Tan Zongxun is not famous for his fame, but for his cooking. Tan Jiacai's cooking methods are mainly roasting, stewing, stewing and steaming, and he is especially good at cooking dry food, soup and old fire treasures, especially bird's nest and shark's fin.
As an editor of the Hanlin Academy, why did Tan Zongxun switch to catering? In fact, Tan Zongxun's father was a famous scholar in Qing Dynasty, and he loved delicacies all his life. When entertaining colleagues at home, he always arranges it himself, and exquisite and delicious home cooking often wins the unanimous praise of colleagues. At that time, Tan Jiacai had a good reputation in Beijing officialdom. In the late Qing Dynasty, most official families were keen on a wide range of fields, and only Tan and his son still focused on diet. In order to constantly improve their cooking skills, they often spend a lot of money to hire famous chefs from Beijing to learn skills in the cooking process. Therefore, the Tan family constantly absorbed the strengths of various chefs, combined the southern cuisine with the northern cuisine, and over time, created a unique Tan-style cuisine. Tan Jiacai, as a home-cooked dish, was famous in Beijing at that time because of its exquisite selection of materials and elaborate production, especially the cooking and seasoning techniques. Later, due to the bad luck of the Tan family, Tan Zongxun simply resigned and took charge of management, thus further developing.
There used to be a saying in the catering industry that the south is sweet and the north is salty. In Tan Jiacai cooking, sugar and salt are usually evenly distributed, with sweetness to increase freshness and salt to increase flavor. The dishes are moderate in taste and delicious, which are liked by both southerners and northerners. Another feature of Tan Jiacai is that it pays attention to the original flavor. When cooking Tan Jiacai, it rarely uses spices such as pepper in the wok, and rarely sprays spices such as pepper after cooking. Tan Jiacai pays attention to the taste of chicken when eating chicken, and pays attention to delicacy when eating fish. Never interfere with the original flavor of dishes with other peculiar smells and strange smells. Never continue soup or juice when stewing, otherwise it will not be original.
Tan Jiacai is a home-cooked dish, which pays attention to slow cooking, unlike ordinary restaurants, where dishes are hastily made for business needs. In Tan Jiacai, the cooking methods used include roasting, stewing, stewing, steaming, roasting, frying, roasting and soup, but cooking is rare, and skills such as shaking and turning spoons are not emphasized. It is for this reason that it is ideal to reserve enough cooks to eat Tan Jiacai.
Tan Jiacai is famous for its bird's nest and shark's fin, and there are more than a dozen cooking methods for shark's fin in Tan Jiacai.
Tan Jiacai's clear soup bird's nest is more unique. It doesn't use chemical alkali to make bird's nest. Although the bird's nest made of alkali is white in color and abundant in quantity, its nutrition is greatly lost. The method of this dish is to soak the bird's nest in warm water for three hours, then rinse it repeatedly with clear water, and carefully remove all impurities such as bird's nest hair. After the bird's nest is soaked, put it in a big soup bowl, pour chicken soup and steam for 20 to 30 minutes. Then boil the clear soup made of chicken, duck, elbow, scallop, ham and other materials, add appropriate amount of sugar and salt, adjust the taste and put it into small bowls, and sprinkle a few slices of finely cut ham on each bowl to eat. This vegetable soup is clear as water, slightly beige, delicious, soft and smooth, unbreakable and highly nutritious. This is Tan Jiacai's masterpiece.
According to legend, there is an unwritten rule for eating Tan Jiacai, that is, no matter how powerful the diners are, they must eat in Tanjiamen. At that time, many dignitaries and diners hoped that Master Tan Jia would "go abroad", but they were all rejected.
In addition, Tan Jiacai also pays attention to the beauty of food, and most dishes are in place. A person is very hygienic in the dining system. When tasting Tan Jiacai, customers often pay attention to the environment, so as to taste it slowly in the quaint and elegant atmosphere. Because Tan Jiacai is different, someone once praised that "the human diet civilization has reached its peak".