In the history of China's diet, the Song Dynasty was a historic turning point, and China people's food began to transition from scarcity to abundance. The introduction of improved rice, the development of farmland, careful breeding, and the popularization of intensive farming technology have given people a richer gift from nature. In the warm sunshine of the Tropic of Cancer, crops create richer ingredients and transport them to various places through the developed market network. During this period, the common people's eating habits changed from two meals to three meals.
People who have got rid of the threat of hunger have more leisure time and more leisurely thoughts to ponder over diet, study cooking methods and invent various delicacies to satisfy the enjoyment on the tip of their tongue. Cooking techniques that any chef must be familiar with today, such as boiling, roasting, roasting, frying, frying, boiling, stewing, marinating, steaming, waxing, honey and plucking onions, all matured in the Song Dynasty. Now we can taste ham, Dongpo meat, hot pot, sashimi (called "left" by Song people), fried dough sticks, glutinous rice balls, popcorn, various cakes and other foods and snacks, which were also invented or popular in Song Dynasty.
Dongpo pork and ham were invented by Song people.
1 1 Century Huangzhou in Hubei Province is still a "wild land". The troubled Su Shi spent the first low tide of his life here. Because of the Wutai Poetry Case, he was demoted to Huangzhou, where he became an assistant of a Yong Tuan, a humble and idle post with no real power. But this optimistic poet is determined to find the joy of life from the plain life. A delicious bite of food can obviously make the gloomy secular life glow with comfort.
Braised pork, the most common dish in China's menu, is rich in flavor, fat but not greasy, and delicious, which makes foodies' forefingers move greatly. Today, people think that this cooking technology that successfully transforms greasy pork into mellow food was invented by Su Shi in Huangzhou, and people named this food "Dongpo Meat". Dongpo is an abandoned old camp in Huangzhou, where Su Shi cultivated land and was close to nature, hence the name "Dongpo Jushi".
Huangzhou people in the Song Dynasty didn't know that an ordinary piece of pork could become delicious under the complicated action of fire and wine after magical cooking. "Huangzhou good pork is cheap as dirt, the rich refuse to eat, and the poor don't know how to cook." In the eyes of gourmet Su Shi, this is tantamount to profligacy.
Dongpo pork is not complicated: cut the fat and thin pork into an inch square, marinate it with wine and soy sauce, put it in a pottery bowl, add Jamlom water, and simmer it on a charcoal stove, paying attention to the heat. Su Shi used a poem "Eating Pork Poetry" to illustrate the key to cooking Dongpo pork: "Slow fire, less water, and he is beautiful when the fire is strong. Get up and play a bowl every day, and you are too full to care. " In the lonely years of Huangzhou, a bowl of braised pork every day turned the poet's "untimely stomach" into a "delicious stomach", and his life and stomach were enriched.
Later gourmets improved the production technology of braised pork according to their own kitchen experience and taste preferences. For example, peppers introduced to China in the Ming Dynasty were used for seasoning, but the key cooking steps were directed by Su Shi.
Ham, another China delicacy from domestic pigs, is said to have been invented by Su Shi. Whether it is true or not, the word "ham" did come from the Northern Song Dynasty. Su Shi also made ham: "Ham is cooked with pig pancreas, and the oil is gone. Hide ham in the valley and it will not be oily for decades. " During the long curing and storage process, mysterious microorganisms decompose protein in pork and turn it into a unique and wonderful taste, which is more delicious than fresh meat.
Hot pot and bean sprouts were born in Song Dynasty.
Lin Hong, a native of Southern Song Dynasty, was born one hundred years later than Su Shi, and was another gourmet in Song Dynasty. He claimed to be the grandson of Lin Hejing VII, a hermit in the Northern Song Dynasty. However, unlike Mr. He Jingfu's indifferent lifestyle, Lin Hong was keen on exploring on the tip of his tongue and once wandered around Shan Ye looking for delicious ingredients. "Mountain Jia Qing Palace" is Lin Hong's work to record delicacies. The book contains various foods such as wild vegetables, mushrooms, fruits and animals produced in Shan Ye, and introduces the materials and cooking methods of these delicacies.
In the era of harmonious coexistence between man and nature, rich game is a generous gift from nature to mankind. Lin Hong once caught a fat rabbit in Wuyishan in winter, but there was no cook in the mountains. Lin Hong doesn't know how to cook this gift from nature. An old diner told him: "Only thin batches are used in the mountains, wine, sauce and pepper are used, and Azakami is used in the wind furnace, so there is little water. After a cup of the Tang Dynasty rings, give everyone one track mind and let them do it themselves? Add soup, cook, spit, and provide juice as appropriate. " The sliced rabbit meat is clamped with chopsticks, stirred in steaming soup, and immediately turned into a rose color, and then dipped in the sauce made of "wine sauce pepper". As soon as you bite it, a more delicious and spicy taste immediately activates the taste buds.
