In Guangdong, as long as there is a potted vegetable, it must be a big occasion, such as the new house occupation, the opening of the ancestral temple, the lighting of the New Year, etc., and it is often a potted vegetable banquet in the village. In the expectation of every household, a pot of dishes is fried, boiled, braised and fried, and served. Not only delicious, but also the ultimate goal. Taste and people are also very harmonious, and the family is also very neat, eating pots of harmonious and beautiful dishes and chatting about the good intentions of the New Year while eating. This is the standard configuration for the Spring Festival.
As the protagonist of the New Year's Eve dinner, it takes a lot of time to choose the ingredients in the pot dishes, and each pot has good wishes including family reunion. Interpreting the happiness metaphor of "perfection", "full beauty", "harmonious beauty" and "full pot" dishes are not only dishes that combine diet with time, but also local dishes with changeable artistic creativity and diverse flavors. Counting the roots, this dish was originally only a special food of Chang 'an Town in Dongguan and its Hakka ethnic group in the New Territories, and its origin was not smooth and simple.
Potted vegetables are the traditional food of the original inhabitants of the New Territories in Chang 'an Town, Dongguan, and also the traditional food of its surrounding villages in the New Territories of Hong Kong. It has a history of hundreds of years and is a hodgepodge. Traditional potted vegetables are packed in wooden barrels or antimony cans. Pot-dish banquets are held in villages in the New Territories on festive occasions, such as the occupation of new homes, the opening of ancestral temples or the lighting of Chinese New Year. Different from the Buddha's Leaping Wall of Fujian cuisine, pot cuisine is cooked as a way of eating, and because the relative height of ingredients is similar, it is often called Cantonese Buddha's Leaping Wall. Each ingredient in a pot dish can be separated independently or turned into a dish. Combine all the dishes together, and a pot of dishes can reach the realm of life of "I have you, you have me".
Some people say that Guangdong pot dishes are the Guangdong version of the Buddha jumping wall. Like the Buddha jumping over the wall, the appearance of potted vegetables is bold and unconstrained, and the cooking methods are exquisite. They should be fried, fried, burned, boiled, braised and marinated, and then put into the pot layer by layer. There are no special regulations on the materials used for potted vegetables, generally radish, bean curd skin, Pleurotus ostreatus, chicken breast, raw pork and so on. As a New Year's dish, in order to make the pot full for many years, oysters, fish glue, lobster, Nostoc flagelliforme, oyster sauce and other delicious dishes will be added to the pot dish, using the same value of raw materials.
Traditionally, Hakka people in Guangdong, a walled village in the New Territories of Hong Kong, hold potted vegetable banquets on every happy festival, wedding, big birthday, new residence, ancestral hall lighting or Lantern Festival in the New Year. Tomb-Sweeping Day also has the custom of "eating on the mountain" when sweeping graves, that is, eating potted vegetables on the mountain. People around the village usually use benches and tableware, eat potted vegetables and have a big banquet in the ancestral hall or in the vast area of the village. It used to be a wooden barrel, but later it was changed into an antimony pot and lit with a small hot stove. Everyone is talking about vegetables in Kan Kan around the hot vegetable pot. They taste delicious. Participants are mainly clan associations, and the scene of thousands of people eating potted vegetables is aggressive, crowded and full of blood.
There are several theories about the origin of potted vegetables. The widely circulated view is that at the end of the Southern Song Dynasty in China, Song Taizu Zhao Min, Lu Xiufu, Zhang Shijie and others fled to Wusha in Dongguan and Weichun in the New Territories in Hong Kong. When the villagers saw the emperor, they were waiting for you. As we all know, there is no good food on Gaoshan Road, so the villagers hurriedly warmed up the only ingredients and presented them to the emperor in wooden barrels. Emperor Song, who was naked and hungry, thought it was also the most delicious food in the world. Villagers in the back always eat potted vegetables to celebrate their big happy events and festivals, such as the Spring Festival, until today. Another view is that Wen Tianxiang, who was attacked by Yuan soldiers at that time, fled to Baoan County, Guangdong Province, which is near the sea. The local villagers gave him all the ingredients at home. Song Bing cooked, but there was no tableware. The villagers suggested using a small pot, and Song Bing ate around the pot, and the potted vegetables came out.
Pots and vegetables are placed in an orderly way, and there may be some differences, but in general, the ingredients have been agreed, with clear ingredients, and the placement has been carefully considered: the light taste will be placed on the bottom layer, such as pig skin and bamboo branches, and the heavy taste of raw pork will be placed on the top layer, so that the next layer can digest and absorb the thick sauce, and the tastes will be connected. Put some precious ingredients with little sauce on it. It's delicious. You can eat it first, such as chicken lobster.
Place the ingredients layer by layer from bottom to top and put them in a large pot. Generally, there are about six layers, and the bottom sixth layer is radish and pigskin. The fifth layer is bamboo and squid; The fourth layer of raw pork; The third layer of Pleurotus ostreatus; The second layer of fried eel and shad balls; On the first floor, the first place is chicken, fried shrimp and so on. When eating, we should also talk about etiquette knowledge. Don't stir wooden chopsticks at will. Dig down a floor and eat them first. When you eat, you should clip it from the first floor and eat it step by step from top to bottom. From the gradually tender chicken and shrimp to the radish and pigskin, which are the essence of basin juice, the more delicious you eat, you can taste the unique level and fresh fragrance of basin dishes.
For people in Guangdong and Hong Kong, the celebration of potted vegetables is associated with important festivals. When we get together and sit on a table and hold up chopsticks to search, we are full of enthusiasm, colorful and thriving, looking forward to the happy events in the new year.