In the middle of the night, Song Renzong's stomach growled, but he didn't want to trouble the imperial chef to cook roast mutton, because he didn't want this extravagant behavior to become a lesson for future generations. He would rather endure hunger until dawn.
Although Song Renzong was a gourmet, he was very frugal, and life in the palace was meticulous, and even the Empress Cao needed to borrow ingredients from the minister's wife in person to make a dish of the emperor's favorite white fish.
Respect for nature and green diet - the thrifty way of Emperor Song Renzong. At a palace banquet, the imperial chef prepared twenty-eight crabs, and before Song Renzong could move his chopsticks, he asked how much the crab was.
After learning about **, he was deeply dissatisfied and emphasized not to be extravagant and wasteful. He set the dish aside as a warning to the crowd. This was not only Song Renzong's personal frugal attitude, but also reflected the importance that the society attached to saving resources and protecting the environment at that time.
During the Song Dynasty, Chinese food culture reached its peak, with a wide variety of cooking methods and rich dishes. "Chai, rice, oil, salt, sauce, vinegar, tea"The proverb also originated in this era. "Tokyo Menghualu" vividly depicts the bustling market and rich food in Bianliang, Tokyo at that time.
Zhang Zeduan's "Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival" shows the bustling market life of Bianjing, the capital of the Northern Song Dynasty. In the picture, people are busy rushing to the market, shopping, watching plays, and playing, which is full of joy and peace.
The fine depiction of Gongbi painting makes the whole picture vivid and expressive, full of a strong atmosphere of life. Food written by literati and ink writers: Su Shi, Lu You and other ancient writers were all gourmets, and they wrote their food life into their poems, especially Su Shi, who even called himself a "glutton".
Su Shi commented in detail on almond pulp, clams, crabs, wine and other delicacies in "Gourmet", showing his unique insights on food. In "Dongpo Zhilin", there are many records of his research on food.
This Jinshi during the reign of Song Renzong, who traveled all over the world, was good at discovering and speaking for food, and named after him has a wide variety of foods, such as Dongpo elbow, Dongpo ink carp, Dongpo crisp, Dongpo meat, etc.
Su Shi's "Huanxi Sand, Drizzle and Slanting Wind as Xiaohan" depicts the pinnacle of Song Ci's food aesthetics. On that cold spring day in the seventh year of Yuanfeng (1084), Su Shi and his friends had a picnic in Nanshan to share food and beautiful scenery.
In the Song Dynasty, Lichun had the tradition of giving spring plates, which were the custom of serving vegetables, fruits, and cakes to give to relatives and friends. The fresh vegetables and fruits in the spring platter, such as knotweed and artemisia shoots, are crisp and pleasant on the palate.
The milky white foam of the snowflakes washed up by the boiling water in the tea set, and when the foam recedes, it is a cup of spring tea that makes people have an endless aftertaste. And the sentence "The taste of the world is pure joy" shows Su Shi's clear and indifferent life realm.
This is not only a praise for food, but also a love for life and a deep understanding of life. This scene makes people feel fresh and elegant, and makes people look forward to and love life.
Su Shi's way of tasting tea pays attention to the coordination of water, fire and utensils, and he also has a song "Water Tune Song Head", which records the process of picking tea, making tea, ordering tea, and tasting tea.
He once wrote in "Eat Tea" that the three words "eat tea and go" can make people find happiness in the world. His optimistic attitude towards life may lie in the fact that he always has good food to accompany him.
Although he was once belittled, no matter where he goes, food is indispensable around him. When he was in Huangzhou, he invented "Dongpo Meat" and wrote down his own food secrets, which were vigorously promoted among the people and became a famous dish.
This experience was actually his act of benefiting the people as a magistrate.
Especially during the period of depreciation of Lingnan, Hainan and other places, he became more interested in local specialties. One of the specialties of the Lingnan region is lychee. After being demoted to Huizhou, Su Dongpo was not depressed because of his remote location, but tasted the local fresh lychees, and wrote the famous poem "300 lychees a day, and he will not hesitate to be a Lingnan person".
When he was demoted to Hainan, he tried the local seafood, especially oysters, and after tasting its deliciousness, he also wrote a letter to the ministers of the DPRK and China to taste it and said with a smile: "I don't let the Chinese courtiers and doctors know, I am afraid of trying to migrate south, so as to share this taste." ”
In addition, puffer fish is Su Dongpo's favorite. Whenever the river is slightly chilly in spring, the flocks of ducks frolicking in the river feel the arrival of spring, which is a good time to eat puffer fish.