Lin Hong named this cooking method "Breaking Shrimp". Later, "Pinellia ternata" was introduced to the market from Shan Ye, from which people got the inspiration to create delicious food. The word "rinse" was widely used on the dining table. Not only rabbit meat, but also other meats and vegetables can be cooked with one rinse and dipping sauce. This method has spread to today, and people call it "hotpot".
Lin Hong also recorded the method of making bean sprouts in his book Shan Jia Qing Gong: "Soak black beans in water to expose tender buds, put chaff into a pot, spread sand to plant beans, and press them with a board. If it is long, reuse it in a bucket and dry it at dawn ... It will be washed after three days, and it is especially good to blanch it with oil, salt, bitter wine and spices and roll it with sesame cakes. The color is light yellow, and the famous goose gives birth to soybeans. " In the recipes of Song people, soybeans, mung beans, peas, silkworm and red beans can all be made into bean sprouts.
In the history of human diet, China people once developed unpredictable delicacies from monotonous beans with talented cooking techniques. From soybean milk to tofu, from fermented bean curd to yuba, soybean-rich vegetable protein eggs have become delicious in various forms and tastes through a series of physical and chemical reactions. Bean sprouts are another genius invention of China people's diet. A sun-dried bean contains almost no vitamin C, but after it germinates, the starch in the bean will be hydrolyzed into glucose to synthesize vitamin C.
If the human body lacks vitamin C, scurvy is prone to occur. During the voyage to the west, it was plagued by scurvy for a long time, and countless sailors died of scurvy. However, after years of turmoil, China's maritime merchants and sailors seldom suffer from scurvy. Later, it was discovered that China people can turn mung beans into bean sprouts at any time when they take them out to sea, so that they can supplement sufficient vitamin C.
Fried dough sticks and glutinous rice balls were also produced in the Song Dynasty.
The people of China planted wheat in the north and rice in the south a long time ago, relying on the fertile land in the Yellow River basin and the Yangtze River basin, the sunshine and rain from heaven, and their hard work and wisdom, they developed a farming civilization far ahead of the world. But for a long time, wheat flour and rice were only used as staple foods to meet the needs of the mouth. During the Song Dynasty, with the increase of crop yield, people's dietary needs began to rise from the low level of the stomach to the high level of the tip of the tongue, and wheat flour and rice gradually developed into more abundant flavor snacks.
There are many kinds of pasta snacks in Song Dynasty, including soft goat noodles, tung skin noodles, fried noodles with salt, shredded chicken noodles, shredded pork noodles and three fresh noodles. Steamed bread includes mutton steamed bread, bamboo shoots steamed bread, fish steamed bread, crab steamed bread, sugar steamed bread and steamed steamed bread. Sesame cakes include thousand-layer cakes, moon cakes, baked golden flower cakes, milk cakes, vegetable cakes, Hu cakes, hibiscus cakes, cooked meat cakes, chrysanthemum cakes, plum cakes and sugar cakes. ...
Fried dough sticks are snacks that quickly puffed dough by frying at high temperature. It is said that they originated in the Southern Song Dynasty. Its birth was related to the hatred of a traitor in the Song Dynasty. Qin Gui, the prime minister of the Southern Song Dynasty, killed Yue Fei, a famous anti-gold star, on trumped-up charges. Song people expressed their indignation in a special cooking way: kneading noodles into the shape of Qin Gui and frying them in boiling oil to eliminate their hatred. Therefore, fried fritters are also called "fried juniper". From experts who know cows to frying pans, diet has always been full of emotions for China people, which includes people's epiphany on life and their love and hate for the world.
Rice is not only a staple food for wrapping the stomach, but also used by Song people to make various cakes: sugar cakes, flower cakes, honey cakes, glutinous rice cakes, bee sugar cakes, chestnut cakes, wheat cakes, bean cakes, steamed rice cakes, double ninth festival cakes ... The famous Soviet-style dim sum, with osmanthus and roses as its fragrance, has formed a genre in the Song Dynasty.
Tangyuan is a kind of dessert cooked with glutinous rice wrapped in sugar stuffing, which was also invented in Song Dynasty. Jiang Baishi, a poet in the Southern Song Dynasty, wrote in a poem: "The Lantern Festival competes to see the lotus boat, and the BMW car receives the cymbals; On a stormy night, people are tired, and the lonely lamp still calls for selling dumplings. " Song people implicitly pinned their feelings by eating jiaozi, expecting to reunite with their relatives.
From a historical point of view, just as a person needs to take calories from food every day to maintain human metabolism, diet also provides a driving force for historical progress. The civilization of human society began when our ancestors learned to cook food with fire. In the Song Dynasty, there was a quiet revolution in the diet of China people. Anderson, an American sinologist, described in his "China Cuisine" that "China's great cooking method was also produced in the Song Dynasty. The food in the Tang Dynasty was very simple, but by the end of the Song Dynasty, an exquisite cooking method with local characteristics had been fully confirmed. " During the period of 1998, American Life magazine once selected 100 events that have had the most profound impact on human life in recent 1000 years, and restaurants and snacks in the Song Dynasty were selected as the 56th. We need not be surprised by this.