On this planet, to talk about which country Americans eat crabs the best, of course China is our country. Chinese people regard crabs as the most delicious food in the world, such as spicy crabs, crab roe, steamed river crabs, crab soup dumplings and crabmeat lion's head, all of which are very popular among Chinese people. Especially during the two traditional festivals of Mid-Autumn Festival and Chung Yeung Festival, eating crabs, enjoying the moon and clamping mountains have become indispensable attractions in the north and south of the Yangtze River.

What I want to say today is that this dietary fad did not not begin today, but it was popular as early as the Song Dynasty.

1. Song Renzong loved crabs since he was a child.

Let's talk about Song Renzong who was the first big crab eater in the Song Dynasty.

According to Sima Guang according to him, Song Renzong loved crabs when he was a child, and when he did not he did not eat a meal because he was too greedy. Do not stop his car. Because eat too much crab, too uncontrolled, and finally eat out of the problem: dizziness, numbness of the limbs, coughing and spitting, constipation.

It is well known that crabs are good, but the nature of cold, it is not advisable to eat more. Eating too much will get wind phlegm. Wind phlegm is what disease? Symptoms of Song Renzong.

At that time, Song Renzong was still young and had not yet mastered himself. It was his nominal mother, Empress Liu, who was really in charge. When Empress Liu saw that the young Emperor ate crabs and ate his body, she immediately issued an edict: shrimps, crabs and sea creatures shall not be banned! Not only crabs, small shrimp are not allowed to send into the palace!

Song Renzong wanted the eunuchs and courtesans to secretly buy one or two crabs in the hotel outside. Everyone was afraid of being severely punished by Empress Dowager Liu, so they all did not he dare not agree, which made Song Renzong become greedy. At this time, another empress dowager can not I can no longer stand. She was the good sister of the raised Empress Dowager Yang Liu. Empress Dowager Yang said, "Why did the Empress Dowager abuse my son like this? Why is Empress Liu so bad to our little baby? I won't let him eat crabs if you win. I'll let him eat it! So she used to hide it and eat it, and she used to get some crabs from a secret channel for Song Renzong to eat.

After he grew up, he was grateful to Empress Dowager Yang but resented Empress Dowager Liu. Why did he hate Empress Liu? Half of it was because Empress Liu had been in politics for too long and made him a puppet; the other half was because Empress Liu was too strict with him and won't let him eat crabs.

2. Song officials who could not live without crabs.

Ouyang Xiu, a great Song writer, also loved crabs. Before his retirement, he wrote to his eldest son, Ouyang Fa, saying: the pork and mutton in Fuyang, Anhui Province, is not as tender as the meat in Beijing, but the crabs produced in the West Lake of Fuyang are much better than those sold in the market in Beijing, and the price is cheap, so in his later years he must move to Fuyang.

In fact, in his later years, Ouyang Xiu really in Fuyang West Lake to buy land, build a house, drink and eat crabs, all day long idle, living in the Song Dynasty, another great writer Su Dongpo envy of the immortal life.

Su Dongpo is also a typical crab lover. Dongpo wrote the book Lao Taoist Fu, describing his favorite food: a cup above, chewing cream before two pincers. Rotten cherry beads fried honey, apricot cheese steamed lamb. Half-cooked clams containing wine, crabs slightly raw and not rotten. The beauty of polymer feeds my gourmet.

The above item refers to the tender neck of the hog's back, the two pincers before the frost refers to the two pincers of the crab when it ripens in the fall, the cherry beads fried with honey refers to candied cherries, the apricot cheese steamed lamb refers to steamed lamb, the half-cooked clams with wine are drunken clams, and the slightly raw and uncooked crab naturally refers to drunken crabs. This verse mentions six dishes, two of which are related to crabs.

But the Song official who loved crabs the most was neither Ouyang Xiu nor Su Dongpo, but a Hangzhou cadre named Qian Kun. Qian Kun, a descendant of King Qian_ of Wuyue, is not well known in the literary history of the Song Dynasty, but there is a famous line that has been known for centuries.

The sentence is similar to the current deputy mayor, but much more powerful than the deputy mayor. What orders and cases the mayor wanted to issue had to be signed by the chief judge before they could be passed. Therefore, Qian Kun wanted to be the mayor of a city that didn't have a general sentence so that he wouldn't don't be limited by others. Why does he want crabs where he works? Of course, because he loves crabs and he can I can't live without them.

3. People in Song Dynasty also eat crabs.

There were many people in the Song Dynasty who loved crabs too.

This example is mentioned in Hongmai Xianchun Lin'an Zhi of the Southern Song Dynasty:

There was a doctor named Sha in Huzhou, Zhejiang Province. His old mother was addicted to crabs. Every year, crabs would be on the market. She would buy dozens of crabs every day, put them in an urn and let them crawl around. When she saw one crawling out, she threw it into the pot first. If you piled up all the crabs this old woman had eaten all her life, you could make a mountain of crabs.

Another old lady from Hongzhou, Jiangxi Province, loves to eat crabs and treats them with bad ones, which shows that she especially loves bad crabs.

