Pingxiang's eating custom

There is a record in Confucius' Family Talk: King Zhao of Chu crossed the river as plain as a bucket, as red as the sun, and ate it when it was cut open, as sweet as a pulp. King Zhao sent someone to ask Confucius for advice. Confucius said: This is a symbol of good luck! Only those who are successful can get it. From then on, this piece of land was named Pingxiang, the hometown of Pingshi.

judging from the origin of Pingxiang's place names, this fertile land surrounded by green mountains and green waters has formed an indissoluble bond with food. According to archaeological data, it is found that a large number of unearthed cultural relics, such as the Yong Zhong in the Western Zhou Dynasty in Pingxiang, the bronze dings and pottery pots in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, and Tao Ge Tao B [wine utensils], have proved that the system of drinking, drinking, ceremony and music has been formed in Pingxiang for a long time. In the second year of Baoding in the Three Kingdoms (AD 267), Pingxiang was established as a county magistrate, and there were post offices, gang shops, gang shops, restaurants and other units engaged in catering and accommodation. Pingxiang is the junction of Ganjiang River system and Xiangjiang River system, where officials and businessmen have to change ships, thus contributing to the prosperity of Pingxiang's catering industry. Many historical celebrities have also left many poems praising wine and food in Pingxiang. Pingxiang's food style was deeply influenced by Wu Chu culture, especially Chu culture. In addition, in the late Eastern Han Dynasty and the war in the north, a large number of people from the Central Plains moved south to Pingxiang. In the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties, people from Fujian and Guangdong provinces moved to Pingxiang in large numbers. Therefore, many characteristics of Pingxiang's food style have been formed. After more than 2,111 years' development, the working people in past dynasties created material civilization, but also made the cooking culture related to "eating" prosperous and prosperous. In the symphony of smoky fire and knives, spoons and pans, chefs used local unique products to deduce the magic and charm of western Jiangxi cuisine. Such as:

the fragrance of sticky rice in Da 'an winter, the fat mutton in Changping Mountain, the smoothness of Yangqi stone chicken, the sweetness of martial arts and winter bamboo shoots, the fresh and delicious carps, the hot and spicy rice noodles with beards, the green Amigu in early spring, and the golden bacon in winter.

These dishes with strong local flavor are mostly made of local delicacies, local products, skilled in knife skills, paying attention to cooking, paying attention to making soup, using sauce, seasoning, and cooking techniques such as stewing, stewing, frying, frying and steaming. When cooked, the taste is fresh, or smooth and tender, or dry, fragrant and crisp, colorful and unique. The taste characteristics are salty, fresh, fragrant and spicy, and the sauce color and thick flavor are seldom used, and sweet taste is avoided, but individual beets are preferred.

There are countless special dishes in Pingxiang. The traditional ones are: three-story building (Pingxiang chop suey), red and white tripe, vermicelli mutton, live-boiled carps, rice flour, lotus blood duck, boiled taro with casserole beef, crispy small river fish, hand-torn dog meat with chestnut, fried taiji map (Monopterus albus) and spicy sauce (beef brisket). Such as Pingxiang rice noodles, rice bean curd, rice cakes, hard rice and hemp chips, hollow hemp balls, all kinds of brown seeds, glutinous rice balls, Amy's cakes, rice cakes with scallion oil, pictographic water snacks, etc., which is related to Pingxiang's location in the hometown of rice in the south of the Yangtze River.

Pingxiang people are fond of spicy food. Even if a sumptuous banquet is placed in front of them, they will say that they can't eat without two or three spicy dishes. This eating habit is related to Pingxiang's location in a "lowly and wet land". As the saying goes, "Fish farts, and peppers smell". Braised fish head, grass carp waist, eel and loach stir-fried Chili. Pepper can be compatible with almost all animal raw materials, and their flavors complement each other. Pingxiang's "small cooking" is the representative of this kind of dishes. Pingxiang's spicy tastes include fresh, spicy, burnt, bad, black bean sauce and spicy sauce, and so on, from which colorful and mouth-watering spicy dishes are derived. The spicy flavor is long and the spicy taste is hearty. Pingxiang people have unique features in processing peppers, such as spreading peppers, white peppers, fried dried red peppers, spicy sauce and spicy moldy tofu, which are all good side dishes to accompany wine and eat.

Some people will say that Pingxiang people only know how to put pepper in cooking, which is absurd. In fact, Pingxiang cuisine has a variety of taste types, and spicy food is only a part of home cooking. There are more than 511 local official dishes and folk dishes recorded in Pingxiang's cookbook at the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China, but there is no spicy dish. In the Pingxiang Flavor Cookbook compiled and published by Pingxiang Cuisine Association in 1996, spicy dishes are also a small part, but more are delicious dishes with different flavors.

Pingxiang's bacon and bacon flavor can also be called a must. There is a record in the Book of Changes that "the sun is eager for the sun and the fire, saying bacon". Every year after the winter solstice, when farmers kill pigs for the New Year, they should smoke bacon and preserved meat for the first month. All livestock, poultry meat and their internal organs, fish, taro and tofu can be smoked. Before smoking, they should be salted for 2-11 days, and then hung in a fire pit more than one meter high, and smoked with firewood, tree pits, sawdust and chaff. Smoke slowly with slow fire. After half a month, take it off and wash it off, dry it in the sun, and its color is golden red. If immersed in a tea oil tank, it will last for years. Bacon and bacon can be steamed and fried. Pingxiang's "Steamed pork with five flowers" and "Fried donkey meat with winter bamboo shoots" are delicious and unforgettable after eating.

today, when time and space enter the reform and opening up, Pingxiang cuisine is also a combination of east and west, north and south, competing for novelty and innovation, advancing with the times on the basis of inheriting and carrying forward the traditional flavor, and moving towards a higher level of "health care, nutrition, cultural taste, color, fragrance, taste, shape and utensils", opening up a new world for Jiangxi cuisine.

