Cantonese cuisine has a wide range of materials, not only rich in main ingredients, but also rich in ingredients and seasonings. In order to show the flavor of the main ingredients, Cantonese cuisine is very particular about the choice of ingredients and seasonings, and the ingredients are not miscellaneous. The seasoning is to bring out the original flavor of the main ingredients, and both of them are based on freshness. Pay attention to color, fragrance, taste and shape, and take taste as the main body.
Cantonese cuisine has a wide variety of materials, which is dazzling. Almost everyone who flies in the sky, crawls on the ground and swims in the water can eat. Needless to say, partridges, sparrows, leopards, civets, pangolins, seal fish and other game of birds and animals; Cats, dogs, snakes, rats, monkeys, turtles, and even grass insects that are mistaken for "leeches" by the ignorant are also among the cooking, and once cooked, they suddenly become exotic and delicious food, which makes the eaters applaud and sigh as "exotic and exotic".
Another outstanding feature of Cantonese cuisine is that the dosage is fine and fine, the ingredients are skillful, the decoration is beautiful and gorgeous, and it is good at imitating and innovating, and there are many varieties. 1965 "Guangzhou Famous Cuisine Beauty Exhibition" introduced 5457 kinds.
The third feature of Cantonese cuisine is that it pays attention to quality and taste, and its taste is relatively light, striving for freshness in the clear and beauty in the light. Moreover, it changes with the change of seasons, with light in summer and autumn, rich in winter and spring, and pursuing color, fragrance, taste and shape. The taste of food is clear, fresh, tender, cool, smooth and fragrant; Seasoning is sour, sweet, bitter, spicy and salty; This is the so-called five flavors and six flavors.
Famous Cantonese dishes include: roast suckling pig, boiled shrimp, Long Hudou, Taiye chicken, braised pork with taro, braised skirt wings, scrambled eggs in Huangpu, stewed rice worms, dog meat pot, multicolored shredded snake, chrysanthemum, dragon, tiger, phoenix and snake soup, all of which are famous Guangzhou dishes with local flavor.
Cantonese cuisine is also one of the eight major cuisines in China. Its formation and development are closely related to Guangdong's geographical environment, economic conditions and customs. Guangdong is located in the subtropical zone, bordering the South China Sea, with abundant rainfall, evergreen seasons and rich products. Therefore, Guangdong's diet has always been blessed. As early as the Western Han Dynasty, Huainanzi Spirit contained the fine and extensive selection of Cantonese cuisine materials, and it is conceivable that Cantonese people had mastered different cooking methods to cook different odors more than a thousand years ago. Before that, Han Yu, a poet in the Tang Dynasty, was banished to Chaozhou. In his poems, he described dozens of foreign bodies such as horseshoe crabs, snakes, octopus, frogs, octopus and Jiang Yaozhu in chaozhou people, which made him feel very uncomfortable. However, in the Southern Song Dynasty, octopus and other seafood were the top delicacies of many local dishes. In terms of ingredients and taste, raw food is used. After that, there were not many pigs, cattle, sheep and deer eaten raw, but the habit of eating raw fish fillets, including raw fish porridge, has been preserved to this day. However, it is still the case that the white-cut chicken is only cooked and the thigh bone is bloody. The characteristics of Cantonese cuisine, such as exquisite knife work, exquisite ingredients, and clear but not light taste, are fully expressed.
