"I found that there was something abnormal on the table, and immediately called the head chef Cheng Ruming to deal with it! "On Chinese New Year's Eve in 1960, the whole country was immersed in the festive atmosphere of reunion, and families prepared Chinese New Year's Eve dinners, waiting for wanderers and relatives to return home for reunion.
And the great man of Zhongnanhai, because he cared about work, left the study late, and when he came to the restaurant, the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner had already been set on the table. However, the dishes on the table are somewhat simple, with no meat, just bitter gourd left over from noon, fried chili peppers, and freshly made green onion cakes.
The dishes of this Chinese New Year's Eve dinner were all agreed by the great man. After sitting down, the great man first used chopsticks to pick up a piece of green onion cake, which was made by the chef next to him, Cheng Ruming.
Cheng Ruming is well versed in the tastes of great men, and he has never made a mistake in eating and drinking for many years. But at this moment, when the great man tasted the green onion cake, he felt that the taste was wrong, and his brows were tightly locked.
After a while, the great man put down his chopsticks and said to the people around him: "There is a problem with this green onion cake, don't eat it, call Cheng Ruming to come." "What's wrong with this plate of green onion cakes?
Cheng Ruming arrived quickly, and the great man didn't directly tell him what was wrong, but asked him: "Tell me yourself, what's wrong with this green onion cake?" Cheng Ruming seemed to have foreseen this result, he didn't make excuses and confessed everything.
It turned out that when making green onion cakes, he added a little meat foam, but the amount was not much, and he held the psychology of luck, hoping that the great man would not be able to taste it.
Cheng Ruming's actions stemmed from the great drought of 1959, which affected food crops across the country. Cheng Ruming is the chef of the great man, he has been trying his best to make a good diet for the great man, but on Chinese New Year's Eve of this year, he secretly added meat foam to the green onion cake, because he saw that the great man worked very hard and wanted to supplement his nutrition, although this was not allowed.
Cheng Ruming promised that even if he was transferred or dismissed, he would prepare food for the great man. The great man was moved to tears and understood Cheng Ruming's good intentions. Great men care about the people of the whole country, and Cheng Ruming cares about the health of great men.
The great man decided not to let Cheng Ruming make green onion cakes anymore as a "punishment" for him. Cheng Ruming's ability has been recognized by great men, and becoming a great chef is also based on his real skills.
Cheng Ruming, a native of Laizhou, Shandong, was born in troubled times, and his family was in the middle of the road. In order to survive, at the age of 13, he went to Tianjin with his uncle to work and worked as a handyman in a restaurant.
He is smart and studious, hardworking and hardworking, from doing odd jobs to becoming a junior chef in the back kitchen, constantly seeking knowledge and learning from experienced chefs. Cheng Ruming's cooking skills are unique in the restaurant, but it is inevitable that people are sophisticated, and the old chefs are dissatisfied with this.
As a younger generation, Cheng Ruming has made a name for himself in the traditional chef industry with his outstanding culinary skills. But this does not mean that he has smashed other people's jobs, but has prompted the old chefs to actively improve themselves and do their best to deal with the competition.
In the end, Cheng Ruming found a job in another restaurant with his unique skills, but in any famous restaurant, there are often several "veterans" gathered in the back kitchen, so he often faces the fate of being excluded.
However, Cheng Ruming's life changed after the founding of the People's Republic of China, and he was assigned to work in the Beijing Railway Special Transportation Office as a cook on the train. In this special period, the great man often took the train to other places, and Cheng Ruming was responsible for the diet of the great man's special train with his excellent work ability.
His exquisite culinary skills attracted the attention of great people, and he was eventually invited to work as a chef in Zhongnanhai.
When he first cooked for a great man, Cheng Ruming was not familiar with the taste of a great man, and a lot of interesting things happened. When Cheng Ruming prepared the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner for the great man for the first time, as a northerner, he naturally remembered to make dumplings and asked the great man what kind of dumplings he wanted.
