China · Chinese
Rice wine dessert with hawthorn
A sweet course among the Luoyang water-banquet accompaniments: sweet rice wine cooked with hawthorn into a bright red, sweet-sour drink. Hawthorn supplies the colour and the sharpness; the fermented rice brings its aroma. Public reference · home adaptation, not a historical original.
Public reference · Home adaptation Mijiu manjianghong is a sweet dish among the eight accompanying courses; menus record the name only, and this version follows public recipe and diner-report sources rather than the menu. Accounts of where the name comes from vary and one links it to the poem Man Jiang Hong, but no verifiable source was found, so no conclusion is drawn here. What is certain is that hawthorn makes it red and rice wine makes it sweet and aromatic. Among a table of sour-hot soupy dishes, it supplies sweetness and closure. **This entry previously also cited a Zhihu column page (zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/492193137); in this pass Zhihu returned 403 to every non-browser client and the body could not be opened by either curl or web_fetch, so that source has been removed. The method here rests on the remaining openable sources listed above.****Name check and honest limits**: verifiable public material consistently calls this dish mijiu manjianghong, also written as mijiu shanhuala or shanhuala, made from sweet rice wine with hawthorn; one diner's account describes it as hawthorn juice mixed with fermented rice, sour-sweet with a rice-wine aroma. **No reliable source was found** linking it to red yeast rice, and none supports the claim that the name comes from Yue Fei's poem Man Jiang Hong, so that reading is not used here. This entry is **menu-evidence and reporting based**: menus record only the name, and the ratios, cooking time and the optional apple dice are editorial for four servings. Store-bought laozao may contain a little alcohol; check the label. Not kitchen-tested. This entry is vegan: rice wine, hawthorn, apple, sugar and starch, with no meat, egg or dairy. Laozao is a fermented rice product and commercial versions may contain a small amount of alcohol and are often made from wheat or glutinous rice, so check the label. 顶端新闻：河南美食·米酒满江红 — It is a classic sweet soup of the Luoyang water banquet, also called mijiu shanhuala or shanhuala, belonging to the sweet accompanying courses. Core ingredients: 200 g sweet fermented rice and 100 g hawthorn cake or puree, the latter key to the colour, plus diced apple; the result is bright red, sweet-sour and wine-scented. https://www.topnews.cn/news/145CDEE744B94C79 大众点评：洛阳水席菜大攻略（上篇） — A diner's description: hawthorn juice mixed with fermented rice, sour-sweet with a rice-wine aroma; some shops are said to add tomato sauce. https://www.dianping.com/discovery/946594203 AI-generated illustration; not kitchen-tested.
Ingredients
- sweet fermented rice (laozao)400 g
- hawthorn cake or hawthorn puree120 g
- apple, diced100 g
- water500 ml
- sweet-potato starch12 g
- brown sugar20 g
Directions
- 1
Chop or crush the hawthorn cake and dice the peeled apple. Whisk the sweet-potato starch with 40 ml water and set aside.
- 2
Heat the water with the hawthorn puree over medium heat 3 minutes until it dissolves and the liquid turns red, then strain out the fibre for a clearer result.
- 3
Stir in the brown sugar until dissolved, bring to a boil, then pour in the starch slurry and stir so the liquid lightly coats a spoon.
- 4
Turn off the heat, then add the laozao and apple and let the residual heat warm them through. Do not boil the laozao or its wine aroma dissipates and the rice fragrance is lost.
- 5
Divide into small bowls and serve hot or warm. The hawthorn sharpens as the liquid cools, so add a little more sugar to taste if needed.
Source: WorldBite · public-reference adaptation · Source-attributed editorial adaptation; AI illustration; not an authenticated original recipe.