When it comes to the varieties of morning tea in Yangzhou and Taizhou, the "protagonist" is dried silk. Taizhou dried silk was researched and created by Xing Guisen, a famous chef in the middle of Jiangsu Province. Xing Guisen was originally a disciple of Ji San, an imperial chef, who was famous for cooking dried silk. In the Republic of China, Xing Guisen worked as a chef in Wanhua Building, Xicang Street, Taizhou. After painstaking research, he introduced hand-dried silk for the public.
Dried silk is cut from dried bean curd. The dried silk cutter first cuts a piece of dried bean curd into about 21 pieces evenly with a knife, then cuts it into filaments equivalent to match sticks obliquely, and then pours it into boiling water for repeated scalding. Because of the alkali, the dried silk is soft and elastic to chew. Of course, dried silk itself is tasteless, and it all depends on seasonings to reconcile. Soy sauce, water, sugar and salt are adjusted to moderate shades, slightly sweet and umami. This process is called "cooking oil", and sesame oil is added and fragrant. Sprinkle shredded ginger, coriander, shredded carrot, peanuts and diced mustard tuber to make light and delicious dried silk. As for boiled dried silk, it is cooked with auxiliary materials such as yaorou, shrimp, mushrooms, bamboo shoots, fungus, vegetables and soup.
when people in Yangzhou and Taizhou eat morning tea, they mostly choose "Fuxiang" tea mixed with Anhui Kuizhen, Zhulan and Hangzhou Longjing. After soaking, this tea is clear in color, rich and mellow, and integrates the color of Kuizhen, the fragrance of Zhulan and the taste of Longjing. There is also an allusion to this tea. It is said that in the old days, Taizhou Teahouse drank tea in different grades, gentry and wealthy businessmen drank Longjing, ordinary families drank Kuizhen, and foreigners in Thailand drank Zhulan. All three kinds of tea needed to be paid. On the second day, the teahouse will mix and boil the remaining three kinds of tea powder and provide it to drivers, porters and other low-paid people for free. Once, a relative of a salt merchant accidentally drank this kind of tea and felt very good, so he recommended it to the salt merchant. After drinking it, the salt merchant called this kind of tea with compound fragrance "Fu (Fu) Xiang" tea and recommended it to his friends. As time passed, this kind of "Fu Xiang" tea became the new favorite of people at that time. Nowadays, "Fuxiang" tea has been popularized, and more people have enjoyed the happy time brought by this famous tea.
Pasta is the "finale" in Yangtai morning tea. Including fish soup noodles, fresh meat wonton, dry mixed noodles, boiled noodles, fried noodles and many other varieties, of which fish soup noodles won the prize at Panama International Expo in 1942 are the most popular. The fish soup on fish soup noodles is very elegant. The bones of wild eel, small crucian carp and big pig are stir-fried with onion and ginger, and then slowly boiled by fire. After the noodles are cooked, put them into the fresh and thick fish soup, sprinkle some small peppers and garlic leaves, and the attractive fish flavor will come to the nose. With fresh and smooth noodles, drinking mellow fish soup, the refreshing taste lingers in my heart for a long time. The old diners in Taizhou commented that it is "thick in the mouth and moist in the stomach". Like Cantonese-style morning tea, there are many kinds of snacks in Taizhou morning tea, such as crab roe soup bag, diced pork with bamboo shoots, shredded radish bag, diced pork bag, mushrooms and vegetables bag, dried vegetables bag, steamed dumplings with shrimps, glutinous rice shaomai, thousand-layer oil cake, etc. The pastry skin is made of high-quality wheat flour, and the stuffing is made with fresh vegetables, meat and aquatic products, and it is steamed now by hand, so the snacks with thin skin and full stuffing taste soft and fine. If you want to taste every snack, you can also choose a variety of snacks with the same cage. The status of refreshments in Guangdong morning tea is also very important. There are two kinds of refreshments: dry refreshments include jiaozi, dried fruits, steamed stuffed buns and crisp cakes, while wet refreshments include porridge, meat, turtle paste and bean curd. Among them, the dry point is the most exquisite and sells well. For example, two or three fresh shrimps are wrapped in translucent crystal dumpling skin, which is the signature shrimp dumpling that every tea house must make. Before lifting the chopsticks, you can see a little reddish in the crystal. After you bite it gently, the flexibility of the crystal dumpling Pete and the natural sweetness and crispness of the shrimps blend into a delicious taste, which makes people memorable. Another example is the special crispy egg tarts of bird's nest in some high-end teahouses. Several layers of golden crispy egg tarts are filled with tender yellow and silky bird's nest, which has aroused people's appetite at first sight, not to mention the perfect combination of sweet and soft bird's nest and crispy powder after entrance, which makes people want to stop eating. And all kinds of porridge, such as the first porridge, preserved egg lean meat porridge, raw rolled fish porridge, etc., are all made of soft and smooth porridge bottom, with different kinds of meat and fish eggs, supplemented by crispy shrimp slices and green chopped green onion, sprinkled with a spoonful of pepper, and tasted soft and sweet, with rich flavor.
speaking of which, the spectators may have been tempted to try the delicious Guangdong morning tea. But wait a minute, how much do you know about the etiquette of Guangdong morning tea? Cantonese people have a few small manners when drinking morning tea, such as opening the lid when there is no water in the teapot to show the need to refill the water, tapping the desktop with the index finger and middle finger of the right hand to show gratitude when others pour tea for themselves, and shouting to the waiter to pay the bill after drinking morning tea. How did such etiquette come into being?
