A cup of food and a cup of drink are all gifts from the creator.
If you don't know how to eat and drink, food is just a kind of feed.
Throughout the ages, smart people in China know how to reward taste buds best. If you want to ask when the food is the best, it must be Song people.
Whether it is the popularity of cooking techniques such as stewing, frying, frying and stewing, or the use of ingredients such as salt, vinegar, pepper and fermented soybean, and even the endless emergence of delicacies, it has set off an unprecedented wave of food in all walks of life.
Elegant Song people not only loved and knew how to eat, but also promoted the improvement of kitchen utensils and furniture, forming an orderly kitchen system.
From the Song Dynasty, two meals a day began to transition to three meals a day, and the position of the separate meal system was gradually replaced by the combined meal system. Without the Song Dynasty, an important milestone in the history of China cuisine would be gone!
Mr. Chen Yinque, a master of Chinese studies, wrote in Preface to Deng Guangming:
Song dynasty has always been an undervalued dynasty. Due to constant disputes with northern nationalities such as Liao, Jin and Xixia, various unequal treaties were signed, which made future generations only remember their military weakness.
As we all know, the prosperity of domestic economy and international trade in Song Dynasty far exceeded the imagination of modern people.
According to historical statistics, during the period of Song Shenzong, the national treasury minted 5.06 million coins a year, while in the prosperous period of Kaiyuan in the Tang Dynasty, it minted 320,000 coins a year, which is nearly 16 times of the disparity in data, which is enough to prove the wealth of Song people.
With a solid economic foundation, the government is not short of money, and the people live and work in peace and contentment, it will put forward higher requirements for the quality of life. The first thing to satisfy is naturally the stomach.
The greatness of Song Dynasty lies not only in ending the war regime of Five Dynasties and Ten Countries, but also in solving the problem of food and clothing closely related to the people.
Throughout the dynasties, famine broke out several times in China, and Li Bai in Fiona Fang suffered from poor harvest and starved to death everywhere, which was shocking. After the founding of the People's Republic of China in Zhao Kuangyin, Song Taizu, North Korea immediately formulated a correct agricultural policy, and its descendants also earnestly implemented this policy.
In contrast, in the Tang Dynasty, the average grain yield per mu 1.5 stone had increased to 2 stone in the Song Dynasty. It is worth noting that the Tang Dynasty 1 stone was about 53 kg, and the Song Dynasty 1 stone was about 97 kg.
In the book Economic History of Song Dynasty, the author Qi Xia also calculated that the cultivated area of Song people reached 720 million mu, and the yield of rice in the south was about 176 kg, and that of wheat in the north was about 89 kg.
The breakthrough of output can not be separated from the effective measures taken by emperors in previous dynasties: setting up agricultural officials, persuading farmers to cultivate mulberry, building water conservancy projects, reclaiming land, rewarding trees and mulberry, and popularizing agricultural innovation.
In order to keep people from starving and eat delicious food, emperors set an example one after another, the most prominent example being Zhao Heng in Song Zhenzong.
At that time, among the tributes of Vietnamese envoys to China, there were a number of excellent seeds called "Zhancheng Rice".
Song Zhenzong virus did not spread to the local area immediately. First, I planted it in a field opened in the palace for two years. It is found that it has drought resistance, short growth period and strong adaptability. So it handed over the seeds to local officials, started sowing in Fujian, and then spread to Jianghuai, Zhejiang and even Henan.
In addition to Zhancheng rice, North Korea's yellow rice and India's mung beans were also introduced in the Northern Song Dynasty. In order to make new varieties spread across the country faster, the government not only issued a series of letters to persuade farmers, but also issued letters to exempt agricultural taxes.
Farmers not only have fields, but also more and more dishes on the table. Eating is no longer just for satiety, but gradually deduces an aesthetic.
How much did people in the Song Dynasty love to eat? We can turn to Zhang Zeduan's masterpiece The Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival to enjoy a thing or two. The 5-meter-long scroll vividly restores the folk customs of Kaifeng, Tokyo.
All kinds of people shuttle through the street pier, cars and horses are busy, boats of all sizes dock on the shore, tall towers stand in the center of the city, houses on both sides are in pieces, and the style of big cities is vividly on paper.
Among the nearly 100 buildings in the scroll, there are at least 45 restaurants, such as teahouses, restaurants, noodle shops and butcher shops. There is even a "takeaway brother".
I saw a little boy walking slowly with a plate in one hand, and I didn't know which house to send the newly cooked food to. At that time, people in China could provide door-to-door service. What an advanced concept!
What do Song people like to eat? Classic works such as Liang Lu's Dream, Tokyo Lu Hua's Dream, and Wulin's Old Stories are all listed in a long list.
For example, noodles are called "soup cakes" by the Song people, including bamboo shoots and pork noodles, salt fried noodles and mutton soft noodles. Another example is steamed bread, which the Song people called "steamed bread". There are mutton steamed buns, crab steamed buns and bamboo shoots steamed buns. There are many kinds of cakes, such as Chongyang cake, chestnut cake, plum blossom cake and Hu cake.
