There are many recipes handed down by Yuan Shikai, some of which are his favorites, and some are specially created or improved for him. Put these dishes away and you can make a big table.
Yuan Shikai's daily diet starts with a bowl of ginseng chicken soup. The practice of ginseng chicken soup is to put ginseng in a sand jar, fill it with water, tie the sand jar with a rope and put it in an iron jar filled with water. After boiling, drain ginseng soup with gauze for drinking.
Yuan Shikai and Cixi have many hobbies in common. One of them is steamed fat duck, which contains glutinous rice, ham, wine, ginger juice, mushrooms, kohlrabi, diced bamboo shoots and so on. Brew and then steam in water. Cixi steamed with clear water, but Yuan Shikai steamed with chicken soup for three days, and the taste of chicken gradually melted into duck meat.
When Yuan Shikai was training in Tianjin, he especially loved to eat buns that were ignored by dogs and dedicated them to Cixi. Cixi also loves to eat, so Yuan Shikai sent fast horses from Tianjin to Beijing to give them to Cixi. That's how Goubuli steamed stuffed bun became red.
Yuan Shikai's concubines are all good at cooking. His favorite fifth aunt is from Yangliuqing, Tianjin. She cooks delicious food. Yuan Shikai's favorite fried shredded pork with leeks and braised pork are all from her hands.
The method of stir-frying shredded pork with leek is: cut peeled pork belly into two and a half inches long curtains, wash leek, cut into inches, stir-fry shredded pork, add Jiang Mo and batter, stir-fry, then add cooking wine and soy sauce, pour in leek, turn over a few times, add salt, thicken and pour pepper oil, and serve. Yuan Shikai likes to eat this dish with steamed bread.
Wuyitai's braised pork is Tianjin-style: the pork belly is cooked until it is five or six times ripe, then put in a red pot, add a little sugar and cook until golden brown. Then put the meat on the iron chopsticks with hot oil, fry it in the pot for one minute, remove the skin when you see bubbles, cut it into strips four minutes long and one minute thick, put the ginger at the bottom of the bowl with a medium bowl, and then put the braised pork on it, salt and cooking wine.
The smoked fish made by my second aunt is also Yuan Shikai's great love: the fried carp is soaked in onion ginger, cooking wine, soy sauce and white sugar, then mixed with brown sugar and flour and smoked in an iron pot.
When Yuan Shikai went to Hebei as governor of Zhili and minister of Beiyang, local officials invented a new way to eat sea cucumbers. He liked it very much: Gong Mi in Zhuozhou was brewed into the belly of sea cucumbers, and it was made by adding onions, ginger, peppers, vinegar and egg skins. This practice is sour and appetizing, and Yuan Shikai likes it very much. It was named Zhili Sea Cucumber.
Yuan Shikai also likes to eat a famous Henan dish-iron pot eggs, which is characterized by red and yellow color, tender and fragrant. It works like this:
Put six broken eggs in a big bowl and beat them in the same direction with bamboo chopsticks for one or two hundred times until the egg liquid is fermented. The foam of the egg liquid in the bowl rises like a cloud, then the pot is put on the stove fire, and the refined lard, shrimps and soy sauce are added. First, the onion and ginger are fried, then they are taken out, and the egg liquid is poured into the oil and rolled, and then the copper pot is clamped off the fire with tongs. At this time, the egg is in the pot and has risen to the top cover. The waiter quickly brought it to the table. Eggs not only squeak in the pot, but also rise high, beautiful and delicious.