Let me tell you some allusions about these etiquette. Burying in the allusions actually means to pile up the bills, that is, to settle the accounts. The "hand-knocking ceremony" when pouring tea is an allusion from the southern tour of Ganlong incognito: it is said that when Ganlong poured tea for his entourage in the teahouse, his entourage kowtowed with his hands bent to represent it, which was handed down, and now it has spread from the morning tea table in Guangzhou to all parts of the country: opening the lid and refilling the water also comes from an interesting allusion. During the dinner, the waiter was called to refill the water. As a result, as soon as the other party opened the lid of the teapot, the wealthy businessman insisted that there was a canary in the pot and started a lawsuit with the teahouse. As a result, the teahouse lost the lawsuit. Since then, the owner of the teahouse has stipulated that guests must open the lid of the teapot themselves if they want to refill the water. Although it is only a legend, the two sides exchanged ideas through a small action, and it is a manifestation of civilization without shouting.
rice rolls
rice rolls, also known as Juan Fen and Pig rice rolls (because it looks like pig intestines), was created by Pantang Hexian Pavilion in War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression period and is now available in snack bars, teahouses, restaurants and hotels. It is to steam rice slurry into thin skin one by one in a special multi-layer steamer or cloth, put meat, fish fillets, shrimps, etc., steam it, roll it into long strips, and cut it into plates. The raw materials are called beef sausage, pork sausage, fish fillet sausage and shrimp sausage; Without stuffing, it is called sausage; Adding sugar to rice slurry is called sweet sausage.
In Hongkong, Guangdong and other places, rice rolls is often seasoned with light soy sauce or hot sauce with peanut oil. In Singapore and Malaysia, more sesame seeds and sweet sauce are added, which may be unfamiliar to diners in Guangdong and Hong Kong, but it has good local characteristics.
Boat porridge
After the end of the Han Dynasty, Guangzhou became a big trading port. Tang Xianzu, a famous playwright in the Ming Dynasty, once described the busy scene and majestic momentum of Guangzhou Port with the words "There are thousands of wells on the riverside and thousands of ships on the site". Under this historical background, boat porridge, a special porridge, came out in Lizhiwan, Xiguan, Guangzhou. At that time, the rivers in the western suburbs of Guangzhou were flowing freely, and Li was red and green, which was rated as one of the eight scenic spots in Yangcheng-"Li Yu Sing". Many scholars go boating, and the boaters cook porridge on the dinghy and sell it to tourists. This kind of porridge is made of fresh fish fillets, fried vermicelli, jellyfish skin and peanut kernels. It is very fresh in taste, beautiful in scenery, light in boat, cool in wind and water, and very poetic.
Shrimp Dumplings
Shrimp Dumplings, with fresh shrimps as stuffing, are truly shrimp-made jiaozi. Shrimp dumplings can be described as the first brother of Guangdong morning tea, and every tea house is the first to promote its own homemade shrimp dumplings. It is said that the idea of shrimp dumplings originated from the owner of a small teahouse in rural Henan, Guangzhou. Because the teahouse is located in a water town, fishermen often sell fish and shrimp on the river, so the boss buys live shrimp and makes shrimp dumplings with pork and bamboo shoots as stuffing, which is famous for its delicacy in Guangzhou.
A delicious shrimp dumpling, it must have a transparent skin, and it is refreshing, elastic and non-sticky. The stuffing inside must be the original fresh shrimp, and at the same time, this fresh shrimp is also particular: it can't be chilled shrimp, in case it feels watered when it is imported. Finally, we need to pay attention to the ingredients of pork. When the pork is wrapped with fresh shrimp, we should put a proper amount of it, so as not to usurp the host's role.
Shaomai
Shaomai, a famous Han snack. Also known as steamed dumplings, Xiaomi, Shaomai, Shaomei, Roasted Plum, and Ghost Pengtou, it describes the shape that the top is fluffy and folded like a flower, and it is a kind of pasta snack wrapped in hot noodles and steamed in a cage. In Guangdong morning tea, Shao Shao is the second brother in the menu, just below shrimp dumplings. Guangdong Shao Shao Shao, mainly dry steaming Shao Shao, fresh shrimp Shao, crab meat Shao, pork liver Shao, beef Shao and ribs Shao.
