Li said in the preface to Wake Up the Garden Record: "(The first adult refers to Li Huanan) As for official tours, most of them are the bitter hometown of Wu Tang. Those who are more willing to cook will follow up the record. This is not a fake, and it has been copied by hand for decades. "
The book records more than 120 dishes. The first volume mainly records the practices and preservation methods of meat dishes, and the second volume mainly records the production methods of cakes, vegetables, pickles, beverages, dairy products and eggs.
Different from ordinary literati recipes, the dishes recorded in Wake Up the Garden Record are very detailed, which has surpassed the literati's taste and sensory description of food. From this, I can even infer that Li Huanan and Li are not only food critics, but also excellent food creators and practitioners, and their cooking level must surpass that of Yuan Mei, a famous gourmet in Qing Dynasty. The writing of Yuan Mei's "Eating Menu with the Garden" depends to a great extent on his chef Xiaoyu. Yuan Mei took him around the world to visit delicious food and let Xiaoyu learn, copy and innovate. Yuan Mei's great talents are more appreciative and descriptive, and few of them cook in person, or they are not particularly proficient in cooking. Some of them, including Liang Shiqiu and Zhou Zuoren in the Republic of China, are also "gentlemen far away". At this point, Li Huanan and his son are comparable to Su Dongpo, a great gourmet who is diligent in hands-on.
How detailed is "Wake Up the Garden"? In my opinion, after reading this book, housewives can copy vegetables now. For example, there is a "drunken fish method" recorded in it: "Wash the fresh carp, marinate it for two days, turn it over and marinate it for another two days, that is, wash it in salt water. Then clean with water and dry the water vapor. Wash with soju and put in a jar. Put some pepper on each layer of fish, pour yellow wine on it, and drown the fish by an inch. Then add soju for half an inch. Cover with pepper and seal with mud. Seven portions of fish, two portions of yellow wine and one portion of soju will be enough. When eating, take the bottom, add pork suet and diced meat, add pepper and onion, the knife is as thin as mud, and the stew is very bad. Really delicious! " It's mouth watering. I can't help buying fish.
A considerable number of Jiangsu and Zhejiang cuisines are recorded in Wake Up Garden Record, but most of them are transformed from Sichuan cuisine, such as "the method of cooking bird's nest": "Take cooked meat stuffing as fine pills, add mung bean powder, soybean oil, pepper, wine and egg white, and make them into balls shaped like bird's nest. Soak the bird's nest and tear it into mud, wrap the meatballs, cook them in boiling soup, pick them up and put them at hand. When they are cooked, use clear soup as juice, add a little sweet wine and soybean oil, roll them in the pot first and then roll them. Just take the bowl down, sprinkle with pepper noodles, chopped green onion and fragrant rice, and it will be delicious. " This practice caters to Sichuan people's strong demand for spicy taste. It's the first time that I sprinkled pepper in the bird's nest.
Pickled vegetables is another dietary hobby of Sichuanese, and there are many records in Wake Up Garden Record, such as pickled red sweet ginger, pickled wax gourd, pickled peanuts (Luojiang is rich in peanuts, known as "Tianfu peanuts") and pickled mustard greens. Pastry is also the key point recorded in Wake Up the Garden Record, including steamed lettuce, steamed tuckahoe cake and steamed Manchurian cake.
There is a local food in Luojiang called "Wenjiang Mandarin Fish", and the legend is related to Li, which is quite interesting. Let me describe it here. It is said that when Li was an imperial examination officer, his friends invited him to eat mandarin fish, saying that if he could match a couplet, he could not only enjoy the food, but also give away the fry. This friend and Li came to a pond and made a couplet: "There are grass carp in the grass pond, fish play with grass, and grass plays with fish." Li thought for a long time, but he couldn't match it. He is very ashamed. Half a year later, Li went for an outing in the suburbs and saw a crying girl with yellow flowers on her head walking among rape flowers. Suddenly, she had a brainwave and said, "In the field of yellow flowers, women make yellow flowers, and yellow flowers make women." I hurried to that friend's house and got 1800 fry, which was quickly sent to Wenjiang, Luojiang's hometown. Since then, mandarin fish have multiplied in Luojiang and become a local delicacy.
Coincidentally, thousands of years later, our poet went to Luojiang to recite poems and cook. Lu, the local county party secretary, is also a poet. As it happens, he is good at food, too. He took us to eat a copy of Luojiang cuisine Steamed Pig's Head, which was adapted from Wake Up the Garden Record. Specifically, a complete pig's head is divided into two parts, depilated with naked fire, then scraped in boiling water, dried, salted on the surface of the pig's head, pickled with pepper, white wine, salt, ginger and garlic, boiled in water, steamed in a steamer for 8 hours, and served with a dip dish made of vinegar and a little garlic. This pig's head meat can be boned at the touch of chopsticks, fat but not greasy, thin but not firewood. At the same table, a poetess who never eats pork also quit, and her index finger moved greatly, even calling it delicious.
This dish is delicious, but it is a pity that it is in Luojiang. I think it can be made into vacuum packaging and sold in supermarkets all over the country like "Daokou roast chicken" and "Dezhou braised chicken" for more people to taste. Luojiang local dishes are still very distinctive, such as leeks mixed with peanuts and sausages with peanuts, which are very refreshing.
Luojiang is also deliberately developing and copying the dish "Yuan Tiao Cuisine" in "Dream of the Garden", but I feel that it is still too limited to Luojiang. A quintessence of "Dream of the Garden" cuisine is the fusion of Jiangnan cuisine and Sichuan cuisine. If you want to explore Luojiang cuisine, you must broaden your horizons. In addition, it is necessary to refine and standardize tableware and move towards national chains, such as "Luojiang Yuan Tiao Restaurant"