Taste of China: Thoughts engraved in the stomach
Qiu Lian, Rye and other works, Life, Reading, New Knowledge, Published by Joint Bookstore.
Behind the family banquet is the inheritance of life concepts and beliefs. "Taste of China" spells out a table feast for Chinese from six aspects: staple food, pork, beef and sheep, poultry, fresh fish and vegetarian food. The book focuses on food and the people who make it, and one story after another is hidden in the depths of our taste buds, accompanying the lives of generations and the past bubbling out in the "one meal" of Chinese.
Selected readings: The important table of the year (excerpt).
The Chinese New Year's Eve dinner must be put into the effort, because it is only once a year, and it revolves around it as a reunion of relatives after a long absence. It may not be possible to do this every year, but the lively and warm scene will always be in the memory, worth recalling, and worth looking forward to. The aroma wafted out from the kitchen, and a "meal" was the official opening of the Spring Festival reunion banquet.
After the cold dishes, all kinds of meat dishes will be "staged" one after another. In the era of scarce materials, the festival is almost a time to eat meat in a reasonable manner. Those meats that are inexhaustible on the basis of tickets** are carefully made into bacon and marinated, and they will be enjoyed in a steady stream of energy after the year. Marta Sarasca, author of A Brief History of Meat, attributes the human "meat craving" in part to the attraction of protein, but later on, nutrients have been consumed in a variety of ways, and people continue to rely on meat because the tongue and nose are inseparable from the taste of meat when it is cooked.
The Shanghainese in Beijing are busy, and they show us a few meat dishes that they will make for the New Year. China is a producer and consumer of pork, and of course pork is indispensable on the table during the New Year's Festival. Before the busy family, the festival was often braised hooves, because to have a complete meaning, chicken, duck and fish meat should be "whole", and the hooves are complete elbows. But slowly, the family felt that the braised pork could be grasped in terms of quantity, and it was more enjoyable to take a bite. What is the difference between the Chinese New Year's braised pork and the usual version? Hurriedly said, first, to collect the juice dry, the oil and juice form a water-melted viscous state wrapped on the meat, each piece is black and shiny, shining with luster. In normal times, the leftover gravy can be used to cook vegetables or eat several meals, and often the soup will not be exhausted by the fire. The second is that braised pork must always be roasted together with other ingredients, and that kind of ingredient borrows the flavor of the meat, and it is better to burn it, and the braised pork retreats to a secondary position.
There are even more amazing dishes being processed in another pot next to the braised pork, which also reflects the characteristics of the thick oil red sauce of the local vegetables, which is a duck with eight treasure sauce. Among the poultry products, the bulk of the country's consumption is chicken, and there is a trend of catching up with and surpassing pork in the past two years. The reason why ducks are not as common as chickens is, firstly, that not everyone can accept the unique smell of duck meat, and secondly, that ducks are slightly more complicated to process. "Chickens can shed their feathers whole with boiling water, while ducks have a layer of fine fluff that needs to be plucked by hand one by one. So if you look at the description of old Shanghai, there will always be an uncle or sister sitting at the entrance of the Shikumen Alley to pick duck feathers, and the duck will be soaked in the lead bucket next to it, and it will take an hour or two to do it. "Said hurriedly. But these have not hindered the enthusiasm of lovers to eat duck, there are famous dishes represented by duck in the areas of rivers and lakes in the country, there are salted ducks in Nanjing, Jiangsu, blood ducks in Yongzhou, Hunan, duck necks and other marinated duck parts in Wuhan, Sichuan, Chengdu, camphor tea ducks, and Babao ducks in Shanghai. According to the origin, the Babao Duck is also a reference to the Babao chicken of Subang cuisine.
There is no chicken on the busy New Year's dinner table, and the whole hen is stewed in advance to make a New Year's dish with the meaning of reunion - a family portrait, in which egg dumplings, pig skin, fish balls, meatballs, salted meat, winter bamboo shoots and other ingredients are densely arranged. The special method of busy families is to throw away a little of the things used in each dish on the table, and then pour chicken broth, which must be in a boiling state when served. In the New Year's food culture of different regions, there is always a "chowder" style soup dish, such as Anhui Yipin pot, Yunnan cooking pot, Guangdong Poon Cai, all of which are a variety of ingredients, placed layer upon layer. And there is a saying when eating: in a pot, you must eat from top to bottom, and each person eats a few pieces of egg dumplings, fried tofu, braised pork or white radish are fixed; When eating poon choi, everyone will turn the food in the pot over and over again several times when they come up, which represents the concerted efforts and time of the new year. Busy eating this dish at home does not have these red tapes. But according to his family's habits, in addition to cold dishes, his mother made a dish in the kitchen and brought it out for everyone to eat. This not only avoids waste, but also ensures that the food is in good condition when it is served. This "family photo" must not be saved, it gives the "spirit" of the entire New Year's table.
Author: Text: Qiu Lian Editor: Yuan Lulu Responsible Editor: Zhu Zifen.