In Jiangnan, a region of plenty and in the south of the Yangtze River Delta, people favor vegetables in season. At a restaurant in Jiangnan, you would be kindly informed if something you happen to pick from the menu is not in season. As Jiangnan produces a great variety of vegetables all around the year, people in the region have long been in the habit of being fussy about what get served at the kitchen table or at a restaurant table.

There are many vegetables in season in spring time such as lettuce, spring bamboo shoots and even some herb, and Chinese chive. In early spring time, Chinese chive and snail can be cooked together and nothing tastes better at this time of year. Such a gourmet window is small in spring. That is from early February to March. Days around Qingming Festival in early April, the dish tastes different if you ask gourmets.

Toward the end of spring or at the beginning of summer, one can have a lot of choices of vegetables in season: edible amaranth, cowpea, cucumber, bitter gourd, tomato, just to name a few. These are in season and you don’t have to buy a lot for fear that they may be out of supply tomorrow. You can rest assured that you can see the newest supply just in from farms tomorrow. But if you run into baby ginger or baby lotus root at a food market, never hesitate to buy. They are in season only for a very short time. If you decide not to buy them, the next time you see them will very probably be 365 days later. Baby ginger is a delicacy. You see it only in early May. Confucius is known to have a passion for ginger. He must have ginger at every meal. A safe guess is that the ginger he favored must have been baby ginger. In Jinhua, the central city in the heart of Zhejiang, chefs know a lot of ways to prepare ginger dishes. Baby ginger can be made into a cold dish to go with rice wine. It can be cooked with sliced eel and chicken or pork.

One can easily recall vegetables in season when autumn arrives: eggplant, sponge cucumber, pumpkin, pepper. But many people have the slightest idea that taro stalk is available in late summer or early autumn. Gourmets love this rare delicacy. As the ingredient is not easily available on a food market, foodies usually pick a restaurant to enjoy tender vegetables such as winter bamboo shoot, wild rice stem, cress, baby lotus roots.