Three major river basins and four major cuisines

The cuisines have different local flavors due to the differences in geography, climate, customs and specialties. As far as the dietary characteristics of the Han nationality are concerned, there are currently four major cuisines, eight major cuisines and ten major cuisines, and the classification of cuisines is still increasing. However, on the whole, Chinese cuisines can be roughly divided into four major cuisines: Sichuan, Guangdong, Jiangsu and Shandong. Judging from the naming of cuisines, although it is named after the province, its influence is far beyond the boundaries of the province. All the food customs are influenced by it, and the taste and cooking are generally the same. This is the scope of cuisines. Of course, within a cuisine, there are many schools or branches, which are just "small differences" among "great harmony". As far as the four major cuisines of Shandong, Sichuan, Guangdong and Jiangsu are concerned, the range of Shandong cuisine is not only Shandong, but also the North China Plain, Beijing and Tianjin, the three northeastern provinces and Shanxi and Shaanxi, all of which are the taste and food customs of Shandong cuisine and become the backbone of northern cuisine. Sichuan cuisine, on the other hand, is centered on the land of abundance and extends to the middle and upper reaches of the Yangtze River, the two lakes and the Yunnan-Guizhou area. Cantonese cuisine is mainly in the Pearl River valley, and Fujian and Guizhou are also affected. Jiangsu cuisine, also known as Huaiyang cuisine, is a vast area in the lower reaches of Huaihe River and Yangtze River, as well as cities such as Shanghai, Hangzhou and Nanjing. Of course, this is only a rough division, and some bordering areas are overlapping.

the origin of cuisines can be traced back to a long time, because the characteristics of dishes are based on the natural conditions of products. Zhang Hua's "Natural History. Five People" in the Jin Dynasty made it clear: "People in the southeast eat aquatic products, while people in the northwest eat land animals." "Those who eat aquatic products, turtles, clams, snails and clams think that delicacies are not aware of their fishy smell; For those who eat land animals, raccoons, rabbits, rats and finches think it's rare, but they don't think it's delicious. " "Those who have mountains gather and those who have water fish". In other words, "relying on mountains to eat mountains, relying on the sea to eat the sea." This is the main condition for the formation of cuisines. It is precisely "today's four seas and Kyushu are separated by special mountains and rivers; There is a difference in diet in the land. " (Qi Cheng)

Based on the products, the difference in taste is an important factor in the development of cuisines. "National Customs" said: "The habits of food vary from place to place. The south likes fat and fresh, and the north likes raw chewing (onions and garlic), each of which is suitable and cannot be strong." This kind of eating hobby has become a habit that people can't move. "Diet is like a dialect, and it is different everywhere. As long as the taste is right, the taste is wrong, and as a person's temperament is not harmonious, he will live in different days. " Only in the last hundred years, with the development of transportation, economic development and scientific civilization, the distance between regions has been shortened, and the products are no longer a fortuitous product, which makes the products no longer the only basis of its cuisine, but this food custom inherited for thousands of years is still not easy to change.

in addition to the above factors, the difference of cooking methods is also one of the important conditions that cannot be ignored in the formation of cuisines. Yuan Mei, a food connoisseur and critic in the Qing Dynasty, wrote two completely different cooking methods in the north and south, making pork tripe: "Stir-fry in oil, it is better to be extremely crisp, which is a northerner's method;" Nanren white water and wine simmer two columns of incense, which is extremely bad. " It can be seen that before Yuan Mei, cooking had already formed different characteristics of other cuisines. Qian Yong said more specifically in Lu Yuan Cong Hua Zhi Dong: "The same dish has different tastes. For example, northerners are addicted to thick, while southerners are addicted to light; People in the north are rich in food, and most of the food is beautiful, while people in the south are beautiful in food and fruit. Each has its own beauty, and it is quite self-satisfied. "

by the end of the Qing dynasty, the different characteristics of the four major cuisines were more distinct. "Qing barnyard grass banknotes" describes the diet situation in the late Qing Dynasty, saying: "The differences in eating habits in different places are due to the practice. Then northerners are fond of onions and garlic, Yunnan, Guizhou, Hunan and Sichuan are fond of spicy products, Cantonese are fond of light food, and Sioux are fond of sugar. " It also analyzes the characteristics of cuisines in various places in detail: "Suzhou people's diet?" You like a lot of fat, and the cooking methods are all mixed with five flavors, but you use more sugar and add five spices. " "Fujian and Guangdong people's diet? The food is rich in seafood, and the meal must be accompanied by soup. Cantonese people are fond of living things and do not seek the depth of progress. " "Hunan and Hubei people's diet? I like spicy food, although I eat before the abbot, I am full of mistakes, and there are no peppers and mustard, and there are many soups. " "Northerners eat onions and garlic, but also produce in the north to win ..." And so on, and so on. Although the quotation is not enough to explain the whole picture of the cuisine, we can see the characteristics of the four major cuisines in China. [