Cantonese cuisine is also good at learning from the strengths of various families, and it is used by me, and I often learn new things. Squirrel mandarin fish, a famous dish in Jiangsu cuisine, is well-known in the north and south of the country, but you can't go to a Cantonese banquet. Although Cantonese people like to eat rat meat, the name of rats is not elegant. Famous chefs in Cantonese cuisine changed the fish into A Man Called Autumn Flower fish with skillful knives, named chrysanthemum fish. After such a change, it is convenient and hygienic to eat one bite at a time with chopsticks and knives and forks. After the transformation, Jiangsu cuisine has become Cantonese cuisine. In addition, the cooking methods of Cantonese cuisine, such as soaking, grilling, roasting and Sichuan, are transplanted from the explosion, grilling, roasting and frying of northern cuisine. The new method of frying and frying is formed by absorbing the similar methods of western food and improving them. However, the transplantation of Cantonese cuisine is not mechanically copied, but combined with Guangdong's extensive raw materials, fresh and tender texture, and people's tastes like fresh and always new, so as to develop it. For example, the steak of northern dishes is usually seasoned, baked until crisp and rotten, and served with oil, which is called clear steak. However, the steak of Cantonese cuisine is to boil or steam the raw materials until they are greasy, and then push them on the wide clams, which is mostly manifested as steak with materials. Representative works include eight treasures grilled duck, shredded chicken grilled meat breast and so on. Guangdong's food culture is closely related to all parts of the Central Plains. One of the most important reasons is that there were many mainlanders who set up another dynasty in history. The officials sent by the dynasties to govern Guangdong and demoted brought the northern food culture, and there were also many chefs who passed on their skills to their local counterparts, or set up their own shops in the shops to directly introduce the local food culture to Lingnan people, making it an important part of Cantonese cuisine. After the Han dynasty, Guangzhou became the transportation hub of the Chinese and western sea routes; Most foreign businessmen gathered in Yangcheng in the Tang Dynasty, and merchant ships came in droves. At that time, compared with the inland areas, the economy in Guangzhou developed rapidly.
Well-known ones include the Man-Han Banquet, fragrant perch balls, drunken shrimps and crabs in Jufeng Garden, assorted cold cuts, a pot of one product and sesame balls with a high quality in Nanyang Hall, the semi-fried rice crust in Yubolou, crispy crucian carp in Fulai, the roast duck in Wanzhan Hall, the Jiangnan Baihua Chicken in Wenyuan Garden, the braised abalone slices in Nanyuan Garden, and the vegetarian dishes in Dinghu Lake in Xiyuan Garden. Wangji's roast suckling pig, Xinyuan's fish cloud soup, Jinling's sliced duck, Guanzhen's clear soup fish belly, Taotaoju's fried crab, vegetable with vegetable root fragrance, Luyuju's skinned suckling pig, Baiyun pig's hand, and Taiping Pavilion's pigeon with western sauce, etc.
Cantonese cuisine consists of three local flavors: Guangzhou cuisine, Chaozhou cuisine and Dongjiang cuisine. Guangzhou cuisine includes famous foods in the Pearl River Delta, Zhaoqing, Shaoguan and Zhanjiang. It has the widest area, complicated materials, fine selection of materials, excellent skills, good at changing, exquisite flavor, clear but not light, fresh but not vulgar, tender but not raw, oily but not greasy. Summer and autumn strive to be light, winter and spring are rich, and they are good at stir-frying, which requires mastering the temperature and oil temperature just right. Chaoshan cuisine belongs to Fujian, and its language and customs are similar to those of southern Fujian. After being affiliated to Guangdong, it was influenced by the Pearl River Delta. Therefore, Chaozhou cuisine is close to the strengths of Fujian, Guangdong and Huizhou, forming its own school. He is good at cooking seafood, and soups, vegetarian dishes and beets are the most distinctive. Fine knife work and pure taste. Dongjiang cuisine, also known as Hakka cuisine, was originally from the Central Plains. In the late Han Dynasty and the late Northern Song Dynasty, it moved south to avoid the war and lived in Dongjiang, Guangdong Province. Its language and customs still retain the inherent features of the Central Plains. The dishes are mostly meat and rarely aquatic. The main ingredients are prominent, paying attention to fragrance, heavy oil and salty taste. Casserole dishes are famous for their unique local flavor.
