon God, Yuanjiang riverside Dai every year in March of the lunar calendar sacrifice of the Dragon Tree, the village to kill the red bull, before killing the red bull with white ash on the body of the pattern, but also in the cattle on the body of the red and green cloth. In the same month, but also to kill the pig sacrifice "heaven and earth mother" in order to bless the livestock peace.
In the Dai folk, especially in some remote areas, there are still some taboos in cooking, such as: burning wood to burn from the root first; shall not be crossed from the fire; can not casually move the tripod on the fire and so on.
Sour Meat
The traditional flavor dish of the Dai ethnic group is made of beef that has been marinated and then fried. It is characterized by a strong sour flavor and can help digestion. The method is to wash fresh yellow beef with rice water, cut into large pieces into a pot, add fresh pepper leaves, salt, rice mix well, loaded into a tile jar, poured into the white wine compaction, on the lid, with grass ash and mud mud sealed jar mouth, marinated for a month that is. The marinated yellow beef cut into julienne, and green garlic seedlings fried.
Fire-roasted fish
The Dai traditional home cooking flavor dishes, characterized by soft and sweet, original flavor. Method is to remove the gills and giblets of fresh fish, cleaned, will be chopped green onion, ginger, garlic, green pepper, green ginger leaves, coriander, wild peppercorns leaves, mint, fennel leaves, lemongrass leaves, grass powder, monosodium glutamate, salt, cooking wine, mixing stuffing, loaded into the belly of the fish, the head and tail folded, and then bundled into a cross of lemongrass, wrapped in plantain leaves, buried in the charcoal after the burning of firewood or burned in hot ash, removed from plantain leaves and lemongrass, and served as a plate. The dish is ready to be served.
Pickled cow's head
The Dai traditional home cooking flavor dishes. The method is to remove the cow's head, cow's feet hair, hoof shells, cut into pieces and boiled, bone, cut into strips of meat, into the pot to join the rice water soaked 3-4 hours, remove the change to cold water to wash, and then will be wild peppercorns leaves, paprika, ginger, and garlic into the beef pot, add salt, white wine and mix well flavored, loaded into the tile jar compaction, seal the lid, half a month later, it will become. Food can be steamed, can be fried, is a cold dish with wine, crisp and tender sour, spicy and cool.
Acid horn
Acid horn tree
Winter and spring seasons, the sky is high, the wind is clear, walk into the Dai village, it is easy to see a local people especially favorite fruit tree - acid horn, it is a tall tree, rough trunk, branches and leaves sparse, the branches are hung with a string of a dulue of brown crook-shaped pods. It is a tall tree with a rough trunk and sparse branches and leaves. Sour horn, also known as sour beans, tamarind, Luo wangzi, sour plum (Hainan), "Mukhan" (Dai), sweet eye can, through the blood map, for the family of Suzuki sour horn genus of tropical, subtropical evergreen tree, the genus contains only 1 species of sour horn, there are two types: sweet type and sour type. Acid horn like hot climate, in the average annual temperature of 18?C-24?C, annual rainfall of 500-1200 millimeters of the region can grow normally.
Insect food
The Dai region is humid and hot, and there are many kinds of insects, which are used as raw materials to make a variety of flavorful dishes and snacks, which is an important part of the Dai food composition. Frequently consumed insects include cicadas, bamboo worms, big spiders, field turtles, ant eggs and so on.
Cicadas are caught in the summer, and every evening, when the cicadas fall in the bushes, their wings are wet with dew and they cannot fly up, so the women quickly pick the cicadas into the bamboo baskets, and go back to the pots to bake and dry them to make sauce. Cicada sauce has the medical effect of clearing heat and removing toxins, removing pain and swelling.
The Dai people generally like to eat ants eggs, often eat a kind of yellow ants nesting in the tree, take ants eggs, the first ants away, and then take the eggs, ants eggs of different sizes, some as big as mung beans, some as small as a grain of rice, white crystal bright, washed and dried, and eggs together with fried food, the taste of fresh food can be raw food can be cooked food, raw food, when the system of soy sauce, cooked food, when the eggs with the egg dressed set of frying, the commonly used sour fruits, Bitter Melon, Bitter Bamboo Shoots, Punching Pepper, supplemented with wild peppercorns, coriander, garlic, lemongrass, full of flavor.
Specialty drinks
The Dai people are addicted to wine, but the degree of wine is not high, it is home brewed, sweet flavor. Tea is a local specialty, but the Dai only drink large-leaf tea without spices. When drinking it, it is only slightly fried on the fire until it is burnt, and it has a slightly mushy flavor when it is brewed and drunk. Chewing betel nut, mixed with tobacco, lime, day after day. Because of the long-term chewing lips and teeth are black, oral fluid such as blood, people think it is beautiful. The pottery industry is more developed, most of the drinking utensils are mostly burned by women.