Among them, in 1931s, dry steaming and cooking became popular all over Guangdong, and in recent 21 years, it spread all over large and medium-sized cities in Guangxi, becoming a must-have product in Lingnan teahouse and restaurant tea market. Dry steaming is made of egg liquid, water and flour as skin, pork, shrimp and mushrooms as stuffing, kneaded into pomegranate flower shape and steamed. Its color is light yellow, crab yellow is bright, its skin is soft, its meat is refreshing, it contains a little juice, and it is delicious and fragrant.
Xiao Bian's personal preference for Shao Shao Shao is crab seed Shao Shao Shao. Sprinkle a little red crab seed on the Shao Shao Shao noodles mixed with various kinds of meat, which can neutralize the greasy meat and have a wonderful taste.
Steamed pork ribs with black bean sauce
Steamed pork ribs with black bean sauce, a classic Guangdong morning tea snack, is made by frying the cleaned pork ribs, chopped green onion and other ingredients in a pot, putting them out, mixing them well with seasonings in a format, adding taro, pumpkin, white radish and other ingredients, and finally mixing them with black bean and steaming them in a steamer until the aroma is sprayed, which really makes people salivate.
For a good steamed pork ribs with black bean sauce, the ribs must be steamed away from the bone, not stuffed with teeth, but with chewing heads. The flavor of fermented soybean juice should be completely blended with the flavor of pork ribs, and if chewed in the mouth, a strange flavor will last forever. It is worth mentioning that the ingredients, if you add taro, you have to fry it with the bottom; If it is a pumpkin, it needs to be cooked very soft and smooth, and it is best to sand it; If it is white radish, it is soft and can't be scattered. These ingredients absorb the gravy of ribs and are absolutely unforgettable to eat.
Steamed chicken feet
According to statistics, steamed chicken feet have been one of the most sold snacks in restaurants and tea markets in China and Japan for many years. This is enough to show that the Guangdong people's love for chicken feet is sincere. After being fried and steamed, the chicken feet are full and soft, and they can be deboned as soon as they are sucked. Coupled with the sauce mixed with various flavors, they will suddenly taste fragrant, and even eating bones has become a pleasure.
At the same time, it is precisely because Guangdong steamed chicken feet are soft and tender that both the elderly and children can enjoy them without obstacles. Besides, chicken feet are extremely rich in nutrition and contain colloid, which can keep the skin moist and have the effect of caring skin. It is no wonder that they are the love of many women!
barbecued pork buns
If Guangdong morning tea is regarded as a dinner, then all kinds of Cantonese steamed buns are the staple food of this dinner. On the table of Guangdong morning tea, barbecued pork buns, cream buns, bean paste buns, quicksand buns, pastry buns, walnut buns and so on often appear, among which the most traditional ones are Cantonese-style barbecued pork buns.
Barbecued pork bun is one of the representative snacks in Guangdong. It is made of barbecued pork cut into small pieces, seasoned with oyster sauce, wrapped in flour and steamed in a steamer. Barbecued pork buns are generally about five centimeters in diameter, and a cage is usually three or four. A good barbecued pork bun is filled with moderately fat barbecued pork. After steaming, the foreskin is soft and smooth, slightly cracked to reveal the barbecued pork stuffing, and exudes the fragrance of barbecued pork.
According to legend, there is another standard for the traditional barbecued pork bun, which is: "The bird cage is tall, the belly is full (the top), and the mouth is full but only slightly exposed." Verified by many authentic Cantonese people, it is still true.
Saltwater Corner
Sipping morning tea is the biggest feature of Cantonese people, and a cup or two of tea shows the comfort of South Cantonese people enjoying leisure life. Naturally, as one of the famous snacks in Guangdong, Salty Water Corner is characterized by its sweet skin and delicious stuffing. The skin is crispy and bulging, and it tastes crispy outside and waxy inside. The fragrant taste of the stuffing is unforgettable and it has become one of the Cantonese refreshments that many tea drinkers like.
As a famous snack in Guangdong, Panyu Salty Water Corner evolved from oil angle, a lunar new year's eve food. Oil angle generally uses raw and cooked glutinous rice flour as the skin, which is divided into two kinds: salty and sweet. They all use glutinous rice flour, cooked noodles, pork belly, mushrooms, preserved vegetables, shrimps and leeks as the main ingredients, and sweet oil angle uses sugar, peanuts, sesame seeds and coconut as the stuffing. Salted oil angle is filled with salt, pork, bacon, horseshoe, shrimp, etc. Panyu people were inspired by salty oil angle and created the Salty Water Corner. Salty water horn is bigger than salty oil angle, and the soup in the stuffing is rich and has the taste of water, so it is called "salty water horn".