There is also a school of Hainan cuisine in Cantonese cuisine, which has fewer varieties, but has the unique flavor of tropical food. In cooking, Cantonese cuisine is mainly fried and fried, and it is also stewed, fried and roasted. It pays attention to freshness, tenderness, coolness and smoothness, and once had the saying of "five flavors and six flavors". The "five flavors" are fragrant, loose, smelly, fat and strong, and the "six flavors" are sour, sweet, bitter, spicy, salty and fresh. At the same time, pay attention to color, fragrance, taste and shape. Many Cantonese dim sum are baked in an oven, which has the characteristics of western food. The main famous dishes of Cantonese cuisine include crispy roast suckling pig, Long Hudou, Taiye chicken, national protection cuisine, Chaozhou roasted eagle goose and monkey brain soup. Among them, "roast suckling pig" is the most famous specialty in Guangzhou. As early as the Western Zhou Dynasty, roast suckling pig was one of the "eight treasures". Roast suckling pigs spread all over the country in Qing Dynasty, but now they are famous in Guangdong. With the changes of the times, the cooking has been continuously improved, and it has truly reached the goal of "color like amber, but also real gold", with crispy skin and soft meat, and fragrant inside and outside, which is suitable for the tastes of southerners. "Grandfather Chicken" is a famous traditional dish in Guangzhou, which started in the late Qing Dynasty and was interrupted in the 1970s.
The origin of Cantonese cuisine can be traced back to the early Han Dynasty more than 2,000 years ago. In ancient times, before the arrival of immigrants from the Central Plains, the ancestors of the Yue nationality in Lingnan had a unique diet style, such as a hobby of white snake fish clams and raw food. In the Western Han Dynasty, there was a record in Liu An that "the more people get pythons, the better food is served". In the Song Dynasty, Zhou Qufei's Answer to the Generation Outside the Ridge also recorded that Guangzhou people "eat anything without asking about birds, animals, insects and snakes". This is inseparable from the geographical environment of Guangzhou. Guangzhou belongs to the subtropical water network zone, where insects, snakes, fish and clams are particularly rich, easily available, cooked and eaten, thus forming a lively and vigorous eating habit.
Since the Qin and Han Dynasties, the Han people in the Central Plains have been moving southward into Guangzhou. They not only brought advanced production technology and cultural knowledge, but also brought the Central Plains diet style of "never tired of cooking in detail and never tired of eating in essence". In the Tang and Song Dynasties, a large number of businessmen from all over the Central Plains entered Guangzhou, and Guangzhou's cooking skills were rapidly improved. In the Ming and Qing Dynasties, Guangzhou's food culture reached its peak. According to the relevant documents in the second year of Qing Daoguang (1822), "Guangzhou Xiguan Meat Forest is full of wine and sea, and there is no cold and heat, no day and night."
In the 1920s and 1930s, Guang Chuan's food customs, compatibility between the North and the South, and the combination of Chinese and Western cultures, with distinctive delicacies and snacks, emerged in large numbers. Over the long years, Guangzhou people have not only inherited the tradition of Central Plains food culture, but also absorbed the foreign and various cooking essences, and continuously absorbed, accumulated, improved and innovated according to local tastes, hobbies and habits, thus forming the food characteristics of various dishes, skillful cooking, high quality and delicious taste. In the past hundred years, it has become one of the most representative and influential food cultures in China. This is based on three major cuisines, namely, Shandong Cuisine in the Yellow River Valley, Sichuan Cuisine, Jiangsu Cuisine and Shanghai Cuisine in the Yangtze River Valley, and Guangdong Cuisine in the Pearl River Valley, or four major cuisines (namely, Shandong, Sichuan, Jiangsu and Guangdong) or eight major cuisines (namely, Shandong, Sichuan, Jiangsu, Guangdong and Fujian) Up to now, Guangzhou's diet, whether it is the variety and quality of food, the number and scale of restaurants and restaurants, or the food environment and service quality, is second to none in China and enjoys a good reputation abroad. At present, there are nearly 20,000 restaurants in the city with 900,000 seats.