Fugu meat is delicious, but it is also highly poisonous. Once, Su Dongpo risked his life to taste puffer fish, and when others asked him how it tasted, he said calmly: "It's worth dying." This can't help but make people marvel at his boldness and taste.
However, Su Dongpo's love for food is not for the appetite, but because he knows that "food comes first, and taste is water-based". He believes that food is a kind of enjoyment of life, the embodiment of culture and life, and a respect for nature and life.
Therefore, he will continue to explore and try various delicacies to satisfy his appetite and taste for life.
At the banquet of the Dragon Boat Festival, although Su Shi tasted the delicious zongzi and Changzheng, and the wine in the jade pot and jade cup, he still could not hide the loneliness of leaving his hometown. In this song "Nangezi Tour", he expresses his emotions with mountains and song eyebrows, waves and drunken eyes.
The Dragon Boat Festival has become a multicultural festival in the Song Dynasty, where people not only avoid disasters, but also commemorate Qu Yuan and eat calamus wine and zongzi. There were many kinds of zongzi in the Song Dynasty, but there was no dispute between the sweet party and the salty party, and the Song people were used to dipping it in sugar and eating it.
In addition, "Pang Lin Xian" made from bamboo shoots in summer was also one of the delicacies of the time, and was known as "the first dish of vegetable food".
Bamboo shoots Photo source Photo network Lin Hong is a maverick strange person, who is excellent in poetry, calligraphy and painting, but he just wants to live a secluded life and does not want to be an official. His book "The Qing Offering of the Mountain Family" is a strange book that integrates diet, health preservation, and literature, and records more than 100 kinds of Song Dynasty delicacies in the form of notes.
In the eyes of traditional scholars, his way of life seems to have no sense of existence, and he is a marginal person. However, he was content with this, moved his family to the mountains, called his wife "mountain wife", and devoted his life to the food world of mountain and wild vegetables, such as Bijian soup, Huaiye Tao, Shanjia three crisps, ** chicken, etc., with Su Dongpo and other writers as idols.
In an involuted society, Lin Hong always insists on being himself and living the life he wants. He once had nothing to do and went to visit his friend Chen Jie. Chen Jie wore a horn scarf on his head, which was extraordinary, and while inviting Lin Hong to drink, he asked the two child servants to sing Tao Yuanming's "Words of Return" in the Jin Dynasty, and offered pine flower cakes to accompany the wine.
Lin Hong believes that the taste of pine cake is far better than the world's envy of hump, bear paw and other expensive dishes, which is enough to show that spiritual pleasure and satisfaction is the meaning of the existence of food.
The food of the Song Dynasty paid attention to food nourishment and health, especially vegetarian food, and the ingredients recorded in the "Shanjia Qing Offering" were natural and delicious, and were deeply loved by people. With the progress of Tibetan ice technology, there are already ice drinks in summer, and some people even sell them on the streets, Jiulongzhai and Xidan Pailou Qiu's ice drinks have become Internet celebrity stores at that time because of their unique taste, and sour plum soup is even more popular.
The rise of cold drink shops in the Song Dynasty reflected the rise of the citizen class after the boundaries of the market were broken. In the Northern Song Dynasty painter Zhang Zeduan's "Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival", the streets are lined with small and medium-sized merchants, at least 45 of which are engaged in restaurants, and various characteristic signboards also show the rudiments of advertising goods.
According to statistics, there were 86 kinds of pastries and pastries in the Song Dynasty, more than 100 kinds of wine names, and the types of grains and omnivorous drinks were also richer than those of the previous generation, and the three-meal system was popularized.
These are all thanks to the development of the folk catering industry, after the Song Dynasty crossed to the south, many time-honored brands in Kaifeng also migrated, and Song Gaozong even sent people to Lin'an's restaurants from time to time to purchase food.
In the "Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival", we can see many ancient storefronts, which show the lifestyle and commercial activities of people at that time.
Autumn is the best time to taste delicious crab meat, especially the female crab in autumn, which is delicious and fat. During the Southern Song Dynasty, the imperial court was located in the southeast, with dense waterways, prosperous oceans, and inexhaustible river freshness and seafood.