Interestingly, people in the Song Dynasty called jiaozi "wonton", but the wonton we are talking about now is called "truth".
Northerners mainly eat pasta, while southerners mainly eat rice, and they also eat fried rice. Rich people pursue delicious food; For ordinary people, a bowl of vegetable soup and a piece of fried tofu can also give them satisfaction.
The most incredible thing is that Song people actually love "night poison".
As we all know, the Tang Dynasty imposed a night ban, telling the people with drums every night that they were not allowed to go out for activities without permission from the beginning of the "night ban", and those who violated the order would be punished, and only three days in a year could not stop at night. It is impossible to go out to drink and eat at night. But if you travel to the Song Dynasty, you can rest assured.
After visiting the night market of Song people, I know that the paradise of eating goods should be here. Without the limitation of business hours, the night market of Song people usually doesn't end until midnight, and it opens early at 5 o'clock. Food and drinks are available, and the price is not expensive.
According to different seasons, the store will also launch seasonal menus. In hot summer, there are litchi paste, plum ginger, sugar, ice and snow and other appetizing desserts. In the cold winter, people eat nourishing ingredients such as rabbit meat, wild duck meat and roasted pig skin.
When it comes to meat, we have to mention a famous dish-Dongpo meat.
After Su Shi, a great writer, was demoted to Huangzhou because of Wutai Poetry, he found that the local pork was extremely delicious, but few people ate it, so he created braised pork and wrote his cooking skills into the poem:
There are many foods related to Su Shi, such as Dongpo elbow, Dongpo tofu, Dongpo bean jelly, Dongpo Fuling cake, Dongpo celery soup, Dongpo cuttlefish, Dongpo soup and so on.
As a veteran gourmet, Su Shi has been enthusiastically giving advice to an old lady selling prickly heat and developing new dishes.
The old lady is skilled, but because the shop is remote, no one comes to buy it. Therefore, Su Shi wrote a poem saying:
The old woman's business has been booming since then, because of this song "Reading the Neighbor". We don't know what prickly heat tastes like, but through Su Shi's writing, it seems that we can perceive the crisp and sweet taste thousands of years ago.
There are many scholars who like to study diet.
On the basis of absorbing the essence of folk noodle making, Zheng Wenbao, a scholar in the early Northern Song Dynasty, also contributed a unique delicacy-Yunying noodle.
Yunying noodles are very particular, including lotus root, lotus flower, water chestnut, taro, chicken head, water chestnut, arrowhead and lily.
First, mix the above ingredients, steam the lean meat until it is cooked, after air cooling, finely mash it in a stone mortar, add sugar and honey produced in Sichuan, steam it until it is cooked, continue to pour it into the stone mortar and gently mash it to mix the sugar and honey evenly, then take out a lump, cool it and harden it, and cut it with a knife. The sliced slices resemble snowflakes, which is the origin of the name "Yun Ying Mian".
A bowl of ordinary noodles can also blend so many ingredients, which is really painstaking. In fact, Daoxiao Noodles's shadow can already be seen in the production method of cloud shadow surface.
The birth of every kind of food is inseparable from the achievements of predecessors. According to word of mouth, Yunying noodles were favored by countless diners and later included in the menu of the Song Dynasty.
Cai Jing, a powerful minister, loves food, and there are examples to prove it. According to legend, he held a banquet in Kaifeng to let his subordinates taste crab-yellow soup packets, and a meal cost more than 1300 yuan, equivalent to one month's salary.
Cai Jing formed a master chef team. There are related records in Ask Qi Lin. "There was a Cai Jing in the Song Dynasty, with hundreds of kitchen maids and fifteen children ..."
Not only in Cai Jing, but also in official families, the kitchen configuration is similar, but the number is more or less. Different from other dynasties, most famous chefs in Song Dynasty were women.
In many occupations, chefs are the most expensive. Their division of labor in the kitchen is very clear. Some are just shredding, others are just setting dishes, and each process is done to the extreme.
If it weren't for wealth and power, most people couldn't afford a chef. Sometimes in order to invite a good cook, even if the official residence is too guarded, you have to greet her with a sedan chair.
Looking at the chef's list of ingredients, the cost of a meal is equivalent to buying several good silks. In the long run, how many families can afford such daily consumption?
Every grand banquet is a time when the "four divisions and six innings" of a large family show their talents.
The "four departments" include accounting department, kitchen department, tea and wine department and desk and tray department; The "six bureaus" include the Fruit Bureau, the Honey Fried Bureau, the Vegetable Bureau, the Oil Candle Bureau, the Fragrant Medicine Bureau and the Plaque Bureau. From song and dance banquets to changing soup and pouring wine, a mature management system has been formed.
In the Song Dynasty, there was a special phenomenon different from the previous dynasty, that is, people could sit around a table and enjoy delicious food.
During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, food was put in low wooden boxes, and people had to sit on the floor when eating, and each person served one without interfering with each other. This is the food sharing system that has followed 1000 years.
Although the sharing system is more in line with etiquette, if the whole family is reunited and can't get together for dinner, it seems a bit indifferent.
