Mutton was regarded as a valuable product in the Song Dynasty, and it was the main meat used in the court. Presumably, ordinary people could not eat it often. In the books of the chef in Zongshen era, it was recorded that "434,463 kilograms of mutton, 0/9 lambs and 4/0/3/0/1 pork were often raised in one year". The consumption of pork and mutton is not an order of magnitude at all, but more as a side dish.
Pork was a frequent visitor to the table of ordinary people in Song Dynasty. In the Song Dynasty, the cooking methods were very diverse, so I won't go into details here about Dongpo pork, which has become a famous dish in Hangzhou.
There are also records of pig head meat. If you have a cooking enthusiast, you can try it according to the book.
After pacifying Shu, those who caught Yu Kou were far away and hungry, so they entered a temple. The monk was very drunk. If the public is angry and wants to cut it, the monk should not be afraid, forgive the public and ask for food. The monk said, "There is meat but no vegetables." Public welfare is very powerful. He was given steamed pig's head, which was delicious and loved by the public. He asked, "Monks only drink and eat meat because they have other skills?"
The monk said he could write poems, and the public ordered him to eat steamed dolphins. He wrote, "The mouth is long and short, and it contains fat. He has been taking medicine in the mountains for a long time. Banana leaves have been wrapped in the steaming place and poured with apricot pulp when cooking. The red, fresh and elegant ones are called golden plates, and the soft and ripe ones are really like jade. If you are a root, the root only eats vines. "
-Hui Hong's "Cold Zhai Night Talk"
Wang Quanbin met a fair-weather monk and forced him to hand over the secret recipe of steamed pig's head meat. The specific method is to wrap it with banana leaves when cooking, and pour it thoroughly with apricot pulp after cooking, which is far more delicious than mutton.
In Song Dynasty, chicken was also a very important meat source. According to Meng Lianglu, Records of the Old Man in the West Lake and other documents, chicken should be cooked with chicken head, sauce chicken, roast chicken, fried chicken, lobster sauce chicken, fried chicken and boiled chicken. However, we should not overestimate the weight of chicken on the table of ordinary people in the Song Dynasty, because just a few decades ago, the value of chicken was mostly to get eggs, not directly as meat, let alone close to the Song Dynasty a thousand years ago.
There are also many dishes with duck and goose as the main ingredients, such as boiled duck, eight-coarse goose, white-fried spring goose, roasted goose, trough goose incident (also named drunk), fried duck, roast duck, boiled goose, salted duck, five-flavored apricot cheese goose, steamed goose with bamboo shoots, goose chops, and roasted chicken and duck.
Beef is seen and recorded as breast beef, boiled beef and so on. However, if we consider that cattle were protected by government decrees because of farming in ancient times. The proportion of beef in the diet structure of ordinary people in the Song Dynasty, especially in the vast rural areas, should be relatively low.
Venison was considered as an excellent tonic in the Song Dynasty. In addition to velvet antler, it is also eaten with velvet antler and deer blood. Many literati mixed deer blood with wine for tonic (you should know), and some even died of overeating, which should be rare in ordinary people's recipes.
Other birds and animals
Common birds, such as yellowbird, quail, roe deer, pheasant, etc., should appear more in the homes of ordinary people. In addition, Zhejiang people especially like to eat frogs. The hobby of eating frogs is more common in the south, but northerners can't understand it.
There is also a strong custom of eating snakes in Guangnan. According to Zhu's "Zhou Pingke Talk", "Guangnan eats snakes and the city is full of snake soup. Dongpo's concubine went to Huizhou with the cloud. She tried to send veterans to buy vegetables, which means seafood. Ask its name, it's a snake. Wow, she was ill for several months and died unexpectedly. " Poor Wang Chaoyun!
What deserves special study is that during the Southern Song Dynasty, the Song people created the cooking method of "rinse".
I visited Wuyi Liuqu and visited the teacher. I got a rabbit when it snowed, and no one could control it. Shi Yun said, "There are only thin batches in the mountains, and wine, sauce and pepper are all in fashion. Azakami wind heating, less than half a pot of water. When the soup rings, everyone will give chopsticks after a cup, so that you can put the soup in and cook it, so that you can give it to each other as appropriate. " Because of its method, it is not only easy to do, but also warm and happy. Yang, a great scholar, loves ancient learning and comes from a poor family, so he should enjoy the fun of this mountain forest. As the poem says: "The storm is sunny, and the wind turns sunny." At the end of the cloud: "I was drunk and remembered the smell of mountains, but forgot that it was your home." Both pigs and sheep are ok.
-Lin Hong's "Shanjia Qing Palace"
We should really thank the master in the mountains for eating hot pot now.
Refers to the "General Envoy of China Customs"