Wulin Old Things" and other records that there are dozens of dishes with crab as raw materials, such as ao offering, crab soup, wine crab, drunk crab, crab sheng, hand-washing crab and so on. And Lu You, a genius in the Southern Song Dynasty, has a soft spot for crabs.
Even when he is old and frustrated, eating crab and tasting wine can still make his eyes shine, as he wrote in the poem: "Tuanbi frost crab four-cheek perch, bottle of fresh for ten years." Saiyue is thousands of miles away, and the dream soul is also drunk in the West Lake. ”
Hua sideburns and stars, amazing ambitions, this body is like a send. Depression and sickness. To the dark, to eliminate the pride of the year. Dreaming of the mountains and rivers of the homeland, separated by heavy smoke and water. Thousands of miles away, the old society withered, who remembers Qingmen Junyou? ”
However, although Lu You cherished the ambition of the Central Plains in Beiding, he was up and down in the Huan Sea, unable to drive back to his hometown, and could only miss the delicacies of his hometown in the autumn breeze, such as sea bass, mushroom vegetables and other Jiangnan flavors, leaving regrets.
Mutton is the first choice of winter food of the ancients, and is also known as the "king of imperial food". In the Song Dynasty, mutton was regarded as a delicacy, alongside ginseng, and was believed to have a nourishing effect, especially when it was cold and tired.
According to the records of "Tokyo Menghualu", there are many kinds of delicacies with mutton as raw materials in the Song Dynasty, including stewed sheep, noisy sheep, sheep in the oven, steamed sheep's head, fried sheep white sausage, etc., as many as dozens of kinds.
Even emperors and geniuses like Song Renzong and Su Shi were big fans of mutton. Su Shi also has a unique secret recipe for mutton, which is stewed with walnuts and mutton, and the boiled mutton has no taste, which can be called a delicacy.
In the court diet, the status of mutton is very important, according to records, during the Song Renzong period, the palace had slaughtered more than 280 sheep a day, which shows the status of mutton at that time.
The palace banquet utensils are ingenious, and Song Huizong personally guides, and the imperial food is amazingly exquisite. During the banquet, the eight treasures were listed, and the wine and delicacies showed the royal pomp, but he himself was at a loss, because the beauty was extreme, but he didn't know where to start.
After the extreme luxury, he and his son were captured by the Jin people, and suffered a lot of humiliation, and the once golden bottle of fine wine and jade plate were ashamed, but now they can only be pursued in dreams. The Song people eat mutton, and Wang Anshi once praised: "The sheep is generous and beautiful".
However, before and after the Jingkang Revolution, the courts of the two Song Dynasty had abandoned the simple life of the early Northern Song Dynasty and held luxurious banquets. During the reign of Song Huizong, every banquet was full of eight treasures, but there was no way to get off the chopsticks, which shows the extravagance and waste of the banquet.
He also often personally directed banquets, and was particularly particular about eating utensils, using materials such as agate, glass, crystal, jade, etc., which were extremely luxurious. However, this luxurious life did not bring him good luck, but allowed the Jin people to capture him and his son, and let them suffer humiliation, and the once golden bottles of fine wine and jade plates were shameful, but now they can only be pursued in dreams.
During the Southern Song Dynasty, the minister Zhang Jun presented an unprecedented luxurious feast for Song Gaozong, and the banquet brought together more than 190 kinds of dishes, including mutton delicacies such as mutton tongue sticks, sliced sheep's head, roasted sheep's head, mutton tongue and placenta soup, paved mutton rice, roasted mutton, beheaded sheep, etc. 7 kinds, and other luxury dishes are dazzling.
The luxury of this banquet even surpassed that of the Tang Dynasty's Roasted Tail Banquet and the Qing Dynasty's Manchu and Han full banquets. However, this feast did not make the Song Gaozong monarch and ministers go down in history, but was despised and ridiculed by the people for it.
In fact, only those literati who truly loved food and life, such as Su Shi, Lu You, Lin Hong, and others, will be remembered, and their works and spirit will be passed down through the ages, while the corrupt lives of those emperors and bureaucrats are not worthy of praise.
The magnates of the Song Dynasty "directly regarded Hangzhou as Bianzhou", and the result was the absurdity of the Northern Expedition and the blood and tears of Yashan.