On Chinese New Year's Eve, the great man only ate one dumpling and stopped eating it, and Cheng Ruming realized that the difference between the diet of the north and the south was far beyond imagination. On Chinese New Year's Eve the next year, Cheng Ruming specially made rice cakes for the great man that southerners liked, and the great man ate very happily and ate a few more bites.
Among the stories of Cheng Ruming's cooking for great men, the story of braised pork with soy sauce is the most well-known. Braised pork is one of the great man's favorite foods, especially during the difficult Anti-Japanese War, every time he won a big battle, Li Yinqiao, the guard of the great man, would try his best to make delicious braised pork.
After Cheng Ruming found out, he relied on his superb cooking skills to make a dish of braised pork with soy sauce that was full of color and flavor. However, the great man did not move a single chopstick after seeing the finished product.
It turned out that in order to make the color of the braised pork more attractive, Cheng Ruming used soy sauce when cooking. Although many people used the method of soy sauce coloring at that time, this still made the great man hesitate.
Cheng Ruming may not know that that great man doesn't like to eat soy sauce. Because when he was growing up, his father used to run a soy sauce factory, and there were many large vats in the yard for brewing soy sauce.
The environment and craftsmanship of that time were not the same as those of today, and during the brewing process of grain, a layer of foreign matter would be produced on the surface, and the great man once unveiled it himself, and since then he has resisted the taste.
After learning what happened, Cheng Ruming began to try to find a substitute for soy sauce. After many experiments, he finally discovered that adding sugar to the pan and stir-frying, and then putting the pork belly in it, can be dyed with an attractive color, and there is no soy sauce taste.
The improved braised pork was so loved by the great man that almost every time this dish appeared, the great man's appetite would be better than usual.
Cheng Ruming has been able to serve the great man for 22 years, in addition to his superb cooking skills, but also his carefulness. After Cheng Ruming solved the problem of braised pork, he began to study how to make Hunan dishes without soy sauce but with excellent fragrance.
After many observations, Cheng Ruming found that every time the great man added tempeh to his meal, his appetite would be better than usual. As a result, he invented two dishes, bitter gourd with tempeh and chili with tempeh, which were highly praised by great men.
And the story of the green onion cake is not accidental, there is also a hidden story behind it.
After the widespread drought, the state launched a call for "frugality to survive the famine", and the diet of the great man was also streamlined. Cheng Ruming began to think about how to make nutritionally balanced and varied meals with limited ingredients.
He found that the great man liked to eat shredded turnips, so he decided to start here. Cheng Ruming studied various methods of radish cakes and found that they tasted good and met the needs of great people.
During that time, Zhongnanhai's kitchen had more carrots and white radish. However, Cheng Ruming realized that although the radish cake was delicious, it was made without oil, which could lead to the great man's daily diet not being able to consume enough fat.
When Cheng Ruming was struggling with a problem, he suddenly remembered the green onion burrito in his hometown of Shandong, so he decided to make a scallion pancake with green onions. This cake was appreciated by the great man, and he even named this cake "Cheng Ruming Green Onion Cake".
During that time, in addition to radish cakes, the great man's favorite was green onion cake. When Cheng Ruming first started working in Zhongnanhai, he would make menus every day. However, whenever he finishes serving, he is asked to destroy the menu.
This is out of concern for the safety of the great man. In his 22-year career, he has never kept a single menu.
In 1976, the great man was hospitalized due to illness and could only eat liquid food, but he still longed to taste the wild vegetables purslane and braised pork. Cheng Ruming carefully prepared these two dishes, but the great man just smelled them and did not eat them.
After the death of the great man, Cheng Ruming's work was made public, and his family learned that he had been cooking for the great man. Many reporters came to interview the great man's last Chinese New Year's Eve dinner, but Cheng Ruming only said that he couldn't remember it clearly, because the menu was destroyed on the same day.