What to eat this month

Deep winter, and the duck line turns to the pressed kind: households buy 板鸭 for the New Year, and 腊板鸭, the winter-cured one in the gazetteer office's list, is this month's. Spring Festival can fall at the end of January. On the Confucius Temple dessert counters it is sweet taro and red-bean soup with rice balls, both served hot, and the plum-blossom cake carts draw their little crowd because the weather is cold. The salted duck, the vermicelli soup, the potstickers and the noodles are the same as every month.

Two things start and two things end. 芦蒿 starts: the local saying is 正月芦，二月蒿，三月当柴烧 — reeds in the first lunar month, wormwood in the second, firewood by the third — which in Gregorian terms is roughly February to mid-March, so this is the front of a window with a real deadline. Spring Festival usually falls here, with the pressed duck on the table. Ending: the hot dessert counter (sweet taro, red-bean soup) and the plum-blossom cake carts have their last cold weeks.

The busiest month on this calendar. From the start of March, for about six weeks, every home-style menu opens a spring-greens column — the eight greens called 七头一脑; the city agriculture bureau is blunt that most of what is sold is farmed on Bagua Island, not foraged. 芦蒿炒香干 runs to about mid-March and then goes woody. The pre-Qingming pick of 雨花茶 is the expensive grade and it is picked now. Some wonton shops put shepherd's-purse wonton on, which is the best version of the year. The pressed duck is the spring-cured 春板鸭 by now.

Still spring greens — the six weeks from early March run into April — and still shepherd's-purse wonton at the shops that make it. For tea: 明前 means before Qingming on 5 April, so the expensive grade is already picked; the later picks are cheaper and perfectly drinkable, and that is what you will be offered from now on. Nothing else has started: the crayfish tables are not out yet.

Summer opens with one thing: crayfish. From May to August the late-night streets smell of them, braised 十三香 or with garlic, eaten outdoors with beer and plastic gloves until two in the morning. It is the biggest food phenomenon of a Nanjing summer and it is worth saying plainly that it is not Nanjing cooking. Otherwise this is a fixed-menu month — salted duck, vermicelli soup, potstickers, noodles.

Crayfish month. The way to find them is by time rather than address: after eight in the evening, wherever the outdoor tables and red plastic stools are. Ask the price per jin (斤) before you order — it moves a lot inside one season. The rest of the list does not change with the weather; the salted duck is a cold dish and suits the heat.

High summer: crayfish and cold salted duck, and the rest of the list unchanged. This is the emptiest month on the seasonal calendar — nothing is coming into season and nothing is going out — so it is the month to work through the fixed must-eats: duck blood vermicelli soup with a duck-fat flatbread for breakfast, beef potstickers and a basket of soup dumplings mid-morning, pidu noodles at lunch, a quarter of salted duck with rice for dinner.

Last month of crayfish — the season on this list runs May to August, so if it is on your want-to-eat list, this is the deadline. Everything else is the fixed menu. The autumn things have not started: crab, crab-roe soup dumplings and the osmanthus counter are all a month away.

Autumn turns everything over at once. Hairy crab from Gucheng Lake comes in — female crabs (round apron) carry the orange roe and are at their best around September and October. The crab-roe soup dumpling from Longpao in Luhe is an autumn thing, a different object from the pork soup dumpling you can eat all year. Osmanthus opens, so the sweet counter puts out 桂花糖藕, cold, in dark red slices, and 糖芋苗 comes back as the new taro arrives. Mid-Autumn usually falls at the end of this month or the start of October, and the crab is what this list has for it.

The crab changes sex: male crabs (pointed apron) carry the white fat and only come into their own in November, so this is the month to order them. Crab-roe soup dumplings and sweet taro are still on. Winter starts at the street end — the plum-blossom cake carts get their crowd back as soon as it is cold, and the pressed-duck season is curing.

Deep winter on the dessert counter: sweet taro and red-bean soup with rice balls, both hot, sitting side by side at the Confucius Temple shops, plus the plum-blossom cake made in front of you on a flower-shaped iron mould. The pressed duck is what the duck line does now — steamed with rice or in soup, not sliced cold like the salted duck, and it is the saltiest thing on this list by a distance. The winter solstice has no Nanjing dish of its own on our list.