With the development of the times and the liberation of ideas, the food culture is getting closer to the secular, and there are tall tables and chairs. Convenient diet has become the mainstream, and exquisite dishes and chopsticks are readily available.
What is commendable is that the Song people paid great attention to food hygiene and strictly stipulated the use of public chopsticks to clip vegetables.
According to Kong Qi, a Yuan Dynasty man, in Zhi Zhi, there were three kinds of necessary tableware on the dining table in Song Dynasty. One is "Sui bottle", which is equivalent to a chopstick bucket and used to hold chopsticks; The second is "stop", which is used to put chopsticks on hold and prevent them from touching the table directly; The third is the "slag bucket", which is used to hold bones and keep the desktop clean.
With the formation of the system of sharing meals and the enhancement of the awareness of public chopsticks, the popularity of "hot pot" in the Song Dynasty was not accidental, but a matter of course.
In the book Shanjia Qing Palace written by Lin Hong, a scholar in the Southern Song Dynasty, there is a kind of food called Poxia Palace.
Scholars in the Song Dynasty preferred to eat rabbit meat and repeatedly poked the rabbit slices in hot soup with chopsticks. Soon, the meat color turned into a cloud color, and the dipping sauce tasted delicious. Isn't it the embryonic form of hot pot?
Compared with "hot pot", a more novel cooking method "frying" was born. Before the Song Dynasty, China people cooked mainly by steaming and boiling, and most of them used renewable plant fuels.
With the development of industry and commerce in Song Dynasty, the demand for fuel is getting higher and higher. Obviously, plant fuel can not meet the supply, coal mining industry has become popular, and coal has become a favored new energy source.
At the same time, metal smelting in Song Dynasty became more and more mature. Iron used to make farm tools and weapons is gradually used by craftsmen to make cookers.
With the popularity of iron pots among the people, it also provides a foundation for the development of cooking in China. It is not uncommon for ordinary people to fry a few dishes of home cooking.
Today, we are used to dividing Chinese food into four flavors and eight cuisines. These four flavors are Shandong, Sichuan, Guangdong and Huaiyang. The eight major cuisines refer to Shandong cuisine, Sichuan cuisine, Hunan cuisine, Jiangsu cuisine, Zhejiang cuisine, Anhui cuisine, Guangdong cuisine and Fujian cuisine.
How can there be no distinction between cuisines when the Song Dynasty advocated food so much?
The division of Song people is relatively simple, mainly including southern cuisine, northern cuisine and Sichuan cuisine.
"Fan Chuan" is a very kind faction. Sichuan people are not hot and unhappy, and the reasons can be found here. However, pepper was introduced from the United States in the Ming Dynasty and was not accepted by the public until the Qing Dynasty. What is the "spicy" of the Song people without Chili?
Onions, ginger, garlic, leeks, mustard, pepper ... as long as they can provide spicy ingredients, they are all included in the kitchen. The most commonly used Sichuan pepper is a kind of Zanthoxylum bungeanum, which tastes stronger than ordinary Zanthoxylum bungeanum.
In the morning market, people eat ginger and spicy soup, which is provided by ginger and mustard, and then use pepper to enhance the numbness of the tip of the tongue. Going out early in the morning and drinking a bowl will have a refreshing effect. At the night market, vendors sell special snacks such as "spicy vegetable cake", "spicy bone" and "mustard melon", and the business is particularly hot.
Burning, roasting, frying, exploding, sliding and stewing ... basically took shape in the Song Dynasty; Meat, vegetarian food, pasta, tea ... in the Song Dynasty.
The handwriting is pale. After thousands of years of baptism, some secret smells have been lost, and the anecdotes in the rivers and lakes have gradually been forgotten. But if time can go back and eat, how should we look at this era?
After all, the Song Dynasty was a dynasty full of regrets. Although it is unified, the territory is not as vast as that of Han and Tang dynasties, and there are always wars in the border areas.
Song dynasty is also a peak of civilization that cannot be underestimated. The simplicity and elegance of Song porcelain, the uniqueness of Song ci, the charm of calligraphy and Zhuo Qun, and amazing paintings all show the style of a great country.
It is an undeniable fact that literature is more important than martial arts, and its wealth is not strong and it is oppressed. Rich products and fertile land can feed 1 100 million people, which is also irrefutable evidence.
If the Song Dynasty had not been wiped out by the Mongols and the prosperity of industry and commerce had continued, it might be possible that China would have entered the industrial revolution earlier than Europe.
The wheel of history has never stopped, and the rise and fall of the Song Dynasty has long been frozen. No matter how the world changes, one tea, one meal and three meals a day are the same theme.
When we hold the bowl in our hands and chew the taste of life carefully, imagine the streets and lanes thousands of years ago, when hawkers came carrying pole, and the diners who heard the news lined up in a long line, they always couldn't help laughing.
"The food there is delicious, the food is new, the vegetables are no problem, and there is no shortage of products." This is the fashion of Song people.
Living in the present and savoring the present, we are now reaping not only a gluttonous feast, but also a country that is richer and stronger than the Song Dynasty. Born in peace and prosperity, the people are well-being, there is no disaster and no difficulty, and you can have plenty of food and clothing, which is the real happiness for eating goods!