Cooking is an activity to process edible raw materials into food in order to meet people's physiological and psychological needs. At first, this activity of human beings was almost the same all over the world, which was to roast animal meat directly with fire, mainly to meet physiological needs. With the development and progress of historical civilization, due to the differences of regions, climates and products, and also due to the frequency of various exchanges (population exchange, cultural integration and economic circulation) and different attitudes towards food, the roughly same primitive cooking of human beings has been divided, and colorful and countless eating customs, cooking methods and delicious dishes have gradually formed. Nevertheless, there are still some similarities in cooking around the world, and many experts and scholars believe that the most representative cooking in the world can be divided into three schools and two types according to flavor. The three schools are oriental cooking centered on China cooking, western cooking centered on French cooking, and halal cooking centered on Turkey. There are two types: agricultural cooking based on agricultural economy, such as oriental cooking, and animal husbandry cooking based on animal husbandry, such as the latter two schools of cooking. They are all food and cooking civilizations formed after great waves and sand scouring in the long river of human history, each with its own advantages and disadvantages.
Taiwan Province's Kenxiang magazine pointed out that China cooking will gradually become the mainstream in the development of the world catering industry. Many experts predict that the 21th century will be the century of cooking in China. We believe that these predictions are not delusions, but are based on a full understanding of the essential characteristics of China's cooking. The essential feature of China's cooking is to pay attention to health preservation and delicious enjoyment, that is, to fully meet people's physiological and psychological needs, and to pay attention to the unity of science and art. However, if we only stay in the bright future of China's cooking, turn a blind eye to the new needs of the people in China whose material and spiritual living standards are constantly improving, and turn a blind eye to the different needs of people all over the world who have their own traditional cooking or modern cooking, and remain complacent, then China's cooking will be difficult to take off in the new century. Of course, objective things always have their own laws of development, and China cooking is no exception. Its development to today's prosperity is not accidental, but is contributed by some historical inevitable factors. Therefore, in today's and tomorrow's increasingly frequent human communication, China cuisine with strong inclusiveness and vitality will never stand still, as evidenced by the rapid development of China cuisine after the reform and opening up. Just to speed up the development of China cuisine and get twice the result with half the effort, people need to recognize the reality, unify their ideas and take effective measures to make China cuisine develop from spontaneous to conscious.
We believe that the rapid development of China's cooking in the new century can not be achieved simply by inheriting the tradition or copying the West or combining the East and the West. Instead, we should make full use of the beneficial experience and scientific and technological achievements of all countries in the world, especially developed countries, to perfectly combine science and art at a new and higher level.
1. Advantages of China Cuisine
After thousands of years, China Cuisine has been flourishing and influenced neighboring countries and regions, forming oriental cuisine centered on it, which is closely related to its own advantages. This advantage is embodied in attaching importance to both science and art. The science that China pays attention to in cooking is based on China's unique traditional mode of thinking, which is to look at everything as a whole and is called holism by Mr. Qian Xuesen. Therefore, for thousands of years, China's cooking has always been people-oriented, adhered to the people-oriented principle, and emphasized the comprehensive effect of diet on human health.
As early as the pre-Qin period, the Plain Questions in Huangdi Neijing clearly stated: "Five grains are for nourishment, five fruits are for help, five livestock are for benefit, and five vegetables are for filling. The smell is combined with it to supplement the essence. This scientific theory is an experience summary of the original intention of diet at that time, and it also played a great role in the development and prosperity of China cooking in later generations. Its scientific nature lies in fully understanding the various needs of the human body and comprehensively arranging the dietary structure. Thousands of years' practice has proved that the food structure with plant raw materials as the mainstay and animal raw materials as the supplement has a significant effect on human health and longevity. In the 1981s. Western scholars made a survey on diet and health in China, and compared it with the West. Finally, they pointed out: "Modern nutrition emphasizes the role of a single nutritional component, ignoring the overall role of various nutritional components in the human body. Therefore, among westerners suffering from the "civilization disease", many people of insight call for learning from China and reforming its dietary structure.