There was a painter named Shen in Kunshan, Jiangsu Province, who loved crabs and was good at cooking them. He could he could not support his family by painting, so he painted and cooked crabs to make money.

Describing the snacks of Kaifeng, the capital of the Northern Song Dynasty, Elder Meng said that under the building of Pan, the largest restaurant at the time, people set up stalls to sell crabs every morning. Fresh crabs were sold during the season when they were on the market, while bad crabs were sold during other seasons.

Zhou Fai Yi Jian Zhi describes the restaurant market in Hangzhou, the capital city of the Southern Song Dynasty, saying that there were so many crab vendors in the city that a trade association called Crab Shops was actually organized.

By common sense, Kaifeng in the Northern Song Dynasty and Hangzhou in the Southern Song Dynasty must have had a bunch of crab lovers. Otherwise, the pan under the floor will not sell crabs all year round, Lin also will not have crab vendors composed of the same trade association a city.

4. Those who do not dare to eat crabs in the Song Dynasty.

Some people in Song Dynasty do not have the luck that I have not eaten. They don't have I haven't seen crabs, and even if they have, they don't I don't dare to eat them.

Shen Kuo wrote in the year of Tokyo Meng Hua Lu:

Crabs do not grow in the rivers of Shaanxi, so most Shaanxi people have never seen crabs in their lives. There was a rich man in Shaanxi who got a crab from somewhere. He didn't he didn't dare to eat it until it dried up, so he had to hang it on the wall as a decoration. When I visited his neighbor's house and I saw the crab hanging on the wall, I turned and ran away, thinking it was a monster. Then the neighbor went there more often and was no longer afraid, but thought the crab would ward off evil spirits. Whenever a child was frightened, they would take the crab out and hang it respectfully in front of that family's house, hoping to keep the little ghosts out of the house and protect the child from further fright.

There are also places where Song people dare to eat crabs, but unfortunately not I don't know how to eat them.

Nowadays we eat crabs, the most scientific cooking method is steaming. However, in the Song Dynasty, most northern diners did not I don't know how to steam, they were keen to adopt the following incredible cooking methods:

One is deep-frying. It is mentioned that a kind of fried crab is sold on the streets of Bianliang, Tokyo. The method is as follows: wash the big crabs, remove the sand, chop off the claws, remove the internal organs, chop them into four pieces, sprinkle them with flour, put them in a frying pan to deep-fry, then take them out to control the oil and dip them in noodles. Eating crabs this way destroys all the unique flavors of the crab. It is a real bummer.

The second is boiling. Tokyo Dreaming BiejiTokyo Dreaming Bieji mentions that during the Northern Song Dynasty, the Grand Hotel in Central China used to make a kind of crab soup. It, too, started with washing the crabs, then chopping them into four pieces, throwing them into a pot of boiling water, boiling them until the crab meat turned red, and finally sprinkling them with salt and vinegar, drinking the crab soup and eating the crab meat.

The third is raw pickling. Liu spring paste net method is the most incredible, but in the Song Dynasty was very popular, even in the emperor royal banquet. It does not matter if you pickle the ingredients. The key is to eat raw, not boiled. Clean the crab, chop it with a knife, whether it is crab yolk, cream, crab, crab meat, chopped into mud, shoveled into a basin, mixed with salt, vinegar, pepper, fennel, orange juice, garlic and so on. Eaten straight away. Wu, a female chef from Pujiang in the south

There were also some foodies in the Song Dynasty who really knew how to eat crab. They could make crabmeat oranges and crabmeat buns.

Crab-stuffed tangerine belongs to steamed crab, but the cooking technique is ingenious: crab meat or a whole small crab ball is stuffed into a hollowed-out tangerine and steamed on a grate. The orange flavor refreshes, the orange juice removes the fishy taste, and the orange peel locks in the crab meat's broth and prevents it from dripping into the pot. It really kills three birds with one stone.

Crab-stuffed tangerines were also known as tangerine urns in the Song Dynasty because they were hollow and had a big belly, which was really kind of like an urn. It is said that the most conscientious cooks in the Song Dynasty did not use the whole crab or crab paste to make the orange urn, but only picked out a little bit of crab meat from the crab with double chela, and threw away all the other parts. I think it's really a waste of time.

The crab buns are similar to the crab soup dumplings commonly found in Yangzhou restaurants, which are deliciously wrapped up in a filling of crab roe and fatty pork. But while crab dumplings are made of flour, Song Dynasty crab dumplings are made of tofu. Tofu is greasy soybean skin (don#t confuse it with the thousands of cheap tofu available. It is a thin film of oil, much thinner than dough. It's used to cover the filling for the buns, and the crabmeat and fatty pork inside are clearly visible. It's really spectacular.

The Song Dynasty should also have crab roe soup dumplings. According to Zeng Minhang's records, when the treacherous Northern Song courtier Cai Jing was prime minister, he had a meeting with officials at his home. After the meeting, he invited everyone to drink. After drinking the main course, each person served a plate of crab roe steamed buns. We know that the steamed buns that the Song people said are the steamed buns that we say now, so the crab steamed buns may be the crab buns.