The scientific nature of China's cooking is not only reflected in the diet structure, but also in the diversification and dazzling combination of food raw materials. In this regard, Dr. Sun Yat-sen made a detailed comment in the "General Plan for the Founding of the People's Republic of China", and said: "The eating habits of China people are still in line with science and health, which is beyond the reach of ordinary people in various countries." In order to achieve the purpose of diet health, China cooking also pays great attention to artistry, which makes diet cooking not only stay in physical satisfaction, but also rise to psychological satisfaction.
The artistry of China's cooking is mainly manifested in the pursuit of creativity and individuality, the taboo of sameness, and the emphasis on one dish and one style. Specifically, it is to take taste as the core, pursue the endless change of taste, and further pursue the taste outside the taste. As a result, there are many cooking methods, flavors, varieties of dishes and complicated collocation and combination methods in China cooking, and at the same time, corresponding dietary ideas and concepts have emerged. During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, Confucius said that "food is not tired of essence, and food is not tired of delicacy", pointing out that the color is evil, the smell is evil, and the sauce is inedible. He put forward requirements for food cooking from the aspects of color, flavor and shape. The original flavor of Lu's Spring and Autumn Annals focuses on the artistry of seasoning? quot; The things to be reconciled must be sweet, sour, bitter, pungent and salty, and there are few things to be reconciled. "The changes in the tripod are subtle and subtle, and the words are eloquent, but the will is beyond words. In the Song Dynasty, Su Shi clearly put forward the viewpoint of "beauty beyond taste", arguing that China cooking can not only make people appreciate its formal beauty, enjoy its taste beauty, but also make people realize a variety of beauty associated with diet, such as environmental beauty and implication beauty. It is precisely because China's cooking unifies science and art that it has a strong vitality. Nowadays, many people say that eating Chinese food means eating science, culture and art, and eating a realm or feeling.
The so-called modern manual cooking is to use modern scientific theories and methods to carry forward and develop traditional manual cooking in a reformed way, and to produce personalized food with special features. Its characteristics are to highlight individuality, creativity and national characteristics. Modern manual cooking focuses on meeting people's psychological needs, but it cannot ignore people's most basic physiological needs. It should be supplemented by standardization on the basis of emphasizing artistry, and strive to make people eat more scientifically on the premise of outstanding characteristics. Therefore, modern manual cooking in China does not need to pursue the stability and quickness of industrial cooking, but must be carefully crafted and "unchanged" in the process of "change". The so-called change refers to the change of raw material collocation, cooking methods, flavor characteristics of finished products, and combination forms of dishes, etc., which fully embodies the characteristics of China's cooking, showing its rich historical and cultural connotation and artistic style. The so-called unchanged means using modern high-tech achievements to achieve stable quality of raw material selection and cutting, reasonable nutritional collocation of finished products and unified standards of management and service. In this way, while people enjoy beautiful art, they also unconsciously enjoy scientific physiology.
Modern industrial cooking must form an industry and be operated and managed like other modern industries, so as to meet the needs of modern people. Modern manual cooking can be carried out like artistic creation, and the two cannot replace each other. Because people's body and thoughts are complex, the group and society composed of a single complex person are even more complex, so it is impossible to meet all the needs of everyone only by industrial cooking or manual cooking. Mr. Qian Xuesen once brilliantly stated: "The rise of cooking industry will not cancel the restaurant industry today, just as modern industrial production has not cancelled the production of traditional handicrafts. Today's restaurants, restaurants and restaurants, today's culinary masters will continue to exist, and will further develop and improve, becoming an artistic activity of human society. " We can further say that even if many restaurants realize industrial cooking, manual cooking will not die out.
To sum up, we deeply realize that in the new century, China cooking will surely have a new pattern of organic coexistence of modern cooking industry and modern manual cooking while maintaining its own basic characteristics, so as to achieve a more perfect unity of science and art. Our cooking workers' task is to make the formation of this brand-new pattern from spontaneous to conscious through unremitting efforts, shorten its formation time as far as possible, and make their own contribution to the take-off of China cooking in the new century.